[QuarianRex]

Pocus,

Remember that JLS's answer only applies to AI Campaign/Proportions mod (I assume) and not the unmodded game. So don't get confused when you hear about armor types that you have never encountered.

For your question, the "emissive" property of emissive armor is a special ability that gets added to a ship equiped with emissive armor. Regardless of how many EA components you have on a ship only the highest EA ability is used (much like with cloaking and such, there is no cumulative effect). The EA ability will remain effective as long as an EA equiped component remains undamaged (ie. as long as you have Emissive Armor left).

Each time the EA equipped ship is damaged in combat the EA ability value is subtracted from the incoming damage. This damage reduction occurs once per hit regardless of how many EA's you have or how powerful the attack.

For example, you have a ship equiped with 10 EA II's (having an EA ability of 20 and structure of 40 each). You are attacked by a destroyer with 3 DUC I's doing 20 damage each. Your ships EA ability nullifies the first 30 points of an attack so the destroyer does squat. Next you are attacked by a baseship equiped with 3 massive mount Ripper Beam IV's each doing 250 damage a pop (are you feeling the pain?). The first hit is reduced by 20 leaving 230 damage to wipe out 5 EA components and leave a 30 point damage bonus for the next hit (see the newbie FAQ or the Dubious guide for mor details of how partial damage is handled in SE4). The second hit does 250 + 30 pt bonus = 280. This is reduced by the 20 pt EA ability to 260 successfully wiping out your remaining 5 Emissive Armors and delivering 60 damage to other components (let us say that all of the damage has been used to destroy components and there is no leftover damage). The third hit of 250 now sinks directly into your ship since all of the components providing the EA ability have been demolished.

I hope this helps. Also, don't get confused when reading the FAQ or such. You may see mention of EA doing nothing to damage over its threshold. This was fixed in a recent patch and now functions as I have described above.

Edit: Spelling

[ April 27, 2003, 18:17: Message edited by: QuarianRex ]