Emmisive Armor for Dummies, please...

[tbontob]

Originally posted by Zanthis:

BTW, the formula given Armor and EA to find the minimum strength damage to have a chance of killing EA before Armor is:

E + 2R - A + 1

where:
A = damage to kill a piece of armor,
E = damage to kill a piece of emissive armor,
R = reduction to damage from emissive component

Let' see if I can get this through my tired brain.

Where you have armorIII and emmissive armorIII and a volley:
1) the emmissive armor absorbs 30 damage.
2) then the armor III is destroyed
3) then the emmissive armor is destroyed

Is this how it works?

But your formula implies that emmissive armor can be killed first.

[PvK]

The standard armor in Proportions mod allows for a "critical hit" phenomenon, because it is not "hit first" - it just usually is hit first if you load a bunch on a ship. But even a light weapon can still get lucky and take out the bridge or the electronic warfare or something.

PvK

[Zanthis]

To answer your question tbontob, understand that components (which includes armor) are either totally destroyed or uninjuried. As a result, every ship tracks "unassigned damage" which is the extra damage that has not yet been used to destroy a component.

Suppose you somehow built a ship with only two pieces of Armor III. It takes 45 damage. Since it requires 40 damage to completely destroy a component, one of your Armor III components will be destroyed. That leaves 5 damage, and since the only remaining component takes 40 damage to destroy, that 5 damage becomes "unassigned". The next time that ship gets hit, that unassigned damage gets added to the new damage to try and destroy more components. So another hit for 35 damage will kill the second Armor III component since 35 new damage plus 5 previously unassigned damage equals the 40 damage needed to kill a piece of Armor III.

Got that so far? Ok, the game appears to try and never leave too much unassigned damage on a ship. As a result, the game builds a list of all components that can be destroyed given the current amount of new damage plus unassigned damage and picks one at random to destroy. It repeats this process until the list is empty.

Consider you had Armor I, Armor II and Armor III on a ship. Two of each. They take 20 damage, 30 damage and 40 damage to kill respectively. Visually, they could be written out like this:
> 20, 20, 30, 30, 40, 40
Now suppose this ship gets hit for 10 damage. The game builds a list of all components that can be killed with 10 damage. If such a list is in []'s, it would look like this when combined with the above list of armors:
> [] 20, 20, 30, 30, 40, 40
Nothing in the list, so nothing gets destroyed and the 10 damage becomes unassigned. Now the ship gets hit for 15 more damage. A list is built of all components that can be killed with 25 damage (the 15 from this hit plus the 10 unassigned from Last hit). This list looks like:
> [20, 20,] 30, 30, 40, 40
So one of the two Armor I components will be destroyed. That will leave 5 extra damage, for which a new list will be built. That list will obviously be empty and so that 5 extra damage gets kept as unassigned damage on the ship.

Lets reset our ship to undamage, and consider what happens when it gets pounded on by a 30 damage weapon repeatedly. Each single hit is one line. I'm listing weapon damage on the left before the '>' sign and previously unassigned damage there too, after the '+' sign. So "30+5>" means hit for 30 and there was already 5 unassigned damage on the ship.
30+0> [ 20, 20, 30, 30,] 40, 40
30+0> [ 20, 20, **, 30,] 40, 40
30+10> [ **, 20, **, 30, 40, 40 ]
30+0> [ **, 20, **, 30, **, 40 ]
30+10> [ **, **, **, 30, **, 40 ]
30+10> [ **, **, **, **, **, 40 ]
0>
Now lets do 11 damage per hit:
11+0> [] 20, 20, 30, 30, 40, 40
11+11> [ 20, 20,] 30, 30, 40, 40
11+2> [] **, 20, 30, 30, 40, 40
11+13> [ **, 20,] 30, 30, 40, 40
11+4> [] **, **, 30, 30, 40, 40
11+15> [] **, **, 30, 30, 40, 40
11+26> [ **, **, 30, 30,] 40, 40
11+7> [] **, **, **, 30, 40, 40
11+18> [] **, **, **, 30, 40, 40
11+29> [ **, **, **, 30, 40, 40 ]
Ok, I stopped there, but notice how the Armor III is now a valid target? That is because using the formula: E + 2R - A + 1, 11 is the minimum damage value needed if you want a chance to kill Armor III before destroying all the Armor II. Effectively, E should be the damage to kill the component you want to kill (40 in this case), and A should be the damage to kill the component you don't want to kill (30 in this case). Since their is no emissive armor in this example, R is zero.

I hope that cleared it up a little. I'm still running tests, especially since there has been indication in this thread that internal damage assignment may vary from armor damage assignment.

[Wardad]

Originally posted by Zanthis:
....Got that so far? Ok, the game appears to try and never leave too much unassigned damage on a ship. As a result, the game builds a list of all components that can be destroyed given the current amount of new damage plus unassigned damage and picks one at random to destroy. It repeats this process until the list is empty....

Does it really work this for non-armor? The bridge, lifesupport, crew quarters, and other small stuff could get wiped out before missles or larger mount weapons.
Looks like someone could exploit it with a few weak weapons added to the front of their ships firing order. It could become more effective then engine damage weapons, after the armor and shields are gone.

[ September 05, 2002, 17:21: Message edited by: Wardad ]

[Suicide Junkie]

My tests (with 20+ of each type of armor) have shown that it does not work that way.

Armor is targetted somewhat randomly. Lower hitpoint armor components are targetted much more often, but not always.
Damage proceeds normally. If there are multiple armors of different sizes, occasionally the tougher one may be hit but not destroyed, and the next shot will kill two or three of the smaller armors.

Internals are targetted in the opposite way. In general, it is close to "one lottery ticket per hitpoint" type of thing, although there is a tendency for stronger internal components to be hit more often than that.

[LGM]

Originally posted by Wardad:
Does it really work this for non-armor? The bridge, lifesupport, crew quarters, and other small stuff could get wiped out before missles or larger mount weapons.
Looks like someone could exploit it with a few weak weapons added to the front of their ships firing order. It could become more effective then engine damage weapons, after the armor and shields are gone.

If that turns out to be true, Null-Space on Normal mounts could be really good against large ships. Ignores large+ mounted weapons and takes out critical little stuff (Bridge, Crew, Computer, Life Support, ECM, Sensors, Talisman!, Shield Generators, etc. And Crystalline races could use Shard Cannons to pick off these important components as well.

In prior Versions, I am pretty sure I have seen Colonizers take no damage from a hit, presumably because the 150 KT Colony module was hit. However, it may have just been a Ram attack and not a weapon hit, which should take out something else.

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by LGM:
If that turns out to be true, Null-Space on Normal mounts could be really good against large ships. Ignores large+ mounted weapons and takes out critical little stuff (Bridge, Crew, Computer, Life Support, ECM, Sensors, Talisman!, Shield Generators, etc. And Crystalline races could use Shard Cannons to pick off these important components as well.

Don't know if it works like that, but if it does, does it really help? Think about it, losing control components prevents the ship from moving fast, but you're probably at point blank range by that time anyway. Likewise for sensors.

[Wardad]

Arkon,

Not only would the control componants go first, but also the ecm, sensors, engines and supply storage.

DEATH...
So first you can hardly move, then your easier to hit, then your punches start missing, and then your life blood leaks out, ...pls excuse the drama... all before your weapons are gone.
Hmmm, too bad there isn't a "Fire until all fuel is gone" check box on the strategy menu. Maybe 50% damage would be enough.

-----------------------------------------------
Arkon, Is your footer a quote from Capn Kirk?

[ September 05, 2002, 22:16: Message edited by: Wardad ]

[LGM]

Originally posted by Arkcon:
Don't know if it works like that, but if it does, does it really help? Think about it, losing control components prevents the ship from moving fast, but you're probably at point blank range by that time anyway. Likewise for sensors.

If your enemy is using the Talisman, you are not at point blank range and their orders are probably Max Range. They probably have no Cultural Combat bonus or Racial bonus if they are a Relgious race. They might even cheat at doing proper Ship and Fleet training if they think they have you out fire powered at long range. Max range with a destroyed Talisman is a bad place to be. Admittedly, you have to kill the Engines and other Small stuff first, but a Talisman Dreadnaught probably has a Master computer or (1 bridge, 3 crew, 3 life sup), 4 Engines, 1 Solar Sail, 1 ECM III and point defenses as the only things smaller than the Talisman. Armor IIIs would be skipped as we are assuming to use Null Space or Shard Cannons. Probably no fuel storage as they have a few Quantum reactor ships in their fleet. They figure they will win or lose the battle long before they run out of fuel on that ship. Maybe one or two supply tops, just because they have so few engines to store supply. Shield Generators are 40 kt, so you would hit them before Talisman (50 kt). If you are using a Null Space, you want 50KT so every hit has a chance to hit a Talisman. If using a Shard Cannon you want at least a Large mount to get over 50K damage so you have a chance to hit the Talisman with each shot, but you want to stay below the damage of their mounted weapons.

If you use this targeting Fastest Ship with no Multi-tracking, you will keep shooting the same ship for that round. Next time you fire, you will switch targets, which is good if you actually made it as far as the Talisman, bad if you just fell short. Shooting until 30% damaged might work better. You would have to tune the damage % to their design.

[Zanthis]

Further testing revealed that I was not entirely correct. I have a new theory, but need to test more.

In case you were wondering what I used to disprove my previous thought, it was a base ship with a Master Computer III, one piece of Armor I and 147 pieces of Armor III. A single hit from an DUCIII failed to kill the single piece of Armor I as I had said.

Back to the testing board.