Thanks, Scatha! +rep
I have been interested in this topic for quite a while now (relative to the amount of time I've been playing), and read every page of the thread that Avery linked to. Unfortunately that thread (and testing) died when everyone realized decay costs were a lot lower and that was good enough.
Kyndig, if you read the thread Avery posted, you will see that the system described on peauction.com is out of date, as of VU 7.7. This may not be true with the latest VU's. As I said, this is the first real study I've seen of armor decay since VU 7.8. And thank you Scatha for giving us info on conducting our own tests.
When I looked at the chart, I saw what many people have seen: pec/dmg is directly proportional to damage protection offered. Thus:
Pixie (9) = 0.055
Goblin (12) = 0.064
Nem/Rascal (15) = 0.073
Ghost (19) = 0.086
Angel (30) = 0.115
Shadow (46) = 0.158
Overall, Etopia's formula matches these figures very closely. Shadow is spot on and the others are off by ~0.002, which is nit picking. Etopia's formula is meant to help predict pec/dmg (for impact) by simply looking at the armor stats and not having to test it--and it does a good job of that.
There is a fly in the ointment, though: Vigilante. According to Etopia's formula, the pec/dmg for impact using Vigilante should be ~0.049, placing it below Pixie which gives 2 more points of protection. However, according Scatha's tests, Vigi had an average pec/dmg of 0.091, which is nearly twice what it should be and more than Ghost, which offers 12 more protection. Since Scatha ran two tests on Vigilante (getting similar results for both), it's difficult to attribute the anomaly to bad data.
Perhaps there is a “minimum decay”? But if that’s the case, then it still should not have been higher than Pixie. I think my HP, Evade, and FAP should let me test Settler and Pioneer against Ambulimax Youngs/Matures. However, my bank is having “deposit issues” at the moment and I cannot conduct my own tests right away, but will do so as soon as I am able.
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