Emissive armour - what is it used for?
 

Am playing the demo currently which does not have much of a description of the use of components.
The description reads that it operates similar to regular armour, except that the component will survive if the damage is less than the armour value. Most weapons I use would appear to be greater than the armour will take, so it will be destroyed. Given that it takes up more space than regular armour, it appears to be pointless.
Am I missing something or is the description incomplete?.
What are the strategies for using emissive armour?
Many thanks in advance....

Re: Emissive armour - what is it used for?
 

You are right. The way things are now, all armor except for the basic one are pointless.

This goes for stealth and scattering armor too. They are supposed to give you a bonus in defense, but since the effects are not cumulative with each other or with any other component that gives you same benefit (like ECM) they are completely useless. So far I use only standard armor.

Emissive could be more useful if the damage it can absorb would be greater. Like 50, 75 100 points. I am not sure if the effect is cumulative, but judging from other components it is not.

I would just lose scattering and stealth armor. Usseles and AI uses them if he researches them.

Re: Emissive armour - what is it used for?
 

Er, gotta beg to differ here. One shell of emmisive armor and half my fighters can't touch a ship. The Bombers can still take you, but all the little guys with light uranium cannons are gonna get slaughtered. Emissive armor isn't a necessity 90% of the time, but in the right circumstances it is pretty frickin nice.

Re: Emissive armour - what is it used for?
 

The volley of a fighter group counts as ONE! damage, i.e. forget about emissive armor, even a group of 2 fighters will not be stopped by it.
Another question: Are you sure that defence bonus from armor is not cumulative with ECM?

Re: Emissive armour - what is it used for?
 

What would be a lot more useful is if the armor had a divisor... say only 2, that would divide all damage by 2 until that armor was deystroyed... damage would always be applied vs. the armor with the highest divisor first. Even a divisor of 1.5 would be nice, and I don't think that would be too hard to code in, nor too unbalancing since as soon as the armor is gone, so to would be the the divisor.

Re: Emissive armour - what is it used for?
 

Just did a test in the simulator.

36 planes with two DUC III's, 30 damage combined per plane, quit attacking the emissive armored ship once they reached the emissive armor.

36 planes equipped with four DUC III's, 60 damage combined per plane, totally destroyed the emissive-armor equipped ship in two volleys.

In conclusion, at least in the simulator, the game is comparing the damage resistance of 30 with the damage inflicted per plane.

Grognard

Editted: Forget what I just said. The above results used auto-combat in the simulator. When I tried it using manual combat, the planes with 30 damage apiece destroyed the ship. So with differing results between auto- and manual control, nothing conclusive can be determined. My only conclusion is the lack of consistency brings the validity of any simulator results into question

[This message has been edited by Grognard (edited 07 January 2001).]

Re: Emissive armour - what is it used for?
 

Guys, when the group of fighters fire on a ship the damage is cumulative. However, AI is NOT aware of that, so when he is supposed to fire on a ship with emissive armor he doesn't fire because he 'thinks' that he can't do any damage while in reality he could. This is why, if you turn on auto-combat, the fighters don't fire (auto-combat is controlled by AI).

I hope this explains something.

I remember somebody made a post about this cumulative damage for fighters and missiles saying that is should be calculated one by one instead of the whole group at once, and I agree completely.

[This message has been edited by Daynarr (edited 07 January 2001).]

Re: Emissive armour - what is it used for?
 

"...when the group of fighters fire on a ship the damage is cumulative."

Yeah, but it shouldn't be.


C//

Re: Emissive armour - what is it used for?
 

Stealth armor is NOT useless.

Don't think of it as armor, but as a cheap, low-level cloaking device. In several games I've designed battlecruisers with 1 Stealth Armor and some extra supplies and these things can wreak havoc in the enemy's rear areas.

I agree, though, that Scattering Armor is crap.

Re: Emissive armour - what is it used for?
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Another question: Are you sure that defence bonus from armor is not cumulative with ECM?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Unfortunately, I am sure. I stumbled across this when, I was trying to add Inertial Stabilizer component. When I was testing this, it wouldn't add to ECM. Then I tried the armor components, to see how they work, and they also didn't stack. Most likely all identical abilities for components are not stackable, just like this one. I have also tried it with combat sensors with the same results.

This BADLY needs fixing. As it stands now armor is next to useless.

Re: Emissive armour - what is it used for?
 

&gt;The volley of a fighter group counts as
&gt;ONE! damage, i.e. forget about emissive
&gt;armor, even a group of 2 fighters will not
&gt;be stopped by it.

I'm not sure this is correct. Read on for why...

I recently played a game in which I created a new tech area for a beam weapon that has a size of 10kt, with damage per turn per kt of hull space used comparable to other weapons. The idea was to be able to create "balanced" small ship designs even in late game (you need a shield, ECM, combat sensors, 6 engines and a solar sail and the little guys don't have room for all that plus any weapons). Anyway, this resulted in a smaller amount of damage per individual weapon, but if the damage from a volley is treated as one shot it should not make any difference (10 points each from 4 weapons fired together = 40 points from one weapon fired by itself). I found that this was not the case, at least against crystalline armor (which adds a given number of damage points out of every volley back into shields).

I had an exploration squadron of 3 battlecruisers equipped with large mounts (15kt) of mt new toy. Ran into a ship equipped with crystalline armor. Blew his shields away, then found that every weapon hit added back into his shields the amount of damage my weapon did - first shot after his shields went down put them back up and every subsequent shot knocked them down, then put them back up by the same amount. That ship was basically invulnerable to my weapons!

It appears to me that every shot in a volley from a ship is resolved separately. They clearly are for "hit or miss". It appears that the special armors (at least crystalline) treat each weapon as a separate shot, and it also appears that special damage effects of special armors are cumulative if multiple armor systems of the same type are installed.

Maybe all the damage from a fighter group volley is treated cumulatively, but that does not appear to be the case for ships.

Re: Emissive armour - what is it used for?
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Noble713:
Stealth armor is NOT useless.
...
I agree, though, that Scattering Armor is crap. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

not at all. late in the game, everyone will have sensors that can easily detect ships with stealth armor, so it loses its value quickly. think of scatt armor as armor plus scanner jammer. I put a scanner jammer on every ship, and when you figure that every ship needs armor too, one piece of armor and one scanner jammer is only 10 units smaller than the scatt armor, AND the scatt gives you the defensive bonus.

its definitly worth carying one point of scatt if your enemies already have scanning devices that can detect level2 cloaks.

Re: Emissive armour - what is it used for?
 

double post, i suck.

[This message has been edited by Puke (edited 08 January 2001).]

Re: Emissive armour - what is it used for?
 

I made Scattering Armor useful by adding Emissive Armor ability to it. So, it's a Scanner Jammer, it boosts your defenses (or would if the game calculated properly) a bit, and it's just as good or better at deflecting a certain amount of damage from your ship. Why not? Isn't it "a highly reflective material"? http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif Also, the AI is not real bright about cloaked ships so the stealth armor an also be very useful, especially early in the game.

Re: Emissive armour - what is it used for?
 

Scattering armor is only useful when you play against human players. Or does anybody really think that the still-pityful AI accounts for your designs in any way whatsoever ?

Re: Emissive armour - what is it used for?
 

Hm.. maybe armor should be one of the non-weapon components that can be enhanced in future mods. I checked the component enhancement text and noted a "none" catagory for weapon type. You -might- be able to modify the standard armors so they can be enhanced like weapon mounts. Eg, large armor with twice the weight, but three times the structure.

Would make heavier warships better protected. However, emissive armor's abilities would have to await another patch to enhance it's abilities and make it useable again.

Just another idea.

Re: Emissive armour - what is it used for?
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by jowe01:
Scattering armor is only useful when you play against human players. Or does anybody really think that the still-pityful AI accounts for your designs in any way whatsoever ?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Actually, I believe the AI accounted for my designs. I stated in a separate message that in my latest game I had to resort to missile dancing with the computer just to slow it down. With in 10 turns and 5 battles it had started throwing ships with point defense at me. None of the computer ships had mounted it before then.



------------------
I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

Re: Emissive armour - what is it used for?
 

I also get the impression that the AI is reacting to me. I met a race that packed DU cannons. They met fiery death by tactical nuke. When I actually moved to invade them, I ran into ships with Cap Ship Missles lvl 3. It seemed that they had switched from using particle weapons to outpacing me in missle tech.

Could just be a natural progression in the AI's research tree, but I dunno...

Re: Emissive armour - what is it used for?
 

The AIs are all scripted there is no reaction to your designs. Its a nice illusion though, after the AI started using point defence earlier I at first though that also but even if you design ships with no missles the point defence still appears on their designs. And DU cannons are the first default design for all the races except maybe the Terrans because its a starting tech. Terrans are always missle crazy http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif.