Armor

Armor serves to mitigate damage before it reaches your character. The amount of damage reduced depends on the stats of the armor for the type of damage being dealt. As armor helps reduce damage, it loses condition. Once a piece of armor reaches zero condition, it no longer functions to reduce damage. A piece of armor's condition can be improved by using an armor repair tool, but it's maximum condition will then be reduced. Thus any armor used in combat will have to be replaced sooner or later, depending on how much damage it absorbs.


 * Crafting process see: add description (changed post-CU) on additional page yet to be created
 * Slicing Armor: Armor break reduction, Hardening, Impact Deflection and Resilience

Armor Types
There are armor pieces available for chest, head, legs, boots and gloves, with arms being divided into bracers and biceps. Because some species are unable to wear boots and gloves, the hands and feet body locations cannot be hit in combat. Thus, boots and glove armor pieces provide no protection and have no sockets for armor attachments.

''All pre-CU crafted armor gloves and boots retained any sockets they had before Combat Upgrade conversion. All pre-CU crafted armor has the option to be re-fitted into a different armor type to ensure the owner is still able to wear a bought armor set. These re-fitted armor pieces have fairly low stats.'''

Reconnaisance, Battle and Assault Armor
Armor types fall into three categories: Reconnaisance, Assault, and Battle. Each category provides differing amounts of protection against the two major damage types. Reconnaisance armors provide extra protection against energy damage, Assault protects better against kinetic damage, and Battle armor provides even protection against each. In general, ranged attacks involve energy damage and melee attacks involve kinetic damage, with Lightsabers doing energy damage.

Depending on its type all armor has inherent hindrances: movement speed, rate of fire, and accuracy. These cannot be directly modified during crafting, but are tied to the highest protection value of the armor.

Basic, Standard, and Advanced Level of Armor
Each armor type has three levels: Basic, Standard, and Advanced. This level is determined by the armor core used by the Smith to craft the piece. Basic cores may carry 0-4 layers, standard 0-8, and advanced 0-12. The addition of quality layers will increase the protection of the piece, possibly up to the cap of the core. However, crafting high quality layers requires many specialized resources, some of which are very rare. There are several different layer types that target various categories of protection values.

Factional Armor
Factional armor is now available for each armor type and is now craftable. Armorsmiths must purchase limited-use schematics from a faction recruiter using faction points. The crafting process is the same as other armor, but uses the purchased appearance in place of crafted appearances. Faction armor can be worn while being a Combatant or Special Forces, but not while On Leave.

Once crafted, the player must use faction points to bind the armor piece to that character. This is called Biolinking. Biolinked armor is not tradeable anymore and only useable by the charater biolinked to. The faction points cost to biolink a full set of armor is 7200 fp
 * Boots, Gloves: 500
 * Biceps, Bracers: 800
 * Chest, Pants, Helm: 1000

See Imperial faction items and Rebel faction items for more factional items and their faction point costs.

Special Armor Sets
These three sets are a special sets of armor. Each of them needs either special looted schematics, components or being unlocked via a quest by the armorsmith.

R.I.S. Armor
R.I.S. (Reinforced Insulated Sheath) armor can only be made by a Master Armorsmith that has completed the quest for the hermit on Dantooine in the mountains near the "Abandoned" Rebel Base (POI) and it also needs special looted components.

R.I.S. Armor is considered to be battle armor. For more information see the RIS armor page.

Bounty Hunter Armor
Pre publish 20 Bounty Hunter armor pieces droped only from Black Sun NPCs on Yavin IV. Bounty Hunter armor drops were very rare and the stats were pretty low compared to regular crafted armor. These looted Bounty Hunter Armor pieces are needed to craft the famous Mandalorian armor.

With publish 20 SOE introduced looted Bounty Hunter Armor schematics. These schematics are looted from the NPC Bounty Hunter targets. All schematics are single use schematics and these crafted Bounty Hunter armor pieces can not be used to craft Mandalorian armor.

Bounty Hunter armor is considered to be assault armor. For more information on both armors see the Bounty Hunter armor page.

Mandalorian Armor
The famous Mandalorian armor which is the type worn by Boba Fett is the rarest armor in SWG. So far only one server managed to craft a complete set of Mandalorian armor including the Jetpack. To craft Mandalorain armor you need a full suit of looted Bounty Hunter armor and several other components which only can be looted inside the Death Watch Bunker where it also has to be crafted. This armor is also not crafted solely by an armorsmith. Depending on the piece you want to craft you need different crafting professions.

Mandalorian armor is considered to be assault armor. For more information see the Mandalorian armor and Death Watch Bunker the page.

Damage Reduction
There are two general damage and four additional elemental damage types. All weapons are considered either energy damage or kinetic damage, with some weapons doing some additional elemental damage. The four elemental damage types are electricity, acid, heat, and cold.

Armor protection stats range from 0 to 10,0000, with 10,000 being the cap, reducing the damage taken to 60%. If an armorsmith experiments to improve the protection of one damage type, the armor will naturally have poorer protection for the opposite damage type. For example, an armor piece can have improved heat damage protection at the cost of the cold damage protection.

A piece of armor will usually have at least some protection for all six damage types, so that if a character is hit in a location with working armor, the character will not receive the full amount of damage. The exception is if the armorsmith experiments one stat so high that its opposite stat reaches zero.

Condition
The condition of your armor also controls how much damage it absorbs. Damage reduction drops when your armor is at 40%, 30% and 20% of the its maximum condition, though slicing the armor can harden it to decrease the amount of damage mitigation loss. Unlike weapons, you do not recieve a system message when armor drops below 50% and 25% condition. Additionally, the fail/success rate of armor repairs signifigantly degrades at lower conditions. If an armor fails repair, the condition becomes 1/1 and offers no protection.

A suggestion to track armor condition is to place the components on a dedicated toolbar. Moving your mouse over the toolbar button will display a popup window that contains the selected unit condition. In addition, if the armor is unequipped, the toolbar icon will be bordered in red for 1/1 or 0 condition components.

Hindrances
All armor has inherent hindrances: movement speed, rate of fire, and accuracy. In effect, the penalty for wearing armor is now derived from the ability of the armor to reduce damage. Hindrances do not stack, the player is only hindered by the best piece equipped. HAM stats are not effected by wearing armor.

Hindrances can be reduced and cancelled out by Mitigation, which is granted as a percentage in some elite combat skill boxes. At master elite skill boxes, all hindrances for Advanced armor should be completely mitigated. Visible monitoring of hindrance can be performed using the 'debuff' icons that display below the HAM bar.

Armor value and actual percent damage reduction
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 * Exact function, where Percentage is the total amount incoming damage is reduced by and AR is the Armor Rating of an armor piece:

You can also estimate your armor's effectiveness based on the following table: