full coverage armor

[Rollo]

Might be too late to chime in, since Puke already made the enhancement file, but here are my $0.02 anyway.
Puke, if I understand this correctly you are changing the size of the armor component and leave the structure constant, right? That leaves you with some odd numbers. How about if you keep the size of the armor constant and let the mounts change the structure? In effect that would mean that 10kT of armor will result in a 'thicker' armor on an escort compared to a battleship. That also means that armor on bigger ships will take longer to repair, since you must use more components to get the same amount of protection. Not sure if that side effect is desired or not. Just an idea, anyway.

Re Shields: I proposed such a system a while ago. Makes perfect sense to me that shields get weaker on bigger ships. Worked out a system for this, too. Got mixed reactions on this and seemed too much work at the time, since the my to-do-list was already long. So I haven't yet implemented it, but I am still considering it for a future Version of DNM.

Rollo

[Puke]

hey, i like your idea better, Rollo. good thing i kept the spreadsheet, it should be simple enough to tweak it to increase durability rather than decrease size, although if i go down that road, the armor mount might end up playing second fiddle to p&n style 'premium' component mounts.

[Suicide Junkie]

It seems to me, that the difference between shields and armor, is that armor can get holes in it
With an energy shield, it should be easy for the protection to remain balanced in each direction until the entire field collapses.

If shields were to be left almost normal, and the armor were altered as discussed below, you could get a nice divergence between large and small ships. (Set the balance so that shield and armor are equally effective on a Cruiser, say. Then small ships would be better with armor, and bigger ships better with shields)

It would also create a mid-game situation where large ships are available, but they are only useful for non-combat jobs (since shields haven't been researched to worthwhile levels yet.