Armor Upgrades Work Properly

[SMZ]

Have I understood the basic result correctly? If so, I am very pleased with the way upgrades work.

That summary seems right on target with my understanding, and the results so far. Just saw one typo:

"in that each upgrade provides the reported type of leather (padded, light mail etc)."

should be:

"in that each upgrade provides the reported type of armour (padded, light mail etc)."

[JaM]

sorry Re but i dont understand how you ment that.

[SMZ]

and I don't think that can be it, because pikemen go straight from flesh to light mail

[Foz]

This is because upgrades are considered to be applied in a progressive way, you can't jump from none to plate. This is the obvious outcome of your testing. The game takes the base armor_stat, then applies the number of the upgrades in armour_ug_levels, probably it doesn't even read the values, just the count of them.

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)

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.

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

[Re Berengario I]

and I don't think that can be it, because pikemen go straight from flesh to light mail

With the same behaviour in combat as they'd have light mail in armor_stat (alas a value of 5)?

I'm at a loss then because there's a contradiction with the data Jam showed up.

Foz explained better than me what I intented and I don't know if it's true, I just trying to make sense out of some contradictory data (which doesn't seem false or badly recorded).

I need to run some tests by myself, the weekend isn't very far away

[Point_Blank]

With the same behaviour in combat as they'd have light mail in armor_stat (alas a value of 5)?

I'm at a loss then because there's a contradiction with the data Jam showed up.

Foz explained better than me what I intented and I don't know if it's true, I just trying to make sense out of some contradictory data (which doesn't seem false or badly recorded).

I need to run some tests by myself, the weekend isn't very far away

Looking at JaM's tests, I would suspect that when you upgrade pikemen at the blacksmith, since its the first upgrade they would get +4 armor, whereas they should really have 5 since they are wearing light mail.

[Point_Blank]

And here is another thing to consider: how is the shield fix interacting with this system? Its being said that the game somehow uses the armor value internally (eg in the case of advanced plate being 9 or 10, partial plate being 8 or 9). If that is the case, the shield fix is likely altering this since it changes the armor value.

[Foz]

This is post #181 that I later discovered was a poorly conducted test that caused much confusion. As such, I've removed it.

[Point_Blank]

'This program brought to you from the same people who coded the shield bug.'

We are trying to make sense of a system that could also very likely be bugged, so just won't provide logical results no matter what the tests.

I mean, to code a system like this is programming 101. How it could be this obscure is, well...