10 to 1 is a very high ratio. To combine that with regeneration makes an incredibly tough armor that might be difficult to balance against various weapons without a round of 'inflation' that could unbalance other things. I have only given crystalline armor the 10 to 1 ratio in my techs, though shields go as high as 20 to 1 and so it's not so out of place. But, crystalline armor doesn't regenerate...
Combining crystalline and organic armor attributes is obscene. Either make it an artifact only tech or only give it to some "evil empire" that threatens to conquer the universe in some specially prepared scenario. I would frankly refuse to play against another human who had such tech.
What MM
should have done with organic armor is made the first levels only regenerate AFTER combat. This "basic" organic armor would function more or less like shields, and would still be a signifigant advantage in the early stages of the game. Only at higher levels should it actually regenerate in combat.
For a real interesting twist there ought to be an organic armor like they had in Babylon 5 that 'learns' about what damages it. Each time it was hit by a weapon type, it would 'learn' something and the next hit would do less damage! Now that's evil! Combined with regeneration it might be invincible to anything but "ignores armor" or "ignores shields and armor" weapons. Maybe it needs to be exclusive of regen. The accounting for this on the code level would be a nightmare, though. Each ship would have unique resistances that would take up a huge amount of space and combat code could get very bloated. Sigh...
I like the idea of 'living ships' but the game doesn't properly support it with it's current abilities. The "repair component" ablity will be applied to any and all ships present together. There ought to be a special ability "self repair" that only affects the ship it is mounted in. It would be fairly easy for MM to do that. Then you could have the "living ships" by making special hulls with that ability in the VehicleSize.txt file.
Now, if we can just get the "damper field" so we can have ships with superb armor and no shields to compete against the ships with shields like thay have in MOO.
[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 21 August 2001).]