Some disappointing observations so far: Chaos Bolter loadout (below rank 5) has nothing compelling to slot over Mark of Nurgle and the Stamina Regen in the other slot (which mitigates Nurgle reduced stamina). This gives 150 toughness together with rank 3 armor suit, but I don't feel that tanky. I want to have a viable Bolter loadout, but haven't found a great one yet. Still grinding 5k boxes, and grinding through rank 4. Finally acquired a Plasma Gun for Chaos, but it seemed pretty terrible when I used it vs Astartes (maybe in part due to lag). It's sad that the Bolter felt better, and the Bolter isn't all that great to begin with. (Again, maybe lag) Ironically the plasma pistol seems a much better choice, and actually viable.
So, the purpose of this post will be to show and/or evaluate the effect on toughness and to show a comparison between the Chainsword and the Powersword. This is for educational purposes. To begin, we must gather the proper information needed for the calculations and comparisons. The Equations The equation for calculation the actual mitigation value of toughness is- 2 * ((1 / (1 + e^-(0.015x))) -0.5) * 0.6 x= the difference between toughness and penetration value or... x= (toughness value of the attacked character - penetration value of the weapon) If the penetration value of the weapon, is higher than the toughness of the attacked character then x=0 The equation to find the damage of a weapon after the mitigation percentage is applied is- All of this information can be found here- http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/threads/loadout-itemisation-updates.52477/#post-1136075 The post is by Michael Chan (a game dev), and is within post #2 The Weapons Chainsword- Damage per Fast Attack swing is- 113 Penetration value of- 80 Powersword- Damage per Fast Attack swing is- 113 Penetration value of- 140 The "Victim" As this post is to find how toughness affects damage in comparison with the penetration values of weapons, we must pick a test subject who actually has a durable loadout to help accentuate the differences between the two weapons. For this reason I will be using one of my own personal loadouts. This loadout is a Tactical Marine with the most durable loadout possible in the game. I will not list all of the wargear on the loadout, as that would be too confusing. Instead I will just list the 3 main values we need for the calculations. Durable Tactical Marine Health- 210 Armor- 139 Toughness- 135 Effective Health Pool= Health + Armor Effective Health Pool=EHP=210+139 EHP= 349 So, 349 points of damage is what is needed to kill this unit. Results By the end of this post, we should know... 1.) The amount of swings needed to kill our Durable Tactical for each weapon 2.) The amount of damage each swing, of each weapon, does per hit. Calculations Chainsword Calculations Damage mitigation percentage equals=2 * ((1 / (1 + e^-(0.015x))) -0.5) * 0.6 x=difference between the toughness of the Durable Tactical - penetration value of the Chainsword x=135-80 x=55 So... 1.) mitigation value= 2 * ((1 / (1 + e^-(0.015x))) -0.5) * 0.6 2.) mitigation value= 2 * ((1 / (1 + e^-(0.015(55)))) -0.5) * 0.6 3.) mitigation value= 0.2343560032170784 Now to find the actual damage of the weapon's Fast Attack "swings" to the Durable Tactical after the mitigation value is applied... 1.) Damage Received per Fast Attack Swing= Damage of Weapon x (1-mitigation value) 2.) Damage Received per Fast Attack Swing= 113 x (1-0.2343560032170784) 3.) Damage Received per Fast Attack Swing= 86.5177716364701408 Damage per Fast Attack Swing against our Durable Tactical is 86.5177716364701408 points of damage, per hit. Last, we must find out how many Fast Attack "swings" it takes to kill our Durable Tactical. This is found by the equation... ( the symbol "/" will represent "divided by") Effective Health Pool/Damage Per Fast Attack Swing= Number of "swings" needed to kill (answer must be rounded up, as you can't deliver a half, or a quarter, or any fraction of a "Swing") So... 1.) Number of Swings Needed= Effective Health Pool/Damage Per Fast Attack Swing 2.) Number of Swings Needed= 349/86.5177716364701408 3.) Number of Swings Needed= 4.0338533158993753094 4.) Round up 5.) Number of Swings Needed= 5 In conclusion. Each Fast Attack "Swing" against our Durable Tactical is 86.5177716364701408 points of damage. And exactly 5 Fast Attack "swings" are needed to kill our Durable Tactical Powersword Calculations Damage mitigation percentage equals=2 * ((1 / (1 + e^-(0.015x))) -0.5) * 0.6 x= difference between the toughness value of the Durable Tactical - penetration value of the Powersword x=135-140 x= -5 Since the penetration value of the Powersword is higher than the Durable Tactical's toughness then... x=0 (zero) So... 1.) mitigation value= 2 * ((1 / (1 + e^-(0.015x))) -0.5) * 0.6 2.) mitigation value= 2 * ((1 / (1 + e^-(0.015(0)))) -0.5) * 0.6 3.) mitigation value= 0 (zero) Now to find the actual damage of the weapon's Fast Attack "swings" to the Durable Tactical after the mitigation value is applied... 1.) Damage Received per Fast Attack Swing= Damage of Weapon x (1-mitigation value) 2.) Damage Received per Fast Attack Swing= 113 x (1-0) 3.) Damage Received per Fast Attack Swing= 113 Damage per Fast Attack Swing against our Durable Tactical is 113 points of damage, per hit. Last, we must find out how many Fast Attack "swings" it takes to kill our Durable Tactical. This is found by the equation... ( the symbol "/" will represent "divided by") Effective Health Pool/Damage Per Fast Attack Swing= Number of "swings" needed to kill (answer must be rounded up, as you can't deliver a half, or a quarter, or any fraction of a "Swing") So... 1.) Number of Swings Needed= Effective Health Pool/Damage Per Fast Attack Swing 2.) Number of Swings Needed= 349/113 3.) Number of Swings Needed= 3.0884955752212389 4.) Round up 5.) Number of Swings Needed= 4 In conclusion. Each Fast Attack "Swing" against our Durable Tactical is 113 points of damage. And exactly 4 Fast Attack "swings" are needed to kill our Durable Tactical Conclusion So to summarize our findings... Fast Attack damage, per swing, of a Chainsword against our Durable Tactical is... 86.5177716364701408 points of damage per swing The number of Fast Attack "swings" needed to kill our Durable Tactical is... 5 Fast Attack damage, per swing, of a Powersword against our Durable Tactical is... 113 The number of Fast Attack "swings" needed to kill our Durable Tactical is... 4 Ending Thoughts and Notes It is important to note that I haven't rounded these numbers, I directly took these numbers from a calculator, and inserted them into the equations. I am unsure of if the system that EC currently uses does any rounding, or at what decimal they may round. That being said, these values are more of a guideline to give us the closest possible correct answer we can realistically find without better knowledge of EC's mathematical systems/practices. Toughness works on giving an exponential increase in benefits, and then at a certain value it starts exponentially decreasing the benefits given. This means, in simple terms, that a small toughness bonus will give small amounts of protection, a "medium" amount of a toughness boost will give "a lot" of protection, and an incredibly high amount of toughness will give "alot" of protection but not much more than a medium boost in toughness. This is due to the exponential increase, and then decrease, of the mitigation values, due to the equation. Basically, having 1000 toughness will not give much more, if any more protection, than having 200 toughness. @Azorbael11 Get your calculation fix.
Thank you for your post. It works out in my head now. It's just a terminology thing for me. In my head penetration goes against armor but here the armor is just the yellow bar not a mitigating stat and has nothing to do with reducing incoming damage. It is just a rechargeable "health" bar. Having more armor is just really giving you more HP that can be mitigated by toughness.
Honestly all stats besides the HP stat seem meaningless right now. Having better armor doesn't make much of a TTK difference, but the Orks health boost has made them noticeably harder to kill.
That's not the case at all. If the Orks had been given a bonus to armour, they would be just as tough, but a few seconds out of combat would give them all that armour back again. Armour > Health > Toughness Toughness would be great if there was more variety in penetration values, but too many are too high and this makes the stat effectively worthless. I think penetration and damage values should be modified for all weapons, and damage for weapons should be boosted when penetration exceeds toughness, using the same formula above, but not zeroing when you get a negative value for x. Edit: Though without testing it I'm not sure if the equation can handle a negative value... possibly not. Either way, should be simple enough to modify it/write a new one. Edit2: Yep, it works. For the Power Sword example above, the new mitigation value would be -0.0225 (rounded to 3sf) Using the damage formula, that would be 115.54 damage per swing. Still needs four swings, so clearly the actual damage and penetration values would need to be tweaked.
As someone that primarily plays shoota, shooting someone with high toughness is very noticeable. However, the shoota is probably the primary weapon most affected by toughness. It's low damage per shot, low penetration, decent but not great DPS. Low pen obviously means greater damage reduction for high toughness targets. Low damage per shot means it's more likely that the target gets more "shots taken before death" and thus more of an extension to his time-to-die. The bolter, for comparison, may have the same penetration as a shoota, but it's higher damage per shot means reaching thresholds of adding another shot to kill is more difficult through toughness alone. This, and the fact that high penetration weapons are abundant and fairly cheap in terms of LP, makes Armor/Health far more attractive, not to mention weapons that flat out ignore toughness via ailments.
Considering everyone and their grandmother uses power weapons or plasma, and the fact that you can crank up your penetration with mods even of weapons that shouldnt have good penetration, yeah its a pretty crap stat tbh. I mostly use the MoN for the voicelines and immersion, i dont really feel all that more durable with it.
