Overview
Quick guide on how armor works in Combat Extended.
Intro
If you didn’t read the title of this guide, it’s for CE, not vanilla. Combat Extended brings some pretty major changes to the armor system, and some of the info in this guide may or may not be correct.
This guide was written in v3.4.
I also have some other CE guides if you would like to check them out.
Armor % Calculation
Sharp armor is calculated in mm’s of RHA. Blunt armor is calculated in MPA. A higher value is better and will stop more rounds.
First things first, you can see a piece of gear’s armor values by going into its info tab.
You can see a pawn’s armor values by also going into it’s info tab. It might be a bit confusing but you’ll find it’s armor value eventually. It typically tends to be in rounded numbers, like 4mm RHA and 6 MPA. You can also see a pawns armor penetration stats. A megaspider can punch through power armor!
3 main factors affect the armor value of gear, quality, material, and condition.
The quality multiplies the armor value of gear by the following values:
-Awful: 50%
-Poor: 75%
-Normal: 100%
-Good: 115%
-Excellent: 135%
-Masterwork: 150%
-Legendary: 175%
Material also affects armor. Regular cloths or leathers do not provide much protection, but stuff like devilstrand, hyperweave, and thrumbofur is much more effective at stopping attacks. A plasteel vest will stop more powerful rounds than a steel vest.
Finally, the condition of gear affects protection. From 80-100%, the armor is still the same. Once you go below 80%, the armor value gradually keeps lowering. In a long firefight, the protection on your armor will eventually degrade.
Attacks first penetrate the outer layers, then keep going in until it either gets deflected, turned into blunt damage, or hits the pawn. If a round fully defeats the outer layer, but then gets stopped by the middle layer, it will only be reduced by the middle and skin layer (ex. if it penetrates a flak jacket, it will only get stopped by a armor vest and a shirt).
Armor Penetration
The armor deflection and reduction system is fairly confusing, so sorry if I get anything wrong.
If the round’s sharp penetration is greater than the armor’s value, it will penetrate the armor and be reduced (ex. If a 10 RHA projectile penetrates 8mm RHA, it will deal 20% damage).
If the round’s sharp penetration is lower than the armor’s value, the damage is halved and converted to blunt damage, which is then tested against the armor, where it is reduced in a similar fashion.
Fire/heat damage is calculated like in vanilla, this includes AP-I rounds. If a burn does 10 damage, 50% heat protection will reduce it to 5, and 100% will completely get rid of it.
Charged and HE round’s special effects are calculated separately from the normal calculations. If they fully penetrate, they’ll deal max damage.
Rather confusingly, a deflected (converted to blunt) attack can (and will!) deal more damage than if it barely penetrated due to how the armor calculation works. You might run into situations where you’ll take more damage from 12×64 if you have some really good armor than from wearing regular power armor. I’ve had situation where a pawn would only take 7 damage from a direct shot to the head wearing regular power armor, then take 12 damage to the torso while wearing legendary cataphract armor.
What Armor to Use?
(This part highly depends on what mods you have. You might have more options than listed here. This is also what works for me. It might not work for you.)
Armor is both a boon and a curse. A armor vest, flak gear and a ballistic shield is very protective for a cheap cost but hinders movement and work speed as well as restricting the user to one-handed weapons. Depending on your play style, you might want colonists always wearing armor, or working with their armor off and putting it on when it comes time to fight. You can ignore this with power armor though, as the increased carrying capacity counteracts this.
In a tribal colony, there are no real armor options. Maybe a steel shield for melee pawns.
In a medieval colony, plate armor is very heavy and should really only be given to melee fighters.
In an industrial tech colony, the best option is flak armor and armor vest. The flak gear will not stop any bullets, but will save a limb. The armor vest will prevent small rounds like 5.56 FMJ from penetrating but won’t do much against most powerful rounds like 7.62 NATO. Dedpending on what mods you have, you can use different armor, like the protective armor from Rimsenal or advanced armor vests from Vanilla Expanded.
Once you can get it, power armor is very powerful. It’s stronger than flak armor and provides many bonuses to carrying capacity, weapon handling, aiming accuracy, immunity to smoke and toxic build-up, and probably some other stuff that I can’t remember. As a comparison, normal power armor has 20mm RHA in protection. A legendary steel armor vest has about 14. Power armor will also let you carry around more stuff on caravans or hauling with pick up and haul.
If your crafters get a creativity inspiration, don’t waste it! Craft a good set of power armor, and you’ll get a super solider running around tanking 7.62 NATO.
Heat protection is also important. 100% heat protection and some nice recon armor and you’ll tank a direct hit from a 80×256 shell. Less noticeably, you’ll be immune to the burn damage of AP-I.
There really are not that many options in vanilla. Hyperweave is a obvious option, it’s not easy to obtain in vanilla unless if you got some massive flake farming operation. The jumpsuit in rimsenal, unlocked once you get the fabrication bench, provides ~50% heat protection and some good blunt protection. Combine this with some good power armor and you’ll hit 100% heat protection.
Wrapping it up
TL;DR have big number to block big shots and have big number to defeat big armor. Get power armor because It’s The Future!™
Sidenote: There’s also an electric armor that provides protection to some really random things. As far as I know, the only material to have this protection is devilstrand. Electric armor protects from EMP blasts (usually pretty minor, but EMP cook-offs will end BADLY), and rather confusingly, not from lightning strikes or Odin attacks (VFE Vikings). It also might protect from some other random junk.