Ship Design for Dummies, weapons, armor, shields, oh my!

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Having all guns means your ship loses weapons on the first shot a very large portion of the time, as they have lots of HPs and are likely to be hit first. Armor/shields allow the ship to absorb some hits before it loses any offensive capability.

I understand that and have always been aware of it. But in my mind I felt that the trade off was that I had more weapons to lose then the other guy so I could afford to lose more. Now I am not so sure this is correct, but how do you come up with a good ratio is what I am trying to determine. And where do you factor in the additional research cost of going for armor. If my second set of tests was accurate, all it took was a tech deficency of one level in weapons to make the armor irrelevant. Of course I am sure that there are more variables to consider, and different weapons might have different results even.

Maybe there is no good method and it's just throwing darts and seeing what sticks.