How to use MTW2's armor system - important notive

Reading the excellent armor discussion mentioned in the "EB armor" thread I came across this post of Foz, which should be of the highest importance for EB2, from which I quote the following excerpt:

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I'm not saying I agree with that, as I actually have not tested it AT ALL, I just felt that I understood what Re was trying to say, and wanted to explain in more detail for concerned parties who may not have understood. If I'm wrong, Re, let me know.

If he's right in his idea, though, then it's huge for modding, as you can achieve a ridiculous variety of upgrade patterns by starting at different places in the upgrade chain, using varying amounts of ug levels, and using repeated upgrade building levels as the 2-4 entries to trigger multiple bonuses from the same building. You could do armour_ug_levels 0, 1, 1, 1 and Re's explanation would mean this grants +7 to that unit, all from the first armoury building!

Edit--@Econ21: I forgot to mention it as I got tied up trying to explain Re... but yes, your understanding of the various findings appears to be completely correct. Thanks for adding it to the FAQ

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This is the basic idea, brought up by Re Berengario I, and explained by Foz

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If I'm reading Re correctly, then what he means is that in order for a 2nd 3rd and 4th entry of 4,5,6 to work correctly as upgrades, they must be preceded by the base level 3, and not 0. That is:

armour_ug_levels 3,4,5,6 tells us the unit starts off with level 3 armour. This gives the game its basis for where to begin in the chain of upgrades. From there, it will step forward, granting the next 3 upgrades as buildings 4, 5 and 6 are built.

armour_ug_levels 0,4,5,6 then is speculated to give you armour upgrades progressive up from zero: you'll receive the benefit of armour levels 1 (about +4), 2 (+1'ish) and 3(another +2'ish) as you upgrade the unit, resulting in 7 points of additional armour as it upgrades. The difference is, you'll be requiring the armour upgrade buildings #4, 5, and 6 to get those value of upgrades. Since the first number is the starting armour level, it would make a lot of programming sense to apply the upgrades linearly upward from that amount, and only make the following entries name the buildings to achieve those armour upgrades.

So if we envision the armour types to be a linear series of bonuses in given amounts, something like this:

lvl 1: +4
lvl 2: +1
lvl 3: +2
lvl 4: +2
lvl 5: +1
lvl 6: +1

then Re is saying that the first entry behind armour_ug_levels sets the point in that progression that the unit is assumed to be starting at, and the following (up to 3) entries allow you to set the required building(s), but will always give the next bonus amounts in the sequence, not the ones for whatever building level you've required to get the upgrade.

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The example by Re

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It what I said, regardless if you write 0,1,2,3 or 0,4,5,6 or 0,10,20,30 the game reads the base armor_stat and then applies 4 upgrades, discarding the values, it just uses the count of them (4 or 3 or 2 or 1 or none upgrade)

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If the Idea of Foz holds true than EB might be able to exploit this system fully, and save a lot of unit slots by doing so. Always a very important thing, I might say.

Cheers
OA

Further testing showed armour upgrades to give a flat +2/2.5 bonus regardless of level or how the levels are set up in the edu.

Its too bad that CA decided to not fix anything else in M2TW.