Armor Thoughts

Baal · #1 May 26th, 2001, 08:48 PM

Does anyone here use armor? (except to guard against PPBs)

no.

In my opinion shields should be weaker per tonnage than armor. Armor you see you have to repair every time it breaks, shields are regenerated every battle with out repair.

There should be some insentive to use armor as an alternative to shields, so why not make them better protection to offset the fact that you need to repair them?

Marty Ward · #2 May 26th, 2001, 09:13 PM

I use armor. I use the stealth and scattering for the defensive to hit benefits. I also load up on it if I don't have phased shields and my enemy is using PPB's. Also, there are no armor depleting weapons so if you are up against an enemy who uses these then armor is better.
If you use the Dev mod you might find the Albative armor useful too, 1 kt for 12 points of protection at top level I think. You can put a lot of armor protection on with it, just bring along a repair ship with about 5 repair bay III's.

[This message has been edited by Marty Ward (edited 26 May 2001).]

Baron Munchausen · #3 May 26th, 2001, 09:21 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Baal:
Does anyone here use armor? (except to guard against PPBs)

no.

In my opinion shields should be weaker per tonnage than armor. Armor you see you have to repair every time it breaks, shields are regenerated every battle with out repair.

There should be some insentive to use armor as an alternative to shields, so why not make them better protection to offset the fact that you need to repair them?

1) Make it CHEAPER than shields per point of protection. It's just dead weight, after all, not some complex piece of electromagnetic machinery. Maybe it takes a lot of research to develop a very tough alloy but once you setup mass production the economics of scale takes over.

2) Increase the other benefits of armor so there are other reasons to use it. I've doubled the defensive bonus on my stealth and scattering armor since this now seems to stack with ECM. A 30 percent defense modifier is no small thing. Also increased the damage limits of Emissive armor, but that's the next suggestion:

3) Alter Emissive Armor to work slightly differently. As it currently works, you are either completely protected -- immune to whatever weapon is being used against you -- or it doesn't help you at all. If you set the ability of the armor high enough to stop most weapons then it's too powerful. But if you don't set it high enough to stop most weapons then it's nearly useless except against wimpy enemies with far lower tech than you have. You're just paying extra for your armor.

I have several times proposed a change in how Emissive Armor works and I'll repeat it here: Set a TOTAL limit per combat turn on how much damage emissive armor can absorb, not just a "per hit" limit. So, even if no single hit exceeds the limit it is still possible to 'overload' the armor with a massive amount of low powered fire. The 'immunity' effect is then much less of a problem and Emissive Armor can be given a decent damage resistance level. This can either be a second setting in the ability itself or a total of the capacity of all armor on the ship -- which would be best since this gives larger ships a reasonably scaled advantage AND provides a gradual loss of ability as armor is destroyed. When the limit is reached, armor would be damaged normally. As your plates of emissive armor are lost, the total ability decays and it becomes easier to further damage the armor.

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 26 May 2001).]

Suicide Junkie · #4 May 26th, 2001, 09:24 PM

The Pirates & Nomads was the source for the ablative armor, as well as HMSGs, which combine armor and shielding pretty effectively.

Shields output 8Hp/KT max, and standard armor only game you 4HP/KT. Ablative gives 14Hp/KT, but comes in 1kt segments, so a Repair Bay 3 will only repair 112 hitpoints per turn of ablative armor

A pretty good trade off, IMO.

I believe Devnull is also using my standard shield mods, where Standard shields provide more hitpoints than Phased. (since the phased shields block more weapons) And the research gives you alternating Normal/phased, so the tech race Lasts longer.

Suicide Junkie · #5 May 26th, 2001, 09:29 PM

quote:
3) Alter Emissive Armor to work slightly differently. As it currently works, you are either completely protected -- immune to whatever weapon is being used against you -- or it doesn't help you at all. If you set the ability of the armor high enough to stop most weapons then it's too powerful. But if you don't set it high enough to stop most wepaons then it's nearly useless except against wimpy enemies with far lower tech than you have. I have proposed a change in how Emissive Armor works and I'll repeat it here: Set a TOTAL limit per combat turn on how much damage emissive armor can absorb, not just a "per hit" limit. So, even if no single hit exceeds the limit it is still possible to 'overload' the armor with a massive amount of low powered fire. The 'immunity' problem is then much less of a problem and Emissive Armor can be given a decent damage level. This can either be a second setting in the ability itself or a total of the capacity of all armor on the ship -- which would be best since this gives larger ships a reasonably scaled advantage AND provides a gradual loss of ability as armor is destroyed. When the limit is reached, armor would be damage normally. As your plates of emissive armor are lost, the total ability decays and it becomes easier to further damage the armor.

An alternative, is to make it like Classic SE3 Emissive armor, which negated the FIRST X points of damage.

Then a 30 point EA3 would take 10 damage from a 40 Damage meson bLaster, and would take 270 damage from a 300 damage missile salvo.

Marty Ward · #6 May 26th, 2001, 09:33 PM

SJ,
Found out about the repair time the hard way. I had 65 of them on a ship that survived a tough fight. Took a long time to repair that ship!
Good idea you had, glad Dev used it in his mod.

Suicide Junkie · #7 May 26th, 2001, 11:09 PM

quote:
Found out about the repair time the hard way. I had 65 of them on a ship that survived a tough fight. Took a long time to repair that ship!

That's over a year unless you had full repair tech (or multiple repair stations)!

I've designed ships with well over 250 components, and boy are they slow. They never die though!

Lisif Deoral · #8 May 27th, 2001, 10:36 AM

Does anyone use emissive armor?
I think it's almost useless, since damage from fighters isn't applied with every single shot but summed up for each attack routine, and (almost) every other weapon causes more damage than its damage tolerance limit. Or does the ability to ignore damage of 20 points or less stack? (i.e., 20 points with 1 armor component, 40 with 2, 60 with 3...)

capnq · #9 May 27th, 2001, 12:39 PM

I use regular Armor a lot, to fill in leftover space in hulls that can't hold another shield or weapon. I think it adds more survival value than the backup control bridge. It also works against mines and unstable warp points, which shields don't. Small Armor also seems to help units survive more than Small ECM, from the little I've experimented with it. I don't use the advanced armors much, and mainly use Stealth Armor if I do research it that far.

------------------
Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft

rdouglass · #10 May 27th, 2001, 07:11 PM

I use armor a lot in early games, but not so much in late games. However, I still use some on EVERY Attack or Scout ship, especially ones I want to ignore the damaging Warp Points (shields do not protect). I agree With Marty W - the defensive bonuses for later armor is very attractive. IIRC it does stack so you get 30% defence with both (Scattering and Stealth).