[jowe01]

Also, if damage to armor is random (or from left to right [is it ?] and the emissive armor is to the right), the value of emissive armor increases dramatically for heavily armored ships. The reason is that it reduces each hit by its "reflection" capacity. If hit damage exceeds that capacity, only the remainder is deducted from the "hit points" of the armor components. Now, if that damage is attributed randomly, there is a fair probability that the "normal" armor will be damaged, not the emissive one. The emissive armor will survive to again reduce damage from the next hit. This way, on ships with one single emissive armor and lots of normal armor, the expected (!) hit absorbing capacity of emissive armor may be well above its cost-equivalent in normal armor.