[Fyron]

When a weapon hits a ship, it will first face the shield layer. If there are no shields, or no shield points, the damage goes to the components of the ship. If there are any components with Armor ability, they will be hit first. But, if the weapon was one with armor-skipping damage, such as Shard Cannons, then the damage will completely bypass the Armor layer and damage "internals," where internals are any components that do not have the Armor ability. Only the Armor ability makes a component act like "armor." If a ship has "leaky armor" components, they are not actually "armor" because they do not have the Armor ability. They are treated exactly like other internals. The reason that we use the term "leaky armor" is because having some beefed up components (lots of hit points) without the Armor ability makes them act similar to armor, except that some shots will not hit them but hit other internals instead. So instead of complete absorption by the Armor, you have partial absorption by the leaky armor. Armor-skipping damage has one role, to bypass the Armor layer, or in other words, those components with the Armor ability. However, testing has shown a few other side effects. The abilities of Shields From Damage and Emissive Armor do not get triggered by weapon shots with the armor-skipping damage type. Both of these abilities will function when any component gets hit, even if that component does not have that ability. This is why stock Armor and Emissive Armor work. Any shot from a regular weapon that hits any armor component will be emissed by so many damage points. The same occurs with Crystalline Armor, which has the shields from damage ability. If you assign either of these abilities to an internal component, then that ability will be triggered when any component on the ship is damaged, whether it is internal or armor is irrelevant. But, their effects do not get triggered from weapon damage of the armor-skipping type. So, if you mod in an internal component that has the Shields From Damage ability (such as leaky shields as in some mods), no shields will be added from the damage occured by an armor-skipping weapon (such as Shard Cannons).