[PvK]

leo1434 wrote:
"What are the pros and cons of using them instead of the normal small armor components. Has something to do with hit probability (I suppose that as the plating is the bigger component installed in a ship, it will probably take the majority of shots?) Are there any other purpose for it? ..."

There are several tradeoffs involved, which I really like about the armored platings. It's also interesting that the situation changes with different ship sizes. For the specialized platings like stealth and scattering types, it makes it economical to apply these to small ships, while larger ships will have to make major investments both in resources and in component size to cover themselves.

The main thing to consider about armored plating compared to armored structure, is that they have different purposes. Armored structure's main purpose is to add lots of structure to the whole ship, and to absorb damage that penetrates "hit first" armor - it makes the whole ship take more to destroy, and for the lower tech levels, is very cost-effective. Armored plating has some of the same effect, but its main purpose is different - it's purpose is to reduce damage before it gets to internal components, and to reduce the total damage actually sustained, by deflecting as much as possible, rather than absorbing it. This is a natural consequence of covering the entire outside of the ship (as opposed to general armoring of the interior, or uneven armoring, which is what the armored structure represents).

In game terms, the armored plating has a higher emissive effect than the structure, which subtracts from every hit on the ship until the component is destroyed. Because plating isn't "hit first," and often has less damage resistance than the armored structure (especially if there are several armored structure components), the armored plating often isn't destroyed until the ship has been heavily bLasted. You actually DON'T want the armored plating to take damage itself, because if it gets shot off, you lose its superior emissive effect, which causes all subsequent hits to do more damage (this represents a major breach in the external armor, through which more hits can bypass the shell protection). For this reason, you might want to have more than one armored plating component on some very heavily armored ships.

The strongest armored ship design will probably have a mix of armor types, because their effects are complementary. The power of the opponents' weapons also makes a big difference - armored shells are great against non-armor-piercing light-to-medium hits, especially when backed by a lot of armored structure. Armored shells are not so important against really powerful-per-shot weapons, or anything that "skips armor".

Fryon: The idea is not use the plating to replace structure - you usually just take one (or maybe two) levels of plating, and then get a bunch of structure to back it up. The more structure you get, the more you get out of your one unit of plating, because:

1) The structure makes your ship absorb many more hits, and the plating multiplies the number of hits your structure can take, by reducing the damage per hit.

and

2) The structure makes the plating much less likely to be hit and shot off, which you don't want to happen.

Plating has fairly high structure, but that's not what its for, and can actually be a disadvantage because it makes it more likely to get hit, losing the emissive effect. The fact that the structure varies with the ship size due to the scale mount also makes some sense, because it is more likely that a large ship will develop a major armor breach before being devastated, than on a small ship.

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