Armor, Shields and Damage (FAQ)

[Mephisto]

That's an easy one.
Count all the hitpoints of all the components and add them together. Then add all shild points to this result, too. That's it. To answer your question: Special armor and shield do NOTHING, they just add their hitpoints and nothing else. If you fire on a unit it will never be damaged and only destroyed when you accumulate enough points to compensate for all of the unit hitpoints.

Extended example:
You have 2 weapon platforms. Both have a "body" (i.e. all components added together) of 500. Platform A has 1 shield V (300 shield points) so the total hitpoints for platform A is 800 (body+shield). Platform B has a phased shield V (375 shield points) so its total hitpoints are 875.
Both are stationed on the same planet and so form one stack with 1675 hit points (800+875).
If you apply 799 damage points, nothing happens.
If you apply 800 damage points, platform A (800) will be destroyed.
Iy you apply 875 damage points (in one salvo), platform A will be gone IMHO but here I could be wrong.

Anyway, you got the idea.

[ 10 December 2001: Message edited by: [K126]Mephisto ]

[dumbluck]

So, when it comes to units, crystaline and organic armor special abilities an non-functional. No regenerative organic armor, no crystalline armor boost to shields are present. Is that what you are saying?

What about mixing units with phased and normal shield, as in your example. Do all the shields block phased weapons, or do none of them (like when you mix phased and normal shields on a ship, they act as normal shields until all the normal shield gens are knocked out, then you suddenly switch to phased shields...)

Oooohhh, my poor head is spinning.....

[LGM]

Has it ever bothered anyone that 10KT of armor covers a Battleship just as effectively as an Escort. I think that armor effectiveness should be modified by the hull size. This would also make smaller hulls have more compensation for being able to hold fewer components.

I would suggest a formula that makes large hull require more armor components to be equally effective: Adjusted Armor Value = Base Armor Value /((KT of Hull/100)^.5))

where ^.5 means raised to the half power (also known as a square root).

You could even go simpler and make it linear: [b]Adjusted Armor Value = Base Armor Value x (100 KT/Hull Size in KT). This would make a light cruiser require 2 armor to be equal to a frigate with 1 armor (400 KT versus 200KT).

You could use 150KT as the base factor instead of 100 if you want Escorts to be at base value. My 100 based formula actual boosts the armor effectiveness of Escorts (they need help anyway).

I would also suggest a similar thing be done with shield points.

Not that Malfador can handle even multiplication in formulas (ever notice most things are addition and subtraction rather than multiplication and division?).

[Mephisto]

Methinks that no special armor abilities are working. And you can mix phased and normal shields as you like - there is no such thing as a unit shield skipping weapon for a weapon platform. A normal shield V adds 340 hitpoints (300 shield points plus 40 component hit points) and a phased shield V adds 415 (375 shields plus 40 component hit points). A weapon platform is one solid slug of material, you cannot pass anything just hit it.

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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So, when it comes to units, crystaline and organic armor special abilities an non-functional. No regenerative organic armor, no crystalline armor boost to shields are present. Is that what you are saying?

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Organic armor regeneration requires the component to be destroyed before it regenerates, so units can't make use of that.

Crystalline armor IS sometimes effective, though. Sats/fighters's crystalline armor stacks within the group of units, too.
Unfortunately, as of the 1.41 -> 1.49 patch, sats are screwed up, and their shields are actually "armor". IE shield depleters have no effect, and the shields do not weaken. Crys ability does not seem to be useful on sats anymore. Same with fighters .
EDIT: Well, even with a planetary shield, SE4 v1.49 fails to use the crystalline armor.

Time to bug Aaron for these abilities on units, eh?

[ 10 December 2001: Message edited by: suicide_junkie ]

[Baron Munchausen]

quote:

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Originally posted by suicide_junkie:
Organic armor regeneration requires the component to be destroyed before it regenerates, so units can't make use of that.

Crystalline armor IS sometimes effective, though. Sats/fighters's crystalline armor stacks within the group of units, too.
Unfortunately, as of the 1.41 -> 1.49 patch, sats are screwed up, and their shields are actually "armor". IE shield depleters have no effect, and the shields do not weaken. Crys ability does not seem to be useful on sats anymore. Same with fighters .
EDIT: Well, even with a planetary shield, SE4 v1.49 fails to use the crystalline armor.

Time to bug Aaron for these abilities on units, eh?

[ 10 December 2001: Message edited by: suicide_junkie ]

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You are saying that you don't see satellite shields respond to damage when hit? I'm not using 1.49 anymore but the current beta. Satellite shields DO respond to damage. I've seen it many times. Oddly, drone shields do not respond to damage right now. They just take hits until suddenly the drone is destroyed. I guess that's the effect you are seeng with sats. What about fighters? When I get into combat with fighters and the PDC doesn't destroy them outright (which is too fast to follow), I can also see shield damage reflected on the display when I use the slower 'main' weapons to finish them off. It seems to be only drones that have this problem right now. I hope MM is working on this, but it strikes me as really odd that a bug would seem to 'move' from an old unit type to a new one.

[Suicide Junkie]

V1.49, a stack of fighters or sats.
Shooting a shield depleter does nothing. Hitting with PDC (normal damage) has no apparent effect until the unit + shields is killed.

Against a 400/50 HP sat.
Two 300 damage Shield depleter hits have no apparent effect.
A 60 Damage Meson bLaster has no visible effect.
The eigth meson bLaster hit reads 400/50 damage, and the sat is destroyed.

Note: you do see the shield animation, but the damage meters don't change, and the right-click report shows no damage.
All in simmed combat.

[ 11 December 2001: Message edited by: suicide_junkie ]

[LGM]

quote:

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Originally posted by suicide_junkie:
Organic armor regeneration requires the component to be destroyed before it regenerates, so units can't make use of that.

[ 10 December 2001: Message edited by: suicide_junkie ]

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I thought someone determined that the regenerative processes of Organic occurred as soon as the battle starts. That it would add damage capacity to the armor before it even gets hit. Thus, Organic armor gets stronger even if it is not hit and that Organic ships are harder to destroy if you do not start at point blank.

However, now that I think about it, others have suggested that because components are never partially damaged, that there is a carry over factor (ship wide) for damage that does not exceed the Last component hit that gets added to the next hit.

Can anyone explain how Organic Armor really works? Does it accommulate points for a few rounds and then suddenly reappears when enough points for a whole piece have been saved up? Or does it appear imediately and put the differential in the carry over damage (if so it would be nasty if the next hit came from a Null Space weapon)? Does its regeneration apply to the carry over damage from the Last hit?

[dumbluck]

quote:

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Originally posted by LGM:


I thought someone determined that the regenerative processes of Organic occurred as soon as the battle starts. That it would add damage capacity to the armor before it even gets hit. Thus, Organic armor gets stronger even if it is not hit and that Organic ships are harder to destroy if you do not start at point blank.

However, now that I think about it, others have suggested that because components are never partially damaged, that there is a carry over factor (ship wide) for damage that does not exceed the Last component hit that gets added to the next hit.

Can anyone explain how Organic Armor really works? Does it accommulate points for a few rounds and then suddenly reappears when enough points for a whole piece have been saved up? Or does it appear imediately and put the differential in the carry over damage (if so it would be nasty if the next hit came from a Null Space weapon)? Does its regeneration apply to the carry over damage from the Last hit?

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Read the first post in this thread (way back at the bottom of page 5). The answers are all there. Everything you wanted to know about damage calculations, and some things you didn't really want to know!

[LGM]

It has been so long since I first read the original post on this thread, that I forgot all that information was in there. The original post fits my experiences fighting Organic Armor. It is much easier to defeat at a warp-point battle. Null Space work great, but they are costly.