The armor tech tree will begin with light/medium/heavy inert armors fully researched.
The ancient races will also have some passive armor tech by default.
Depending on how we want to balance the whole thing, they may start with most or all the passive techs finished.
There will be a three or more-dimensional grid tech for active armor, with dimensions of:
- Hitpoints/Kt
- Cost/Hitpoint
- Number of components allowed per ship.
- (Maybe) Speed of Regeneration (if it dosen't conflict with in-combat repairs)
Active armors would be self-healing. If we are not using the in-combat-repairs thing, then this can be standard OA type stuff.
At the top of the tree, an armor component with the armor ability could provide guaranteed protection, instead of the iffy armor.
The self-healing will keep the armor absorbtion% from falling as fast as normal armor, and the ability armor will get 100% all the time.
Basically, organic engineering is implied by the ancient race racial trait.
The techs you'd actually research would be "Active Armor Manufacturing", "Active Armor Physics", "Active Armor Engineering", etc.
The Last one is the most similar to Organic engineering, but it could easily be fluid metals or something.
[ June 20, 2002, 02:55: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]