Alien Armor Values (Lack Thereof)

[Big Z]

Quick question for those who've had a handle on the balance and coding changes of the last year or so; is the current system by which higher tier aliens are simply given astronomical HP totals rather than increased armor a concession made to simplify balancing Ground Combat difficulty, or is the coding for alien armor actually buggy/defunct in such a way that it can't be reliably used?

[kabill]

Armour values work fine. Using HP as a simulation for alien armour is a balance thing.

(Androns have armour values, for what it's worth).

[Big Z]

Excellent. I've been mulling over taking a shot at overhauling the values for weapons and armor in general to add a bit more variety and depth in the near future. All those null and repeated values floating around are giving me an OCD fit.

[Chris]

You'll find that giving aliens other than Androns armour values means that you can't really distinguish between weapon classes by giving them more mitigation when you try it, though. Once all aliens have armour, 5 points of extra mitigation pretty much is equal to 5 points of extra damage.

[Big Z]

Makes sense. The only time it would really matter in any meaningful way is if one decided to bring out old hardware that theoretically should be useless later on; it'd just do unacceptably low damage rather than none, like showering a Praetor with enough 9mm rounds to chip it to death.

[Chris]

Well actually it'd matter every time you bring a precision rifle or such into battle, because their higher mitigation will amount to higher damage against every enemy type rather than just robotic ones.