Nano-Weave Armor and Shots to Kill.

(Subtitle: Oh Look, Another Long Rambling Post From Plague Rat)

So as infiltrators we have 100 less shields than other classes, which is 100 less damage we can sustain before death. Damage however doesn’t come in trickles, but in chunks, so I messed around with a spreadsheet to figure out Shot to Kill differentials between the various ranks of Nano-weave from the standard soldier health/shield pool (1000) to not just how our shield penalty effects how many shots we can sustain before death, but also how the Nano-Weave armor cert may, or may not, effect these numbers. So after pulling data from the weapons spreadsheet floating around, and plugged them into the STK formula, as it turns out there’s very little difference in STK between an infiltrator and any other class, and generally only have a bearing at the minimum damage ranges.

Specifically, there are only 8 weapons in the game that will take 1 less round to kill an infiltrator and only at the shallow end of their damage ranges:
VS Solstice
VS Solstice Burst
VS Solstice SF
VS VX6-7
VS Serpent
NC Mag-Shot
TR TX1 Repeater
VS Beamer VS3

The VS carbines have a lower minimum damage but at a farther range than other armies, so shooting an infiltrator at these ranges that penalty is sort of cancelled out by the infiltrator’s lower shields, whereas any other class would take an extra round. As for the pistols, they all have poor low end damage which sit in the ranges that take one less round to hit 900 than to hit 1000, but again this is only at max range, where pistols are a poor option to begin with.

Now for Nano-Weave armor.
For infiltrators it has no bearing on the STK table until Rank 5, (which puts us at 1025 total shields/health) Those 25 extra hit points over what a standard class has are magical, and ends up resulting in being able to push us over the threshold to survive a round from any infantry primary weapon except for bolt action sniper rifles, and semi-auto sniper rifles with their max damage range. (long range would now take an extra shot)

So while it’s obvious Rank 5 is worth it, rank 5 is also rather expensive, and fails to make any impact whatsoever on the STK tables until this point. Now of course the spreadsheet I made doesn’t factor in headshots bonus damage and explosive splash damage, so it’s very possible rank 1-4 can maybe save your life in those respects but the bulk of combat damage is from bullets. So this begs the question, is there a more practical option for the suit upgrade slot? More ammo? Extra grenades? A faster regenerating shield? I personally might go with one of these now that I know what I’m actually getting for my certs.

NOW INFO FOR NON-INFILTRATORS!
Since you’re not always going to be an infiltrator, here’s how Nano-weave works out for the other classes on the STK table. At Rank 1 through 3, there is no change on the spreadsheet, with the user able to survive and additional round from every weapon (again with the exception of Bolt Action rifles and Semi-auto’s at closer ranges) where at Rank 4, a non-infiltrator begins being able to survive an yet another addition shot from the TX1 Repeater and Beamer VS3 at long range. Since pistols are almost never used at long range, let’s consider rank 4 a bust too.

Now, at Rank 5, (1125 health/shields) a user can survive 1 more shot than the standard health pool from most any gun (same sniper rifle exceptions) and 2 from the following weapons at the shallower end of the damage ranges:
---Assault Rifles
VS Pulsar VS1
VS H-V45
VS CME
VS Equinox Burst
VS Equinox
---Carbines
The NC GD-7F
ALL TR carbines
ALL VS carbines
---LMGs
VS Orion
VS VX29 Polaris
VS Pulsar LSW
VS SVA-88
---Pistols
TX1 repeater (any range)
Beamer VS3
---Scout Rifles
Stalker
SOAS-20
Artemis (I can only assume this because data is missing for the low end damage)

But again, all of these with the exception of the TX1 are only bonuses at the farthest effective damage ranges, and in the case of the various VS guns they hit their minimum damage at 115m compared to the 65 and 75m of the various other faction guns, so take that with a grain of salt. So while Infiltrator’s might need rank 5 to make a dent, a standard class need only spend a single cert to get bulk of the benefit until rank 5, and it’s up to the user to decide if it’s worth the heavy cert investment to be able to soak an additional pot-shot made from long range.

TL-DR
For infiltrator. Only 8 guns, can kill you quicker with base shields/health and consist of VS carbines beyond 115m or pistols beyond 65m. The real penalty from the lower shield pool is that Nano-Weave armor has no bearing on the number of times we can be shot before death until rank 5. For NON-infiltrators you get the bulk of nano-weave benefit with a single cert point, and further investment isn’t terribly necessary.

So basically what you are saying is that there is a hidden tax for Infiltrators. To get use out of nano weave we have to spend 1000 certs (for rank 5) while others only have to spend 1 cert.

Interesting.

Design flaw, bug, or working as intended?

So in short, nano-weave armor is barely even worth it - and I should probably look at other options?

It becomes more interesting when you start to consider how long you will survive and your health might increase or decrease many times throughout. How many more shoots can you survive while being healed? How long do you need to wait for the passive regen in the bio labs to let you absorb another shoot? Do the person that heals you get more exp? Etc...

Look at it in terms of investment to payoff:
For 341 certs in shield capacitor you effectively reduce your shield recharge delay by 25% (down to 7.5 seconds from 10)
For 1250 you can carry 4 additional mags. (even the first rank or two would be a godsend to the isolated sniper)
For 711 flak armor halves explosive damage.
For 600 you can carry 2 more grenades
Or for 1211 you can survive 1 additional shot in combat.

When you look at them all side by side, yeah Nano-Weave is weak as hell. Looking at it now, I’m likely going to invest in flak armor, since just keeping track today more than half my deaths were explosive related. Grenade Bandolier providing 2 extra grenades can be a bit of a boost to my close range effectiveness, I wouldn’t feel so reluctant to about using them for fear of needing it later. I could get both of these for the same price as Nano-weave. Then there’s the ammo belt which has an unquestionable advantage to the sniper, since you won’t have to leave your nest to go find an engineer or terminal so often, even with a single rank or two. Practically, I think all of this is a better payout per cert than necessary 1211 points to make nano-weave effective.

Awesome post Plague Rat. However, now I`M kicking myself for dumping so many certs into nanoweave.....gah!

Yeah I did the same thing. Here's my thought progression while making the spreadsheet:
Oh boy spreadsheets and formula, time to use my liberal arts math education.
Umm, this doesn't look good.
No...
um... no.
Did I screw up a formula somewhere? go-go windows calculator!
no?
well at least I only put 2 ranks in. Sucks, but not too terrible.
(psst, your engineer and medic both has rank 4, you only needed rank 1)



*goes into the other room to cry and eat christmas cookies and chug eggnog until mental anguish subsides*

Yeah. I have been saying that nanoweave is useless for infiltrators ever since beta.

Does anyone know how much damage the claymore's and such do? I've noticed I ran over a few betty's or something while having rank 4 nano-weave armor and just barely surviving that. Now I'm wondering if it's because of having rank 4 in that or if I would have survived it without aswell.

Not entirely sure. More than a grenade for certain. I've killed MAX suits with the NC bouncing betties, and at the same time I've survived the blasts with no ranks of nano-weave.

I think a big part of it is how far away you are from the actual explosive when it goes off, the biggest damage is directly over the explosive. Not sure if it's latency issue or if there's a dely between the device triggering and detonation, but I've seen them detonate late and not kill the one who tripped it.

AP mines have a damage drop off at the end of their ranges that let you survive them, even without flak or nanoweave. Depends on how you trip them. Full damage from a claymore is something like 1320 damage or so, enough to kill you despite nanoweave.

I don't regret getting it. Of course, I also have it all the way to rank 5. Those of you who think it's useless clearly haven't been headshot by a bolt-action and survived, only to retaliate and kill your aggressor in a single hit just like they expected to do to you. Can't really blame anyone for being reluctant to invest so many certs, but there really is nothing better if you just can't afford to die.

See I'm skeptical about this headshot survival bit. I've seen it happen, but at the same time I've seen single headshot kills at about the 300m range on people (a medic specifically) who has rank 5 NW, then spend the next 20 minutes ranting in region chat because they spent 1000 certs for an effect they didn't get.

Those that have looked at the game files have reported the headshot multiplier with sniper rifles is 2x. So the standard bolt actions doing 750 would do 1500 on a headshot, and even if it's 1.5x that's still 1125. Which wouldn't be survivable with any rank of nano-weave. (especially not by an infi only able to max out at 1025)

I've heard mixed reports as to whether or not bolt-action rifles even have damage drop with range and if they do at what range and at what values they bottom out at, usually discussed at distances where you can't even really get the game to render players, or using friendly players as targets, or using specifical classes as targets. But people have survived (possibly not a headshot??) at these ranges, so there has to be some mechanic at play here.

There's just too many unknowns for me to make a ruling on it. I've seen it happen, and I've seen it not happen. Too much of the evidence I've seen out there is anecdotal, and there are too many variables to pin down. The ones I see live are usually victims of a VS rifle, so that might be the higher damage penelty at range the others lack. Or the target is an HA (and they're still theorycrafting their shield mechanics so I'm not even going to open that can of worms) or they're using friendly fire to test it.

I'd like to think it's possible, which would make the investment worth it (at least on some classes), but personally, I'd rather not to make a 1000 cert investment on something that's not 100% and might only work some of the time.

The Nanoweave vs Bolt Action headshots is really something we need a concrete answer on, hopefully from the devs.I've seen and heard mixed reports as well so for now I'm not commiting to it either. Hopefully with the promised transition to numerical ingame stats Higby promised, we'll get addtional accurate feedback about this as well. More info about the HA shields (Resist apparenty has a breaking point now?) would be great as well.

I can't claim to have definitively tested this, but I've survived shots which take me from full health and shields to less than 10% multiple times before, and I play VS. That can't be anything but a bolt action sniper, and I've identified the culprit plenty of times before as an Infiltrator anyways. I can understand why you don't want to rely on purely anecdotal evidence like this, but I'm certainly not lying to you. It works often enough for me to notice that I have it, and that's good enough for me.

Oh, I never thought you were lying. I've seen the survivals too, I just can't find any recognizable patter, rhyme, or reason to what results in a one-shot and whatt lets the user survive. As far as nano-weave and sniper rifles are concerned, I've seen people live when they should have died, and I've seen a single bullet from the next territory over drop my buddy with NW Rk.5 (the medic I mentioned earlier. Still ranting BTW.) I mean it could be any number of things. Maybe one rifle has less damage drop that we don't know about, or don't have it at all (bug or intentional) while other's do, leading to a situation on wither you live or die depends entire on what you're being shot with. So until someone with the know how can dig out the numbers and provide more transparancy or SoE comes out and explain how the hell this works, all I can do is write it off as a crapshoot until more conclusive data comes out.

EDIT: as a personal example, just an hour ago I shot a light assault square in the noggin from less than 20m away with the longshot, which SHOULD have delt something in the neighborhood of 1600 damage, but the guy lived with what appeared to be an empty health bar (like seriously had to have 1 hit point left) and I had to use a pistol to finish the job. I have absolutely no explination for this since a body shot would have left him with about 20%

Is it possible that a headshot might be calculated based on where it lands?

I don't think different parts of the head are calculated differently, pretty sure your whole top-end is a 2x multiplier spot with rifles.

I've actually been testing it a bit, but have completely forgotten about this thread. But after shooting at meatpuppets for a while I've sort of gave up trying to figure it out, since I rarely notice my headshots not killing during actual play. I will say this though, using teammates for a weapon's test won't help you. Using a bolt driver and shooting at a NC meatpuppet with NW Rk.2 at 75m and they'll always live with a sliver of health left. The same shot will kill an enemy meatpuppet with the same rank. Go figure. At this point I'm just waiting for the patch that switches weapon stats in-game to text instead of bars to figure the rest out as far as sniper rifles and headshots are concerned.

The only thing I'm certain of at this point is that from any range, bolt-action headshots will kill an infiltrator at max range, even with Rk.5. I actually found a VS sniper that picked up Rk. 5 and was willing to trade kills with me so they could gage how the VS damage over range penelty played on bolt actions.

As for the crapshoot unjustifiable survivals of non-nanoweave wearers I'm almost certain that's got something to do with biolab health regeneration and really lucky timing, since the only time I've been able to get it to happen with any real frequency was when my meatpuppet had the regen buff. Possibly if you have full health the next timer for the next tick of regen lingers for a moment like a batter on deck, and if the health loss occurs while it's lingering they pick up that single hit point in the same instant the headshot bottoms them out because it's higher priority in the game order of operations. But again, that's just a theory.

Also a note to anyone reading this thread:
Please disregard my original post. While the information is accurate dealing with min/max weapon damage shot to kill thresholds, it's misleading. When I actually started doing the math to figure out the damage drop for every gun ever per meter, it showed the infiltrator tended to remain in a higher STK threshold at farther ranges than standard classes due to our 100 less shields, a penelty which can be negated with Rank 4 nano-weave. But I still debate the usefulness of spending certs to remove a penelty when you could do so to add benifit instead, especially when we're not really a main combat class, and if you're getting shot you either running or dying in most cases. I'll try to write something more in-depth and add it, or start a new thread since with SMGs coming out it's probably useful because it's chiefly a close to mid range issue.