Emissive armour - what is it used for?

God Emperor · #1 January 7th, 2001, 06:25 AM

Am playing the demo currently which does not have much of a description of the use of components.
The description reads that it operates similar to regular armour, except that the component will survive if the damage is less than the armour value. Most weapons I use would appear to be greater than the armour will take, so it will be destroyed. Given that it takes up more space than regular armour, it appears to be pointless.
Am I missing something or is the description incomplete?.
What are the strategies for using emissive armour?
Many thanks in advance....

Daynarr · #2 January 7th, 2001, 06:37 AM

You are right. The way things are now, all armor except for the basic one are pointless.

This goes for stealth and scattering armor too. They are supposed to give you a bonus in defense, but since the effects are not cumulative with each other or with any other component that gives you same benefit (like ECM) they are completely useless. So far I use only standard armor.

Emissive could be more useful if the damage it can absorb would be greater. Like 50, 75 100 points. I am not sure if the effect is cumulative, but judging from other components it is not.

I would just lose scattering and stealth armor. Usseles and AI uses them if he researches them.

Marik Wahoooka · #3 January 7th, 2001, 07:58 AM

Er, gotta beg to differ here. One shell of emmisive armor and half my fighters can't touch a ship. The Bombers can still take you, but all the little guys with light uranium cannons are gonna get slaughtered. Emissive armor isn't a necessity 90% of the time, but in the right circumstances it is pretty frickin nice.

Mephisto · #4 January 7th, 2001, 11:21 AM

The volley of a fighter group counts as ONE! damage, i.e. forget about emissive armor, even a group of 2 fighters will not be stopped by it.
Another question: Are you sure that defence bonus from armor is not cumulative with ECM?

Trachmyr · #5 January 7th, 2001, 11:31 AM

What would be a lot more useful is if the armor had a divisor... say only 2, that would divide all damage by 2 until that armor was deystroyed... damage would always be applied vs. the armor with the highest divisor first. Even a divisor of 1.5 would be nice, and I don't think that would be too hard to code in, nor too unbalancing since as soon as the armor is gone, so to would be the the divisor.

Grognard · #6 January 7th, 2001, 06:19 PM

Just did a test in the simulator.

36 planes with two DUC III's, 30 damage combined per plane, quit attacking the emissive armored ship once they reached the emissive armor.

36 planes equipped with four DUC III's, 60 damage combined per plane, totally destroyed the emissive-armor equipped ship in two volleys.

In conclusion, at least in the simulator, the game is comparing the damage resistance of 30 with the damage inflicted per plane.

Grognard

Editted: Forget what I just said. The above results used auto-combat in the simulator. When I tried it using manual combat, the planes with 30 damage apiece destroyed the ship. So with differing results between auto- and manual control, nothing conclusive can be determined. My only conclusion is the lack of consistency brings the validity of any simulator results into question

[This message has been edited by Grognard (edited 07 January 2001).]

Daynarr · #7 January 7th, 2001, 10:09 PM

Guys, when the group of fighters fire on a ship the damage is cumulative. However, AI is NOT aware of that, so when he is supposed to fire on a ship with emissive armor he doesn't fire because he 'thinks' that he can't do any damage while in reality he could. This is why, if you turn on auto-combat, the fighters don't fire (auto-combat is controlled by AI).

I hope this explains something.

I remember somebody made a post about this cumulative damage for fighters and missiles saying that is should be calculated one by one instead of the whole group at once, and I agree completely.

[This message has been edited by Daynarr (edited 07 January 2001).]

Courageous · #8 January 7th, 2001, 11:01 PM

"...when the group of fighters fire on a ship the damage is cumulative."

Yeah, but it shouldn't be.

C//

Noble713 · #9 January 8th, 2001, 01:10 AM

Stealth armor is NOT useless.

Don't think of it as armor, but as a cheap, low-level cloaking device. In several games I've designed battlecruisers with 1 Stealth Armor and some extra supplies and these things can wreak havoc in the enemy's rear areas.

I agree, though, that Scattering Armor is crap.

Daynarr · #10 January 8th, 2001, 02:09 AM

quote:
Another question: Are you sure that defence bonus from armor is not cumulative with ECM?

Unfortunately, I am sure. I stumbled across this when, I was trying to add Inertial Stabilizer component. When I was testing this, it wouldn't add to ECM. Then I tried the armor components, to see how they work, and they also didn't stack. Most likely all identical abilities for components are not stackable, just like this one. I have also tried it with combat sensors with the same results.

This BADLY needs fixing. As it stands now armor is next to useless.