Shields & Armour --- what's the point?

[Jon Brave]

All interesting, but before we lose the point:

* Aren't phased shields a bad "upgrade" for normals? Don't you find you cannot afford to use "Hide Obsoletes" or "Upgrade" if you accidentally research them, which is ?

* Armour: I can see this area is complicated; other Posts seem to think emissive, at least, is broken, non-modded. Persuade me the horrendous drop in size/damage + vastly increased cost is worth it...

I could just do with clarification on how these work. For instance, is 75 phased shields *really* pointless compared to 300 normals against most weapons?

[Gandalph]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jon Brave:
<snip>* Aren't phased shields a bad "upgrade" for normals? Don't you find you cannot afford to use "Hide Obsoletes" or "Upgrade" if you accidentally research them, which is ?
<snip>

---

I have to agree with this to the point that I modded the families so that both will show up in the design window even with only latest selected.

[Jon Brave]

Zarix, you may have summed it up. Emissive pointless; other armours maybe worth the bonus, but I'm not convinced; phased shields great against non-phased weapons but too risky for "general" use, and, yes, my designs are a pain if I ever research them... So basically I don't want to use these areas 99% of the time. Shame...

[Wardad]

I noticed that a lot of player written AI use armor and maybe one shield generator. I think these experienced players tweaking the AIs (example TDM mod pack) know a thing or two.

The phased shields will eventually be stronger than the normal shields. The Scattering Armor and the Stealth Armor both have a 15% (ECM like) defense bonus. Using both types adds +30% defence.


The Shield Depelter weapons are very effective. Firing order is important so mount it before (to the left) of your other beam weapons.

Shield and Armor skipping weapons can be effective also. Mount these before the Shield Depelters. The Ionic Disperser (Engine Damage) can be very nasty, by killing the engine it kills its supplies too. I generally don't use the other skipping weapons, except in SAT stacks

Only the Crystal Tech race trait has an armor (only) skipping weapon. This weapon is greatly underpowered when used against shielded ships.

Boarding Parties could be considered an armor skipping weapon. Pretty effective for worm hole defense against unshielded ships.


Anyway, I suggest that you try the Combat Simulator on Auto and play barenaked ships against ships with shields and/or armor. Spice up the sim with some fighters and SATs.


--------------------------

Paper, Rock, Scissors

[ 07 May 2002: Message edited by: Wardad ]

[Bman]

Shields: If you continue to research you will eventually reach phased shields that are as strong as (and eventually stronger than) normal shields. You are correct that phased shields do not provide added protection against a normal weapon. But normal shields will not stop Phased Polaron beams, which most humans research early (as well as alot of TDM-Modpack AI's). But at shield-level 10, you get phased shields that generate 375 points each which is better than the normal shield generators

Armor: Get an ECM-III (+60% defense), Add Scattering Armor-III (+15% defense), Add Stealth Armor (+15% defense). Train your ship (+20% defense). Train your fleet (+20% defense). Add it all up: 130% defense. That means even at point-blank range your opponent will not be able to hit you without help. Now if your opponent has:
combat sensors-III (+65% offense), training (+20% offense), fleet training (+20% offense), that comes to +105% offense. Now as you can see because you have both armors, he still hase a -25% chance to hit you. That means at point-blank range he will miss 1 in 4 times. 5 squares away he will only hit 25% of the time (vs 55% of the time if you did not have the armors). That cuts his number of successful hits in half at 5-range.

Stealth and scattering armor are *very* nice.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jon Brave:
Zarix, you may have summed it up. Emissive pointless; other armours maybe worth the bonus, but I'm not convinced; phased shields great against non-phased weapons but too risky for "general" use, and, yes, my designs are a pain if I ever research them... So basically I don't want to use these areas 99% of the time. Shame...

---

[Zarix]

One really shouldn't compare normal shields V and phased I. It is usually better to go with armor than I or II of the normal or phased shields.

[tesco samoa]

Have you looked at the advanced research trait's armour ???

That will throw a monkey into your thinking.

Organic and Crystaline Armour.

But back to the topic of Phased Shields vs non-phased shields. Use them both but only one kind per ship class.

Make PShield ships and copy that design and make a non PShield Version of the ship. Build both. Use them together. Forces the opposing player to react to your ship configurations. Forcing you to react to there new ship configurations.

I could understand the debate over this if ship combat was one on one but it is not.

When you have fleets of 100 greater... Staying power is very important. AS is quickness to ship construction and deployment of ships.

You have to look at the cost of each ship component vs its benifits and decide if this ship build is an economically viable solution. If you can afford it build the best.

Weapons that skip shields and armour have a longer reload time. If your ships are non phased i will attack you with PPB's
If your ships are Phased then I will attack you with PPB's but I will also start attacking you with weapons that cause more damage on the initial strike. But the PPB's will be there because they fire every single turn.

I am losing track here. Rambling sorry.

But my point is that for shields both are viable.

It all depends on what you need to build to survive the first salvo from the enemy.

Which in the long run is a balance of shield type and armour type ships.

Space and the purpose of that ship.

So when your running your simulators build both types of ships and have some fleet engagements with those different types of ships.

You will find that you need both.