Armor & Shields On Units...
 

Hello,

I think this question has been answered before but I can't find anything in thr FAQ about. Maybe I'm just not seeing the answer.

Do shields and armor behave on units as they do on ships? Will armor or shield skipping weapons skip armor and shields on units?

Another player has told me that he believes that armor and shields are just "normal hit points" on units and that no skipping can occur.

Is this true? If so isn't this a pretty serious bug?

Thanks,

Unco

Re: Armor & Shields On Units...
 

I believe it is different for different units. Weapon platforms and satelites most probably do benefit from armour or phased shields, however fighters are simplified. Placing armour and shields on fighters grants no special benefits, and as you said they are just extra hit points.

Re: Armor & Shields On Units...
 

Units do not take partial damage, so armor most definitely does act as simple hitpoints.

Shield depleters do work well against in-space units, though I haven't looked closely at shield skipping weapons lately.

For planet-based units shields act as simple hitpoints

Re: Armor & Shields On Units...
 

No, not really. It is an artifact of units not being able to have damaged components. Armor skipping does technically skip the armor, but since the unit is fully functional until it takes 100% damage, it is meaningless... Shield skipping is a different issue, but I think it works fine for use against space units, as SJ said. Troop combat is absurdly simplified. No special damage or armor abilities function in troop combat.

Certainly, this isn't a very logical way to handle units, and they should be able to lose components before being completely annihiliated, but it isn't really a bug (other than shield skipping (aka phased polaron beams) still having to get past normal shields against non-troops)... With the amount of units you can have, Malfador probably figured that the memory requirements would be too high, especially when you start having 1000s of fighters and such...

Re: Armor & Shields On Units...
 

One things for sure, phased polaron beams completely ignore the hitpoints generated by normal shields on a satelite stack. I tested it out a while back, but can't find the results I posted.

I didn't really test all other damage types, but I have seen some bizzare things: example, shield depleters won't file during strategic combat, but can be fired during tactical. A recent patch made them do noting against a unit stack, but before, they would blow up a unit stack. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

Re: Armor & Shields On Units...
 

Hmm. So I still am confused and will ask more specific questions. Thank you in advance for your patience and wisdom. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

FIGHTERS
1. Are Small Shields on Fighters skipped by Phased Polaron Beams?
2. Are Armor and/or Small Shields on Fighters skipped by Null-Space Weapons?

WEAPONS PLATFORMS
1. Are Shields on Weapons Platforms skipped by Phased Polaron Beams?
2. Are Armor and/or Shields on Weapons Platforms skipped by Null-Space Weapons?
3. If Weapons Platforms have 100% functionality when damaged and if a Weapons Platform has Armor and/or Shields can it ever be fully destroyed by Null-Space Weapons or Phased Polaron Beams?

SATELLITES
1. Arkcon, did Phased Polaron Beams skip and then destroy a stack of Satellites with Shields?
2. Do Shield Regenerators work on Satellites?

Re: Armor & Shields On Units...
 

AFAIK:

Fighters
1. Yes, they damage all the "physical" hitpoints of the fighter until it is destroyed.
2. Null-space will skip shields, but since armour is just physical hitpoints, and units retain all functionality until 100% damage is reached, armour is effectively not skipped.

eg. Fighter has cockpit, engines, weapons adding up to 9 hit points, armour adds 4, shields add 4 plus 20 shield points. PPB hits will take out the 9+4+4=17 hit points, and not touch the shields. Once the 17 is gone, the fighter is destroyed. Null-space will take out the 9+4=13 from the regular components, then the 4 from the armour, making it 17 hitpoints again to destroy. So there isn't really a difference between the two weapons when it comes to fighters.

Weapon Platforms
1. No, shield points act as regular hit points (someone please correct if I'm wrong, haven't played in a while http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif )
2. No, see above. All hit points are pooled together.
3. Yes, once all the hit points are depleted, the platform is destroyed and the next unit in the queue is targeted.

Satellites
1. Arkcon?
2. IIRC, they do. Again, I haven't played in a while, so don't hold me to that.

Basically, units are just extremely simplified in the game, with the space-based ones having slightly more detail. On planets, shields are just regular hit points, while in space, they act like shields. Damage is dealt in a queue, so basically everyone lines up single file, and you stand in front and shoot until either you're dead, they're dead, or the combat turn limit has elapsed.

Re: Armor & Shields On Units...
 

Using the combat simulator PPB and shard cannon against fighters, it seems that neither shields nor armor are skipped. Both weapons have to make the full damage including armor and shield points before the fighter is destroyed. However shield depleters seem to function on fighters.

Re: Armor & Shields On Units...
 

From my Expirience in game:

Shield Depleters Work on Fighters, Drones and Satellites
Shield Depleters Don't Seem to work on Weapons Platforms and Troops.

Though i rarely use Shield Depleters on troops, Usually i pile them high with Ground Cannons or DUC. Less Protected yes, but the return volley the enemy finds impressive, for the brief few moments it survives. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Armor & Shields On Units...
 

Some correction on the "queue thing" AFAIR. Damage is always check against the unit with the least hitpoints first. Either this unit is destroyed (in this case the procedure starts anew with the remaining damage) or no unit is destroyed and the damage stored for the next hit. I.e. there is no use to build a shield WP to protect other unshielded units. It won't protect WPs with lesser hitpoints, it will just be the WP destroyed Last.

Re: Armor & Shields On Units...
 

Wasn't this changed to be more random in a recent patch?

Note that armor skipping weapons fired at ships will damage armor components normally once all internal components are destroyed. You can completely destroy a ship/unit with Shard Cannons and Null Space Projectors. This differs from "Only X" type damage, such as from Shield Disruptors. If there are no valid components to damage (ie: no shield generating components), such a weapon does no damage. Armor skipping damage types ignore this rule.

Re: Armor & Shields On Units...
 

Shield depleters do work on troops, though not as shield-only damage (because troops can't have shield points). Instead, they deal regular damage -- which makes shield depleters the best weapon to equip your troops with, since they do the best damage. (though it could be argued that this is a bug, so using shield depleters on troops would be an exploit...)

Re: Armor & Shields On Units...
 

I think so. Not sure which patch but I think it was the one that made WP's get destroyed before other units during planet assault. I did some testing a while back (can't find my post) but shield/armor WP's can get damaged (or destroyed) before other WP's. It's not always predictable, but I wouldn't call it "random" either. I *think* that the most efficient way to do this from my testing was to make small shield/armor WP's instead of large WP's. The reason was that the "stored" damage from one turn plus the actual damage might not be able to destroy a large shield/armor WP so the game sometimes would destroy a WP with less hitpoints instead. If you build large shield/armor WP's, this effectively does what Mephisto said in making the shield/armor WP get destroyed Last because no single volley will destroy it so damage sometimes gets shifted to destroy a WP with less hitpoints. This is not what you want. You *do* want it to be destroyed before other WP's or else the accumulated damage is shifted to weapon WP's. Again, from my testing small WP's work better for this.

That being said, it is a little cumbersome to manage and you can achieve almost the same thing by adding some shield/armor to each weapon WP. The effect is the same: it takes more damage to kill one of them. This way the average damage required to kill a WP goes up, you still maintain full function on a WP until it is destroyed, and you are not subject to any randomness which might accidentally kill your weapon WP's before shield/armor WP's.

Clear as mud?

Slick.

Re: Armor & Shields On Units...
 

I;m going nuts trying to find my old post describing my experiment -- Oh, why'd I make so many Posts?
[EDIT] {found it} click

Re: Armor & Shields On Units...
 

I was distressed by Posts which assert that non-space units ignore skipping damage type weapons (I'll explain why, later) and decided to test it myself. As I see now this test was useless, but I'll post it anyway.

So, indeed armor skipping, shield skipping, armor and shield skipping and "all shields skipping" weapons only inflict normal damage, and shield points act as normal hp. Shield depleters don't work at all. Damn, now I have to change significant part of my offensive strategy in one of the pbw games http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

But the Last test was the most interesting one. Description:
Side 1: 4 BA armed with PPBs (3000 dmg at point blank).
Side 2: sphereworld defended with 60 WP of 3 types:
1) 20 Med WP ("Type1") with Phased Shield Generators V (3000 phased shield points + 330 hp from comps = 3330 hp total);
2) 20 Sm WP ("Type2") with Shield Generators V (1200 shield points + 170 hp from comps = 1370 hp total);
3) 20 Lg WP ("Type3") without shields, but with weapons (910 hp total).

Battle:
--------
Turn 0. In cargo: 20 Type1, 20 Type2, 20 Type3. Destroyed WP: 0.
Turn 1. In cargo: 20 Type1, 20 Type2, 8 Type3. Destroyed WP: 12 Type3 (least hp).
Turn 2. In cargo: 20 Type1, 16 Type2. Destroyed WP: 8 Type3(destroyed first), 4 Type2 (with medium hp, destroyed later).
Turn 3. In cargo: 20 Type1, 8 Type2. Destroyed WP: 8 Type2.
Turn 4. In cargo: 20 Type1. Destroyed WP: 8 Type2.
Turn 5. In cargo: 19 Type1. Destroyed WP: 1 Type1 (most hp).
etc, untill all WP were destroyed.

I did another test with 2 BA, but with the same result: choice of unit on planet to destroy is not random at all and the rule "least hp - destroyed first" still works with no exceptions. Double damn, now have to change WP defenses for a few dozens of planets in another pbw game http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: Armor & Shields On Units...
 

Don't shield depleters work against fighters (even if only 1 fighter at a time)?

Re: Armor & Shields On Units...
 

Aiken, I respectfully disagree with the theory that least hitpoint WP's are always destroyed first with no exceptions. Your test method actually (unintentionally) skews your results to imply that this is the case when it is not. Here's my post from a while ago where I tested the order of Weapon Platform damage; please feel free to validate my results:


quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I started a new high tech game with 2 human controlled empires, turn based. On homeworld A I built Weapon Platforms. On homeworld B I built 2 dreads with heavy mounted APB's. I conducted tactical combat at homeworld A using 1 weapon at a time, checking for surviving WP's after each shot.

Series 1
On Homeworld A I built 6 WP's as follows:
1 small WP with only WP computer core
1 medium WP with only WP computer core
1 large WP with only WP computer core
1 small WP with WP computer core and filled with APB's
1 medium WP with WP computer core and filled with APB's
1 large WP with WP computer core and filled with APB's

Result: the first shot would always kill the 3 empty WP's then the remaining would be successively killed in order from small to large. 20 tries, exact same result in all cases.

This result is what might lead one to believe that WP's are destroyed from weakest to strongest since there usually is a significant difference in WP hitpoints in real games. And at first, I thought I proved it worked this way.

But then I started wondering if my test method was valid. After consideration I realized that randomly applied damage would still show the same results. This is because a small amount of damage would destroy a weak WP while it would "accumulate against" the strong WP without destroying it. So this test series didn't really prove anything.

Series 2
On Homeworld A I built 10 WP's as follows:
1 small WP with WP computer core
1 small WP with WP computer core and 1 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 2 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 3 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 4 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 5 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 6 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 7 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 8 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 9 PDC 5

The idea here is that there is only 20 kt difference between successive WP's.

Result: 20 runs. The WP's were NOT destroyed in order from weakest to strongest. Weaker ones TENDED to be destroyed before stronger ones. But there were several cases where the stronger WP's were destroyed before weaker ones. This validates the "random damage" position. If you randomly apply damage, you would expect this result.

Conclusion: WP's are not destroyed randomly but are damaged randomly; WP's with less hit points tend to be destroyed first because it takes less random hits to destroy them. [edit] This makes the idea of "shield platforms" interesting. Shield WP's will help absorb random hits to keep your weapon WP's alive longer, but only so far as they add more targets for the random damage - NOT that they get hit before or after other WP's.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Slick.

Re: Armor & Shields On Units...
 

Ok, thanks guys for this very useful discussion.

In defending a planet then I would be best to build large numbers of small armour and shield WPs with a moderate number of large weapon WPs with some of their own shielding? This would allow for the random damage to hit the larger number of small shield platforms more often than the weapon ones and give the weapon ones a little more survivablity? Or does one just build large mixed ones?

Re: Armor & Shields On Units...
 

As always my peremptory statements put me in a spot http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Thank you Slick, for pointing out the defect in my logic (I missed that 3000 dmg is actually 10x300 dmg). I guess there's another method to check this: to mod weapon causing huge amount of damage per hit (several thousands) and test it on a big variety of WPs with very different HPs (max hitpoints of WP should not exceed weapon damage, so any WP could be destroyed in 1 shot). Probably it will be possible to find some correlation. It will be my homework for this evening http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Armor & Shields On Units...
 

Here's my advice on Weapon Platforms: Build them only when you can't build a ship to do the same job. Ships and fleets have many more advantages. WP's are good for using up excess income if you have all your Spaceyards working already; but this means you really should be building more spaceyards. If you are using WP's, this means you are fighting the war in your systems - this is bad - you should try to fight the war in the other guy's systems. They may make you feel like you have a security blanket, but a decent fleet can normally easily glass or capture even a well defended planet.

They can be used as an emergency means during early contact, or to establish an outpost where the enemy doesn't have a fleet around. But SE4 is rightfully biased in favor of ships. If planets could overcome fleets, games would end in gridlock. Planets have disadvantages in defense (-200%!!) and in cargo capacity. They have advantages in range and damage multipliers for WP mounts. These can be used temporarily as a stop-gap measure (as can other units like mines, fighters and drones (which are not very good)), but if you invest in WP's at the expense of spaceyards and ships, you are asking to have the war fought in your systems while the enemy flourishes and continues to expand.

I recommend reading section 17 of the Newbie FAQ, written almost 100% by Stone Mill (former King of the Hill) and respected PBW player. Specifically 17.3.7 "Economic Harmony" really opened my eyes after I started practicing these techniques. Previous to this, I had been building too few spaceyards on planets, using too many WP's and not developing my empires as efficiently as I could have.

edit: As far as what kind of WP's to build, I recommend building the largest you can (to take advantage of the range and damage bonuses from the better mounts and that they have more hitpoints before being destroyed) and designing them to have some shielding or armor so you can minimize the micromanagement of them.

Slick.

Re: Armor & Shields On Units...
 

Thanks everyone! I now know that the Fighters and Weapons Platforms that I've been building to fight a Religous, Null-Space Weapon using enemy in a Devnull Mod game I am playing in are the best they can be. Whew! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I humbly suggest the following change in SEV or the next SEIV Gold Devnull Mod:

Fighters:
No Small Armor components, but equivalent size and damage resistance "Structural Integrity" components. Their description would say that they increase damage resistance of the Fighter and are not skipped by any weapons. These components would be gained through research at the same time as Small Armor components were.

Weapons Platforms:
Armor and Shield components cannot be used on Weapons Platforms, but equivalent "Surface Protection" and "Planetary Energy Barrier" components would be available. Their description would say that they increase damage resistance (and regenerate in the case of Energy Barriers) of the Weapons Platform and are not skipped by any weapons. These components would be gained through research at the same time as Armor and Shield components were.

This would maintain the combat balance of the game, but make it clear to players exactly how these components behave.

And a bug would be fixed! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Thanks again everyone!

Re: Armor & Shields On Units...
 

Good findings, Slick!

Re: Armor & Shields On Units...
 

Unit and planetary shields can't regenerate during combat, and armor "regenerates" after combat since there is no partial damage.

Re: Armor & Shields On Units...
 

Some more test results from the combat simulator using shield depleters and null space weapons for attack:

Weapon platforms: Shield depleters: no effect
Null space weapon: only normal damage, no shield skipping.

Satellites: Shield depleter and null space weapon work normal as against ships.

Fighters: shield depleters are effective.
null space weapons: only normal damage, no shield skipping.

Drones: shield depleters and null space weapon work normal as against ships.

Time distortion bomb: only normal damage (no 4x damage to shields additionally) against all units.