Soaking Damage

Whenever a character takes damage in a Crew Combat, their Armor, attributes, and resistances, may soak (reduce) some of that damage.

## Soaking Crew Combat Damage

Crew combat damage comes in three major classes, Normal Damage, Energy Special Damage, and Damage-Over-Time Special Damage. Each of these classes has its own style of damage reduction.

### Normal Damage

Normal damage is reduced by a character's Armor Rating and their Fortitude. Each piece of Armor has a Ballistic Armor Rating and a Melee Armor Rating. The Melee Armor Rating reduces Melee damage and the Ballistic Armor Rating reduces the Ballistic Damage. Both Melee and Ballistic Damage are reduced by a character's Fortitude. If an attack is pierces, then the non-rolled ArmorRating reduction is removed AND the Fortitude reduction is halved. Normal Damage Soaking is a percentage reduction.

#### Piercing versus Deflection

All Weapons have a Piercing score (which represents their ability to punch through heavier armor) while all Armors have a Deflection score (which represents their ability to deflect or absorb damage from more powerful weaponry). **A Piercing Attack reduces general damage mitigation by 66% compared to a non-Piercing Attack (see Normal Damage Soaking below).**

When a character is hit, the attacker's Piercing and target's Deflection are directly compared to see if the attack is Piercing. If the target's Deflection and the attacker's Piercing are equal, there is a 100% chance that the attack will be Piercing. For each point that Deflection is higher than Piercing, that is a 1% reduction in the chance of Piercing,

Effectively: Deflection% - Piercing% = Chance to Deflect (not pierce)

* Example 1: 102% Deflection and 50% Piercing and -> = 102% - 50% = 52% Chance to Deflect (48% chance to pierce)
* Example 2: 150% Deflection and 20% Piercing and -> 150% - 20% = 130% Chance to Deflect (always deflect) (0% chance to pierce)

#### Armor Buff and Debuff Effects

Some Effects (e.g., from Talents or Traits) provide armor modifiers increasing or decreasing a character's Armor Rating. All sources of armor modifiers are summed and then impact the character's Armor Rating manipulatively.

Effective Armor Cap

We go into the literal mechanism below, but the maximum effective Armor Rating of character armor is actually only 75% of the listed maximum. So an armor of value 100, would at best (ignoring additional modifiers) only block 75% of damage.

#### Mechanics

##### Normal Damage Reduction for non-Penetrating Attack

* *Percent Reduction = floor(fortitude/2) + floor( ArmorRating \* SumArmorEffects /2) + Min[ floor(ArmorRating \* SumArmorEffects /4) , RNG(1 to floor(ArmorRating \* SumArmorEffects /2)) ]*
* The MIN function causes some unexpected behavior. The outcome is:
	+ 50% of the time the result is a reduction of between 50% and 75% of the modified ArmorRating (+ Fortitude/2)
	+ 50% of the time the result is a reduction of 75% of the modified ArmorRating (+ Fortitude).

##### Normal Damage Reduction for Penetrating Attack

* *Percent Reduction = floor(fortitude/4) + RNG(1 to floor(ArmorRating \* SumArmorEffects /2))*
* The outcome is between Fortitude/4 and 50% of modified ArmorRating.

### Energy Special Damage

Energy Special damage types (e.g., Fire, Plasma, and Radiation) are reduced by the specific Special Damage Resistance and Resilience. Additionally, Energy Damage effects are general effects and impact Fire, Plasma, and Radiation damage. A character's Armor's Armor Rating has no impact on Energy Special Damage nor do piercing hits reduce the mitigation. In contrast to Normal Damage soaking, Energy Special Damage soaking is a flat reduction.

#### Mechanics

##### Energy Special Damage Reduction

* *Flat Reduction = WeightedDice(EnergyDamageResistance) + BigDice(0.5 \* Resilience)*

### Damage-over-Time (DoT) Special Damage

DoT damage types (poison and bleed) is ONLY reduced by the respective resistance (Poison Resistance or Bleed Resistance). It is not reduced by any attribute. A character's resistance is the sum of all resistance modifiers, both positive and negative. If the summed effects are a negative value, then the damage taken is increased.

#### Mechanics

##### DoT Special Damage Reduction when Resistance > 0

* *Flat Reduction* = BigDie(DoTResistance)

##### DoT Special Damage Reduction when Resistance < 0

* *Flat Increase* = Weighted(DoTResistance)