Emissive Armor

[jowe01]

How does "emissive armor" work ?

- If for example the emissive armor is said to reflect up to 10 points of damage and can take 30 points of damage before being destroyed, what happens if the damage exceeds 10 points ? Are 10 points reflected and the rest damages the armor ? Or is nothing reflected and all the damage counts towards the armor component's "hit points" ?

- What if there are emissive and non-emissive armor components ? Which is hit first ? If the non-emissive are hit first, does the emissive armor nevertheless reduce damage ?

- Are emissive armors cumulative, i.e. do 3 of the above described emissive armors reflect up to thirty damage points ?

[dmm]

The way I understand it, first you get the "emissivity" protection from emissive armor, then you lower shield strength. Once shields go to zero, you start destroying armor. Once armor goes to zero, you start randomly destroying whatever components are left (including but not limited to emissive armor or shield generators). Am I right, everyone?

But I never use anything but regular ArmorIII. Emissive Armor is too heavy, not worth it. Ditto for Shields, unless I also had the Shield Regenerator, which might make it worthwhile (haven't tried yet).

[Baron Munchausen]

Shields are reduced first unless you are using a weapon that ignores shields. Only when your shields are gone will the armor be hit, IF you are not using a weapon that ignores armor. Armor is hit randomly just like inner components, so if you have several components of different types some of the hits will go to the emissive armor and some will go to the other components. It's likely that ordinary armor will be destroyed even if you have one emissive armor.

[jowe01]

Thanks for the first answers. Two questions are still open:
- Does emissive armor reduce damages even of hits which exceed its "reflection" capacity ? Or is it a "all or nothing" attribute, i.e. hits which exceed the reflection capacity of the emissive armor are not reduced at all ?

- Are emissive armors cumulative ?

[Baron Munchausen]

I haven't been able to determine if they 'absorb' up to their limit and then break of if they just break.

No, emissive armors are not cumulative, but they are 'serial' -- if one is destroyed the next will just take over and must be hit with greater than it's emissive protection value. So it's still worthwhile to have more than one.

[Master Belisarius]

As the Baron said, the emissive armors are serial, not cumulative.

How work an emissive armor? First the armor absorb the points, and if the weapon is more powerful than the points that can abosrb, then the emissive armor work like an standard armor.

For example:
You have a ship with one emissive armor that can deflect 10 points of damage and can take 30 points of damage.

a) IF your ship is fighting against 20 ships that have one weapon that can inflict 8 points of damage, then, your ship will not take damage during the combat: everytime that your ship receive one shot for 8 points, the emissive armor will abosrb everything. Then, your ship could destroy all the others ships without receive any damage.

b) If your ship is fighting against other ship that have one weapon that can inflict 40 points. Well, at the first shot, your emissive armor will be destroyed (10 points that can absorb + 30 points damage resistance)

[dmm]

Thanks for clearing that up. I hadn't noticed that emissive armor also has a good amount of regular damage-taking ability. That makes it better than I thought, but still too heavy IMHO. 'Course I stopped in disgust at level II, so maybe it gets more competitive.
Consider: 1x emissiveII gives 20+40=60 protection, while 2x armorIII gives 140 protection. Yet the weight is the same, the cost is MORE for the emissive (1x500 vs. 2x50), and you had to research two more tech levels for it. Emissive is only worth it if your opponents are fitting out their ships with large numbers of wimpy weapons (and well into the game, too).

[Taqwus]

dmm --

Look into Crystalline for a GOOD armor. ;-)

[Baron Munchausen]

quote:

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Originally posted by dmm:
Thanks for clearing that up. I hadn't noticed that emissive armor also has a good amount of regular damage-taking ability. That makes it better than I thought, but still too heavy IMHO. 'Course I stopped in disgust at level II, so maybe it gets more competitive.
Consider: 1x emissiveII gives 20+40=60 protection, while 2x armorIII gives 140 protection. Yet the weight is the same, the cost is MORE for the emissive (1x500 vs. 2x50), and you had to research two more tech levels for it. Emissive is only worth it if your opponents are fitting out their ships with large numbers of wimpy weapons (and well into the game, too).

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If you're getting 70kt of damage for regular armor you must be using demo .51 still? The .56 demo reduced the value of armor somewhat. Besides the difference in armor values, I think that the 'emissive armor' ability just plain doesn't WORK in the current public demos -- either of them. The next demo will have it working properly and you'll see what its worth. Lots of things are getting fixed and adjusted for the next release.

[jowe01]

Also, if damage to armor is random (or from left to right [is it ?] and the emissive armor is to the right), the value of emissive armor increases dramatically for heavily armored ships. The reason is that it reduces each hit by its "reflection" capacity. If hit damage exceeds that capacity, only the remainder is deducted from the "hit points" of the armor components. Now, if that damage is attributed randomly, there is a fair probability that the "normal" armor will be damaged, not the emissive one. The emissive armor will survive to again reduce damage from the next hit. This way, on ships with one single emissive armor and lots of normal armor, the expected (!) hit absorbing capacity of emissive armor may be well above its cost-equivalent in normal armor.