Clarification on Infantry Armour and Damage

[BlackSomethingDown 22]

Hi, I've been looking through the Soldier Protection   , Damage Description and CfgAmmo documentation, as I am trying to make ammo stats.

 

However, I still do not understand how the armour system works for infantry (I only just realised that the latter guide mainly focuses on vehicle armour). From what I gather, "armor" is just health points, and the "armor" on the vest just slaps extra health points on that body part?

 

In that case, is there still any penetration mechanic for body armour? If it is just extra health, wouldn't only the "hit" value of the ammo matter? However I also noticed that the "caliber" values still affects the number of shots it takes to kill, but doesn't it just mean rounds can pass through the player?

 

Could someone with some understanding of the damage/armour system for infantry explain how "armor", "passThrough", "hit" and "caliber" tie in? And on that note, does anyone know where muzzle velocity is defined in the weapon class?

 

Cheers,

Some really confused chap in Notepad++

[x3kj 1247]

Yes infantry damage system is just damage - means extra hitpoints, hit / armor are the most relevant.
Soldiers have very similar firegeometry (basically just parts that are meat material, or meat+bones material etc) - and armor does not influence the fire geometry. Therefore caliber is mostly irrelevant - EXCEPT when the caliber is sufficient to completely penetrate (see Case A in Damage vs. Penetration in the damage description) - in which case the described reduction of damage is observed.

Pass through is for global armor (global health). If global health is 0, the vehicle/soldier dies. Contribution of individual hitpoints to global armor is determined by passthrough of the soldier hitpoint config, modified by passthrough of the armor.
Problem is - it is highly unpredictable what happens due to the combination of issues. See direct damage description  in https://feedback.bistudio.com/T120542

Based on my tests i have 0 confidence in global health mechanic, because i observed weird oddities even with passthrough set at 0 for everything.

So take away this - Infantry damage is imperfect. If you want to improve it you have to trial and error a lot and base all decisions on ingame tests. Unfortunately. The issues can be somewhat remedied by a complete rebalance...

Muzzle velocity is defined in magazine class, can be modified (or overruled) by weapon https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/CfgMagazines_Config_Reference#initSpeed.3D900