All of the information here is gleaned from watching hours of combat spam.  it gives me something to do while I cue up specials Im posting this here as well as the armorsmith boards.  I hear a lot of people wondering about armor, and most dont know how it works.  I just figured it out recently as well.

Im going to break it down by stats found on all armor:

Durability

All armor has durability. Most of us have seen its effects.  Armor in this game seems to decay in some relation to the damage it takes.  The more damage, the faster it decays.  As the armors get better, they increase in absorb, and also increasse in durability to make up for it.  Use a repair kit to replenish durability, but be prepared to break it and have to buy a new piece.

Protection

All armor has a an AC of 1(as far as I can see, prove me wrong on this)  It will absorb 50% of all damage not listed in vulnerabilities PLUS any percentage listed in Protection.  Say if you have 10% kinetic(this is a value found on chitin).  Damage dealt is 100, the armor will take 50 damage plus 5 more damage.  It will say "Blah blah armor absorbs 55 damage" in the combat spam.  The offshoot from this system is that small damages get lowered by less than large damages.  Which is partly the reason I didnt notice before.  For most hits, it will look like your armor absorbs 50%, but at higher damages the secondary number is in effect as well.  At first I thought it was a rounding error

a.  Special protection

all armors have a type of damage that they are best at absorbing(bone: energy, mabari: heat and blast).  I believe this is also where layers will come into effect later(when they work).

b.  Normal Protection

this is where the natural defense of the armor shows up.  All of the damage types that the armor absorbs are listed here.

Vulnerability

These damage types are what the armor will Not absorb.  You will be hit for full damage with these types of  attacks.  Even if your AC is 1.  Some very rare damage types will fall into vulnerabilities, that I can only see players doing.  Have you seen an electricity attack from an npc?  I havent.

Encumbrance

a.  Health This number is subtracted from the secondary stats.  It will reduce Strength and Constitution by the given amount.  Effected mostly by Chestplates.

b. Action Same as above, only for Quickness and stamina.  Leggings and boots effect these areas the most

c. Mind Same as health only for focus and willpower.  Helms effect this area greatly

Encumbrance will lower stats by a huge amount for good armor.  Even experimented suits will have a large effect.  I have a very rough suit of chitin right now, and my strength, constitution, quickness and willpower are dipping into the 100-200 range while my focus is like under 100.  This will get better, but I would expect it to only halve, which is still significant(at least for a brawler) 

Remember that both creatures and players have armor.  The above rules still apply.  If you have high enough creature knowledge, you can see all of the stats that matter on creatures.  To help you decide what to attack and what not to, as well as pinpoint the vulnerabilities.  I assume most people that hunt have no idea what the creatures armor is, and wonder why their lightning gun isnt hurting the creature, or their new blaster of armageddon is only tickling the giant sand beetle.    

I hope this is helpful to some people. If it has been done befor I hope that i have added something to it.  This is a good start.  I will try to add an explanation of damage types when I figure out more of them. 

Please feel free to dispute my claims, or prove them right.

Thanks for posting this. I find it incredible that the Devs could not list the base protection of a piece of armor right on it. Hey thats what it does! why is it missing. Where on a bone helm does it say 50% vs something, it doesnt. There is so much text on items when you examine it, you would think that an extra 20 characters could fit in there somewhere!

I have stayed away from buying armor because I'm looking at these rather low numbers 8-19% without knowing that it is 50% + 8% of the remainder. Well, this makes much more sense. Someone had posted armor is 50% but examining armor says otherwise.

Now if we could get a PLAYER to list what power ups actually do I would be real happy. We cant expect a dev to dirty his hands with documentation and then actually put it in a place people might be able to find it, like on the examine panel. Why should I put a barrel on a gun it just costs me points when doing a special action and does not say what it does!

This is rather frustrating. If they mean for us to "explore" the items and guess at what they do in practice, fine! remove all the stats from all weapons. Why should we know a gun can do 20-50? If they think we should know weapon damage, why not power ups, why not armor?

Thanks again for posting this, at least now I know armor is worth it.

Thanks, It took me about 2 monthes to figure this out.  It was even more cryptic in beta.  All we got back then were code strings about base effectiveness and some such, and no combat spam about armor.  I dont even know if the armor out of the dispensers(yes we had dispensers, 5 creds per weapon/armor piece.  You could buy a composite set for 45 credits lol) was as good as the stuff that we are crafting now.  Ive worn Mabari and chitin in my time playing, and I can definitely tell that the number on the armor is not all it absorbs.  Just having armor is better than not.  It will absorb something. 

My chitin makes me almost invulnerable to all creatures of even con.  Add to that a good weapon, and you are good to go.   

Thanks Melvic, it was even right on the front page hehe. Looks like he posted it yesterday.

Off topic power up stuff:

When you go to a store you see a sign that says -25% cost on all stuff. Well you know that you will save money. If you saw a sign that read +25% cost, would you buy it? If my power up read -10% health cost I would say great, slap that baby on.

They felt that a power up needed a positive number for some reason, just to confuse people I guess, oh well

I have recently learned that there is other armor with higher AC than 1.  I will investigate and post more on it.

PS no strength has nothing to do with damage taken.  It is purely used to determine how much HAM a special move costs.

Taken right out of a post written by Sapp in the armorsmith forum:

Sinfoxx,

I think you're refering to Armor Rating so I hope my answer is what you are looking for...

Per the SWG Guide, Weapons and Armor (should) work like this with respect to Armor Rating.

All weapons have an armor rating of 0 (none), 1 (light), 2 (med), or 3 (heavy). All player crafted armor has a rating of 1 (light). If a weapon's rating is the same as the armor being hit, there is no change in the damage calculations. However, if the weapon's rating is higher than the armor's rating, its deals and additional 25% damamge for each level higher.

Therefore a weapon with an armor rating of 3 attacking a piece of armor with a rating of 1 would do an additional 25% of damamge followed by another 25% of damage.

So a blast that hits for 100 base damage would do a total of 156.25 damage after the rating differences are calculated. (100 x 1.25 x 1.25)

If the armor rating is higher than the weapon's armor, the damage taken is deduced by 50% for each level higher. So a blaster with a rating of 0 that hit 100 damage points on a armor rating of 2 would be reduced to 25 points (100 x .5 x .5)

Only NPCs drop armor that is 2 or 3...we armorsmiths can only make 1 so far.

Later in the thread someone mentions being able to make AC 2 pieces.  Especially in the Ubese armor type. 

Thanks Ashla! Finally an answer to all my questions about armor

All player crafted armor has an AC of 1. Different guns have different AP values. If the gun's AP value is equal to the armor's, it deals normal dmg. (note:special protection will still take effect) If the AP value is higher, it will deal an additional 25% dmg for each level higher. If the guns AP is lower, it will deal 25% less dmg for each level lower. For example, if I shot someone without any armor with my laser carbine (AP:2) it would deal dmg +25% +25%, not +50%.

I'm not good at explaining things, so if you want to know more, buy Prima's guide, that's where I got this from.

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Everquester wrote:

All player crafted armor has an AC of 1. Different guns have different AP values. If the gun's AP value is equal to the armor's, it deals normal dmg. (note:special protection will still take effect) If the AP value is higher, it will deal an additional 25% dmg for each level higher. If the guns AP is lower, it will deal 25% less dmg for each level lower. For example, if I shot someone without any armor with my laser carbine (AP:2) it would deal dmg +25% +25%, not +50%.

I'm not good at explaining things, so if you want to know more, buy Prima's guide, that's where I got this from.

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