Shock Springs - Understanding them

Say you had two springs. Both were the same height, diameter, and wire diameter, but one had more coils. The one with more coils is softer as you have more material to deflect. In other words, each coil revolution takes the same stress to distort a given distance, so more coils equals more distance, for the same force(softer). In the same respect, cut a coil off and the spring becomes stiffer, as you just removed material to deflect.

- Say you have two coils the same diameter, wire diameter, and amount of coil revolutions, but one coil is twice the length. The shorter one is softer as the coils don't have to distort in extreme multiple directions to compress the same distance, like the longer coil.

Obviously a thicker wire diameter spring is stiffer when comparing two springs with everything identical but the wire diameter, but unless they are identical it is very hard to look at a spring and assume "yeah it's stiffer, the wire is thicker", as if it has more coils than the thinner spring, it could be softer.