Armor and Damage

A hit doesn’t automatically mean “full damage.” Once a shot has cleared the accuracy, dodge, and critical checks, the target’s final line of defense comes into play — armor and resistances. This is where it’s decided how much harm actually reaches health, and sometimes whether any reaches it at all.

Two layers of defense: DT and DR

Every target — your character and your enemies alike — has a defense built from two distinct layers that work in sequence:

• DT (absorption, the “cut”) is a flat number that is simply subtracted from incoming damage once per attack. Roughly: “the armor eats the first N points of damage whole.”
• DR (resistance, a percentage) is a percentage taken from the attack’s original damage. The harder the blow, the more absolute points DR removes.

They’re calculated together with a simple formula: damage removed = DT + DR × damage / 100, and final damage = damage minus what was removed (but never below zero). First the flat DT is subtracted, then percentage DR kicks in based on the original value.

The practical takeaway: DT is especially brutal against weak, frequent hits — a small shot can get almost entirely swallowed by flat absorption. DR, on the other hand, scales and “bites off” the same fraction from a weak hit and a powerful one alike.

DT is paid once per action, not per bullet

This is an important nuance for bursts. Flat DT is removed once per resolved attack, not for each individual bullet in a burst. So a burst that puts several rounds into a single action passes through flat absorption only once — against dense armor, a burst is often more effective than firing those same shots one at a time.

Resistances by damage type

Defense isn’t equal against all threats. Both the character and the armor have a shared layer plus separate resistances for each specific damage type. There are five types:

• Physical — ordinary bullets, blows, claws; the basis of most encounters.
• Energy — laser weapons, for example.
• Fire.
• Poison.
• Radiation.

A target’s final DT is the sum of its general absorption and the absorption for the relevant type (the same goes for DR). That’s why armor that holds up brilliantly against bullets may do almost nothing against fire, energy, poison, or radiation. This isn’t a bug, it’s by design: you need to think about your gear ahead of time for different threats.

An example from the gear. The “Raider Armor” has a physical DT of 10, but its fire and energy resistances are zero: it soaks up ordinary blows well, yet it’s nearly useless against a flamethrower or a laser. The “KS-2 Kit” has a different character of physical protection — a small DT (3) and a noticeable percentage DR (8): it shaves off a fraction of the damage rather than absorbing a fixed chunk.

How armor adds to your defense

Worn armor reinforces both layers — its DT and DR are added to the target’s own resistances for the corresponding damage type. The character’s own DT and DR don’t go negative in the process: they’re floored at zero, so negative defense never turns into a damage boost.

There’s a flip side too: broken armor offers no protection at all — until the item is repaired, it provides zero DT and DR. Wear is sneaky here: protection stays full right up to the breakage threshold, and then the broken armor is automatically moved to your inventory, and you can only put it back on after a repair.

Armor penetration

Some attacks bypass the contribution of worn armor. The main mechanism is armor-piercing ammunition: a piercing round grants 100 penetration points, to which the attacker’s own armor-piercing is added. If the total penetration reaches the threshold (25 by default), the DT and DR of worn armor are ignored. The same effect comes from a forced “finisher” by certain abilities.

It’s important to understand the boundary: penetration cancels only the equipment’s contribution. The target’s own resistances, the state of its body, and its vulnerabilities to a specific damage type all remain in effect. An armor-piercing approach is great against one problem — thick armor — but it doesn’t leave the target defenseless.

When an attack genuinely bypasses armor that actually had protection against that damage type, a brief AP tag flashes over the target. If the target had no worn armor with protection of the relevant type, the tag doesn’t appear — it’s an honest indicator of the moment of penetration, not just a “big hit.”

Zero damage is normal

A weak attack against sufficient defense can deal 0 damage even on a confirmed hit. The result never drops below zero. If a fight feels endless, the problem often isn’t your character’s nerve but the wrong tool: maybe you need a different damage type, armor-piercing rounds, or simply a more powerful weapon.

There’s also a final multiplier: after resistances are calculated, the target’s overall “damage taken” modifier is applied to the damage (it, too, never pushes the result below zero). This applies even to attacks that ignore resistances entirely.

Armor is a trade-off

Protection isn’t armor’s only property. Gear can affect other things as well: camouflage, speed, warmth. The “Raider Armor,” for instance, has a camouflage bonus and a built-in heat source, but its dark colors mark you as a bandit. So choosing armor is always a balance between protection, mobility, stealth, and warmth — not just a “take less damage” button.

The core principle of armor and damage in Last Frontier is simple: think ahead about which threat awaits you. One thing against bullets, another against fire and energy, a third against poison and radiation. And against an enemy’s dense armor, prepare penetration or the right damage type before the firefight even begins.