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I've heard somewhere armor degrades, is that true? And if so do you have to replace it every so often?? Thanks

In the original X-Com when armour absorbed damage its rating degraded. Armour didn't degrade quickly, but if a squaddie survived a fusillade of shots the armour he was wearing certainly wasn't quite the same as it had been before. Armour degradation also occurred with alien armour but this was less noticeable as aliens tended to have less armour and a lot more HP. I presume that as armour could degrade this was supposed to insert a note of caution into players running around with their shiny new toys. But because (in my experience) the rate of degradation was so small and because power armour, an endgame armour, had perhaps a 50/50 chance of absorbing endgame weapons (heavy plasma/blaster launcher) damage in any case, armour degradation wasn't (in my research) a strong part of strategy. In Xenonauts, armour plays a much more prominent role than in X-Com for both humans and aliens. Humans get semi-decent armour straight off the bat and 5 more suits wait to be unlocked. On the alien side, armour values ramp up quite quickly and some alien types emphasise armour – the Andron and the terror drone are good examples. Furthermore, armour is reliable. Each set of armour stops X amount of damage (depending on armour penetration). A player can know from the get-go what the different suits are likely to stop and what they aren't as compared to X-Com armour which was a crapshoot, and unlike UFO: Extraterrestrials the level of weapon escalation doesn't hideously overshoot armour research and production - at least, not at the moment. Heavy plasma weapons (the foil to Wolf armour) are introduced at about the same time as Wolf armour is introduced, but plasma rifles and plasma pistols are still in effect and a squaddie wearing Wolf armour can survive a single shot from a heavy plasma gun, which is more than can be said when the aliens in UFO:EX swap weapon types completely! With this increased importance of armour could armour degradation be introduced? There are several good reasons why armour degradation could enhance play: It permits lesser powered weapons to wear down dangerous targets. Let's take an example here of the first robots you face: the Andron and the terror drone. The base-level robots have got some rockin' armour – ballistic small arms don't stand a chance, and even high-powered rifles and LMGs have difficulty getting through their thick skin. This is exactly how it should be. But as robots arrive in the transition phase between tier 1 and tier 2 weaponry, it can be difficult to get to grips with them. If lesser weapons could wear down armour by degrading it, then dangerous aliens remain dangerous, but not impossible to face. Likewise, aliens armed with light weaponry can still present a threat to squaddies in thick armour. It encourages teamwork and clever strategy. Tying in with the above point, a player whose weapons are having difficulty getting through an aliens' armour will have to think about what he's doing. If the player knows he can wear down an alien, he can use his team to harass and tire an alien before closing for the kill, instead of reaching for the biggest gun as the solution. It encourages variety within weapons loadouts. A weapon might be poor at penetrating armour or doing damage but have a bonus to chewing armour up. Such a weapon might be kept around by a squaddie to help harass and take down dangerous targets. As far as implementing armour degradation goes perhaps the simplest way is all weapons cause the same base level of degradation, plus or minus a bonus value. That way weapons can be tuned and balanced more rapidly than if each weapon had its own “degradation” value, reduces arguments on what the value for each weapon should be, and allows degradation to consist of very small values, as the aim of armour degradation is to provide new tools for the player and alien A.I. without overwriting previous tools.