Making armor useful again

Started by Shurp, October 02, 2018, 06:12:40 PM

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Shurp

So a thought just occurred to me on a method to fix Rimworld armor without radically changing anything.

Most players are more interested in preventing critical injuries ("Damn, my pawn's brain got shot out!") than significant damage reduction.  The old armor system which applied a flat percentage helped a bit; your organ would get injured but would then heal.  (Not sure about brains healing)  The new system tends to be all-or-nothing which isn't much help.

But we could keep the current 100% / 50% dynamic and still have usable armor... if we just extended that division to 25%, 12%, 6%, and so on.  That is, when the attack percentage is higher than the armor value, the armor *still* reduces the damage, just by a lower percent.

So say you have 50% armor, reduced to 40% by a 10% penetration attack.  And then the attack gets a 67% attack value.  67% / 40% = 1.675, so that falls in the 1.5 - 2.0 bracket, which means only 12% of the damage is absorbed.  Maybe that's enough to keep your colonist's stomach intact.

Note this would allows stacking weak armors to actually be useful.  Your devilstrand duster and devilstrand t-shirt would actually produce some damage reduction in addition to your flak vest.
If you give an annoying colonist a parka before banishing him to the ice sheet you'll only get a -3 penalty instead of -5.

And don't forget that the pirates chasing a refugee are often better recruits than the refugee is.

zizard

I think it addresses a real problem which is the really jarring steps between 0, 50%, and 100%.

Thane

Daily Reminder that having a colony of disfigured cripples makes for a good story. /s
It is regular practice to install peg legs and dentures on anyone you don't like around here. Think about that.

vzoxz0

The problem of "I can't be invulnerable, fix it!" seems to ... not ... be a problem.

There SHOULD be tradeoffs from wearing armor like there are now. Normal clothing just shouldn't do much versus sniper rifle fire or great bow arrows hitting your chest. You need actual armor for that to do anything.

CthulhuTactical

Just make armor working like in real life. For example we have a typical flak vest ie. flexible kevlar vest. It should completely protect from bullets like SMGs, shotgun to torso, dont protect shoulders or legs. Armor will wear off by absorbing shots, and then even said SMGs and shotguns will pierce it eventually. Marine armor should protect from rifles and charge rifle/glitterworld weapons, but again getting hit wears off the armor and you would eventually get through. Game would benefit from adding more armor, and armors that cover more and less at the cost of weight, so flak vest with shoulder pads and thigh pads, or flak vest with plate insert. Fights would be protracted, less chaotic and RNG prone. But melee users would benefit from that, and most of kevlar vests dont protect from sharp knifes at all[ironically protect well against bullets, but knifes go through at relative ease], unless equipped with plate inserts.

b0rsuk

How about a very video-gamey solution: armor takes 100% of the damage, but has vastly reduced hitpoints compared to now. So a simple helmet might have 25 hitpoints but will absorb the entire damage. Obviously, it will also break very quickly under sustained fire.

This would make armor expensive to use, but effective.

Bolgfred

Quote from: b0rsuk on October 03, 2018, 01:15:51 PM
How about a very video-gamey solution: armor takes 100% of the damage, but has vastly reduced hitpoints compared to now. So a simple helmet might have 25 hitpoints but will absorb the entire damage. Obviously, it will also break very quickly under sustained fire.

This would make armor expensive to use, but effective.

Actually this would be a good idea to differ between clothing and armor, making armor less likely to break because of higher durability and casual clothing can take a shot but will break quickly in combat.
"The earth has only been lent to us,
but no one has said anything about returning."
-J.R. Van Devil

Scavenger

You think your Tshirt would stop a screw driver, let alone an armor piercing sniper round?
"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." - Oscar Wilde

vzoxz0

Even kevlar doesn't stop an armor piercing sniper round -- not even with steel plating behind it. Not sure why these people keep expecting very powerful projectiles to be stopped by conventional armor and clothing.

zizard

Quote from: Scavenger on October 04, 2018, 05:39:29 AM
You think your Tshirt would stop a screw driver, let alone an armor piercing sniper round?

I think a leather shirt would be useful vs a screwdriver.

b0rsuk

I think it's just helmets that need re-examined. If a simple helmet can't help against what's probably the worst ranged weapon (or is that molotov cocktail?), what's the point of helmets? I mean it was a shortbow that instakilled my colonist.

Plate armor is indeed quite good. I had a colonist wearing an excellent steel one withstand attacks from 3 drifters and dishing out death with a plasteel knife. Plate armor covers arms and legs, but uses the torso armor slot. You can currently wear it with pants and a shirt.

Shurp

So plate armor is a metal duster.  Sounds effective.

As for armor and storytelling... it's unfortunately fairly realistic that a colony that has survived  dozens of firefights is going to accumulate a lot of permanent injuries and fatalities along the way.  But for gameplay purposes we want to feel like armor is doing something useful.  A steel pot on your head should have a better than 30% chance of keeping your brain inside.  (Eyes and jaws, on the other hand... well, that's more storytelling, right?)

What might help is if complete organ replacement were a technology high up on the vanilla tech tree so that you wouldn't look at permanent injuries as truly permanent, but rather as a motivation to research the tech to grow a new jaw in a vat.
If you give an annoying colonist a parka before banishing him to the ice sheet you'll only get a -3 penalty instead of -5.

And don't forget that the pirates chasing a refugee are often better recruits than the refugee is.

b0rsuk

#12
It seems like Rimworld colonists wear their organs on the outside. I don't know about you, but my brain is protected by a really hard skull. Destroying my heart is also not a simple matter of hitting me where the heart is - there are ribs in the way. But in Rimword, if you know the magic spot to hit, BAM instant death. You don't even have to hit hard. A rolled up newspaper would suffice.

It's a quasi-realistic system which in some ways ends up even less realistic (and annoying!) than simpler systems in most other games. Turtles biting your eyes, colonists fighting and headbutting someone's knee, predators on the map being the first to die (bleeding to death from wounds inflicted by herbivores).

Electroid

I quite enjoy how the current armor system works. A straight improvement from the last imo.

The biggest problem I have now is that colonists seem to frequently get there head blown off by Lancers more than I care. But shit it happens

vzoxz0

QuoteI think it's just helmets that need re-examined. If a simple helmet can't help against what's probably the worst ranged weapon (or is that molotov cocktail?), what's the point of helmets? I mean it was a shortbow that instakilled my colonist.

In real life, a helmet doesn't stop a bullet. They are for shrapnel from artillery fire, grenades, and other types of explosions (or simply from debris flying as a result of bullets flying around you).

I do agree that arrows should not have the penetrative power of a bullet, though -- a helmet would in fact protect you from a shortbow arrow. A great bow arrow not so much.