Armor
An object type's armor class, or on a country or difficulty setting the divisor of the damage its objects take.
Armor class
- Applies to
ObjectType and derived types
AircraftTypeBuildingTypeBulletTypeInfantryTypeOverlayTypeParticleSystemTypeParticleTypeSmudgeTypeTerrainTypeUnitTypeVoxelAnimType- File
rules.ini- Section
[<ObjectType ID>]- Value
- ArmorType
- When omitted
- Context-dependentMost object types start at none. A TerrainType starts at wood.
The class names the entry of the firing warhead’s Verses list that the damage is multiplied by. Several steps reach the figure before that multiply and two more after it, and Warheads and damage sets the whole order out. By the time the list is consulted, a prone soldier’s own reduction has been applied, and a unit, structure, aircraft or infantryman has had its house’s difficulty and country divisors and its veteran armor bonus taken out of the figure. After it come the falloff for distance from the point of impact, and then the warhead’s floor and ceiling.
An OverlayType is the exception. A wall or a Tiberium patch is not an object and never reaches the step that consults a warhead’s list, so its class is never a column there; every path that reads an overlay’s class instead compares it against wood and nothing else, which is the other half of Wood=yes on a warhead. A TerrainType is read both ways — as a column when the object takes damage, and as a wood test by the rules that set it alight.
Tiberium=yes rewrites an overlay’s class to wood once that overlay’s section has been read, so an Armor= written into such a section is discarded.
Animation armor class
- Applies to
- AnimType
- File
art.ini- Section
[<ObjectType ID>]- Value
- ArmorType
- When omitted
none- Used by the game
- No — loaded but not used
An armor class is consulted in one place, where a warhead’s damage is scaled before it is applied, and an animation never arrives there. Strength sets out every path that would have to reach it and why none does.
An animation is on the dealing end instead. Damage is the figure it applies to whatever is under it, and the class weighed against the warhead there belongs to what the damage lands on.
Armor bias
- Applies to
- HouseType
- File
rules.ini- Section
[<ObjectType ID>]- Value
- floating point
- When omitted
1.0
Each country carries its own divisor, and a house takes the one belonging to the country it was created under — outside a campaign game, the country chosen for it in the session setup. Damage arriving at that house’s objects is divided by it, so a figure above 1 in one country’s section and not another’s makes everything that country fields harder to kill, whatever it is built from.
The divisor is multiplied with the difficulty section’s once, when the house is given its difficulty slot, and a campaign game drops it: nothing a country section says about armor reaches a campaign mission. Because the two are multiplied before anything divides by the result, a 0 written here does what a 0 in a difficulty section does.
Difficulty damage divisor
- Applies to
- difficulty settings
- File
rules.ini- Section
[<Difficulty ID>]- Value
- floating point
- When omitted
1The difficulty block is re-read from fixed defaults whenever its section is present, so a later file that carries the section without this key restores 1 rather than keeping the earlier value.
[Easy], [Normal] and [Difficult] each carry their own figure, and a house takes the one for the difficulty slot it is assigned. Damage arriving at one of that house’s objects is divided by this figure together with the object’s own armor multiplier rather than multiplied, so a figure above 1 makes the house tougher and one below 1 more fragile. It runs only on positive damage the source has not forced through, ahead of the veteran armor bonus and of type immunity, and the result of both reductions is floored at 1 — no figure here can bring incoming damage to nothing.
The product is worked out once, when the house is given its slot, alongside the country’s own figure outside campaign games. In a campaign game the country’s figure is dropped and this one stands alone.