Jacket Armor

 

Jacket Armor
Damage Absorption	30% against non-energy damage 0% against energy damage
Found in	Quake II
[Source]

In Quake II, Jacket Armor (also called the Flak Jacket) is the weakest type of armor in the game, absorbing 30% (rounded up) of the damage inflicted by conventional means - weaponry as well as most other hazards such as slime or falling damage. It offers no protection against energy damage such as the Hyperblaster, Blaster or BFG10k.

Armor value

If you don't have any armor, a pickup of Jacket Armor sets your armor type to Jacket Armor and gives you 25 points of it.

If you already have it as your armor type, you can collect another to get up to +25 armor up to a maximum of 50 points, i.e. twice the base (picking up is impossible above that value, but Armor Shards can still increase it above that).

If you already have a better armor or pick up better armor while wearing Jacket Armor, the armor points get converted based on the ratio of normal damage absorption rates. The factor is /2 (30%/60%) if converting to Combat Armor and *3/8 (30%/80%) if converting to Body Armor. The resulting "salvage value" of Jacket Armor is then rounded down to the nearest integer. As a result, Jacket Armor pickup adds +12 (25/2, rounded down) to Combat Armor and +9 (25*3/8, rounded down) to Body Armor, as long as the player has not achieved the base maximum equal to twice the number of pickup armor points for the currently equipped armor type (i.e. 2*50=100 for Combat Armor and 2*100=200 for Body Armor - allowing for theoretically picking up Jacket Armor 23 times if you start doing so with only 1 point of Body Armor left). Because of that, in late game it's actually much easier to use Jacket Armor pickups effectively. The caveats is that, while the converted points have a much higher damage absorption rate and protect against energy weapons as well, the total raw amount of damage absorbed - so also the amount of health saved - is severely reduced by the conversion.

Picking up Armor Shard (Q2) with no armor sets your armor type to Jacket Armor and gives you the regular 2 points of it.

Effectiveness

A player with 100 health and 50 Jacket Armor can effectively withstand a single hit of about 140 damage before getting killed. Assuming exact math, if he got the 140 damage, 42 would get absorbed by armor and 98 would be inflicted to health. Note that in this case Jacket Armor will be still present when the player suffers the final damage, which is unlike the case for other armors.

Because 30% of the damage the player gets can be a relatively small value especially in the early game, the Jacket Armor has the tendency to wear down slowly compared to other armors.

Strategies

Single Player

In single player, Jacket Armor is the most common type of armor in the game until you get out of the Factory hub. Early in the game, it provides good protection against the weak Guards and Enforcers, but it doesn't cut it against Gunners, Gladiators and Tanks. However, if the health pickups are plentiful and the relative risk level of an area is low, staying with Jacket Armor and delaying picking up better armor (and losing armor points in the conversion) is a great way to utilize health pickups to the max and to conserve better armors for the toughest fights.

Multiplayer

While the Jacket Armor has a low absorption percent, it will protect you from getting killed by a Railgun in one shot, so grab it as soon as you see it. It's better than nothing. Since it offers no protection against energy weapons, anyone spamming Blaster at you must be avoided.

Trivia

Jacket Armor is Quake 2's equivalent of the Green Armor found in Quake 1.