full coverage armor
 

the porportions mod (and some others) uses a concept where regular armor does not get damaged first, but mearly soaks up damage as if it were a regular component. it also has a kind of armor that IS damaged first, but provides less protection (presumeably since it is more spread out)

CAR WARS is a steve jackson game, loosely themed around Mad Max. it has a concept where armor is heavier on larger vehicles, because you need more to cover a larger car or van.

some genius recently (okay, a month or so ago) came up with the idea to use engine mounts to allow for a better QNP movement system, by scaling engine size to match ship size.

What are peoples thoughts about using an Armor Mount to scale ship-covering armor to mass more on larger ships? I think that I brought this up in the thread about the engines, but as im putting together my GritTech mod, and am thinking of including this, I thought it deserved its own discussion.

edit: i was first inclined towards basing the armor mass around cylindrical surface area, but to be as fair as possible, perhaps it should be based on spherical surface area. that way, it could be assumed that even if the ship is not perfectly spherical, some facings might not need to be as heavily armored if the ship could be manuvered to present its strongest side in battle. even though ships might not be designed to provide perfect surface area efficiency, they could be constructed in such a way that their armor requirements were the same as if they were.

[ September 25, 2002, 19:02: Message edited by: Puke ]

Re: full coverage armor
 

What kind of percent of armor increase/Decrease are you going with. Sound like a interseting idea. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: full coverage armor
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">On one side:

The function of armor is different from the function of engines. While it does make sense to have larger armor for larger ships (and I have modded this myself) it doesn't make sense to require that the armor be larger. It is possible for an engine to be 'too small to be effective' relative to ship size but not really possible for armor to be 'too small to be effective' in the same way. Sure, lighter armor is less effective than heavier armor but there are corresponding advantages to lighter armor. And you are getting at least some protection from even the lightest armor.

On the other side:

Ships are physical structures and building them requires that you follow basic rules of engineering dictated by your materials. Since it makes sense for the actual structure of the ship to be proportionaly larger and heavier (diminishing returns) as the ship gets larger, so it makes sense for the armor to be larger and heavier. Many mods include increasingly steeper basic hull costs as ships get larger. So it does make some sort of sense in these terms to force armor to be larger and more expensive for larger ships.

Conclusion:

Roll your own and enjoy. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: full coverage armor
 

Makes perfect sense to me. 10Kt or all over armor on a 150Kt escort would be thicker than the same 10Kt of all over armor on a 800Kt battleship. To get the same protection you would need the same thickness. And to get the same thickness over a larger surface area you would need more mass (or volume) in armor. Since we can't really mod what what would be ideal, that is armor that only protects certain facings, then this is a good compromise.

And by the way, Car Wars rocks! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif I loved that game. Unfotunatly like everything else in my role play phase I had very few friends that got into them as much as me. One thing I liked about Car wars though was it had a fairly extensive set of rules for solo play with random encounters and other stuff. Very cool.

Geoschmo

Re: full coverage armor
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">it would not need to be required, ships could always use armor that does not provide full coverage, and is not damaged first.

running some numbers, it looks like this works passably well for ships of 100-1500 KT, using 1/500th of the hull size as the radius of the sphere, and producing armor requirements from .5%-7% of the total hull size. as vehicle hulls get huge, they start to require alot more armor. using the same formula, a 15000KT ship would require about 75% of its mass to be devoted to a single piece of armor.

of course, thats just a rough measurement, based on r=mass/500. if someone can provide me a better formula to use to find the radius of a sphere based on mass, id be happy to make adjustments.

Re: full coverage armor
 

Yep, great idea, I think. I did this a couple of weeks ago for Proportions 2.5, which I've been too busy to release. I have a whole range of new "scale mounts" for every ship size that I have vehicle sizes for from 50kT to 5000kT, and then there are several types of component that can use this. I have a new Category of armor (armored shell) in addition to the existing Proportions armor types, which uses this, as well as applying it to cloaking devices, stealth and scattering armor, scanner jammers, and emergency propulsion.

From the readme draft:

* Added Scale mounts. These make the size, cost and supply use of certain
components directly proportional to the size of the thing they are
built on. Applies to components which naturally require effort and size
based on design size: Stealth Armor, Scattering Armor, Emissive Armor,
Scanner Jammer, Emergency Propulsion, Cloaking Devices.
Note: Upgraded games from earlier Proportions Versions will find existing
components of these types unchanged, but unable to be repaired until
retrofit with scale-mounted Versions.

I really love the effect on some of these, because it gives appropriate new abilities to smaller ships. A small cloaked ship is now not hugely expensive, but a cloaked baseship is, etc.

PvK

Re: full coverage armor
 

okay, using better math this time.

where density = 1, mass = volume. v=4/3*pi*r^3, therefore r=(mass/((4/3)*pi))^(1/3)
and area=4*pi*r^2

so still using 1/500 mass, a 200KT hull takes a 1.31% size armor component, and a 15000KT hull takes a 0.311% size armor component.

much better, though 1/500 mass might be a bit small.

Re: full coverage armor
 

You are confusing me with the 1/500 thing. The way I see it what you really need to be concerned about is surface area. Since we don't really know what the thickness of the armor is we can use pretty much any number there. But the thickness should stay the same no matter how big the ships gets. So what we nee is a ratio of surface area from one size to another.

You can get surface area from radius and you can get radius from volume using the formulas you already gave. Calculating the surface area of a 150KT escort and a 1500Kt baseship tells you the surface area of a baseship is 4.64 time larger than the surface area of an escort. So to get the same protection that a 10Kt piece of armor gives to a 150Kt escort you would need roughly a 50Kt piece of armor for a 1500kt baseship.

It's not a linear relationship but there is probably a way to make one formula and calculate the size of the armor based on hull size.

Is that what you are trying to do? I am a little confused. My math is a little rusty.

Geoschmo

Re: full coverage armor
 

using the actual ship tonnage for mass in the formulas below generates rediculously high numbers, so i am using mass/500 instead, which is essentially the same as increasing density.

edit: i actually ended up with mass/20, using 500KT armor components.

[ September 25, 2002, 23:44: Message edited by: Puke ]

Re: full coverage armor
 

To keep calculations easier I'd suggest using Cubes for calculating surface area.
So it would be
Length X Height X Width X 6
Then decide The Weight of the Armor per cubic unit
This way you could apply Heavy armor to an Escort if you wanted to or Light armor to a Battle Crusier
My understanding of Proportions is this would allow a trade off in Number of Engines / Speed / Amount of Armor
Or: have I over simplyfied?
2nd Edit: What I meant to say the first time.
Final Edit:
As ships got longer and higher wider the calcs would be easy, (I think).
I guess this means making an "Armor Weight class" for each hull size

[ September 25, 2002, 23:57: Message edited by: Gryphin ]