Armor, Shields and Damage (FAQ)

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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I hope MM fixes the fighters soon, so emissive armor will be useful in standard games as well. That will also make crystal armor much better against fighters

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Rather than fixing the fighters, fix the Emissive Armor!!!
Instead of an All-or-nothing approach, subtract 10 points from the weapon damage whenever an Emissive component (with 10 ability points) is hit.
With that, damage is reduced for any weapon hit.
Emissive armor will then stack, but only if a second Emissive armor component is hit on the same shot (and the first armor was destroyed).

[Rollo]

First of all, I agree that emissive armor should not stack. Just too easy to make invulnerable ships that way.

quote:

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Originally posted by suicide_junkie:
Rather than fixing the fighters, fix the Emissive Armor!!!
Instead of an All-or-nothing approach, subtract 10 points from the weapon damage whenever an Emissive component (with 10 ability points) is hit.
With that, damage is reduced for any weapon hit.
Emissive armor will then stack, but only if a second Emissive armor component is hit on the same shot (and the first armor was destroyed).

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Sorry, but I don't agree, S_J. Reducing damage is not what emissive should do. This is already done (Well, very close) with the crystal armor that loads your shields and thus reduces the effect of the next shot.

Rollo

[Puke]

perhaps if you tweaked low dammage weapons to be more efficient than their high damage counterparts, then they would become the weapon of choice. then the use of emissive armor would force people to use larger weapons, thus making it valueable, and forcing people to make more choices in the game.

what i think needs to be fixed, is that fighters fire as a stack instead of individuals. so emissive armor that should stop one fighters weapons wont stop the combined attack of the entire stack. that seems to defeat the point of the emissive armor.

[President_Elect_Shang]

I have a damage Q. Sort of.
Has anyone tried to create a weapon that can only fire once than is fried. Destroyed on use ability does not work. How about a weapon that may or may not blow to pieces. Every time you use it is like a toss of the dice?

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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Sorry, but I don't agree, S_J. Reducing damage is not what emissive should do. This is already done (Well, very close) with the crystal armor that loads your shields and thus reduces the effect of the next shot.

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The differences, as I wish it was:
- Only components which are damaged or destroyed stack their emissive ability. (crys stacks all of them, all the time)
- Emissive ability works as above for internals, too.
- Components without emissive abilities do not get any emissive-type protection. (crys works, even if some other type of armor takes the damage)
- Emissive abilities work against "only X", and shield or armor skipping weapons. (as long as the component being hit has emissive ability)
- Quad2Shields and shield-only damage types do not reduce the effectiveness of emissive abilities.

[dumbluck]

Ok, here's another question for all of you gurus out there. How do shields and the special armors work on units????? I know that units don't track destroyed components; they are either in pristene working order or completely destroyed, with no in betweens. But that's all I know.

Heres to hoping for an answer!!!

[Mephisto]

That's an easy one.
Count all the hitpoints of all the components and add them together. Then add all shild points to this result, too. That's it. To answer your question: Special armor and shield do NOTHING, they just add their hitpoints and nothing else. If you fire on a unit it will never be damaged and only destroyed when you accumulate enough points to compensate for all of the unit hitpoints.

Extended example:
You have 2 weapon platforms. Both have a "body" (i.e. all components added together) of 500. Platform A has 1 shield V (300 shield points) so the total hitpoints for platform A is 800 (body+shield). Platform B has a phased shield V (375 shield points) so its total hitpoints are 875.
Both are stationed on the same planet and so form one stack with 1675 hit points (800+875).
If you apply 799 damage points, nothing happens.
If you apply 800 damage points, platform A (800) will be destroyed.
Iy you apply 875 damage points (in one salvo), platform A will be gone IMHO but here I could be wrong.

Anyway, you got the idea.

[ 10 December 2001: Message edited by: [K126]Mephisto ]