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

oleg · #1 July 25th, 2003, 07:22 PM

It is not easy to instruct ships to gang up on one ship and pound it. You must use "most damaged" as a first firing priority, but I often see such ships moving aimesly (poor pathfinding) and fire ineffectively from a long distance. IMHO, the most effective priority is "nearest" but that may lead to the spreading of fire and armored/shielded ships can Last longer even in fleet battles !

oleg · #2 July 25th, 2003, 07:24 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by geoschmo:

quote:
Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Geo, I normally research to DUC V and PDC III before getting Chemistry or armor. Destroyers with 5-6 PDCs slaughter all early game fighter/missile rush strategies.

Ok, well that makes sense. But if that's the case why bother ever researching armor at all? Go to LC's and start researching shields. You need Physics anyway for all the better beam waepons, you can't stick with DUC's forever. And the only other good thing to come from the chemestry branch is resource manipulation. And you can do without that for a long time. Am I wrong? I am just trying to figure out when the armor should come into play.

Geoschmo

DUC -> PPB. Now the only protection for a long time is armor !

geoschmo · #3 July 25th, 2003, 07:30 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by oleg:
DUC -> PPB. Now the only protection for a long time is armor !

The only protection against PPB, yes. But if my tests so far are accurate you are better off with no protection at all and just putting on more weapons. That's entirely the question I am trying to figure out.

Geoschmo

Suicide Junkie · #4 July 25th, 2003, 07:40 PM

Quote:

The more tests I run on the this the more I get to the conculsion that for fleet combat less armor or even no armor and all weapons is the way to go. What am I missing?

Weapons and engines do add quite a bit of bulk to ships. Weapons contribute to both offense and defense, and are thus especially effective.

In comparison to the minimum 460kt of hitpoints on an LC, a few pieces of armor don't have a whole lot of impact.
Also keep in mind that you should subtract 10 points off the strength of armor, since if you don't put armor, there will still be 10 hitpoints from whatever else you put in there instead.

geoschmo · #5 July 25th, 2003, 07:50 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
In comparison to the minimum 460kt of hitpoints on an LC, a few pieces of armor don't have a whole lot of impact.

Ok, so maybe what I am seeing then makes sense? At least for the stock game? Perhaps the extra damage done by mounts makes standard armor pretty much a bad idea for combat ships? That would explain why it seems to give some value in destroyers but not in the LC's.

Or am I reading too much into it?

Geoschmo

oleg · #6 July 25th, 2003, 08:40 PM

[ July 25, 2003, 20:05: Message edited by: oleg ]

Silent Sorrow · #7 July 25th, 2003, 08:43 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by geoschmo:

quote:
Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
In comparison to the minimum 460kt of hitpoints on an LC, a few pieces of armor don't have a whole lot of impact.

Ok, so maybe what I am seeing then makes sense? At least for the stock game? Perhaps the extra damage done by mounts makes standard armor pretty much a bad idea for combat ships? That would explain why it seems to give some value in destroyers but not in the LC's.

Or am I reading too much into it?

Geoschmo

I'd say that once you get in to mounts, which show up on the LCs, armour is only marginally effective but it is effective. Simply because if it soaks up even a little bit of damage overall that might be the difference between surviving one extra round to do damage or spread incoming damage (across more ships), and not surviving.

In a fleet battle, clearly, this can make a huge difference. But as others have pointed out, it also makes a difference who fires first.

In my latests games I've found myself tending to move away from putting armour on my LCs and instead going all weapons (because the LCs are kind of expandable so I go for max damage, though I do put on PDCs). But anything above that starts to get armour, usually about three Armour IIIs, which I think is about 90 hit points--good enough to deflect much or most of the hit of one heavy mount weapon.