Organic Armor: Is it broken ?

[jowe01]

It already striked me in a regular tactical combat, but it was really confirmed in the simulator: organic armor does not seem to regenerate !

Or am I getting something wrong ? In the simulator I shot once at a ship without shields and with a piece of organic armor III. The shot caused the ship to have 20 damage. The next turn I did nothing. Now, I understand the ship should have regenerated the 20 damage points in one turn (organic armor III = regenerate 30/turn), but it did not ! The damage remained not only this turn but until the end of the simulated combat. Is that a bug and if yes, is everybody experiencing this ?

[Eisenhans]

I had the same impression. No regeneration at all!

[Baron Munchausen]

Apparently the "Armor Regeneration" ability only works when at least one component of armor has been DESTROYED. So, if you only have 1 component of organic armor on your ship, all you've got is some pretty good armor that will have no damage AFTER combat if it isn't destroyed -- just like a normal component. If you have more than one component, then the regeneration kicks in. Even more interesting, it is apparently cumulative rather than individual. In other words, each piece of armor does not regenerate by 20 points (or whatever) per combat turn. ALL of your armor regenerates at the rate of all those components added together. So if you have 3 components on your ship, your armor will regenerate 60 points of damage per round of combat. This means that regenerating armor is much more powerful in larger ships because it scales up. This is what people have reported, anyway. I've not tried it in some time. It might have gotten goofed up again in all the code changes of recent patches. Now if only emissive armor would act the same way!

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 16 January 2001).]

[igoblin]

I did some testing in the simulator and it looks like the current description of organic armor is outdated. I only tested organic armor III though. I found that it will not regenerate at all unless it is destroyed. But once destroyed it will be completely restored to 150kT on the next turn if you have another non destroyed organic armor component. I am assuming I and II work the same way. This is fine. But, the manual should be updated if this is how the organic is intended to work.

In the simulator the regeneration was extremely effective against slowly reloading weapons like the wave motion gun. It would be impossible for a ship with enough organic armor to withstand one hit from a WMG(wave motion gun) ship to lose in one on one combat. Of course against multiple ships they will combine fire and destroy all the armor before it has a chance to regenerate.