Content:
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- Technicals
- Requirements
- Load Order

- Motivation
- Basic balancing
- IMPORTANT: Settings
- In detailed balance discussion
- Bugs (and IPA mechanics)
- Changelog


Technicals:
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This mod is only an  .esp file containing armor entries with edited weight and damage resistance (AR) values as well as adding these armors to the a0aImperviousList.
This mod does not contain any meshes, textures or effect scripts itselfe, you need the original mods before installing this one.

Requirements:
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- Impervious Power Armor
  http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/13325/?

- FWE 6.03
  http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/2761/?

- all requiremets demanded by these mods


Installation:
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Just drop the esp in your Fallout3  Data folder manually or with an mod managing tool, then activate it with the mod managing tool.

Load order:
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The ImperviousCombatArmorsforFWE.esp must be loaded after the "FO3 Wanderers Edition - Main File.esp". Otherwise some armors will keep the original FWE stats and you or your enemies get nearly invulnerable by weak small weapons.

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Motivation:
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I think the flat damage reduction base makes the combat armor more believable and immersive - either a bullet can't penetrate your vest, then it might add some bruisers ar brake a rib, or it can penetrate it, but then will lose some energy. I always found the percentage damage reduction was kind of lame, a goddam bloatfly can kill you in your Poer Armor if attacking long enough... And then the balancing: leather armor with a weight of 15 gives 24% reduction, a combat armor with W=25 gives 32% and the metal armor with W=32 gives 35%. Doubling the weight and putting on loads of metall or advanced military fabric gives you 33% or 50% mor protection compared to leather (applies only to Vanilla FO§, not FWE)?
The headware is even worse: The stormrchaser hat and sunglases give the same protection as a steel combat helmet plus more bonuses? WTF?
Time to get some flat damage reduction to the combat armors as well!

Settings and Balancing:
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I will asume the "ImperviousMult" value is set to 2 when giving values for the flat reduction.
If you don't know what the ImperviousMult is, read the discussion of the Impervious Power Armor mod below or lok at the nexus page of this mod.

Now the combat helmets will reduce damage to the head by a flat 2xAR (10 damage points for a normal helmet, 16 for a masked MarkII helmet) additionaly to the percentage reduction. - it willmake you  start wearing  these things (did you now that headshots give double damage in FWE both to you and your enemies?).

For the armor, I aimed to balance with regards to three refference points:
- The effect should be noticeable for weak weapons.
- The Power Armors should still give a noticeable improvement, feeling tanky compared to normal cmbat armor.
- This mod should not spoil the balancing and increased damage introduced by FWE. Oh, and there should be no obvious best armor class, therefore I give the higher tear amror more weight to give a penalty to the increased protection (Oh, I think I also give the Mark II heavy the Agility-1 malus from the metal armor...).

I made a progression where armor improvement comes with a hughe increase in armor weight:
Metal Armor (weight (W) =42, AR =26)
"Mark II heavy" CA (W)=36, AR=24)
"Mark II" CA (W=30, AR=21)
standard CA (W=24, AR=18)
Guard Armor(W = 18, AR =15)
Antagonizer/Mechanist(AR = 13/14)
light CA (W=14, AR=12)
Some of the heavier Mercenary armors receive IR, they have then an AR of 8-10.
For the Reily Rangers armor, which comes in all four weight classes described above, the IR is 1 point larger and 2 points heavier.

Take a look at the images to see how the damage reduction depends the damage dealt to a character with combat armor. The bright red area is the damage range of most basic small weapons (25-80, details on this later).

When equipping an armor with IR, you get a message stating the amount of damage reduction (the values returned seem to be strange though).

Good to know:
The flat reduction is counted in before the percentage reduction: damage taken = (damage-IR) * 1-AR/100
 The AR of the body and head armor count together into one % reduction value, ut the IR of the armor applies only to the body ant the IR of the helmet only to the head!


Before you get too bored I come to the suggested settings:
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As you can see in the images, the damage reduction falls off very steep initially, therefore the balancing must be carefully finetuned for a certain damage range. For obtaining this damage range, I suggest:

 - difficulty on norma (Very important, otherwise you or your enemies will receive a 50% or more damage bonuss or malus !)
 - FWE: global damage multiplier at 2
 - IPA: ImperviousMult set arround 2.5 (higher values give stronger Armor - ses image 2 for comparison between 2.1 and 2.5)
 - IPA: ImperviousCondition set to 0 (I would like to have it at 1, but most enemies have their armor at condition ~ 25%, reducing the IR of their armor to ~ 62%)

What is that "ImperviousMult"?
It is the global setting that modifies the strenght of the impervious effect (the amount of flat damage reduction).

Some basics about the IPA mod:
 - The IR is always dendent on the base AR value of an armor. The standard is 0.25*AR for body armor and 1*AR for helmets
 - the ImperviousMult scales this effect up or down: IM*0.25*AR (with IM = 2 you get IR = 0.5AR for body and IR = 2AR for helmets)
 - You must modify this values with the ingame console, there is no ingame menu:
pres the "^" button (without the ""), then type: "Set ImperviousMult to 2" or any other value (again withoput the "")
accordingly, you type "Set ImperviousCondition to 0" to switch off condition dependent flat reduction or 1 to put it on)

I myself use a FWE mult of 2.25, IPA mult of 2.5, IPA condition = 0 and IPA offset = 1.

In detailed balance discusssion:
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As pointed out, the amount of damage reduction is now very sensitive to the damage values encountered (likely a reason we did not get it in the first place, you cant just cange the damage multipliers in the difficulty section without messing up the armor balance).
So what are the typical damage values encountered in FWE?
Most basic small weapons in FWE have an base damage around 20, like the 10mm Pistol (some SMGs have a smaller base per projectile, down to 16 I think)
 The damage of basic small weapons goes to ~40 for weapons like the desert eagle or the hunting rifle.
With the global damage  multiplier of 2, one gets a ragnge of 40-80.

FWE modifies the base damage by 30% depending on skill and 20% depending on the weapon condition.
Enemie types have specific weapon skills (see http://www.gamefaqs.com/xbox360/939933-fallout-3/faqs/55305) and their weapons are often in a bad condition (around 20%-30%)
meaning, a raider with 30: small weapons skill and a 30% 10mm pistol will do
40*(1-0.3*0.7)*(1-0.2*0.7) = 27 Damage.

Therefore I consider the range of 25-80 the damage range of normal small weapons and want an considerably improved protection for the lower range of 25-40, and decreased protection beyond 80 (or ealier with light armor)

If you want your heavy combat armor to completely absorb damage at the lower end and you don't mind making combat with raiders a lot easier,
use an ImperviousMult value of 4 or 5. Then you ar starting to take damage from a damage value of 24 or 30. Note that this will also affect power armors, with the BoS armor giving complete protection up to 65 or 80 damage!

Bugs:
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When doing a merged patch with FO3edit, the metal armor and metal helmet are not included in the merged a0aImperviousList.

Some notes about Impervious Power Armor:
There apparently was no way to achieve a native additive damae reduction, therefore the mod applies the workaround of refunding HP after a hit.
This is a complicated process, as it has to calculate the amount you get not from the final received damage, but has to calculate how the damage was if you would have had the flat reduction before the percentage reduction and refund the difference to the actual reduction. I write this because the results will not always be correct and you will sometimes gain HP after a weak hit. During testing with a SMG armed raide, this happen quite often - my guess is that IPA has problems with the FWE feature of getting reduced HP damage from hits to the limbs, instead refunding as if you have gotten the full damage. Maybe I am going to test this with a follower and report back on this.

For reducing this effect, set ImperviousOffset to 1 or 2 (then you always get 1 or 2 points less HP refunded)

In short: be prepared for inconsistencies in the damage values you receive! If mechanic consistency is more important to you (I must never gain HP from a hit) for immersion than realism related consistency (combat armor protects better against weak weapons), then IPA and thismod is nothing for you!


Changelog:
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Version 1.1:
Added the Vault Security Suit
All Mark II Heavy combat armors now have the Agility -1 penalty
Raily Rangers Armors are now more specialized (all have the Luck+1):
The Mark II heavy protects: Weight 40(+4), AR 26 (+2), Agility -1, SG +10, 
Mark II is mostly unchanged: Weight 30, AR 22 (+1), Normal RR bonuses
RR combat armor lighter for improved sneaking: Weight 22 (-3), AR 18, Agility+1 (gives 6 AP), SG+10 
(all normal combat armors count as light in FWE)
Light Armor: better protection and sneaking: W 14 (-1), AR 14 (+2), Agility+1, AP+5, Small Guns+5, Sneak+5

Specialized Mechanist and Antagonizer Armor:
Mechanist armor is now heavy, has Weight 18, AR 16
Antagonizer still light, has Weight 16, AR 14

If you do not like this chages, stick to the original version.