Armor not adding up right?

I tried searching but haven't seen this posted yet so forgive me if I just missed the thread

It seems I have much less armor then I should have at the moment. My human has 2 pieces of Scavengers armor (legs and chest) and a silver helmet. The first 2 have 5 armor each and the hat alone as 10, but looking at my character sheet i see i only have 7 armor. Unless I am mistaken I should have closer to 20, which would let me live thru a LOT more then what I currently am. Is this just me, am I misunderstanding how this should be calculating, or is it just broke atm?

Im desperately trying to get higher armor so I can start taking out all these NPCs I keep finding with firearms, can't kill em for beans when they shoot me half way across the screen then 3 shot me >.<

 

5+5+10=20
20/3=6.67
Your armor value isn't just the sum of the item's protection like in Terraria or Minecraft, it's 1/3 of all pieces or the average of all of your slots. A full set of iron armor with 5 points per piece will give you 5 armor, and a full set of silver with 10 points per piece will give you 10 armor. If you're having trouble with armed NPCs, try using Ctrl to get a better view of the area before attacking and try to hide behind cover if possible. I would also recommend using a shield if you can find one, since that should block all of the shots. If they're really just too powerful for your equipment, you could trap them (or yourself) behind a wall and attack through the blocks.

 

Fantastic! Thanks much for the info. I'll give that a try

 

Why is your armor value divided by 3?

 

It's the average of all of your armor pieces

 

It's kinda confusing to have the armor value calculated as a rounded up average instead of a sum. Is there a reason why it's designed that way?

 

The amount of protection an item gives you is completely arbitrary. However, I can only assume it is all related to the way the game treats threat level. Iron armor crafted by the player has 5 defense, and iron weapons crafted by the player have 5 armor penetration. They're also called "level 5" items by the crafting window. Presumably, level 5 enemies also have 5 armor and 5 armor penetration. Having all of these different values be the same number and grow at the same rate means you have to do, like, a tiny bit of math to get your armor value, but it simplifies everything else like crazy.