Armor, Shields and Damage (FAQ): Correction

[Zanthis]

I just noticed some odd behaviour from Organic Armor while testing mines and discovered something interesting. So, here is a correction on how Organic Armor works followed by a brief note on emissive armor.

Organic Armor Correction
It works pretty much as I stated before, however, once an organic armor component is destroyed, it stops generating points toward regeneration for the remainder of the battle. That means, if you have 10 piece of OA-III (30pt regen/turn) and 9 are destroyed, from that point on you only generate 30 points of regeneration! So, once you run out of built-up regeneration, it will take 5 turns to repair each component .

Also, Organic Armor is not automatically repaired outside of combat (although it should be). In fact, I find it very amusing, assuming I have at least 1 OA remaining, to engage colony ships and such and just sit in place will my OA repairs itself. Repeat until all your OA is back. I think OA should auto-repair at the beginning of each turn, but hey, that's just me.

Emissive Armor
Ok, works pretty much just like you'd expect. It is not cumulative. It is triggered before damage is delt to your ship (but not before it hits shields). This means if you have 1 EA-III and 10 OA, no weapon doing 30 or less damage has any effect.

However, remember how extra damage to your ship gets added to future weapon attacks? That's right, this can let weaker weapons piggy-back past emissive armor. As if it wasn't worthless enough. So, if you have a Meson BLaster (30 dmg) and a APB (35 dmg say), fire the APB first then the MB and you'll get 65 damage on the target instead of the 35 you get by firing the MB first.

[Crab Legs]

Thanks Zanthis,
As always your wisdom is most depressing LOL. I do hope the problem is addressed because worthless technology is not as fun to research as worthwhile tech. Kind of defeats the point of researching at all if the future tech is not going to be worth its while...

------------------
"Doctors, glad I'm not sick!"

[Nyx]

So let me see if I get this right, If I have 3 OAs and two go down, but get regenerated back up, the two that are now supposedly back at full strength no longer regenerate?

------------------
Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.

[Zanthis]

That is correct Nyx. Also, any OA already destroyed prior to the start of battle will not provide any regeneration during the entire battle.

[LintMan]

Clarification question:

You say that OA is not automatically repaired outside of combat. Do you mean not at all, even between turns?

I'm pretty sure I've seen some OA on my ships get destroyed by a screwey warp point, but then repaired the next turn. This was in a pre-1.19 game, though - I haven't checked it lately.

[Zanthis]

LintMan:
That is correct. I did about 10 end turns in a row with a ship that had lost 2 out of 3 OA components to a mine while I was testing and no repair happened.

Personally, I think at the start of "your" turn, every ship you own containing at least one un-destroyed OA component should have all OA components repaired for free.

I'm not sure when components are repaired (at the start or end of your turn) but if at the start, I'd also ensure that this OA regeneration happened before your repair bays went to work. No sense wasting repairs on self-regenerating armor.

[This message has been edited by Zanthis (edited 08 February 2001).]

[E. Albright]

Bump.

[Magus38]

Actually I think I must raise an objection. While it is true that OE does not repair itself while destroyed outside of combat, once a layer of OA regenerates within combat it does indeed contribute to the whole. I think the problem is that the level of actual damage reported each turn misrepresents the true level of damage the armor currently bears, meaning that the repair is incorrectly reported. There are exceptions to this simply in that the behaviour of OA in general is very flaky and sometimes actually inconsistent.

[dumbluck]

Budda-Bump