Armor

For armor that covers your ship see Ship Armor

Common armor is obtained from your ship's Weapons Locker component.


 * All crew, including officers and your Captain, can freely choose any type of armor from your Weapons Locker.
 * 1 Weapons Locker component can outfit any number of crew and officers.
 * If you have no Weapons Locker component, then all crew have only the lowest tier A0 weapons and armor available.
 * All crew can switch armor/weapons/gear at any time if you're not already in combat. You cannot switch armor when:
 * you're already in a ship or crew combat
 * your card game result is a ship encounter or crew combat, and the card game button already reads "Fight!"
 * when you're ambushed during a mission step (because there is no Crew button for you to click)
 * But you can switch armor when:
 * your card game result is Mission Success, and the mission outcome will be a ship or crew combat, but you're still in the card game, and the button reads "Mission". Now's your last chance!

Special armor can be purchased from Contacts. Rare and relic armor can be acquired only from salvage orbital operations.


 * All crew, including officers and your Captain, can wear special, rare, and relic armor.
 * Special, rare, and relic armor are singular items. You buy, sell, or find 1 suit at a time.  Each 1 suit can equip 1 crew member at a time.
 * You can accumulate any number of each type of armor. All special armor that aren't currently in use are available in your ship's equipment locker.
 * If a crew member leaves the ship for any reason (dies, abandons, or is dismissed), all armor/weapon/gear on that crew member automatically returns to your ship's equipment locker. Crew never take your equipment with them.

Damage Soaking Mechanics
See Soaking Damage for an official treatment of this topic.

Whenever a character takes Ballistic (ranged) or Melee damage in a Crew Combat, their Armor soaks some of that damage.

Armor Rating
Every armor has two separate Armor ratings, for Ballistic and Melee damage, respectively.


 * An armor that states "13-26% Ballistic soak" has an Armor rating of 26 (equal to the maximum soak%). Put another way, the soak% is given by WeightedDie(Armor rating), and so a rating of 26 gives a range of (13-26)%.
 * All traits, gear, buffs, and debuffs that give "+/- Armor%" stack via simple addition. The final +Armor% then multiplies both Armor ratings.

Example: An officer has Thick Skinned trait (+10% Armor), Military Gear T1 Witchfire Defense Net (+10% Armor), Tactical Edge buff (+10% Armor), and Lethal Trap debuff (-10% Armor), for a total of +20% Armor to her Armor Ratings. If she wears A3 Light Body Armor (38 Ballistic, 34 Melee ratings), she has final Armor ratings of 45 Ballistic (truncated from 45.6), 40 Melee (truncated from 40.8), for a final armor soak% of 23-44% Ballistic, 21-40% Melee on a deflected hit.

Armor and Fortitude Soaking
All Ballistic and Melee attacks are soaked by the target's final Armor rating and Fortitude.


 * Total soak% is capped at 100%, which reduces the incoming damage to 0. A combined soak roll of 101%+ doesn't heal you!

Example: An officer who stacks +50% Armor from 1 gear and 3 buffs, wears any armor with 60 Armor rating or more, successfully rolls to deflect the hit (see below), randomly rolls near the maximum (60% * 1.50) = 90%, and has high Fortitude of 24 and rolls near the maximum of 12% Fortitude soak, can exceed 100% total soak. This reduces that one hit down to 0 damage, but has no further benefit.

Deflection
All Weapons have a Piercing% score which represents their ability to punch through heavier armor, while all Armors have a Deflection% score which represents their ability to deflect or absorb damage. These scores stack by simple addition with all traits, buffs, debuffs, and gear that give +Armor Piercing% or +Deflection%, respectively.

A piercing hit reduces Armor soak by 2/3 (on average), and Fortitude soak% by half. In other words, a deflected hit will give an average of 3 times as much armor soak as a piercing hit.

On each hit, the attacker's total Piercing% and the target's total Deflection% are directly compared to see if the attack is Piercing.

(Chance to Deflect = Armor Deflection% - Weapon Piercing%)


 * If the target's Deflection% and the attacker's Piercing% are equal, there is a 0% chance that the attack is Deflected, which means 100% chance that it is Piercing.
 * For each 1% that Deflection% is higher (lower) than Piercing%, there is a +1% (-1%) adjustment to the chance of a Deflected hit.


 * If the deflect% is 100% or greater, then the hit is automatically deflected.
 * If the deflect% is 0% or negative, then the hit is automatically piercing.

Examples:


 * An attack with 42% Piercing hits armor with 112% Deflection. The chance to deflect is (112 - 42)% = 70%.  The chance to pierce is its complement, or 30%.
 * An A1 Infantry Pistol with 10% Piercing hits A3 Heavy Body Armor with 136% Deflection. The chance to deflect is 126%, and the shot is automatically deflected.
 * A Sniper with A5 Mensin Sniper (98% Piercing), Righteous trait (+20% Armor Piercing), Military Gear tier 1 XK Tracer Ammo (+8% Armor Piercing), and T1 Dominant Eye buff (+20% Armor Piercing) shoots with T11 One-Shot (+15% Armor Piercing), for a total of 161% Piercing. If the target is wearing heavy A5 Interlock Armor with 146% Deflection, the chance to deflect is (146 - 161)% = -15%, and the shot is automatically piercing.

Damage-over-Time (Bio-Poison/Bleeding) and Energy (Radiation/Plasma) Damage and Resist
Crew combat attacks can cause four special damage types.


 * Energy (Radiation/Plasma) Damage has instantaneous effect, with no duration. The associated talent may also add a debuff that gives -Resist for that energy type, which affects any future shots.
 * Damage-over-time (Bio-Poison/Bleeding) has a duration of 2-4 turns, depending on the talent used. This damage is rolled at the start of every following turn, until it expires.

These special damage types have their own rules for damage and soaking.


 * Special damage ignores all +Damage% and +All Damage% traits, gear, buffs, and debuffs.
 * Special damage types automatically bypass Armor, and therefore skip the Deflection pipeline.
 * Special damage and resist are in points of damage, not %.
 * Special damage Resist (whether positive or negative) applies only to hits of the same damage type.
 * Negative Resist uses exactly the same pipeline, so it adds +WeightedDie(|Resist|) to damage of the same type!

Armor Reference

 * Light armors grant a significant amount of bonus dice to Dodge.
 * Heavy armors give a penalty to Initiative but come with very high deflection and damage soaking. Heavy armor typically offers a small amount of Dodge as well.
 * Stealth armors give Stealth Dodge. This grants dice equal to listed value or the wearer's Stealth Skill, whichever is lower. You do not need to be in stealth mode to make use of this Stealth Dodge (unlike in Templar Battleforce.) Certain Stealth Armor can also actually give an initiative bonus to its wearers.