How is protection calculated?

[Kadelake]

I haven't found anything about this in the manual and can't remember seeing anything on the forums.

If you give someone with 10 natural protection an armour with 18 protection the body protection will be less then 28. How is this calculated?
Does the protection shown on the main unit page have any function or is it always the head and body stats that are used?

[Endoperez]

I don't remember the exact formula, but I'm sure someone does. It basically makes natural protection and armor protection less and less effective as both increase.

I think it's always either body or head protection.

[JimMorrison]

Basically, the idea is that the better armored a creature already is, the less effective it is to pile armor onto their scaly/leathery/chitonous hide.

So the equation should look something like this I'm sure there is an easier way to express it, but I am still sleepy ): B + [A/40 * (40-B)]

Where B = Base Prot, and A = Armor Prot.

Thus in your example, what you get is: 10 + [18/40 * (40-10)]


Again, there has to be an easier way to write that, but it's escaping me atm. Basically you gain an amount of your Armor based on the ratio of Base/40. So as in the example with 10 Base, you will gain 75% of Armor, and if your base was 20, you would gain 50%.

Check your math! If that equation is working right for you, the answer is 23.5 (probably displaying as 24, but then you have to factor in Head Prot as well, which impacts Total Prot on a 4:1 ratio against Body Prot).

[Gregstrom]

AFAIK, the formula (from vfb's post here) is:

Protection = natural + armor - (natural * armor/40)

I couldn't swear the two formulae aren't the same, though.

[MaxWilson]

Gregstrom, the formulae are equivalent.

B + [A/40 * (40-B)] =
B + A(40-B)/40 =
B + A*40/40 - A*B/40 =
A + A - A*B/40

Remember that Head Prot is actually totally discrete from Body Prot, unlike Natural/Armor Protection. That is, a creature with a Body Prot of 25 and a Head Prot of 5 (like many sacreds without helmets) will take approximately zero damage from humans wielding daggers most of the time because they hit the body, but sometimes they hit the head and do about 7 points of damage. So expect a high variance in damage taken if you have low head prot.

I'm not sure exactly how it's calculated whether something hits the head or the body. I seem to have observed that the relative sizes of the creatures involved makes a difference, as does the length of the weapons, but I'm not sure and I haven't ever checked the debug log to make sure.

-Max

[Kadelake]

What happens if you have several head or torso slots?

[Endoperez]

If a unit has two heads and just one helmet, the head protection is halved.

Don't know about two body slots. It would probably be the same, but I'm not sure if anything has two of those. Maybe some Foul Spawn?

[Agema]

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

So as in the example with 10 Base, you will gain 75% of Armor, and if your base was 20, you would gain 50%.

That's a good general rule to bear in mind to save number-crunching. Thanks.