Ablative Armor

[Black_Knyght]

Damn.

Not looking for "Überarmor" here. Just something better than Armored Hull Plating but less advance than Emissive or Stealth armors

[Suicide Junkie]

Consider the math:
Standard armor gives 3-4 hp/kt
Shields give up to 8 hp/kt
Your armor gives 15 hp/kt

Basically, shields start looking as useless by comparison as standard armor used to.

PS:
What makes you think stealth and scattering armor are better than standard armor? All you need is one component of them to get all the ability benefits, and the rest of your defenses can be the slightly better HP/kt standard armor, or the superhigh hp shields.

I reccommend that you either:
- reduce your new armor hp to max out at 11 or 12, and maybe add some intermediate armor which is size 3 and gives 6-8 hp/kt.
- remove the armor ability and make it leaky armor. As leaky armor, you'll have the option of increasing the hitpoints to 10-25 without making shields irrelevant.

[capnq]

Suicide Junkie said:
Standard armor gives 3-4 hp/kt
Shields give up to 8 hp/kt
Your armor gives 15 hp/kt

For further comparison:

Emissive Armor 1.5-2.5 hp/kt (plus damage reduction)
Scattering Armor 3 hp/kt (plus defense bonus)
Stealth Armor 3.33 hp/kt (plus defense bonus)
Organic Armor 3.33-5 hp/kt (plus armor regeneration)
Crystalline Armor 3.33-5 hp/kt (plus shield generation)

[StarShadow]

Strictly speaking, the stock emissive armor is ablative armor.

[Suicide Junkie]

Emissive is the opposite of ablative.

Logically, ablative armor *ablates*. Which means part of it is permanently lost after each hit.

Emissive armor, on the other hand, does not take any damage from small hits, typically at the expense of having fewer hitpoints per kt.

[Black_Knyght]

Okay - I get that THIS was a bad design, so to speak.

But, now I'm thoroughly lost. I don't even know HOW that armor is considered so tough?

I don't have a clue how to incorporate, or even WHAT, leaky armor is. I'm still new to the Modding aspect of SEIV, though some areas I get better than others.

[Suicide Junkie]

It is tough, because it has 15 hitpoints per kt!

You could spend 10kt of space on a standard armor, and get 40 hitpoints at max tech.
Or you could spend 10kt of space on your new armor, and get 150 hitpoints at max tech.

150 >> 40


Leaky armor is simply inert components without the armor ability, and which have a high number of hitpoints per KT.
Damage to internals is applied via a "hitpoints lottery" type system:
If you have 950 hp worth of leaky armor, and 50 hp worth of other internals, then (950/1000) 95% of the time, weapon damage will randomly pick an armor component to damage.

You can see how this provides excellent protection while still leaving a chance of damage leaking through to internals

For further details on the damage mechanics, bordering on the nitty gritty see:
- DEF 200 : Damage Theory
- DEF 340 : Armor Mechanics

[StarShadow]

Yes and no, ablative armor on, for example, a main battle tank, is not going to be destroyed by everything that hits it, if that were the case small-arms fire would be the bane of every armored tank.

Strictly speaking ablative armor as we know it, is not possible in SE4. The purpose of ablative armor is that it basicly destroys itself in order to prevent or reduce damage from an incoming projectile.

To me it seems that emissive is the closest thing SE4 really has to offer, and considering that early ablative armor used rubber (either as a filler between two armor plates, or as a backing) to reduce damage, it seems appropriate. In any case, since this is a game, we're allowed to stretch/alter/change traditional meanings.

[Fyron]

Ablative armor is the most directly implementable form of armor in SE4... You burn off the outer layer to prevent the ship from taking any real damage. Ablative armor is directly represented by raw hit points. Making it come in tiny chunks makes it burn off all the faster, as well as making it harder to repair than big pieces of "regular" armor.

Emissive armor is exactly not what ablative armor is; emissive is a magic, limitless reduction effect, which negates damage without any commensurate reduction in strength. Think of a mirror reflecting a laser beam.