I would love to see something like a reason to use smaller weapons than two handed blades, one of the great things about the Gladius or even a dagger is that there are always tiny exposed bits, for example, between the joints of armor.

Most games take this into account, with a rogue with a dagger and high dexterity can often score hits that ignore armor or critical hits etc. As the game stands however, there's no stealth mechanic, no way to account for any sort of "backstab" beyond the assassin trait. There aren't even blunt weapons which do crushing damage that harms armored units.

I suppose this might not be exactly on the topic of armor, but I'd love to see the ability to prepare your own battlefield, if you're the defender. For example when you build a hedge row, you're able to lay it out on a strategic map after you finish the construction (or as you begin it). Then it would be awesome if you could do things such as position troops for an ambush before battle begins, lay out traps on the field of battle, or in any other way prepare your cities or defensive strong points for the enemy. And, to tie that concept back to the armor discussion, I would imagine that steel plate is of little use against a pot of boiling oil dumped on you from atop a wall.

I looked forward to sieging cities, while I wasn't looking for Lords of the Realm 3.5, I was sort of expecting some reason to amass a huge army. While I played a game in 1.1 that did manage to amuse me in much the same way the beta 2 amused me (and no other version between the two had), there was something ludicrous about having my two fully armored knights (husband and wife, rulers of my empire none the less) competely run roughshod over something like 45 units in the final battle against Relias, who always demands money and then attacks me when I refuse him.

There are so many small additions to the tactical combat that would make the entire game more enjoyable, it's a shame to see sieging a city still brings me onto the plains outside the castle walls with no real allowance for more advanced strategies that are usually required for successfully capturing an enemy fortification.

There's also no real provision for any sorts of sieges, I'd love to camp an army atop an enemy stronghold and starve them out, or use a scorched earth technique to deny local crops to the onslaught of besiegers en route to my own stronghold. A game where swords and boiling oil compete with dragons and spellslingers was what I wanted Elemental to be, unfortunately it still lacks the depth I had hoped for when I first imagined the gameplay that went alongside the screenshots that convinced me buying to get in the beta was an excellent idea. While I realize that some of these ideas are much harder to implement than others, I don't see why any of them wouldn't be able to be integrated into future Elemental versions at some point.

These are the numbers I'm getting. Would be cool if someone could check the calcs. This would be for 1.2 (1.19 beta)

Same numbers for 1.11

We do have an ignore armor function in the abilities xml. It would be so cool if special abilities could be cast on strike instead of click a button.

I think you are overcalculating the value of armor. In your spreadsheet, you are not correctly taking into consideration that armor that reduces damage to 0 does not get saved for other attacks.

It goes without saying, that when you reach higher than 100% mitigation, your calculations are wrong. In addition, it is easy to further disregard the calculations because you arrive at erroneous results - staffs CAN damage 6-armor targets, as we see in-game. Logically, a staff can roll max attack (5) and armor can roll minimum defense (3). It is therefore impossible to reach your numbers.

In 1.11, for a weapon to have 100% mitigated damage, the attack needs to be half or less of the defense. Any other attack has a chance of dealing damage. In 1.19, any weapon has a chance to deal damage against any armor, unless the attack is 1 and the armor is 1.

Edit: This is the script I used to calculate mitigated damage. http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=mah4MgpL

As you can see, every possible attack roll must be measured against the average mitigation of every possible defense roll. Only remaining damage is interesting, damage is never negative (armor either reduces an attack to 0, or the attack deals damage).

I don't understand how that value is in any way interesting to look at, but it's your topic.

My numbers measure the total amount of damage dealt, vs the total amount of damage mitigated. If you are attacking with 5 attackpower, and the target unit has 6 defense, 87% of all the possible damage you deal will be blocked. The remaining ~13% will deal some damage.

I don't know how rounding works either, I haven't done any of it. Does it round to the nearest integer, or always up? Don't know.

If I change the script so that all square roots are rounded down, and all half-damage attacks are rounded up (5/2=3) then the number I get is 85% on 5att vs 6 def (edit: in 1.19).

How did I arrive at this number?

I ran through all the possible attack rolls. For example, for 5 att I would run through 25 attack rolls, each resulting in a certain amount of damage.

Then, for each possible attack roll, I also measured each possible defense roll on that particular attack roll. The defense rolls were then averaged across the attack roll. At this point, I had a number telling me - for that particular attack roll - how much the armor would mitigate on average.

So, if I had 25 attack rolls and 36 defense rolls, I ran through all 900 possible outcomes. Each attack roll had an average remaining damage after armor was removed, and that gives us (in comparison to possible total damage) how much armor did really reduce the attacks.

Right, I initially did (maximum damage - actual average damage vs. armor)/(maximum damage) to get mitigation percent. If I change it to (actual average damage vs. no armor - actual average damage vs. armor)/(actual average damage vs. no armor) as you did I get 85% (same as your result after rounding changes). Since your original was 87% obviously the rounding is having little effect either way.

I sent a PM to Kael, hopefully he can stop by and shed some light on the rounding issues.

Padded starts at helm and bracers being 1 armor, and chest and legs 2. Every level after gains 1 to each. Master plate is divided into light and heavy. Higher plate has dodge penalties.

Interesting results. Some basic rules of thumb, which could be useful ingame:

If attack is twice defense, expect 45% mitigation

If attack is equal to defense, expect 80% mitigation

If attack is half defense, expect 95% mitigation

(Consistently correct, give or take 1%, for values >2)

Keep in mind that 95% mitigation vs. 80% is a bigger difference than it may seem - you're getting hit for 5% instead of 20% on average, this is 4x the survivability.

Doesn't seem like a bad system, but as the OP pointed out, the actual attack and defense values ingame may need balancing. Right now with attack roughly equal to defense at same tier, you're looking at 80% mitigation when tech is equal, and it's very easy to hit that 95% mitigation mark if you can get your armor a tier or so ahead of enemy weapons. Needless to say, when attack is struggling so much to pierce defense at all, using any weapon except the max damage one is.. a questionable decision.

If attack value was significantly ahead of armor at any given tier (attack being about 1.5x defense would be a good start, I think), we'd be seeing more reasonable numbers like 60% mitigation against same tier armor, and maybe 80% when facing armor of the next tier up.

Also to avoid significantly throwing off the balance of combat, any armor decrease (or damage increase) should be accompanied by a health increase. I really don't want to see more oneshot kills - longer combat is more tactical! You have time to make more choices, and the results are less affected by luck.

Oh I agree, hypothetically speaking combat can get too long for a TBS - I'm just saying that right now it tends more towards the "blink and you'll miss it" end of the scale (except when armor is enough to grant nigh-invulnerability), if anything is changed to speed it up further in the name of fixing armor, it should be be balanced by a change to slow things down (more health).