Shield recharging components question...

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by oleg:
8 CA III + EA III makes you impregnable to weapons with less than 150 damage. Even against bigger guns, it will prolong you survival immensely

Not if I understand crystal armor it doesn't. The points get put to shields yes, but they also get applied to the crystal structure and the ramor gets destroyed. You might be impregnable to one shot from a 180 damage weapon, but the second shot will get through. You seem to be saying it's emmisive armor with the bonus of putting the points to your shields instead of just disapating it nowhere. I don't think that's the case.

Geoschmo

[oleg]

Originally posted by geoschmo:

quote:

---

Originally posted by oleg:
8 CA III + EA III makes you impregnable to weapons with less than 150 damage. Even against bigger guns, it will prolong you survival immensely

Not if I understand crystal armor it doesn't. The points get put to shields yes, but they also get applied to the crystal structure and the ramor gets destroyed. You might be impregnable to one shot from a 180 damage weapon, but the second shot will get through. You seem to be saying it's emmisive armor with the bonus of putting the points to your shields instead of just disapating it nowhere. I don't think that's the case.

Geoschmo

---

No,no, CA does not channel the damage inflicted in shot, but ALL damage registered to CA up to its upper limit. Example: you hit ship with 6 CAIII (recharge 90 points) with some weapon doing 90 damage. If there are no shields before hit, after the hit you get 90 points damage to CA and 90 points shields. Next shot, you fire second such weapon - you strip all shields but do NO damage to armor. Before next turn, CA miracuosly channel 90 damage to shield, leaving target ship in exactly same state as before !

BTW, this is not a bug, this is how MM wanted CA to work.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by oleg:
No,no, CA does not channel the damage inflicted in shot, but ALL damage registered to CA up to its upper limit. Example: you hit ship with 6 CAIII (recharge 90 points) with some weapon doing 90 damage. If there are no shields before hit, after the hit you get 90 points damage to CA and 90 points shields. Next shot, you fire second such weapon - you strip all shields but do NO damage to armor. Before next turn, CA miracuosly channel 90 damage to shield, leaving target ship in exactly same state as before !

BTW, this is not a bug, this is how MM wanted CA to work.

But this is not how others have described crystal armor working, unless I have totally misread them. What others have said is, taking your example, 90 points would be added to the shields on that first shot, BUT 90 points of damage would also be done to the armor itself. And by this process after a couple of hits your crystal armor is gone and you start taking damage to the ship.

Geoschmo

[oleg]

Well, try it yourself If weapon hit is smaller than total CA ability, damage to CA stabilizes at weapon hits, If weapon hit is bigger than total CA, damage slowly goes up until first CA is destroyed. It will lower total CA recharge and will start CA meltdown. But it will suck a lot of damage in the process.

[geoschmo]

Well I tried it and you are correct Oleg. Sure seems like a bug to me though. Even with organic armor if you can pounce the organic armor ship with enough weapons you will eventually overwhelm it's ability to repair itself. With this you could actually make a baseship that was almost completly crystal armor that would be almost completely impervious to any standard weapon. You would only be able to do damage with a starbase mounted weapon, or with null space or possibly some of the other racial weapons. the only standard ship weapon able to break it would be a baseship mounted wave motion gun, and it would only tick off 5 points per shot. That would take 30 hits just to kill one piece of armor.

And it could withstand an infinte number of ships. That's just not right. And you could build a starbase that literally couldn't be damaged, even by another starbase if there was any way you get it withing range, which there isn't.

Of course you wouldn't have much room for weapons, but for an infinitly strong ship you wouldn't need much in the way of weapons, just one and a lot of patience will do.

Sure seems like a bug to me.

Geoschmo

[Baron Munchausen]

You are forgetting the effects of seekers. A stack of missiles seems to hit 'all at once' just like a stack of fighters, doing HUGE damage totals in a single hit. So, as with most things in SE IV, there is a way around the 'unbeatable' Crystalline Armor.

Also, mixing shield depleters with standard weapons will go a long way to screw up the advantages of CA. I've never seen a hit with a shield depleter recharge shields. Just 'interleave' them with your standad weapons so they get fired alternately and you've got something that will be much more effective than standard weapons alone.

[jimbob]

Yes, but there are nonstandard weapons like the null-space weapons. He's now sunk the king's ransom in CA into his starbase, and your weapons all bypass! Unless I'm misunderstanding the way null-space weapons work, he's hooped

Oh, and as an afterthough, presuming you have no null-space weapons, the starbase (or any other vessel) would do well to have both a ton of CA and a modest amount of OA (organic armor). Then if you do manage to punch a shot or two through, the OA will fix up any failed/destroyed CA. Thus the complementing advantages of picking more than one racial trait... not that I ever pick crystaline

[oleg]

There is another way to deal with the stockpile of CA - If you take the whole piece of CA in one shot, it will recharge only the overhead damage.
CA III has 150 points. If you hit with 200 weapon, it will blow up one piece and only 50 residual 50 will be channeled to shield. Of course in most cases you will have some shields to sap before getting CA itself in one shot, but basic idea when fighting CA is bigger is better !

Another good anti-CA weapon is time distortion bust. Once you get several levels in temporal weapons and mount TDB on light cruiser or bigger, you can eat heavily armoured crystalline ships alive. 4x shields damage makes a mockery out of CA. CA is in no way unballancing, it just add new interesting twist to SE gameplay.

[ September 05, 2002, 02:39: Message edited by: oleg ]

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by jimbob:
Yes, but there are nonstandard weapons like the null-space weapons. He's now sunk the king's ransom in CA into his starbase, and your weapons all bypass! Unless I'm misunderstanding the way null-space weapons work, he's hooped

Oh, and as an afterthough, presuming you have no null-space weapons, the starbase (or any other vessel) would do well to have both a ton of CA and a modest amount of OA (organic armor). Then if you do manage to punch a shot or two through, the OA will fix up any failed/destroyed CA. Thus the complementing advantages of picking more than one racial trait... not that I ever pick crystaline

No. Organic armor only regenerates itself. You can create other component families that use armor regeneration, sure. But they will also only regenerate themselves -- other components of the same family. You'd have to mod special armor to use both abilities to get that effect. And if you did, I think everyone would consider it unbalanced. Only Emissive Armor 'shares' its ability with other armors. And that's nasty enough now that it always takes damage 'off the top' before the damage is applied to any components. Combining Emissive and Crystalline armor is nasty and very powerful in the hands of a clever player.

[ September 05, 2002, 04:07: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]