reactive-plating

Adaptive Plating

What it is

A stat-flavored reactive artifact built around the player-damage signal. Every time the ship is hit, the plating layers on a stacking armor buff, a stacking weapon-damage buff, and a tight reactive pulse that damages nearby enemies. There is no cooldown — the artifact procs on every hit, so its per-proc payoff is small and the strength comes from frequent re-triggering rather than from any single proc. It is the smallest-radius, lowest-per-proc damage entry in the player-damage AOE family.

Identity

Field	Value
Display name	Adaptive Plating
Category	Stat
Icon	🛡️
Primary color	#888888
Secondary color	#555555
Bright/highlight color	cccccc
Damage tag	None (type-agnostic)
Proc audio cue	Plays the artifact’s dedicated audio cue on every proc — defensive metallic thud + click + low electrical sparkle.

Per-tier values

Tiers are indexed by rarity. The four authored tiers cover uncommon through legendary; the runtime prepends a fifth “common” tier that reuses the uncommon row’s values and only adds a smaller flat passive bonus.

Rarity	Armor per stack (damage reduction)	Weapon damage per stack	Max stacks	Reactive pulse damage
Common	+2%	+4	15	30
Uncommon	+2%	+4	15	30
Rare	+4%	+8	15	55
Epic	+6%	+12	15	85
Legendary	+10%	+18	15	130

The reactive pulse hits everything inside a fixed 140-unit radius centered on the ship. The pulse radius and max stacks do not scale with tier.

Effect

Trigger: the player-damage signal (fires whenever the ship takes damage).

Cooldown between procs: none — the artifact runs every hit.

On each proc, the artifact runs the following actions in order:

Action	Effect
Armor stack	Adds one stack of a percent damage-reduction modifier worth the tiered armor-per-stack value, lasting 3 seconds.
Weapon-damage stack	Adds one stack of a flat weapon-damage modifier worth the tiered damage-per-stack value, lasting 3 seconds.
Reactive pulse	Deals the tiered flat damage to every enemy inside a 140-unit radius centered on the ship.
Primary VFX	Plays a burst-and-ring effect in the artifact’s bright color (14 particles, scale 3.5, 0.30 s lifetime).
Artifact flash	Flashes the artifact’s HUD icon to signal the proc.
Banner	Shows the artifact’s banner the first time it procs in a run.

The armor stack, damage stack, and reactive pulse all resolve on the same trigger — every hit simultaneously hardens the ship, sharpens its outgoing damage, and clears the immediate ring of enemies.

Stacking rules

Rule	Behavior
Max stacks (armor)	15
Max stacks (weapon damage)	15
Stacking mode	Refresh — each new proc adds a stack (up to the cap) and resets the remaining duration of the existing stacks to the full 3 seconds.
Modifier sources	The armor stack and the weapon-damage stack each carry their own source key, so they refresh independently rather than overwriting each other.
Buff duration	Fixed at 3 seconds per stack regardless of tier.
Cooldown gating	None. Every hit produces a fresh stack and a fresh reactive pulse, so under sustained chip damage the artifact ramps quickly toward the 15-stack cap.
Stack decay	Once 3 seconds pass without another hit, all stacks expire together because each new proc refreshes the duration of all existing stacks of the same source.
Reactive pulse stacking	The pulse is a fresh one-shot AOE on every proc; it does not persist or accumulate between procs.

At max armor stacks the ship gains the per-stack armor value × 15 as percent damage reduction; at max weapon-damage stacks it gains the per-stack damage value × 15 as flat weapon damage. At legendary that is a +150% damage-reduction ceiling and a +270 flat weapon-damage ceiling while the buffs are kept refreshed.

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Summary: Adaptive Plating is a stat-category player-damage artifact with no cooldown. Every hit grants one stack of percent damage reduction and one stack of flat weapon damage (each 3 s, capped at 15 stacks, refreshed by subsequent procs) and triggers a small 140-unit reactive pulse around the ship. Armor per stack (+2% → +10%), damage per stack (+4 → +18), and pulse damage (30 → 130) all scale across tiers; pulse radius (140), max stacks (15), and buff duration (3 s) are constant. It is the smallest-radius, lowest-per-proc entry in the player-damage AOE family and trades single-proc punch for sustained ramp under continuous incoming damage. Common reuses uncommon’s values per the shared-tier convention.

EXTRACT-CANDIDATE flags:

• The “5th common tier reuses uncommon values and differentiates via flat passive bonus” rule is shared across all artifacts and belongs on the artifacts roll-up page, not duplicated per entity.
• The FLAT_BONUS_PCT_BY_TIER table (10 → 50 across common → legendary) referenced in the shared types is engine-wide and should live on the artifacts overview / authoring guide.
• The stacking: 'refresh' / maxStacks / per-source modifier semantics (independent source keys, duration refresh on re-proc, simultaneous expiry) are generic effect-engine concepts; canonical definition belongs on a combat or effect-engine page.
• The modify_stat, damage_aoe, vfx (burst_and_ring), flash_artifact action types are shared primitives across many artifacts — canonical reference belongs on the artifact authoring guide.
• Color-palette schema (primary / secondary / bright) is shared across all artifacts and belongs on the roll-up, with per-entity pages only listing the values.
• The procAudioCue mechanism (audio cue keyed to the artifact’s flash action, routed through the spatial game bus with LPF + reverb) is an engine-wide convention and belongs on the artifact authoring guide.
• The showBanner: true first-proc banner behavior is shared across artifacts and belongs on the roll-up.
• The player-damage AOE family ordering (smallest-radius / no-cooldown Adaptive Plating ↔ short-cooldown Reflex Array ↔ long-cooldown Shield Break Nova as inverse-radius / inverse-cooldown counterparts) is a cross-entity design relationship and belongs on the artifacts roll-up or a dedicated family/synergy page rather than on each artifact page.