[Suicide Junkie]

I've made excellent use of the EA on my LC fleet in this one game...
They're fighting off Xichung who happen to be using Lightning guns on their LCs.
With the damage falloff, plus the emissive effect, my ships are extremely durable at long range, and the EA absorbs an average of half the damage at medium to close range.

Don't ask the EA to be an invulnerability device. What it does is reduce the damage form each hit you take.

In order to make it work, what you need is:
1) Plenty of Standard armor to actually absorb the damage and prevent your EA from getting blown up too early. (All the other armors come in chunks that are too large, and thus won't get hit before the EA)
2) An enemy using moderately small weapons. If they're stocking up on missiles and WMGs, don't even bother. Less than 100 damage per shot for best results.

So, if the enemy uses 80 damage guns, your EA will reduce that to 50.
Given 400 hitpoints worth of armor, that means you withstand 8 hits instead of just 5... not too shabby.

[ December 16, 2003, 22:12: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]