Emissive armour - what is it used for?

[Barnacle Bill]

>The volley of a fighter group counts as
>ONE! damage, i.e. forget about emissive
>armor, even a group of 2 fighters will not
>be stopped by it.

I'm not sure this is correct. Read on for why...

I recently played a game in which I created a new tech area for a beam weapon that has a size of 10kt, with damage per turn per kt of hull space used comparable to other weapons. The idea was to be able to create "balanced" small ship designs even in late game (you need a shield, ECM, combat sensors, 6 engines and a solar sail and the little guys don't have room for all that plus any weapons). Anyway, this resulted in a smaller amount of damage per individual weapon, but if the damage from a volley is treated as one shot it should not make any difference (10 points each from 4 weapons fired together = 40 points from one weapon fired by itself). I found that this was not the case, at least against crystalline armor (which adds a given number of damage points out of every volley back into shields).

I had an exploration squadron of 3 battlecruisers equipped with large mounts (15kt) of mt new toy. Ran into a ship equipped with crystalline armor. Blew his shields away, then found that every weapon hit added back into his shields the amount of damage my weapon did - first shot after his shields went down put them back up and every subsequent shot knocked them down, then put them back up by the same amount. That ship was basically invulnerable to my weapons!

It appears to me that every shot in a volley from a ship is resolved separately. They clearly are for "hit or miss". It appears that the special armors (at least crystalline) treat each weapon as a separate shot, and it also appears that special damage effects of special armors are cumulative if multiple armor systems of the same type are installed.

Maybe all the damage from a fighter group volley is treated cumulatively, but that does not appear to be the case for ships.

[Grognard]

Just did a test in the simulator.

36 planes with two DUC III's, 30 damage combined per plane, quit attacking the emissive armored ship once they reached the emissive armor.

36 planes equipped with four DUC III's, 60 damage combined per plane, totally destroyed the emissive-armor equipped ship in two volleys.

In conclusion, at least in the simulator, the game is comparing the damage resistance of 30 with the damage inflicted per plane.

Grognard

Editted: Forget what I just said. The above results used auto-combat in the simulator. When I tried it using manual combat, the planes with 30 damage apiece destroyed the ship. So with differing results between auto- and manual control, nothing conclusive can be determined. My only conclusion is the lack of consistency brings the validity of any simulator results into question

[This message has been edited by Grognard (edited 07 January 2001).]

[Daynarr]

Guys, when the group of fighters fire on a ship the damage is cumulative. However, AI is NOT aware of that, so when he is supposed to fire on a ship with emissive armor he doesn't fire because he 'thinks' that he can't do any damage while in reality he could. This is why, if you turn on auto-combat, the fighters don't fire (auto-combat is controlled by AI).

I hope this explains something.

I remember somebody made a post about this cumulative damage for fighters and missiles saying that is should be calculated one by one instead of the whole group at once, and I agree completely.

[This message has been edited by Daynarr (edited 07 January 2001).]

[Courageous]

"...when the group of fighters fire on a ship the damage is cumulative."

Yeah, but it shouldn't be.


C//

[Noble713]

Stealth armor is NOT useless.

Don't think of it as armor, but as a cheap, low-level cloaking device. In several games I've designed battlecruisers with 1 Stealth Armor and some extra supplies and these things can wreak havoc in the enemy's rear areas.

I agree, though, that Scattering Armor is crap.

[Puke]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Noble713:
Stealth armor is NOT useless.
...
I agree, though, that Scattering Armor is crap.

---

not at all. late in the game, everyone will have sensors that can easily detect ships with stealth armor, so it loses its value quickly. think of scatt armor as armor plus scanner jammer. I put a scanner jammer on every ship, and when you figure that every ship needs armor too, one piece of armor and one scanner jammer is only 10 units smaller than the scatt armor, AND the scatt gives you the defensive bonus.

its definitly worth carying one point of scatt if your enemies already have scanning devices that can detect level2 cloaks.

[Puke]

double post, i suck.

[This message has been edited by Puke (edited 08 January 2001).]