Armor, Shields and Damage (FAQ)

[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 ]

[dumbluck]

So, when it comes to units, crystaline and organic armor special abilities an non-functional. No regenerative organic armor, no crystalline armor boost to shields are present. Is that what you are saying?

What about mixing units with phased and normal shield, as in your example. Do all the shields block phased weapons, or do none of them (like when you mix phased and normal shields on a ship, they act as normal shields until all the normal shield gens are knocked out, then you suddenly switch to phased shields...)

Oooohhh, my poor head is spinning.....

[LGM]

Has it ever bothered anyone that 10KT of armor covers a Battleship just as effectively as an Escort. I think that armor effectiveness should be modified by the hull size. This would also make smaller hulls have more compensation for being able to hold fewer components.

I would suggest a formula that makes large hull require more armor components to be equally effective: Adjusted Armor Value = Base Armor Value /((KT of Hull/100)^.5))

where ^.5 means raised to the half power (also known as a square root).

You could even go simpler and make it linear: [b]Adjusted Armor Value = Base Armor Value x (100 KT/Hull Size in KT). This would make a light cruiser require 2 armor to be equal to a frigate with 1 armor (400 KT versus 200KT).

You could use 150KT as the base factor instead of 100 if you want Escorts to be at base value. My 100 based formula actual boosts the armor effectiveness of Escorts (they need help anyway).

I would also suggest a similar thing be done with shield points.

Not that Malfador can handle even multiplication in formulas (ever notice most things are addition and subtraction rather than multiplication and division?).

[Mephisto]

Methinks that no special armor abilities are working. And you can mix phased and normal shields as you like - there is no such thing as a unit shield skipping weapon for a weapon platform. A normal shield V adds 340 hitpoints (300 shield points plus 40 component hit points) and a phased shield V adds 415 (375 shields plus 40 component hit points). A weapon platform is one solid slug of material, you cannot pass anything just hit it.

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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So, when it comes to units, crystaline and organic armor special abilities an non-functional. No regenerative organic armor, no crystalline armor boost to shields are present. Is that what you are saying?

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Organic armor regeneration requires the component to be destroyed before it regenerates, so units can't make use of that.

Crystalline armor IS sometimes effective, though. Sats/fighters's crystalline armor stacks within the group of units, too.
Unfortunately, as of the 1.41 -> 1.49 patch, sats are screwed up, and their shields are actually "armor". IE shield depleters have no effect, and the shields do not weaken. Crys ability does not seem to be useful on sats anymore. Same with fighters .
EDIT: Well, even with a planetary shield, SE4 v1.49 fails to use the crystalline armor.

Time to bug Aaron for these abilities on units, eh?

[ 10 December 2001: Message edited by: suicide_junkie ]