Armor abstractions in Fallout's SPECIAL game system

[Slowtrain]

I'm curious though, if FO was one of the last crpgs you really enjoyed why were you planning to alter so much of it in your working vision of FO3?

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Because the things that were good about it weren't the fact that there were two medical skills and a broken armor system.

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heh. OK. Everything can stand a little tweaking. Although I thought the armor system was one of the best I've ever seen in a crpg, except for the fact that AP rounds weren't useful enough. Just my take on that though.

 

But I just remember thinking that many of your proposed changes seemed more to have the result of reducing the possibilities in the game rather than expanding them, whioch to me is the core of the crpg experience: possibilities.

 

What about BG2 bothered you, do you think? That seems to me a pretty classic crpg-style game, I'm surprised yiou didn't enjoy it so much.

[J.E. Sawyer]

heh.  OK.  Everything can stand a little tweaking.  Although I thought the armor system was one of the best I've ever seen in a crpg, except for the fact that AP rounds weren't useful enough.  Just my take on that though.

The armor system resulted in making characters invincible near the end of the game unless an armor-bypassing critical hit was scored, which often resulted in massive injuries/death.

 

But I just remember thinking that many of your proposed changes seemed more to have the result of reducing the possibilities in the game rather than expanding them, whioch to me is the core of the crpg experience: possibilities.

I disagree. Fallout's firearm skills were stratified in way that encouraged players to dump all skill points into them in a certain order for the entire game. Basically, small guns was designed to obsolete at a certain point, then big guns. The same didn't apply to characters who focused on speech or science -- or unarmed combat, for that matter.

 

What about BG2 bothered you, do you think?  That seems to me a pretty classic crpg-style game,  I'm surprised yiou didn't enjoy it so much.

I really disliked most of the CNPCs, I really disliked being forced to go find Imoen, I really disliked the style of dialogue, and I really disliked being flooded with a million quests by every shmoe on the streets of Athkatla. Basically, there wasn't a whole lot I did like about it.

[Slowtrain]

The armor system resulted in making characters invincible near the end of the game unless an armor-bypassing critical hit was scored, which often resulted in massive injuries/death.

 

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I wouldn't have been opposed to tweaking some of the armor stats, esecially the PA, but I thought the concept of AC (% chance to miss completely) combined with DT and DR was outstanding. It really gave you a lot of flexbility on how you could choose to armor yourself, plus having 5 distinct damage types would often require a trade-off of one type of resistance for another. For example, Metal armor was good early againt bullets and laser but awful against fire and electricity,and the Tesla armor was a cool specialized piece of gear. Plus there was those in-games things you could do to yourself like get the implants in Vault City that would give you either a slight DT or Dr bonus at the cost of somethign else. To me it just added a great deal of possiblity into the game. Just from a personal note I disliked the power armors and never wore them.

 

 

I disagree.  Fallout's firearm skills were stratified in way that encouraged players to dump all skill points into them in a certain order for the entire game.  Basically, small guns was designed to obsolete at a certain point, then big guns.  The same didn't apply to characters who focused on speech or science -- or unarmed combat, for that matter.

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hmmm. I don't recall this being an issue. I once wiped out the entire Brotherhood of Steel with the MP5. One of the coolest builds in the game was the auto-weapon build which was 2 levels of bonus ranged damage, fast shot, bonus rate of fire, a few other perks. You could use either a small gun character or a big gun character and it was totally lethal. Or course the classic sniper/gauss rifle shooter using the finesse/sniper/sharpshooter build. Also lethal. Or you could just fast shot/ bonus rate of fire with the turbo plasma rifle. Or of course, bruiser and heavy handed combined with bonus rate of melee attack and the super sledge. oof! Again the ability of SPECIAL to create an almost endless possibilty of character builds was amazing. The game was really only limited by ones imagination.

 

 

I really disliked most of the CNPCs, I really disliked being forced to go find Imoen, I really disliked the style of dialogue, and I really disliked being flooded with a million quests by every shmoe on the streets of Athkatla.  Basically, there wasn't a whole lot I did like about it.

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I agree with most of those points. And I think it is because BG2 worked more to limit the possibilities of what I could do than expand them. Just my personal take on that though.

[Nick_i_am]

erm...yeah, the AC calculations for FO endgame could be pretty annoying. 'hahaha, with this power armour nobody can touch me' *critical hit* *instant death*

 

Fun fun fun!

[Spider]

I wouldn't have been opposed to tweaking some of the armor stats, esecially the PA, but I thought the concept of AC (% chance to miss completely) combined with DT and DR was outstanding. 

 

I disagree. I think it makes no sense at all, actually. The DT/DR is supposed to show how armor stops incoming force from hurting you. If you're hit by something and it doesn't damage you, that means the armor completely blocked it.

 

So what exactly does the AC represent? The in game effect is that I'm harder to hit in the first place, not harder to damage. So how do I get harder to hit by carrying around 40lbs of metal exactly? Doesn't that in fact make me easier to hit (there is more of me and I can't move as freely), but harder to damage?

 

AC makes a little more sense in a game like D&D where the increase in AC represents the armor's damage stopping qualities as well as your own ability to not get hit. I don't think it's a very good concept there either, but at least in such a system I can understand it.

[Judge Hades]

Because the things that were good about it weren't the fact that there were two medical skills and a broken armor system.

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You were going to make grenades as melee weapons if I remember correctly. I agreed with most of the changes, but grenades are not melee weapons!

 

[Slowtrain]

So what exactly does the AC represent? The in game effect is that I'm harder to hit in the first place, not harder to damage. So how do I get harder to hit by carrying around 40lbs of metal exactly? Doesn't that in fact make me easier to hit (there is more of me and I can't move as freely), but harder to damage?

 

AC makes a little more sense in a game like D&D where the increase in AC represents the armor's damage stopping qualities as well as your own ability to not get hit. I don't think it's a very good concept there either, but at least in such a system I can understand it.

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EVerything in a computer game, ever stat, number, figure, is a representation of something, an abstraction of what occurs in the real world. I always think of AC as your ability to dode, evade, anticiptate, deflect an attack. In FO the leather armor was combat combat clothing that allowed you freedom of movement, camouflage, etc, whereas the metal armor gave you some deflection at the expense of freedom etc. I thought it made perfect sense as an abstraction. This of course coming in a game where I could get shot in the face by a rocket launcher and still get up afterwards

[Spider]

EVerything in a computer game, ever stat, number, figure, is a representation of something, an abstraction of what occurs in the real world.  I always think of AC as your ability to dode, evade, anticiptate, deflect an attack.  In FO the leather armor was combat combat clothing that allowed you freedom of movement, camouflage, etc, whereas the metal armor gave you some deflection at the expense of freedom etc.  I thought it made perfect sense as an abstraction.  This of course coming in a game where I could get shot in the face by a rocket launcher and still get up afterwards

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Yes, and I can relate to how the leather armor would give me higher AC than the metal armor with this representation. My question is why does donning the metal armor make me harder to hit compared to wearing no armor at all? 40lbs of metal makes me more mobile?

 

If wearing armor would decrease my AC compared to being unarmored, I would love the system, but that's not how it is.

[Slowtrain]

Yes, and I can relate to how the leather armor would give me higher AC than the metal armor with this representation. My question is why does donning the metal armor make me harder to hit compared to wearing no armor at all? 40lbs of metal makes me more mobile?

 

If wearing armor would decrease my AC compared to being unarmored, I would love the system, but that's not how it is.

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I see your point, but I think you're trying to interpret AC too literally. (ie I wear heavy metal armor; therefore I am less easy to hit. WHich of course doesn't make sense).

 

Rather, look at AC as being an abstraction of the dynamic battlefield. In a game like FO even though what you see is just 2 people standing there shooting at each other turn after turn, the combat engine needs to take into account that they are actually moving, sweating, panicking, etc. This can't be shown in the engine, of course, but needs to be accounted for as a number that can be applied to skill rolls, ie. AC. It's an abstraction yes, but its important since it gives a defensive response and counter to the offensive player's chance to hit.

 

I've always believed that AC should be a number that is affected by a wide range of a player character's stats and statistics, everything from endurance, agility, intelligence, perception to dodge skills and clothing worn. I've never seen that in a game, but I loved that FO at least seperated AC from actual defensive characteristics of the armor itself.

 

So look at the AC number in FO in depth:

 

First: the base AC is determined by a characters agility. That abstracts a character's general ability move and react when in combat. Good, although I would rather see it affected by additional stats as well.

 

Second: Unused APS roll over into AC. Again, good. Abstracting a player character's increased state of defensive awareness. I wold have liked to see it roll over at a higher than base 1 to 1 ratio, but again, at least it does something.

 

Third: A handful of traits and perks that either lessen or increase AC. Again all of them are merely abstractions of a player character's battlefield awareness. I would have liked to see them have a more pronounced effect however.

 

Fourth: Armor. Each type has a different AC bonus applied to it. Leather +15, metal +6 etc. SO we can see right away that the armor system does take into account that metal armor has significently less impact on AC increases than Leather, thus giving metal armor an AC penalty for its weight. But ALL armor is clothing which is specially created for combat. Professional athletes don't compete in jeans and loafers; they competer in clothing designed for the specific event because it gives them an edge. Same for armor, and that edge is what is abstracted in the AC numbers provide by armor.

 

 

One of the few things that is disappointing about Jag 2, is that it has no AC abstractions in the game. The combat engine basically assumes that all characters are standing still when fired it and that ALL PENALTIES TO HIT MUST OCCUR WITH THE SHOOTER. WHich is ridiculous, of course. Different targets are more or less easy to hit even if all other conditions are identical. The FO approach is much more sophisticated and interesting and varied. More interesting and crpg-y, since it changes depending on the items and build of the pc.

 

 

In a realtime first person game, having to abstract AC becomes much less important. Probably even unneccessary. Well, may not completely unneccessary, but less so.

Edited January 14, 2006 by CrashGirl

[Slowtrain]

Thank you for cutting this out and moving it, helpful unknown mod/admin person. I was feeling a little guilty about going so far off topic. But I like talking about this kind of stuff so I couldn't give it up.

[J.E. Sawyer]

I don't think anyone is arguing that AC isn't an abstraction, but I would argue that Fallout/SPECIAL's system of abstracting armor is unintuitive and forces characters to always adopt the heaviest armor unless they want to intentionally handicap themselves.

 

If I were coming to Fallout for the first time, my expectation would be that metal, Tesla, and power armor greatly increase protection but reduce my stealth abilities and my overall mobility. They're bulky, heavy suits of armor. I understand that PA is motorized, but I've always believed that the actuators in PA are there simply to give the person the great strength required to wear it, not to enhance movement speed and grace above and beyond their normal capabilities.

 

I would expect the leather and combat armors to protect me less, but to give few penalties to my stealth abilities or to my movement-oriented stats.

 

If we think of an attacker's skill check as determining their ability to hit a target of a certain size moving at a certain speed at a certain range, the properties of the target certainly factor into that calculation. I just don't think that the durability of the armor should have any positive effect on it.

 

But in Fallout, this isn't the case. Heavier armor both increases AC and increases damage reduction. It also has no penalty on stealth skills. On top of this, the DR/DT system combines to result in virtual invincibility in the late game unless the PC suffers the effects of a rare critical. To make matters worse, the gulf of difference between armor types is huge. If you fight Enclave troops in the best combat armor you can find, you will take massive damage compared to those wearing APA. Because of how good the endgame armor is, all of the enemy weapons have to be jacked up in power more and more just to make a little dent in the PC. Against all other armor types, it's Bedtime for Bonzo.

 

In my opinion (duh), the changes I wanted to make in F3 would have resulted in different character types having more options in the late game. Power armor variants were for people who wanted to be tanks. They could take a great deal of punishment, but they were pretty easy to see/hear coming and to hit. People in combat armor variants retained most of their movement/stealth capabilities, but couldn't quite take the heavy hits in extended combat.

[Nick_i_am]

Movement options in a Fallout could have done this system well too, it would hardly be practical to 'go prone' in Power Armour, which is an ability which a person would retain while wearing 'normal' armour. For example.

[Slowtrain]

I don't think anyone is arguing that AC isn't an abstraction, but I would argue that Fallout/SPECIAL's system of abstracting armor is unintuitive and forces characters to always adopt the heaviest armor unless they want to intentionally handicap themselves.

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I would agree with this, but to me it doesn't indicate a broken system. Rather, it indicates to me that AC is not properly balanced with DT/DR. The benefit of the +15 AC of leather armor vs the +6 of metal armor is not even close to the value of the 5/40 DT/DR of metal armor over the 2/25 DT/DR of leather. For those people who have a leather fetish (hello, me!) and loved wearing the leather jacket for the whole game this caused a great deal of trauma (and reloading). If I were going to tweak the FO armor system, I would increase the usefulness of the AC number as well as having more stats and skills that could affect it, but still keep it seperate from the DT/DR of the armor itself.

 

On a side note, I would also decrease the usefulness of the PAs. However that might just be personal because I don't like them and I refused to wear them. AT the very least you should have to carry around several thousand small energy cells or something. lolol.

 

If I were coming to Fallout for the first time, my expectation would be that metal, Tesla, and power armor greatly increase protection but reduce my stealth abilities and my overall mobility.  They're bulky, heavy suits of armor.  I understand that PA is motorized, but I've always believed that the actuators in PA are there simply to give the person the great strength required to wear it, not to enhance movement speed and grace above and beyond their normal capabilities.

 

I would expect the leather and combat armors to protect me less, but to give few penalties to my stealth abilities or to my movement-oriented stats.

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I hadn't thought about the stealth penalties since those are really outside the AC/DT/DR system, but yes, I do agree with the heavier armors giving sneak, lockpicking, pickpocket penalties, maybe even direct AP penalties. Plus perception penalities for the PA's or anything else that covers the head. Also chr penalties for walking around in PA since you look like a buffoon.

 

 

But back to AC!

 

If we think of an attacker's skill check as determining their ability to hit a target of a certain size moving at a certain speed at a certain range, the properties of the target certainly factor into that calculation.  I just don't think that the durability of the armor should have any positive effect on it.

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But here you are basically limiting the player character from doing anything with stats and skills and items that has a countering effect to the attacker's chance to hit. Especially since in a turn base game no target is ever actually moving, there needs to be some way of abstracting that.

 

The AC number is something the defender can affect to make herself harder to hit, but not to damage. Armor should be a part of that AC number, but not the only part, and probably not even the biggest part, although depending on character build it might be. Indeed in FO a character with 7 or more agility gets more benefit from that than from the AC increase of metal armor.

 

Again, I am not saying the value of the system don't need tweaking. They do. But the system is not b0rk3d, I don't think.

 

 

But in Fallout, this isn't the case.  Heavier armor both increases AC and increases damage reduction.

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Yes, that's true. But metal armor has a substially smaller bonus than leather armor. And as I said earlier, armor IS combat clothing, that is what it is built for, all armor should give some sort of AC bonus. Those bonuses have to be measured relative to one another not to an absolute state of not having any armor at all. Tweaking down the PA AC values is probably agfood idea though.

 

 

It also has no penalty on stealth skills.

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I do agree that was a problem. It reduced player choice in the game.

 

 

On top of this, the DR/DT system combines to result in virtual invincibility in the late game unless the PC suffers the effects of a rare critical.

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I will sorta agree with this. Yes, DR/DT could work to make players invincible but criticals were so frquent that it didn't matter too much. Also because of the 5 different damage type, your pc might be highly resistant to one but not others. For example, one of my favorite builds for a pc was to take three levels of toughness and the chem resistant trait. By taking one dose of psycho, with a reduced chance for addiction, my pc had an 80% DR to nornal damage. This is how I got my leather jacket only characters throgh the game, lol. But of course that was DR to nomal damage only and was worth diddly against plasma and lasers and rocket launchers and what not. But I loved the fact that having AC/DT/DR as seperate entities allowed me to bild a wide and disparate group of player characters. I would have liked to have done more with straight AC but that just wasn't possible, sadly.

 

 

 

To make matters worse, the gulf of difference between armor types is huge.

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This I will agree with. Was Power Armor overpowered? I don't know really. I know I didn't like it, mostly because I like to roleplay light on their feet player-characters and the PA's just don't fit that idiom (so to speak), and since I never used it my games were much harder. But I can't complain about it really since it was my choice to not make use of something the game was balanced for. I did give it to Sulik in FO2 because I couldn't see him wearing it so I would forget he had it on.

 

If I were going to tweak FO's armor I would probably reduce both the DR and DT of the PAs.

 

 

If you fight Enclave troops in the best combat armor you can find, you will take massive damage compared to those wearing APA.  Because of how good the endgame armor is, all of the enemy weapons have to be jacked up in power more and more just to make a little dent in the PC.  Against all other armor types, it's Bedtime for Bonzo.

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Well, FO and to a slightly lesser extent FO2 have ways around most of the combat. Which was great! And when you did have to fight againt the high end enemies there were perks and ways of building your character that made those fights winnable even without the PAs.. Were the fights harder without the PA's? Very much so.

 

 

 

In my opinion (duh), the changes I wanted to make in F3 would have resulted in different character types having more options in the late game.  Power armor variants were for people who wanted to be tanks.  They could take a great deal of punishment, but they were pretty easy to see/hear coming and to hit.  People in combat armor variants retained most of their movement/stealth capabilities, but couldn't quite take the heavy hits in extended combat.

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ANd I think that overall is quite proper as a goal, but that doesn't mean the FO armor ystem is broken, Josh .

 

AC + DT + DR rule. Chnage the values but not the concept. I think (duh)

[J.E. Sawyer]

I think your boundary between "working fine" and "broken" is a lot different than mine. Yes, the armor system does actually protect characters from damage, so I guess in that respect, it does function. With regards to supporting player choice, player intuition, and general game balance, I think it fails.

 

Ferret and I put a healthy amount of effort into re-working the armor system for F3. It seemed to hold up pretty well in our lil' demo. That was with no DR and no AC bonuses from armor.

[Judge Hades]

Perhaps we would need to simplify the system just a tad. The Character's Armor Class should be gauged by one's Agility score and any perks that makes him or her more agile in combat situations, things that allow him or her to avoid getting hit.

 

Armor itself should not increase the Armor Class. It should just give Damage Reduction in the areas it covers. Such as if you are wearing a flak jacket your arms and torso are covered but your head is not.

[J.E. Sawyer]

That's pretty much what the F3 system did, but with DT instead of DR and with only two coverage areas: body and head. Also, AC was a weird name for what it represented, so it was just changed to Evasion (I think).

[Slowtrain]

I think your boundary between "working fine" and "broken" is a lot different than mine.  Yes, the armor system does actually protect characters from damage, so I guess in that respect, it does function.  With regards to supporting player choice, player intuition, and general game balance, I think it fails.

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The more individual aspects about your player-character, the more choices you have. If those choices reequire hard-thought trade-offs so much the better. By breaking defense out into three seperate categories that affect different areas, one gains a great deal more player choice. That seems pretty straight forward to me.

 

 

Ferret and I put a healthy amount of effort into re-working the armor system for F3.  It seemed to hold up pretty well in our lil' demo.  That was with no DR and no AC bonuses from armor.

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I'm not saying your system wouldn't have worked or wouldn't even have been totally awesome. I am merely saying that of all the games I've played FO seems to me to have the most interesting and flexible armor system and then I tried to explain why.

Edited January 14, 2006 by CrashGirl

[Spider]

I see your point, but I think you're trying to interpret AC too literally. (ie I wear heavy metal armor; therefore I am less easy to hit.  WHich of course doesn't make sense).

 

snip

 

 

Edit: That's what I get for taking a long time to write my post (phone call and such). When I started writing this, it was as a reply to the above post and no other posts had been made. So sorry for only repeating what Sawyer already said.

 

I have no problems with abstractions. They just have to make sense, and the armor system in FO doesn't.

 

Since I'm not familiar with GURPS, I am going to assume that the concept of AC is more or less ripped from AD&D. There both a characters agility and armor rating improves that characters AC, and it makes a lot more sense. AC represents how difficult it is to score a wounding blow rather than just to hit, which means a miss can be either a swing in the air or a blow that connected but was blocked by armor.

 

I'm not advocating AD&D's AC system by any means (it certainly has a lot of flaws), but it does make a great deal more sense than the one in Fallout.

 

The whole thing is that Fallout already has a way of showcasing armors damage stopping capacity (which is what armors effect on AC reflects in D&D) and that is it's DT/DR value. So if AC in no way accounts for that, where does the bonus to AC come from?

 

I have no problems with seeing AC as a characters ability to avoid getting hit. The action point bonus and the perks make perfect sense. But the armor doesn't. Again, how does wearing a bunch of metal make me harder to hit?

 

If Fallout would have a AC + DT/DR system where AC (which would then be horribly named) would be ruled by the characters ability to avoid getting hit and armor would actually carry with it a penalty to that AC, then I would have really liked it. And it's logical. Armor makes me easier to hit, but less likely to take damage when someone hits me.

 

Professional athletes don't compete in jeans and loafers; they competer in clothing designed for the specific event because it gives them an edge. Same for armor, and that edge is what is abstracted in the AC numbers provide by armor.

 

I thought the edge that armor was supposed to give you was DT/DR. If I put on a plate mail armor, everyone who takes a swing at me will hit me. But if they're swinging with their fists, they'll damage themselves more than me. And that's where the edge armor gives you in combat comes from. It does not increas your mobility. Some armor may not hamper my mobility, but that's about it.

Edited January 14, 2006 by Spider

[J.E. Sawyer]

The more individual aspects about your player-character, the more choices you have.  If those choices reequire hard-thought trade-offs so much the better.  By breaking defense out into three seperate categories that affect different areas, one gains a great deal more player choice.  That seems pretty straight forward to me.

It only creates more player choice if the actual instances of armor in the game have meaningful trade-offs. The choice between leather and metal is sort of a trade-off, but by the time you get to combat armor, there's no longer any trade-off. Even between Tesla armor and power armor, there's not much comparison. Telsa armor's protection against energy attacks is only marginally better than power armor's, and power armor's protection against everything else is far better.

 

T-51b Power Armor
Type            DR     DT
Normal         40%   12
Laser           80%  18
Fire             60%  12
Plasma         40%   10
Explode        50%   12 (FO1) 18 (FO2)
Electrical      40%   12

 

Tesla Armor
Type            DR    DT
Normal        20%   4
Laser          90%   19
Fire            10%   4
Plasma        80%   10
Explode       20%   4
Electrical     80%  10

 

(stats from The Vault wiki)

 

You could give each suit of armor 10 stats, but if all Suit A's stats are inferior to all of Suit B's stats, the aren't many reasons to choose Suit A over Suit B.

[mkreku]

Ferret and I put a healthy amount of effort into re-working the armor system for F3.  It seemed to hold up pretty well in our lil' demo.  That was with no DR and no AC bonuses from armor.

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What demo? I want to play it! )

[J.E. Sawyer]

What demo? I want to play it! )

The demo we developed for Interplay. It was two levels and featured a decent amount of combat on the exterior map. IIRC, the NPC follower that came with your character, Cpl. Armstrong, was wearing T-49d power armor, which was a precursor to the T-51b. He was pretty much impervious to small arms fire, but I think he wound up in the proverbial danger zone when exposed to seriously heavy weapons (like a flamer). Especially since he wasn't wearing a helmet.

[mkreku]

I bet Herve is at home playing it right now.

[Diogo Ribeiro]

With the rats.

[Slowtrain]

I thought the edge that armor was supposed to give you was DT/DR. If I put on a plate mail armor, everyone who takes a swing at me will hit me. But if they're swinging with their fists, they'll damage themselves more than me. And that's where the edge armor gives you in combat comes from. It does not increas your mobility. Some armor may not hamper my mobility, but that's about it.

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I see your point, Spider, and I don't disagree with it as long as AC (a not very descriptive term, I agree) is kept as seperate number that remains outside of the DT/DR of the armor. SOmething that the pc can change as they develop. To me it makes sense to include an value attached to an armor as part of it, but I'm not married to that. From my point of view, the actual value that a piece of armor adds (or doesn't add as they case may be) to the AC is not that important.

 

What is imporant, what I see as working so well in FO, is that the AC exists seperate fom the DT/DR. Whether that AC number comes from armor or agility isn't so important.

 

I think a good armor system should make several checks on an attack.

 

1) Does the attack hit. (AC)

 

2) If the attack hits how much is deflected (AC/DT)

 

3) After deflection how much penetation power remains (DT)

 

4) How much energy is lost during penetration? (DR)

 

A system like D&D isn't so good for that because who want to make 50 rolls on each attack. But in a system built for the computer the CPU has no problem making multiple checks. FO is one of the few games I've played that takes advantage of that.

 

 

(yes, its true I'm one of those people whoa actually read through all the attack tables at the back of the Master of Orion strat guide. lolol)

[Slowtrain]

It only creates more player choice if the actual instances of armor in the game have meaningful trade-offs.  The choice between leather and metal is sort of a trade-off, but by the time you get to combat armor, there's no longer any trade-off.  Even between Tesla armor and power armor, there's not much comparison.  Telsa armor's protection against energy attacks is only marginally better than power armor's, and power armor's protection against everything else is far better.

 

 

You could give each suit of armor 10 stats, but if all Suit A's stats are inferior to all of Suit B's stats, the aren't many reasons to choose Suit A over Suit B.

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But isn't that more just an issue where the values attributed to the various armors are unbalanced but the system itself is not broken?

 

Also what was your thinking behind removing DR from the armor system?

Edited January 14, 2006 by CrashGirl