Built-in armour for hulls

[CW]

Anybody managed to mod hulls with built-in armour?

[Suicide Junkie]

All hitpoints come from components, not abilities.
Hulls can't have built in hitpoints.

Instead, you can give hulls built-in shield generation.
You can also make a one-per-vehicle armor component that uses up zero space.

[CW]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
All hitpoints come from components, not abilities.
Hulls can't have built in hitpoints.

Instead, you can give hulls built-in shield generation.
You can also make a one-per-vehicle armor component that uses up zero space.

Hi SJ,

I was trying to make a special ship for each racial trait, but looks like I can't use armour after all. As to the shields, I don't think I want to use it too, since a non-phrased built-in shields can't mix with phrased ones and will cause problems later in the game with PPBs. On the other hand a built-in phrased shield is probably too much of an advantage in the early game.

[Nodachi]

No, you can't have built-in armor. Armor is just another type of component that really acts as ablative hit points becuase it gets hit first. There really is no hull to target. When you create a design and choose a hull size you're not actually selecting an empty hull, you're deciding how much space you're going to use. The system assumes that you'll use all of that space. That's why the different sizes have different defensive modifiers. Put only required components on an escort and a destoyer, and the same amount of engines, and the same amount of damage will destroy both ships.

Nodachi

[Suicide Junkie]

Adding a hundred or so phased shields to the hull is not that big a deal. If the player adds normal shield generators, the PPBs will work normally, and skip all the shields.
If the player dosen't add normal shields, the ship will be protected from the first 1 or 2 PPB shots, but that dosen't make much difference in the outcome of the battle.

[Baron Munchausen]

Inherent hull abilities would be nice, but might have unexpected effects. I think giving a ship built-in cloaking ability would make it permanently invisible, for example, like mines are. Would armor regeneration work as a hull ability? Or does it require the component family in order to know what to work on? hmm....