Proportions shell armor and ... minesweeping armor?
 

Yeah, Fryon is of course correct there - mounts can't add effect per component. Or, did you want the effectiveness to go down with ship size? I don't understand why you would want to add minesweeping to armor - what is the theory behind that?

Incidentally, upon later reflection I think Fryon was also right a long time ago, when he was criticizing the cost of the armored shells in Proportions. I think they cost too much for what they provide, and should probably also have somewhat increased structure.

PvK

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Re: Proportions shell armor and ... minesweeping armor?
 

well, if you could somehow make a mount that only affects minesweepers and have it reduce the size...

Re: Proportions shell armor and ... minesweeping armor?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">And you can. One of the patches added the ability to have mounts affect specific component families only.

Re: Proportions shell armor and ... minesweeping armor?
 

Yeah... in Proportions, it'd need to be a reverse of the Scale Mount series... However I'm still waiting to be told what the original conceptual connection between scale-mounted shell/plate armor and minesweeping was. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

PvK

Re: Proportions shell armor and ... minesweeping armor?
 

Well in Proportions, doesn't most armor block some amount of damage per shot? So imagine using an armored ship as sort of a "brute force" minesweeper - just detonate them harmlessly against the armor.

Of course, given that mines do damage in the hundreds and armor blocks around 1-5 per shot, not counting emissive armor, I don't really see how that would make much sense anyway... unless you consider mine explosions to do their damage in the form of a huge number of tiny shrapnel projectiles, which isn't all that unreasonable...

Re: Proportions shell armor and ... minesweeping armor?
 

I don't think EA ability works on mines. damage is calculated outside the combat.

as to the armour cost - I think shell armour could be made cheaper, but "internal" advanced armour should still be expensive at high levels.

Re: Proportions shell armor and ... minesweeping armor?
 

EA dosen't stack either, so even if it did work, you'd only take off 1-5 damage points (whatever the strongest surviving EA ability is)

Re: Proportions shell armor and ... minesweeping armor?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Oh, I agree the internal advanced armor costs are good. It's just the armored shells that are probably overpriced, and could stand to have a bit more structutre themselves.

I would hope that EA would apply to mine explosions.

And now that Ed mentions it, I can see how it could make sense to use armor to protect somewhat against minefields (not to sweep them) just with the EA. It would work well assuming EA would (not stack but) apply once to each mine explosion, and if mine damage were greatly reduced (I hear SJ did that in P&N and removed minesweepers, which seems like a neat change).

PvK

Re: Proportions shell armor and ... minesweeping armor?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Exactly, the premise is that the larger the displacement of the vessel the greater the (scale mount) in Armor Plate that could be Installed.

If it was possible to put the (Minesweeping Ability) on the scale mount, then as the ship displacement increases then so to the amount of mines required to do damage….

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">PVK, in regards to Mine Sweeping Abilities this is just the title for the actual se4 action and not meant literally in my presentation.

The intention is that, the amount of mines required and/or actually expended would be increased as the scale of Armor Plating is increased by the Ships Displacement.

I humbly ask, can this be done with Plate Armor, and is there any advise to actually make this happen with the CompEnhancement mounts ? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ September 07, 2003, 15:28: Message edited by: JLS ]

Re: Proportions shell armor and ... minesweeping armor?
 

Ok, I see. I would not try to model it indirectly by using the actual minesweeping ability. I'd just reduce mine damage as I mentioned below, to the point that the desired effect will occur naturally, also perhaps increasing the mines per sector limit and/or reducing the abilities of actual minesweepers. Try reducing mine warhead strength by a factor of ten or twenty for starters.

So as in P&N, ships will tend to get hit by mines, but fleets won't be directly annihilated by them. They may, however, tend to take a bunch of small damage hits, sometimes knocking out some important systems. Armor of all types will be a useful countermeasure, and large ships may have a natural advantage (except that if they do suffer a bridge hit or something, a more powerful unit is affected). Also, since partial damage is rounded down and ignored, you'll actually see some variety in whether any components are actually destroyed; random mine results have been requested for years, and this would actually tend to deliver it, I think. Testing required of course - I'll be curious to learn if EA works as expected against mines or not.

PvK

Re: Proportions shell armor and ... minesweeping armor?
 

Thanks Pete, good advise http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Proportions shell armor and ... minesweeping armor?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">SJ, any advise. So that I may start off with my best foot forward?

[ September 07, 2003, 15:50: Message edited by: JLS ]

Re: Proportions shell armor and ... minesweeping armor?
 

The idea I like best is to eliminate sweepers entirely.

Then you can reduce warhead damage, and play with the mines-per-sector limit.

Say, 10 mines required to kill a ship, plus mounts to double damage at 3x the cost, or 5x damage and 10x cost, say.

With a limit of 100 mines per sector, you'll force the defenders to spread out their fields across the whole system, and the attackers will normally lose at most 10 ships. (Home-system defenses will likely involve the more powerful mounted warheads, and do much more damage)

Scouts and small Groups of ships will be slaughtered, but large fleets will merely be slowed down in their advance while they wait for repairs after every movement. If you're lucky, you may even take out the repair ship and force them to turn back.
You could also counter-attack while thier defenses are weakened.

The main point is to have no sweepers, and weaker (probably cheaper too) mines spread out across the system. That way all the mines don't go up at once, and all the ships don't have to die.

[ September 07, 2003, 19:35: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: Proportions shell armor and ... minesweeping armor?
 

Now this system make sense http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

SJ, you still keep the sector limit to 100 or is it reduced to 10?

[ September 07, 2003, 23:53: Message edited by: Grand Lord Vito ]

Re: Proportions shell armor and ... minesweeping armor?
 

You need the limit to be at least 50.
The mines will be fairly small and should be able to take chunks out of most of the ships in a fleet. When each mine hits a random ship, you should end up with a gaussian distribution, so most ships will have some damage, a few will be untouched, and a few will be severely hit or destroyed.

1) There should be more mines than ships unless the defender was surprised, or isn't relying much on mines.
2) The damage of a single mine should be small enough that a typical warship can shrug it off. 10 or 20 kt worth of armor with stock settings for everything else, perhaps. Adjust up or down depending on overall weapons damage / defenses strength in specific mod.

Re: Proportions shell armor and ... minesweeping armor?
 

SJ, what would you recomend the warhead strenght be?

Re: Proportions shell armor and ... minesweeping armor?
 

I believe I mentioned 10-20kt worth of armor as a good starting point.
Halve that if you get two warheads per mine.

[ September 11, 2003, 12:05: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]