Armor, Shields and Damage (FAQ)

[Puke]

perhaps if you tweaked low dammage weapons to be more efficient than their high damage counterparts, then they would become the weapon of choice. then the use of emissive armor would force people to use larger weapons, thus making it valueable, and forcing people to make more choices in the game.

what i think needs to be fixed, is that fighters fire as a stack instead of individuals. so emissive armor that should stop one fighters weapons wont stop the combined attack of the entire stack. that seems to defeat the point of the emissive armor.

[President_Elect_Shang]

I have a damage Q. Sort of.
Has anyone tried to create a weapon that can only fire once than is fried. Destroyed on use ability does not work. How about a weapon that may or may not blow to pieces. Every time you use it is like a toss of the dice?

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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Sorry, but I don't agree, S_J. Reducing damage is not what emissive should do. This is already done (Well, very close) with the crystal armor that loads your shields and thus reduces the effect of the next shot.

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The differences, as I wish it was:
- Only components which are damaged or destroyed stack their emissive ability. (crys stacks all of them, all the time)
- Emissive ability works as above for internals, too.
- Components without emissive abilities do not get any emissive-type protection. (crys works, even if some other type of armor takes the damage)
- Emissive abilities work against "only X", and shield or armor skipping weapons. (as long as the component being hit has emissive ability)
- Quad2Shields and shield-only damage types do not reduce the effectiveness of emissive abilities.

[dumbluck]

Ok, here's another question for all of you gurus out there. How do shields and the special armors work on units????? I know that units don't track destroyed components; they are either in pristene working order or completely destroyed, with no in betweens. But that's all I know.

Heres to hoping for an answer!!!

[Mephisto]

That's an easy one.
Count all the hitpoints of all the components and add them together. Then add all shild points to this result, too. That's it. To answer your question: Special armor and shield do NOTHING, they just add their hitpoints and nothing else. If you fire on a unit it will never be damaged and only destroyed when you accumulate enough points to compensate for all of the unit hitpoints.

Extended example:
You have 2 weapon platforms. Both have a "body" (i.e. all components added together) of 500. Platform A has 1 shield V (300 shield points) so the total hitpoints for platform A is 800 (body+shield). Platform B has a phased shield V (375 shield points) so its total hitpoints are 875.
Both are stationed on the same planet and so form one stack with 1675 hit points (800+875).
If you apply 799 damage points, nothing happens.
If you apply 800 damage points, platform A (800) will be destroyed.
Iy you apply 875 damage points (in one salvo), platform A will be gone IMHO but here I could be wrong.

Anyway, you got the idea.

[ 10 December 2001: Message edited by: [K126]Mephisto ]

[dumbluck]

So, when it comes to units, crystaline and organic armor special abilities an non-functional. No regenerative organic armor, no crystalline armor boost to shields are present. Is that what you are saying?

What about mixing units with phased and normal shield, as in your example. Do all the shields block phased weapons, or do none of them (like when you mix phased and normal shields on a ship, they act as normal shields until all the normal shield gens are knocked out, then you suddenly switch to phased shields...)

Oooohhh, my poor head is spinning.....

[LGM]

Has it ever bothered anyone that 10KT of armor covers a Battleship just as effectively as an Escort. I think that armor effectiveness should be modified by the hull size. This would also make smaller hulls have more compensation for being able to hold fewer components.

I would suggest a formula that makes large hull require more armor components to be equally effective: Adjusted Armor Value = Base Armor Value /((KT of Hull/100)^.5))

where ^.5 means raised to the half power (also known as a square root).

You could even go simpler and make it linear: [b]Adjusted Armor Value = Base Armor Value x (100 KT/Hull Size in KT). This would make a light cruiser require 2 armor to be equal to a frigate with 1 armor (400 KT versus 200KT).

You could use 150KT as the base factor instead of 100 if you want Escorts to be at base value. My 100 based formula actual boosts the armor effectiveness of Escorts (they need help anyway).

I would also suggest a similar thing be done with shield points.

Not that Malfador can handle even multiplication in formulas (ever notice most things are addition and subtraction rather than multiplication and division?).