Armor & Shields On Units...

[Unco]

Hmm. So I still am confused and will ask more specific questions. Thank you in advance for your patience and wisdom.

FIGHTERS
1. Are Small Shields on Fighters skipped by Phased Polaron Beams?
2. Are Armor and/or Small Shields on Fighters skipped by Null-Space Weapons?

WEAPONS PLATFORMS
1. Are Shields on Weapons Platforms skipped by Phased Polaron Beams?
2. Are Armor and/or Shields on Weapons Platforms skipped by Null-Space Weapons?
3. If Weapons Platforms have 100% functionality when damaged and if a Weapons Platform has Armor and/or Shields can it ever be fully destroyed by Null-Space Weapons or Phased Polaron Beams?

SATELLITES
1. Arkcon, did Phased Polaron Beams skip and then destroy a stack of Satellites with Shields?
2. Do Shield Regenerators work on Satellites?

[Will]

AFAIK:

Fighters
1. Yes, they damage all the "physical" hitpoints of the fighter until it is destroyed.
2. Null-space will skip shields, but since armour is just physical hitpoints, and units retain all functionality until 100% damage is reached, armour is effectively not skipped.

eg. Fighter has cockpit, engines, weapons adding up to 9 hit points, armour adds 4, shields add 4 plus 20 shield points. PPB hits will take out the 9+4+4=17 hit points, and not touch the shields. Once the 17 is gone, the fighter is destroyed. Null-space will take out the 9+4=13 from the regular components, then the 4 from the armour, making it 17 hitpoints again to destroy. So there isn't really a difference between the two weapons when it comes to fighters.

Weapon Platforms
1. No, shield points act as regular hit points (someone please correct if I'm wrong, haven't played in a while )
2. No, see above. All hit points are pooled together.
3. Yes, once all the hit points are depleted, the platform is destroyed and the next unit in the queue is targeted.

Satellites
1. Arkcon?
2. IIRC, they do. Again, I haven't played in a while, so don't hold me to that.

Basically, units are just extremely simplified in the game, with the space-based ones having slightly more detail. On planets, shields are just regular hit points, while in space, they act like shields. Damage is dealt in a queue, so basically everyone lines up single file, and you stand in front and shoot until either you're dead, they're dead, or the combat turn limit has elapsed.

[Q]

Using the combat simulator PPB and shard cannon against fighters, it seems that neither shields nor armor are skipped. Both weapons have to make the full damage including armor and shield points before the fighter is destroyed. However shield depleters seem to function on fighters.

[Raging Deadstar]

Q said:
Using the combat simulator PPB and shard cannon against fighters, it seems that neither shields nor armor are skipped. Both weapons have to make the full damage including armor and shield points before the fighter is destroyed. However shield depleters seem to function on fighters.

From my Expirience in game:

Shield Depleters Work on Fighters, Drones and Satellites
Shield Depleters Don't Seem to work on Weapons Platforms and Troops.

Though i rarely use Shield Depleters on troops, Usually i pile them high with Ground Cannons or DUC. Less Protected yes, but the return volley the enemy finds impressive, for the brief few moments it survives.

[Mephisto]

Some correction on the "queue thing" AFAIR. Damage is always check against the unit with the least hitpoints first. Either this unit is destroyed (in this case the procedure starts anew with the remaining damage) or no unit is destroyed and the damage stored for the next hit. I.e. there is no use to build a shield WP to protect other unshielded units. It won't protect WPs with lesser hitpoints, it will just be the WP destroyed Last.

[Fyron]

Mephisto said:
Some correction on the "queue thing" AFAIR. Damage is always check against the unit with the least hitpoints first. Either this unit is destroyed (in this case the procedure starts anew with the remaining damage) or no unit is destroyed and the damage stored for the next hit. I.e. there is no use to build a shield WP to protect other unshielded units. It won't protect WPs with lesser hitpoints, it will just be the WP destroyed Last.

Wasn't this changed to be more random in a recent patch?

3. If Weapons Platforms have 100% functionality when damaged and if a Weapons Platform has Armor and/or Shields can it ever be fully destroyed by Null-Space Weapons or Phased Polaron Beams?

Note that armor skipping weapons fired at ships will damage armor components normally once all internal components are destroyed. You can completely destroy a ship/unit with Shard Cannons and Null Space Projectors. This differs from "Only X" type damage, such as from Shield Disruptors. If there are no valid components to damage (ie: no shield generating components), such a weapon does no damage. Armor skipping damage types ignore this rule.

[Slick]

Imperator Fyron said:

Wasn't this changed to be more random in a recent patch?

I think so. Not sure which patch but I think it was the one that made WP's get destroyed before other units during planet assault. I did some testing a while back (can't find my post) but shield/armor WP's can get damaged (or destroyed) before other WP's. It's not always predictable, but I wouldn't call it "random" either. I *think* that the most efficient way to do this from my testing was to make small shield/armor WP's instead of large WP's. The reason was that the "stored" damage from one turn plus the actual damage might not be able to destroy a large shield/armor WP so the game sometimes would destroy a WP with less hitpoints instead. If you build large shield/armor WP's, this effectively does what Mephisto said in making the shield/armor WP get destroyed Last because no single volley will destroy it so damage sometimes gets shifted to destroy a WP with less hitpoints. This is not what you want. You *do* want it to be destroyed before other WP's or else the accumulated damage is shifted to weapon WP's. Again, from my testing small WP's work better for this.

That being said, it is a little cumbersome to manage and you can achieve almost the same thing by adding some shield/armor to each weapon WP. The effect is the same: it takes more damage to kill one of them. This way the average damage required to kill a WP goes up, you still maintain full function on a WP until it is destroyed, and you are not subject to any randomness which might accidentally kill your weapon WP's before shield/armor WP's.

Clear as mud?

Slick.

[spoon]

Raging Deadstar said:
Shield Depleters Work on Fighters, Drones and Satellites
Shield Depleters Don't Seem to work on Weapons Platforms and Troops.

Shield depleters do work on troops, though not as shield-only damage (because troops can't have shield points). Instead, they deal regular damage -- which makes shield depleters the best weapon to equip your troops with, since they do the best damage. (though it could be argued that this is a bug, so using shield depleters on troops would be an exploit...)

[Arkcon]

I;m going nuts trying to find my old post describing my experiment -- Oh, why'd I make so many Posts?
[EDIT] {found it} click

[Aiken]

I was distressed by Posts which assert that non-space units ignore skipping damage type weapons (I'll explain why, later) and decided to test it myself. As I see now this test was useless, but I'll post it anyway.

So, indeed armor skipping, shield skipping, armor and shield skipping and "all shields skipping" weapons only inflict normal damage, and shield points act as normal hp. Shield depleters don't work at all. Damn, now I have to change significant part of my offensive strategy in one of the pbw games

But the Last test was the most interesting one. Description:
Side 1: 4 BA armed with PPBs (3000 dmg at point blank).
Side 2: sphereworld defended with 60 WP of 3 types:
1) 20 Med WP ("Type1") with Phased Shield Generators V (3000 phased shield points + 330 hp from comps = 3330 hp total);
2) 20 Sm WP ("Type2") with Shield Generators V (1200 shield points + 170 hp from comps = 1370 hp total);
3) 20 Lg WP ("Type3") without shields, but with weapons (910 hp total).

Battle:
--------
Turn 0. In cargo: 20 Type1, 20 Type2, 20 Type3. Destroyed WP: 0.
Turn 1. In cargo: 20 Type1, 20 Type2, 8 Type3. Destroyed WP: 12 Type3 (least hp).
Turn 2. In cargo: 20 Type1, 16 Type2. Destroyed WP: 8 Type3(destroyed first), 4 Type2 (with medium hp, destroyed later).
Turn 3. In cargo: 20 Type1, 8 Type2. Destroyed WP: 8 Type2.
Turn 4. In cargo: 20 Type1. Destroyed WP: 8 Type2.
Turn 5. In cargo: 19 Type1. Destroyed WP: 1 Type1 (most hp).
etc, untill all WP were destroyed.

I did another test with 2 BA, but with the same result: choice of unit on planet to destroy is not random at all and the rule "least hp - destroyed first" still works with no exceptions. Double damn, now have to change WP defenses for a few dozens of planets in another pbw game