Game Mechanics - Protection

[EricM]

On page 75 of the manual it says:

Protection roll: defender's protection attribute at hit location + DRN + (shield protection

It's the "at hit location" that interests me. This implies that the protection value shown on the unit status screen is some kind of average.

Does anyone know the exact formula used to calculate the protection of a unit? Just playing with numbers it looks like the formula is something like

finalprot = baseprot + 3/4 body armor + 1/4 helmet

I can infer from this that head attacks occurs about 25% of the time. Are there any weapons/spells that target the head rather than the body?

What happens with multi headed units?

If anyone has the underlying formulas I'd be very interested.

[Agema]

All details/mechanics are in the manual. But you've got it pretty close if not wholly accurate: it's important to note that you might have 16 prot on the unit summary screen, but if it's all body and no helm, a head hit will have no protec (and vice versa).

[EricM]

I think there is more to protection than just head and body. I've been examining a hexdump of the executable and have found some interesting stuff in the armor section.

Full Chain Mail has a protection of 17.
Plate Hauberk also has a prot of 17.

But if you think about this historically, a Hauberk protects the torso much better than it protects the arms and legs. Full chain mail would protect the torso, arms and legs equally. Also, plate mail protects the torso better than chain mail protects the torso.

Examining the data we have these fields:

Full chain mail 17 17 17
Plate Hauberk 20 14 14

These numbers make sense if we interpret the first field as the torso protection, and the second fields as arm / leg protection.

I've examined all the armor in the game and the formula seems to be

avg protection = (f1 * 2 + f2 + f3) / 4

Where f1, f2, f3 are the three fields indicated in the above examples. This is consistent across all the armor.

Now if the game engine makes use of this data it means that all armor of the same protection is not actually the same.

[Kristoffer O]

Correct. We once intended for more hitlocations than just head and body and this is still reflected in the protection total, but there are no hit locations coresponding. So armor is calculated as you sam but there are no leg hits protected by the leg prot.

[EricM]

Thanks for the info, KO. You just saved me running a bunch of battles to see if the engine made use of these other fields.

[BigJMoney]

Hmm...wait a second though. Could this be causing a bug? Look at his example above:

Plate Hauberk: 20 14 14

So the game takes the average and tells you this armor has Prot Value of 17. However, if all the game is doing is ignoring the last 2 values and accepting the first, then it is actually giving units with Plate Hauberk a Prot of 20, and the 17 is merely what we see on the unit profile.

I doubt this is the case, but it's just a thought.

=$= Big J Money =$=