Physical Protection Artifacts Work
Your physical protection artifacts don’t stop bullets without this mod. That’s why you still get mowed down even with a stack of Compass artifacts, because the benefit you expected does not exist. I fix! Now they will protect you.
Well, they kind of do, but not in the way that players expect. They protect against physical anomalies, but not bullets. I realized I need to explain things more, so I’ll put that at the bottom.
I’ve been playing around with everything I can mess with in the game to make my mega-mod, and I finally got around to studying the details of physical protection artifacts. What I was surprised to find was that they don’t reduce the damage of incoming bullets in the current version of the game, and no experimenting with using EEffectType::ProtectionStrike (which is how the game does it) could make them work. Sounds crazy, but it’s true. I believe that armor modifications which increase physical protection probably also don’t work at this time, but that would be much more difficult and time-consuming to experiment with so I’m ignoring it for now.
The only way I can find to make physical protection artifacts work is to make them increase max HP, and adjust medkits etc to heal based on a percentage of maximum health instead of a specific number of hp so that they don’t become less effective as your protection increases. If you think this is too simple of a fix, sorry. It’s the only choice at this moment without having the source code to the actual game.
Yes this also means that “physical protection” will now also equally protect you from burn, shock, and chemical anomalies. The game does not allow this to be fully compensated for, because doing so would require giving those elemental protections a negative protection value (penalized below zero) to make them hurt worse in proportion to the increase in max HP. The math to do it is very simple, the game just doesn’t allow it.
The downloaded zip will contain three versions. All versions will include both the .pak file is for playing the game and also the unpacked cfg files so that you can see exactly the changes made.
Physical Protection Artifacts Fully Work
Physical Protection Artifacts Work
Physical Protection Customized
The first one (Fully Work) faithfully represents what is implied by the numbers in the original configuration file, in which the protective value of the Compass artifact is 1. That 1 was probably intended to function as a +1 to Skif’s Armor value. Every 1 increase in Armor value cuts damage in half, so equipping 3 Compass artifacts would cut damage down to 1/8th and equipping 4 of them would cut damage down to 1/16th. Yes, that is an enormous level of protection, but this is how armor is handled in the game. There isn’t any kind of armor mechanic other than dealing more damage, so for example a sniper rifle with AP ammo simply deals something like twenty times as much damage as an ak-74.
Ah, but what about the strike protection limit in ObjEffectMaxParamsPrototypes.cfg? We can only guess how things were intended to work, because they don’t work. If the number in that file is intended to limit benefits from artifacts, not be a total ceiling for all armor sources, then it would only limit players who wanted to equip 5 “+100% hp” Compass artifacts at the same time. If it is intended to limit all armor sources then sorry, the developers want Skif to die.
The second version, “Physical Artifacts Work”, is half as much protection. It’s +50% hp instead of +100% hp per Compass. This is still a lot of protection, but it doesn’t compound so aggressively. If you equip 4 Compass artifacts with this version it’s like chopping incoming damage down to 1/5th instead of 1/16th.
The third choice, Physical Protection Customized, is just some numbers I made up that might work ok. It makes 3 Compass artifacts give you +100%~ hp, while keeping the weaker artifacts still usable. Look, I’m not going to spend a hundred hours playtesting and fine-tuning these because I’ve got my own full mod to work on, and most people who will download this are also doing their own modding (such as making enemies do the same damage as the player). Besides, do you want your protection artifacts to start doing their job right now or several weeks from now after I’ve spent more time nailing things down? Today is better, yes?
This mod will affect the Scar boss fight in a way the developers didn’t intend. His weapon ignores all armor protection and deals 80 damage straight to hp. Physical protection artifacts would, if they increased armor, also be ignored and would not reduce the damage. However, by changing the artifacts to increase max HP they will now protect against his weapon. I do not have a way to work around this.
Compatibility: alters only EffectPrototypes.cfg
ok down here at the bottom I’ll explain better why I describe the situation as the artifacts “not working” when technically they do work to protect Skif from physical anomalies. It’s the combination of player expectations that these artifacts should protect from physical damage including bullets (based on common sense and previous games), and also the fact that an armor’s Strike protection in ArmorPrototypes.cfg, which is what defines the armor’s “physical protection”, is what reduces damage from bullets. So it’s this weird thing where the base value for an armor’s strike protection does protect from bullets but then upgrades to exactly that stat do not protect from bullets, only anomalies. It appears to be a mistake, not an intentional design, and if it is an intentional design it is so misleading to the player that it’s a problem.
