Marc Santos is a Guides Staff Writer from the Philippines with a BA in Communication Arts and over six years of experience in writing gaming news and guides. He plays just about everything, from turn-based RPGs to life sims, 4X, horror, and more. Marc has spent over 2,200 hours on Destiny 2, all while leaving his Steam game backlog to grow ever bigger.
In a tactics game like MENACE where every single bullet can be lethal, it can be tempting to just equip every single one of your squads with the best armor possible, and when heavily-armored enemies start rolling out en masse, giving your soldiers high-caliber weapons is just as enticing. However, using or countering armor has costs, and unless you fully understand how armor works in MENACE, you might end up hamstringing yourself by using gear inefficiently. In this guide, we’re going to break down how armor works in this game as well as some options you can use on how to maximize your survivability and lethality against targets donning even the best protection.
MENACE: Every Attribute, Explained
Here’s how each of the stats on your characters and weapons work in MENACE.
MENACE Armor Mechanic, Explained
In MENACE, armor acts as a secondary health bar that gives units a chance to take no direct HP damage from incoming attacks. The game’s armor system uses the following stats:
- Armor: Overall Armor value that determines the percentage chance that a shot is going to get absorbed. If a weapon’s Armor Penetration stat exceeds Armor value, then shots will always penetrate.
- Armor Durability: The total health of a unit’s armor. Absorbed shots will reduce Armor Durability, negatively affecting overall effective Armor value. This is matched against a weapon’s Armor Damage stat.
To summarize, armor is most effective against the first few shots they absorb. Eventually, armor will break, making your units vulnerable.
When you’re shooting at enemy soldiers that are wearing decent body armor, you’ll notice that successful hits will reduce your target’s total Armor value (indicated by the grey bar directly above their red HP bar), but they won’t take any real HP damage unless shots manage to penetrate. This works on your own troops as well.
The entire MENACE armor system also plays with weapons via two stats:
- Armor Damage: Dictates how much damage successful weapon hits do to armor. Shots that penetrate armor do not deal Armor Damage.
- Armor Penetration: Determines the chance for shots to penetrate armor. If Armor Penetration meets or exceeds a unit’s effective Armor value, they are guaranteed to penetrate.
You don’t necessarily need weapons with high Armor Penetration values all the time, so long as they can shred Armor Durability by having high Armor Damage, or by whittling away at Armor through sheer volume of fire.
As of writing, there appears to be a hidden stat related to how low Armor Damage interacts with very high amounts of Armor, such as on tanks. Units with super-heavy armor appear to take less Armor Damage from small arms fire (i.e. bullets) compared to infantry body armor or the chitin on various alien units, which means you’ll still want to use weapons with high Armor Damage when dealing with threats like heavily-armored threats.
Tips
- Having a dedicated anti-armor/tank hunter squad will greatly improve your overall effectiveness against vehicles and large armored units.
- Before attempting to strip the armor off infantry that have the Counter-Fire ability, make sure your target is suppressed and that your own units are in good cover. Otherwise, Counter-Fire will do serious damage to your troops.
- Weapons like the Crocodile Anti-Materiel Rifle are mostly good for taking out lightly-armored vehicles and walkers. Against heavier units like tanks, these weapons are best used to destroy modules/parts instead of outright eliminating such targets.
