Assessing Armor: Introduction (Patreon)

I've been wanting to go back and do a thorough look at the various armor types in the game as a part of my content for a while now, and this is going to be the start of that series. Armor is one of the most important pieces in the success cycle of a settlement. Gear (armor) protects survivors, who gather resources, who make Gear and so on. The most powerful settlements are the ones that observe this cycle and strengthen it as much as possible, and before we move on, you'll notice that I have not listed Innovations in that cycle, Innovations are not key to a settlement's success, they are supplementary.

So, we are going to take a look at each armor set in the game, breaking down what abilities they have, what affinities they provide and assessing what is good and bad about each particular piece that makes up the set and also the set as a whole. 

This series will be public, so you can share with newer players, but it really exists for those of you who are part of the Designer Diary series, in preparation for when we get to designing gear.

Our aims with this piece are multi-fold:

1. To give you the tools to assess any future armor pieces/sets as they are released

2. To explain what works and doesn't work about a particular armor set/piece so you are aware of the limitations and strengths of each set.

3. To provide a foundation for custom/homebrew armor design as a supplement to those of you who are following the Designer's Diary series (new post coming this Sunday on the Hunt Phase!) You can't really design new armor without understanding the existing sets in extensive detail, because things do not exist in a vacuum.

4.  Giving you a primer for constructing builds, because armor sets are the foundation of most builds in this game because they dominate the gear grid with 5/9 available slots in most cases.

5. General Education and Entertainment.

How the system will work

We will use a grading system for each item we look at, with S+ tier being the highest and F being the lowest. But we will also have a text based review of each section, generally about a paragraph.

[Individual Gear Name]

Resource Cost: Raw cost.

[Assessment]

Efficiency: How good it is for the cost paid.

Defense: How good the protection it provides in isolation is. Including armor points, but also things like evasion.

Abilities: Judging the abilities of piece (if any). If it has none, it will get a N/A score (which is effectively an F).

Affinities: A look at the affinities in isolation, some types/directions/colours are more desirable/powerful than others and some are very rare.

Score: Overall score of the particular gear piece

[Armor Set Overall]

Total Resource Cost:

[Assessment] 

Efficiency: How efficient this set is in comparison to the price paid.

Defense: How good the set as a whole is at protecting.

Affinities: As before, but considering the overall affinties, the layout(s) possible and how easy it is to activate itself and other key gear cards (Lucky Charm, Monster Grease, Zanbato etc etc).

Set Bonus: how useful/flexible/unique/powerful it's set bonus is.

This is just the introduction, so in the name of providing content, the first article for this piece will come out later today! It'll be a look at the first tranche of game armor: Rawhide.