False. Regardless of whether you are hit by a z, a truck, or an explosive, some force is going to hit you and you are going to be damaged. Putting on a helmet doesn’t make you magically immune to any head trauma; it stops the worst of it, but there is still energy being transfered through you, into your head, and knocking your brains around. Armor is not a wall: armor is padding. Armor doesn’t stop energy, it minimizes what goes directly into us. If you are wearing plate armor and get doubled over by a cannonball to your gut, you’re still going to hurt and you’re still going to break something.
Biting and punching? No, that’s nothing at all if you have power armor. But at some point, there’s going to be enough force being delivered that you WILL feel it, and it might hurt. Again, armor is not a wall: armor is a cushion. It currently acts as a wall. This isn’t realistic. Physics still need to work.
I think that current amounts of damage dealt by enemies are sufficient; however, we need something to add to the current damage calculation so as to emulate the kinetic force being delivered, which still might hurt. For instance:
A survivor has a suit of plate mail. That’s pretty durable and solid. If a zombie punches the survivor, they are probably not going to feel anything at all. Energy is still being transfered to them, but it’s likely so little that it’s barely noticeable. It’s the second part of that which needs to be represented: the strike itself did nothing, and the force that made it through the armor also did nothing.
However, if we have, say, a Brute that walks up and slugs them in the gut - perhaps the armor stopped most of the damage, but that hit you hard enough to lift you up off your feet and propel you through the air, which is a lot harder than it sounds. That’s not a dainty little slap there. Damage still needs to occur, even if the armor stopped most of the hurt.
Every point of armor adds value to a…oh, let’s call it a ‘hurt threshold’ for now. This threshold is the last line of defense - what decides if that blow was felt enough to hurt, regardless of how much the armor absorbed.
Say you get hit in the leg by a Kreck. They don’t hit very hard, so let’s say you got…5 damage dealt. Just as a number. Pants can generally take that much damage and nullify it; however, we have to account for the energy being transmitted. Take the damage dealt and compare it to the threshold; if the damage exceeds the threshold value, then we say that while the blow did not actually do real damage, you still felt it, and it still affected the survivor. Either generate some minor amount of pain, or deal a single point of damage to the respective limb. This is because pants, while perhaps enough to stop the claws from getting to you, doesn’t stop the force nearly enough to keep it from hurting, or causing a bruise.
Now take the same survivor and replace their pants with proper power armor. Deal 5 damage to the leg again. Armor value cuts it off completely, just like the pants. However, now take that 5 damage and compare it to the threshold value, which is FAR higher than the pants. Both stop the damage of the blow itself, but unlike the pants, the power armor completely stops any sort of damage from being done. Both are thick enough to keep the brunt of the damage from hurting you, but only the power armor was sufficient to keep the kinetic force of the blow from doing anything. All damage is absorbed.
This would create a more fluid way that damage is dealt and would turn armor into padding instead of making it a sheer wall that damage below an arbitrary number cannot cross, and would be a much more realistic way of representing how energy transfers from one thing to another.
I should add that this would only happen if the damage is halted by the armor value; if you have damage that exceeds the armor, and then you compare it to the threshold value again, you’re essentially dealing the same blow twice, only slightly less blocked the second time. The threshold only applies if damage dealt is less than the armor value; something hits you hard enough and doesnt hurt you itself, but the energy was still enough to cause a bruise, or maybe split skin, or cause internal damage. This is what I want to see simulated. Because armor is padding, not a wall.