Care to speak about armor and body parts? That's what I'm trying to figure out at this point: how different pieces of armor work in relation to each other, with regard to where one takes hits.

Since the combat system does take different body parts into account ("body hit," "right arm hit," and so on), I assume the damage reduction for a hit is modified only by the armor covering the affected body part. Or am I wrong--is armor more cumulative than that?

Assuming I'm right, what about body parts that can be covered by several pieces of armor at once? One's right arm is presumably affected by gloves, right bicep, and right bracer, for example.

Armor question:

why am I able to stand naked and let a sevorrt pound on me for nearly 5 minutes, while with armor on i last maybe 2 minutes?

this is because my HAM is regenerating so much faster with no armor on. is there any armor that will actually benefit me?

i should also throw in that i'm able to sustain combat (ie. firing my blaster specials) for a MUCH longer time when i'm naked than wearing armor.

bottom line is i do much better wearing nothing but normal clothing.

The devs did this for a very good reason:  How often do you see any of the star wars characters wearing armor, other than storm troopers?  Armor is encumbering, and mostly useless according to the star wars cannon (as evidenced by the lack of it in the movies).  If it wasn't, then they'd be wearing it more often, no?  So armor isn't as effective in SWG as it is, say, in EQ, or any other game...because the cannon shows us that it's not in popular usage.  Wear armor if you want, but as other posters have seen, characters tend to be more effective OUT of armor, than in it. 

The best use for armor and such is when you're engaging in specific activity, like you know you're going to be duelling in PvP against someone that uses blasters, then you don the bone armor which gives good armor against blaster fire, etc... Just wearing it all the time doesn't seem to be terribly effective.

"why am I able to stand naked and let a sevorrt pound on me for nearly 5 minutes, while with armor on i last maybe 2 minutes? ...  BTW that's with a full set of bone chitin armor."

Two things:

- I didn't realize there was anything called "bone chitin".  I'm only aware of Bone armor, and Chitin armor.  Note that Bone armor (the easiest armor to craft) does NOT absorb kinetic damage.  So if you are wearing bone armor, that sevort is doing its full damage to you.

- The effect of armor halving damage done to you is best felt when you fight higher level creatures that hit hard.  Sevorts aren't kind of wimpy, so armor won't be taking much damage off per attack.  Therefore against a sevort the armor's usefulness is reduced because, like you said, you could be regenerating a lot of that damage back.

However, if you're fighting a creature that does a lot of damage per hit, then your armor is likewise absorbing a lot of damage quickly.  In that case the damage your armor absorbs is going to be a lot more than you'd be able to regenerate on your own.  So armor is well worth it when facing tough stuff, if you're the one taking damage. 

Of course, if you're a support or ranged guy in a group and not taking much damage, you may as well take off your armor.  But if you're one of the lucky guys in your group who's always taking damage, armor is a must against higher level stuff.

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lorildeh wrote:

Armor question:

 

why am I able to stand naked and let a sevorrt pound on me for nearly 5 minutes, while with armor on i last maybe 2 minutes?

this is because my HAM is regenerating so much faster with no armor on. is there any armor that will actually benefit me?

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AllaKhazam wrote:
Very Nice.  I posted this up on our site.  Let me know if you didn't want it preserved Ashla.

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Great post!

Adding a bit to your stuff....Note your encumberance affecting strength, quickness, and focus. When these stats go down, your HAM costs for your specials go UP because you do not use these abilities as efficiently. If you take something like TKA specials which have high multipliers across the board (1.5-2x to health AND action AND mind) which seem to have been designed to be balanced for no weapons and you add in vibro knucklers with their high HAM cost, and pile on encumberance from armor you can come close to killing yourself with special moves. Even my rifle with fairly reasonable HAM costs is costing 66mind per headshot2 with chitin armor for my trandoshan, as my focus drops from around 400 naked to 100 or so in armor. VK's are even worse.

So you will see TKA's de-equip VK's for specials, then re-equip them later to dish out the damage. Zerk + autoattack works just fine in full armor, as you pay one HAM cost up front for zerking, and the armor reduces the price you pay defensively for zerking.

A really great strategy is to say put all of your gear on toolbar 6 and create a macro using

/ui action toolbarPaneXX to switch to Pane05 (toolbar6)

/ui action toolbarSlotYY to equip/equip your armor

to equip or de-equip all of your armor in one keystroke. What this does is let you regenerate post combat with your armor off, and fight in combat with it on.

Bone armor is not vulnerable to kinetic, is it? So it should offer 50% protection. Why do people say it is zero protection? They are just going off the additional bonuses right? This post of yours should help clear that up.

Prima guide is very misleading as it lists general effectiveness of armor types.

I find that in general the armor works wonders for my TKA. Sure missing zerk now hurts alot, but in general I take less damage and can tank longer with armor on than with armor off. I really doubt the analysis that the others said that regeneration rates exceeed mob damage- this isnt true- regeneration is slow. Maybe if he is special moving like mad he is stripping off his own HAM fast in armor.

The repair kits can work, but the game will not let you repair until I think your armor hits zero. Seems also like the stat bonuses decline with armor degradation.

There also seems to be a mentality that personal shield generators can let you have your cake and eat it too. My understanding is they are expensive, are fragile, and need alot of repair and are no substitute for good armor.

It boggles my mind that people are not educated on this stuff.  It is even more amazing that a simple game mechanic like this is not publicly disclosed by a dev. 

If you guys see a post asking a question on anything in here feel free to link it!

Upcoming in a few days is my gigantic post on weapons, damage types, and armor vulnerabilities with information learned from the strategy guide.  Im composing it in my head as we speak.....I may make a v 2.0 becuase it will change some stuff in the one above. 

Bone armor is not vulnerable to kinetic, is it? So it should offer 50% protection. Why do people say it is zero protection? They are just going off the additional bonuses right? This post of yours should help clear that up.

If you have a piece of armor lieing around you can see in the properties.  The only Protection if I remember is Energy.  All of the others fall under vulnerabilities, so they will not be absorbed.

The armor/weapon system in this game is really complex, and quite elegant.  There is a whole inside game of guess the weapon/armor that you can play in pvp to kill your opponent faster, and you can even bring a bigger gun to the table to trump any armor(bringing a new meaning to the term "heavy weapons").  This game is also playable when fighting npcs.

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deiong wrote:
well what i want to know is why have armor at all when its more effective to battle naked as many more are finding out and doing lately ??

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