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Nyrrion

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About this mod

A ".dll free" yet fully functional armor rating overhaul mod for both player (main focus), and actors.

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~> Armor Rating Overhaul <~
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* Synopsis
Skyrim vanilla armor rating handling is awful; 'Armor Rating Overhaul' (ARO) tries to bring a better balance and fairness over vanilla own system, managing the link between armor rating and survivability in a peculiar and different way compared to other "armor rating" mods:
  • ARO actually calculates the new damage reduction for the player only, and simply 'mimics' it for actors using perks / other "armor rating" mods usually calculate it for everyone, or they do it exclusively for the player
  • ARO uses a special 'curve' that makes survivability scale linearly with armor rating up to some ~850 displayed armor rating, and then smoothly reaches a soft cap / other "armor rating" mods usually let the player get closer and closer to full damage immunity, or they use a hard cap to prevent it

Basic build is a ligthweight, load-order independent and natively compatible solution.
Full build is a complete suite designed to automatically integrate with combat/perks/magic overhauls, and everything else worth noting.

* Overview
Skyrim vanilla armor rating ("AR" from now on) management has always been one of the most poorly designed of all time. Most (but not all) of its flaws are inherently tied to the linear formula that the devs used, because a linear ratio between armor and damage reduction leads to an hyperbolic growth on survivability, and that's where (and why) the infamous "667 armor cap" kicks in; to make things even less clear, each armor piece gives an invisible 3% damage reduction out of thin air, probably to mend the intrinsic lack of tankiness (this also brings some wild and unintuitive behaviors, as you can see in the graphs). My thought is that the devs decided - for whatever the reason - to simply patch up the unexpected mess that came from using a linear solution instead of opting for a different formula altogether. Not the best decision, if you ask me.
The issues that are directly and indirectly carried over are many:
▸ once you hit the hard cap, there is ZERO reason to furter increase your AR
▸ survivability is dependent on both AR *and* plain number of armor pieces worn
▸ maces and warhammers specific perks are pretty useless even at rank 3
▸ total AR is pretty useless below values of ~300, and this also means that:
  • 'mage armor' spells and perks are straight up useless (ebonyflesh + 3/3 mage armor perk is borderline useless)
  • any other form of extra AR (like "The Lord Stone") is pretty useless if the total AR is less than the aforementioned ~300
  • Vampire Lord form on its own is squishy as heck, having a maximum of 300 AR when at level higher than 45
  • Werewolf form is approximately as squishy as Vampire Lord form until level 41, reaching then a maximum of 400 AR when at level higher than 45 (and thus becoming a bit less squishy)
'Armor Rating Overhaul' aims (once again) to bring balance on the matter, fixing all of those problems at their very root by changing the way survivability is linked to AR.

* Description
Long, detailed description of everything under spoiler.
Spoiler:  
Show
This mod has been developed with an ambitious goal in mind: be as simple/lightweight/compatible as possible without compromising on functionality. The main focus of the whole project is the player character, which receives the 'full treatment': all of the formulas used are applied to the player - and to the player only - while actors only receive a 'sketched out' resistance evaluation. This decision has been taken to avoid both .dlls (better compatibility) and constant cloak effects/quest aliases (better performance), but also because 90% of the perceived game is - of course - player focused, and actors rarely have anything more than 200 AR anyway. As a side effect, the player will have the intended physical protection against actors/traps/whatever, while actors will have an approximated rebalanced protection when attacked by the player; actors attacked by other actors - or being damaged by traps - will lack the rebalanced protection, therefore being a bit less tanky. SPID .ini files are provided to mimic the readjusted protection and line it up to its "player attacking actor" counterpart.
The curve behind the damage reduction calculation is a peculiar 'weighted exponential' that closely emulates a hyperbolic curve, but unlike the hyperbolic lack of a 'limit value', it slowly flattens out to a 90% cap; the reason for the cap is simple: apart from potential temporary effects, 99~100% damage reduction is just silly (I don't want to use 'unpolite' words here) and - in my opinion - kind of immersion breaking... if you want to cheat-become damage immune just type "tgm" or "tim" in the console command and call it a day.

A common misconception about percentages and survivability on Skyrim is that "double the percentage, double the survivability", while the truth is much more complex-fascinating... the vanilla calculation 'follows' an hyperbolic function to translate AR into survivability when the AR is inside the range 0~667 (the formula is " 1/(1-AR*0.0012) "), and then flats out at 667+ AR because this hyperbolic curve has a "zero" at about 833 AR (when the survivability would tend to infinity) and as such, values going from 667 to 833 would gradually cause a dramatic increment on damage resistance. However, an hyperbolic curve increases very slowly at the beginning, and that's why the 0~300 AR range feels so useless: survivability simply doesn't increase as much as it should; I guess devs at Bethesda don't really like math, not at all. What does all of this mean, by the way? It means that, on vanilla Skyrim, an AR of 300 (so 300*0.12% = 36% of damage reduction) doesn't add much survivability to the table compared to 150 AR (so 150*0.12% = 18% of damage reduction), despite being double the % damage reduction:
▸ survivability at 300 AR > 1/(1-300*0.0012) = ~1.56x
▸ survivability at 150 AR > 1/(1-150*0.0012) = ~1.22x
This means that, if you have 100 HP, you can take roughly 122 physical damage before dying with 150 AR, and only a meager 156 physical damage with 300 AR. On a vanilla setting, you have almost no added survivability going from 0 to 300 AR, while you'll notice being way more tanky the closer you approach the 667 AR cap (and just to gain absolutely NOTHING after that). Using the 'weighted exponential' curve I came up with, on the other hand, lets you have a survivability that increases almost linearly in the range 0~850 AR and then slowly reaches the 90% asymptote after that: using the same AR values as example, you'd have a ~45% of damage resistance (1.83x survivability) at 150 AR and ~63% of damage resistance (2.68x survivability) at 300 AR (take a look to the graphs for a better understanding).

For those interested in the math or just curious about it, the curve used is:
damage_taken = incoming_damage * (0.111111 + value_A^(armor_rating^value_B)) / 1.111111

and therefore, % damage reduction and survivability are:
%_damage_reduction = (1 - (0.111111 + value_A^(armor_rating^value_B)) / 1.111111) * 100
survivability_multiplier = 1 / ((0.111111 + value_A^(armor_rating^value_B)) / 1.111111)


As a comparison, these are the vanilla calculations (valid for AR range of 0~667):
damage_taken = incoming_damage * (1 - armor_rating * 0.0012)

and as a result:
%_damage_reduction = (armor_rating * 0.0012) * 100
survivability_multiplier = 1 / (1 - armor_rating * 0.0012)

Given that the damage reduction affects survivability in the same way regardless of the formula used to convert AR into damage reduction, it is possible to directly link damage reduction to survivability, as shown in the table below:
00% > [no resistance]
01%1.010x21%1.266x41%1.695x61%2.564x81%5.263x
02%1.020x22%1.282x42%1.724x62%2.632x82%5.556x
03%1.031x23%1.299x43%1.754x63%2.703x83%5.882x
04%1.042x24%1.316x44%1.786x64%2.778x84%6.250x
05%1.053x25%1.333x45%1.818x65%2.857x85%6.667x
06%1.064x26%1.351x46%1.852x66%2.941x86%7.143x
07%1.075x27%1.370x47%1.887x67%3.030x87%7.692x
08%1.087x28%1.389x48%1.923x68%3.125x88%8.333x
09%1.099x39%1.409x49%1.961x69%3.226x89%9.091x
10%1.111x30%1.429x50%2.000x70%3.333x90%10.00x
11%1.124x31%1.449x51%2.041x71%3.448x91%11.11x
12%1.136x32%1.471x52%2.083x72%3.571x92%12.50x
13%1.149x33%1.493x53%2.128x73%3.704x93%14.29x
14%1.163x34%1.515x54%2.174x74%3.846x94%16.67x
15%1.176x35%1.538x55%2.222x75%4.000x95%20.00x
16%1.190x36%1.563x56%2.273x76%4.167x96%25.00x
17%1.205x37%1.587x57%2.326x77%4.348x97%33.33x
18%1.220x38%1.613x58%2.381x78%4.546x98%50.00x
19%1.235x39%1.639x59%2.439x79%4.762x99%100.0x
20%1.250x40%1.667x60%2.500x80%5.000x100% > [total immunity]

As you can see, survivability grows slowly for low percentages, and then quickly increases the closer the percentage is to damage immunity (100%). This, in the end, is the very reason behind the absolute superiority of an hyperbolic-like relation between AR and damage reduction instead of a linear one.

I offer two different builds of this mod, one more focused on simplicity (basic build) and one that is way more 'fleshed out' (full build), both using the same 'framework' and sharing the same formula (but using slightly different values for a better balancing):
▸ [BASIC build] doesn't touch any vanilla record, and will exclusively take care of the damage reduction curve; it is intended to be simpler and 'low maintenance', so any mod-specific balance solution for it is considered "out of scope" (just like for any other armor rating mod), and as such, no balance patches will be provided; any other compatibility issue is either non-existent (since it doesn't touch vanilla records) or obvious, such in the case of mixing it with other mods that change armor rating management (things that should be always avoided anyway, with any armor rating mod)
▸ [FULL build] is a complete "armor rating suite" that - unlike other 'armor rating' mods - implements many changes to AR-related records and aspects (like flesh spells and scrolls), and aims to integrate its own AR handling with most magic/perk/combat overhauls to bring an overall better balance and a more personalized experience: it will receive compatibility and balance updates, trying to keep actual .esp patches to a bare minimum (mostly needed for descriptions consistency)

One important thing to be specified: as unintuitive as it might seems, [BASIC build] might be - as pretty much EVERY other 'armor rating' mod - not completely compatible with (and/or balanced for) 'combat overhauls ', since they usually use their own parameters on damage reduction and armor; while this flaw should never bring to game-breaking outcomes, it might still make the game a bit too easy/hard than intended. On the other hand, [FULL build] is designed to be compatible with every 'combat overhaul ' around.

* Features and details
[both builds]
▸ comes as an ESLified .esp
▸ SPID .ini files for a better actor protection approximation
▸ no cloak effects or reference_alias pools used to distribute scripts
▸ no hidden AR on armor pieces
▸ soft cap of 90% damage reduction from AR
▸ no 'game mechanics' altered on a code level
▸ "Damage Resist" active effect to show the current resistance
▸ configuration lesser power available from "Powers" menu
▸ possibility of changing options also from console commands; list of available settings:
  • NPC adjusted resistances > "set Nyr_ARO_ToggleNPCResist to  0/1" (case insensitive) to switch it OFF/ON
  • non-NPC Actors adjusted resistances > "set Nyr_ARO_ToggleActorResist to  0/1" (case insensitive) to switch it OFF/ON
  • NPC flesh spells rebalance > "set Nyr_ARO_ToggleNPCxMAFix to  0/1" (case insensitive) to switch it OFF/ON
[BASIC build]
▸ no vanilla records touched
▸ build-specific option: Dragonhide & Bones of the Earth adjustments
▸ build-specific option: standard/vanilla-like/hardcore damage curves
▸ physical resistance at example points as follow, using standard curve (soft cap at 90%):
  • 20% damage reduction at ~ 35 AR (equivalent to ~ 170 AR on vanilla)
  • 35% damage reduction at ~ 85 AR (eq. to ~ 290 AR on vanilla)
  • 50% damage reduction at ~ 170 AR (eq. to ~ 420 AR on vanilla)
  • 65% damage reduction at ~ 315 AR (eq. to ~ 540 AR on vanilla)
  • 80% damage reduction at ~ 667 AR (same as vanilla)
▸ physical resistance at example points as follow, using vanilla-like curve (soft cap at 80%):
  • 15% damage reduction at ~ 55 AR
  • 30% damage reduction at ~ 115 AR
  • 45% damage reduction at ~ 195 AR
  • 60% damage reduction at ~ 305 AR
  • 75% damage reduction at ~ 565 AR
▸ physical resistance at example points as follow, using hardcore curve (soft cap at 70%):
  • 25% damage reduction at ~ 130 AR
  • 35% damage reduction at ~ 205 AR
  • 45% damage reduction at ~ 300 AR
  • 55% damage reduction at ~ 450 AR
  • 65% damage reduction at ~ 765 AR
[FULL build]*
▸ build-specific option: combat overhauls lesser damage adjustments
▸ physical resistance at example points as follow:
  • 20% damage reduction at ~ 45 AR
  • 35% damage reduction at ~ 105 AR
  • 50% damage reduction at ~ 195 AR
  • 65% damage reduction at ~ 345 AR
  • 80% damage reduction at  667 AR
▸ changes/shifts/improvements on vanilla records:
⁂- PERKS
  • 'Mage Armor' perks have been toned down to  1.5x / 2.0x / 2.5x magnitude from  2.0x / 2.5x / 3.0x magnitude for a better smoothered progression and to account for the new AR formula
⁂- SCROLLS
  • Oakflesh, Stoneflesh, Ironflesh and Ebonyflesh now have the same magnitude of their spell counterparts ( 40 / 60 / 80 / 100 magnitude instead of  20 / 25 / 30 / 35 magnitude), last four times longer (240 seconds instead of 60 seconds) and also benefit from "Mage Armor" perks
  • Dragonhide has been normalized (removed the erroneous description and fixed the 'out of range' duration of  3600 seconds)
  • Dragonhide is now included in the appropriate leveled list
⁂- SPELLS
  • All flesh spells now have a base duration of  120 seconds, up from  60 seconds
  • Stoneflesh now has a charge time of  0.67 seconds (up from  0.5 seconds)
  • Ironflesh now has a charge time of  0.83 seconds (up from  0.5 seconds)
  • Ebonyflesh now has a charge time of  1.0 seconds (up from  0.5 seconds)
  • Dragonhide now has a charge time of  2.0 seconds (down from  3.0 seconds)
  • Dragonhide damage reduction has been modified to a base of  75%, stacking multiplicatively with current AR up to a maximum of  95% (this means HALVED damage received compared to the 90% soft cap)
  • Bones of the Earth now lasts for  240 seconds, and boosts damage reduction to the 90% soft cap
  • flesh spells magicka cost is slightly incrementally higher (+5/10/15/20/25%)
▸ other details and additions:
  • some high level NPCs will be 'able' to use a specific "NPC version" of Dragonhide, depending on their Alteration level and if they don't already know Dragonhide
  • there are a total of 5 guaranteed Scrolls of Dragonhide in two fixed locations
  • order of precedence for armor spells is: Oakflesh > Stoneflesh > Ironflesh > Ebonyflesh > Dragonhide > Bones of the Earth
  • 'armor rating' enchantment implemented on proper leveled lists for robes

* notice: values for [FULL build] are subject to dynamically adjust based on installed mods
* Installation
Use your mod manager of choice to install it as any other mod, or manually put the files inside the game folder (not recommended).
[BASIC build] is load-order independent, since it alters no vanilla records.
[FULL build] should be placed according to the Compatibility Guidelines.

* Uninstallation
To uninstall, either use the config power or type the console command (case insensitive) "setstage Nyr_ARO_MainQuest 701" to turn it off, wait for the notification, save the game and remove the files. Use of Resaver is recommended (as always is when removing mods that add scripts and/or new records).

* Update
Safe to update to any newer version. If you want to switch from [BASIC build] to [FULL build] or the other way around, FIRST follow the instruction for "Uninstallation" up here, or oddities may result.

* Compatibility
▸ Should be compatible with any SE/AE version of the game
▸ Should be compatible with VR version (confirmation needed)
▸ Not compatible with other AR mods (do I really need to say this?)
▸ Do NOT install both builds together (do I REALLY need to say this?)
Check the 'Compatibility Guidelines' article for a full list of compatible mods and some insights about it.

* Known issues
While the effective damage reduction will be updated almost instantly if the AR changes, the displayed "Damage Resist" active effect will not be updated until the game is not in menu mode anymore. The script will simply wait for the game to be unpaused before trying to update the value, to avoid visual oddities that may creep in.
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Other mods by me:




Old mods:
- [Porting] Summon Skeleton and Skeletal Archer (SE)
- Basic Overhaul for Vampires by Nyr