Emissive Armor?

[Suicide Junkie]

Perhaps I was unclear...
Rounding things off:
1kt non-armor, 10 hitpoints
vs
5kt non-armor, 35 hitpoints (B5 mod uses 7/50)

If you have 100kt of space spent, you get 100 of the light armor, for 1000 hitpoints... VS 20 of the heavy armor for 700 hitpoints.
...With B/LS/CQ/6engines and guns behind that...

What happens is that you have a greater probability of sustaining damage to your engines and/or guns if you use the light "armor", despite the fact that it has more hitpoints total.

Of course, once the "armor" has taken a lot of damage, the extra protection percentage falls off.
And if your ship was destined to be destroyed by the first volley of a large fleet, the light armor would sap more ammo from the enemy.

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The point is that early on in the battle, the tiny-chunk & stronger stuff lets more damage through to weapons & engines & stuff than the large-chunk & weaker stuff.
(Where stronger & weaker is measured in Hp/Kt)

[ December 18, 2003, 22:48: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[oleg]

Originally posted by Karibu:
Emissive armor has its uses though. Make a ship with 11 crystal armor and one shield. It stands invulnerable against 150 damage points/shot. Then make ship with all that + one emissive armor and it stands punishment of 170 damage points/shot. However, in SEIV there is tendency that for some unknown reason smaller components are destroyed first and so this one component is only help against first few shot (it is smaller than crystal armor). If this bug is fixed in future, its value increases significantly.

It is opposite for armour Bigger pieces tend to be destroyed first AFAIK.

[Fyron]

Damage is not assigned per point. All the damage from a shot is assigned to the same component, unless it gets destroyed. Then, the extra gets applied to a new single component.

Trust SJ. He is quite right on this.

[ December 19, 2003, 06:59: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Karibu]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:

quote:

---

If this bug is fixed in future, its value increases significantly.

It is not a bug, it is how the combat mechanics were designed.

---

Then it is designed poorly and should be fixed. It is not logical that enemy would 99 % of the combats hit first that same armor (expect with talisman and that only guarantees that you hit the ship, not one specific component in that ship).

[Fyron]

If that one armor component has a lot fewer hit points than the other armor components, it makes sense. It is the weakest part, so why not target it first?

I should also point out that the armor systems are bound to be integrated somehow, so the weakest part is likely to fail first, not Last. It makes 0 sense to say that one chunk of the hull is CA, one is EA. If that were the case, then the EA ability would not be in effect when CA gets hit, but it is. Given that, whatever the EA is doing is always getting hit and worn down, so it would be more likely to fail first.

[ December 19, 2003, 08:01: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Asmala]

It's logical that EA is destroyed first. In stock game it's bigger than standard armor, less durable and in order to reflect energy back to space it have to be located in the ship's outermost layer.

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Trust SJ. He is quite right on this.

I can't see anybody disagreeing with him on this. I just tried to explain why the heavy pseudo armor is better than the light even if the light has more hit points. Cyrien explained excellently what I tried to say.

[Fyron]

EA is actually destroyed (usually) Last when using standard armor, cause it has more hit points...

[Asmala]

...right... so it's not logical then.

[Ed Kolis]

Actually isn't standard armor 30/35/40 HP at TL 1/2/3 while emissive is 30/40/50 at TL 4/5/6? So at tech level 4 your emissive armor would be likely to get hit first, at level 5 your armors would have an equal chance to get hit, and at level 6 your standard armor would be likely to get hit first.

I like to think of emissive armor as a thin coating around the ship, so it's still on the outside in "real-life" terms, and it only works the way it does due in the game due to SE4's quirky rules about which components get hit first If you want to model it this way in the game, make EA 5kT with 15/20/25 hitpoints, that way it tends to get hit first and you'll need a lot to make sure you can keep up the emissive effect as your armor wears down... so you'll probably want to reduce its cost as well

What's really weird is how scattering and stealth armor work together... one reflects and the other absorbs, so shouldn't they cancel out? (Unless they reflect and absorb different frequencies of light...)

[narf poit chez BOOM]

one absords what the other doesn't reflect.

[ December 19, 2003, 19:40: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]