[Puke]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
On one side:

The function of armor is different from the function of engines. While it does make sense to have larger armor for larger ships (and I have modded this myself) it doesn't make sense to require that the armor be larger. It is possible for an engine to be 'too small to be effective' relative to ship size but not really possible for armor to be 'too small to be effective' in the same way. Sure, lighter armor is less effective than heavier armor but there are corresponding advantages to lighter armor. And you are getting at least some protection from even the lightest armor.

it would not need to be required, ships could always use armor that does not provide full coverage, and is not damaged first.

running some numbers, it looks like this works passably well for ships of 100-1500 KT, using 1/500th of the hull size as the radius of the sphere, and producing armor requirements from .5%-7% of the total hull size. as vehicle hulls get huge, they start to require alot more armor. using the same formula, a 15000KT ship would require about 75% of its mass to be devoted to a single piece of armor.

of course, thats just a rough measurement, based on r=mass/500. if someone can provide me a better formula to use to find the radius of a sphere based on mass, id be happy to make adjustments.