what the...finally a question about SE4 !

[Slynky]

Doesn't organic armor only repair after combat (other than in-combat regeneration)?

Actually, I'm not too convinced it regenerates much at all. And certainly, it doesn't regenerate after combat is over. I have some ships been sitting for 10 turns now with 1 blown-out org armor. Maybe I misunderstand how it works but it certainly doesn't seem real useful in actual simultaneous combat (where strategies tend to make sure ships are "ganged up" upon till destroyed).

[Fyron]

Organic Armor used to build up a pool of regenerative points as soon as combat started. Now, they only start generating regenerative points after an organic armor component is destroyed. Say you have 2 OA comps that have 150 HP and 15 regeneration. Then one is destroyed. It will take 10 combat turns to generate 150 regenerative points and repair that destroyed OA. However, the display of the ship does not update to reflect the repaired component until the ship is hit by an enemy again. Until it is hit by an enemy, the damage points remain and the component still appears destroyed. This display bug is often a source of confusion.

Additionally, you must have a functional component with the OA ability to get any components to regenerate. One organic armor is useless, and OA can not regenerate if all OA components are destroyed.

[Slynky]

Organic Armor used to build up a pool of regenerative points as soon as combat started. Now, they only start generating regenerative points after an organic armor component is destroyed. Say you have 2 OA comps that have 150 HP and 15 regeneration. Then one is destroyed. It will take 10 combat turns to generate 150 regenerative points and repair that destroyed OA. However, the display of the ship does not update to reflect the repaired component until the ship is hit by an enemy again. Until it is hit by an enemy, the damage points remain and the component still appears destroyed. This display bug is often a source of confusion.

Additionally, you must have a functional component with the OA ability to get any components to regenerate. One organic armor is useless, and OA can not regenerate if all OA components are destroyed.

Yes, that's the way I understand it. For example, if a ship had 11 OA on it, and during a combat round, 1 was destroyed, it's my understanding that 10 OA's would completely regenerate the one that was destoryed in the next combat round. Assuming that is correct, the OA regenerative ability fails in actual play due to the fact that multiple ships in the combat arena will continue pulverizing the damaged ship till it is either destroyed or all armor is gone (or reduced to the point that regeneration is nearly useless).

And to the other point, as I said, once a component of OA is destroyed, it will never be repaired after battle unless there is some sort of repair component available (SY or Repair bay).

[Suicide Junkie]

Actually, under the Last patch, Organic Armor will completely heal after combat if you have any regen points left.

EG:
After a particularily strenuous battle, in which you had 9 out of 10 OA destroyed by the time you finish the battle...
You will have all 10 OA intact for the start of the next combat or the start of the next turn.
Damage done to your armor outside of combat (by retrofits for example) does not regenerate each turn.
If an OA ship is being retrofitted when combat occurs and has at least one intact OA at the end of the battle, it will get all of its armor regenerated for free (speeding up the retrofit process)

During combat, after taking a hit to the armor, and then running away, you will see the dead-component crater holes turn back into OA components one by one as the regen points build up.
Your hull damage numbers won't be updated until you get hit again, but the components you see fixed are fixed.
On the next hit, it will do the damage normally, and update the numbers to their correct, and probably lower, value.

At 1024x768 resolution, the game will display the damage done just below the ship bar graphs. With OA, that number sometimes comes up as a negative value, since the OA gained a lot of hitpoints since the Last hit.