Problems with "New" Organig Armour.

[Graeme Dice]

If you eliminate the storage of regeneration points when the armour is not damaged, then you are going to have to make all pieces about 150 to 300 kt stronger to make them worthwhile, as you can usually expect your ships to have at least 5 turns before the range closes, and it's currently not overpowered. Either that, or double or triple the regeneration rate. After all, it has to be at least as useful as shields are to be worthwhile, and the ability to repair after combat if the ship isn't destroyed is useless if the ship will always be destroyed.

[Taera]

Well no, organic armor is a useful piece of defense because of its regeneration rate- its a shield and shield regenerator, both in 30kT and it costs ORGANICS. I like the introduced change because it makes sense, and increasing regen instead would make it realy overpowering.
I though would like to see changes being made to its counterpart, Crystalline Armor which is realy underpowered in anything but its low cost.

[PvK]

Not only does OA have a good protection rate and use organics, but it doesn't even cost very many organics. They also don't suffer from bypassing via phased weapons, or lowering via depleters, or destruction via shield-destroying weapons. They do suffer to shard cannons, though those are expensive and low-damage.

Actually, OA was pretty darn over-powerful before this, but only IF and WHEN it was used in small battles, especially one-on-one battles. It was quite possible for say a cruiser with OA to avoid all damage from an entire 30-turn engagement with a single other cruiser, or certainly long enough to destroy the other cruiser.

However, what usually happens is a larger battle with more ships and more concentrated fire, so very frequently, all of the organic armor on one ship can be destroyed in one turn (by fire from multiple enemy ships), in which case it doesn't get a chance to heal.

PvK

[Mylon]

I think the Baron was talking about in-combat damage, not post-combat damage. The fix to regenerate armor after combat is quite obviously the latter. If what he says is true, then Organic's armor regeneration ability is crippled because:

1) Armor only regenerates when a piece is destroyed, not when a piece is damaged or at the end of every combat turn.

2) Armor can only be regenerated by restoring a broken piece, not by removing partial damage.

3) Armor can only be regenerated once and/or once regenerated does not contribute to other regeneration (I'm not clear on this one).

[oleg]

Yes. before there were two bugs/features, one working in favor of OA (accumulating point before damage), second against (no partial healing).
More or less they balance each other - extra points from former were offset by lost points due to later. Now, OA will give you far less regenerating points than you can expect by just looking on OA numbers. There've been not many complaints about OA before and one can deduce people are more or less satisfied with play balance. Now, OA is weeker and hence need some modest boost, either more damage points or more regeneration - my favorite.

[geoschmo]

"Partial damage"? What is partial damage?

Every component in the game as far as I know gets partial damage restored at the end of combat. This is whether it's organic armor, or not. Unless you guys mean something else besides partial damage.

Organic armor is different in that instead of having ot go to a reapair bay or space yard to repaior COMPLETE destruction of the component, it can be repaired if there is at least one functional piece of organic armor left on the ship.

The bug was that if the destruction of that piece occured near the end of combat, it didn't have time to heal and wouldn't do so until sometime during the next combat. The fix is that now instead of that, at the end of combat all roganic armor will be repaired immedietly, IF there is a functioning organic armor component left. THere still has to be a functioning armo comp left. That much hasn't changed.

Geoschmo

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Taera:
Well no, organic armor is a useful piece of defense because of its regeneration rate- its a shield and shield regenerator, both in 30kT and it costs ORGANICS. I like the introduced change because it makes sense, and increasing regen instead would make it realy overpowering.
I though would like to see changes being made to its counterpart, Crystalline Armor which is realy underpowered in anything but its low cost.

I think you need to take a look at the relative numbers for organic armour when compared to shields. Phased shields V give 9.4 shields per kiloton. Organic armour III gives 5 damage resistance per kiloton. With a shield regenerator V, you get 6.25 shields per kt, and a regeneration of 20. With Organic Armour III, you get a regeneration of 30.

The old style organic armour, which was not imbalanced, managed to build up a regeneration pool of around 150 - 300 kt per piece before weapons fire began. That put it on about an equal level with shielding. Now, if regeneration only happens once the armour is damaged, then stops once it is repaired, the armour needs to be made either stronger from the beginning, or have its regeneration rate increased so that it has a chance to regenerate once the firing has begun.