Emissive Armor

[Enigma]

I am sure this has been asked a hundred times. How does Emissive Armor work. If you get hit with a weapon that does 300 points damage, does it reduce that damage by 30? I am confused.

[Suicide Junkie]

Any damage that is NOT of a type that skips armor will be affected.

The ability does not kick in until the hull is hit (IE after shields are down or when they are skipped)

The incoming damage is reduced by the highest EA ability rating of any component left on your ship.

Notes:
- the emissive armor ability does not need to be on Armor to count.
- it will reduce damage only once per hit.
- Adding multiple components with EA ability is only useful as backups in case one is destroyed by damage.

===

EG:
- Incoming hit of 100 damage (normal damage type).
- 10 Shield points left on the ship.
- Emissive armor component (50 hp, 30 ability points)
- Standard armor component (30 hp)

1) Shields block 10 damage, leaving 90.
2) damage is normal type, so EA ability kicks in, reducing damage by 30, leaving 60.
3) Damage is applied to the hull, destroying 1 standard armor component of 30hp. Leaves 30 damage left.
4) Remaining damage is applied to the hull, destroying another standard armor component, leaving 0 damage left.

[Fyron]

- Adding multiple components with EA ability is only useful as backups in case one is destroyed by damage.

But only on the next shot. Only one EA ability can be applied to any shot, even if the damage destroys one EA component and the extra damage hits another EA component. EA in SE4 is nothing like EA in SE3.

[Enigma]

Thanks so if I am hit with a shot with damage 300 and I had EA 3. Then it would reduce the amount of damage by 30.

Would I be better off having 12 Crystal Armor rather than 10 Crystal and 3 EA?

[douglas]

If a ship with emissive armor III is hit with a non-armor-skipping weapon, the damage to the hull is reduced by 30 before any other effect, to a minimum of 0. This does not affect damage done to shields - only the part of the damage that gets past shields is reduced. For this reason, I recommend using it only on ships that make heavy use of armor as their primary defense. It is particularly useful in combination with large amounts of crystalline armor and one shield generator. The amount of emissive armor on the ship does not matter, only the highest emissive ability is used. However, emissive armor has less structure than any other specialty armor and is much more easily destroyed, so putting multiple emissive armor components on a ship means you'll have the emissive effect active for more of the battle.

Edit: Wow, that was a lot of posts while I was typing. The shields from damage of crystalline armor works in a very complicated way that comes out to essentially equivalent to the emissive ability except that it stacks to a maximum of the structure of a single crystalline armor component or your maximum shields, whichever is lower. Emissive armor stacks with this effect beyond the limit, effectively allowing you to have 180 damage reduction as long as all 10 crystalline armors and at least one emissive armor remain intact. However, the emissive is weaker per component than crystalline, so you need backups. Spare crystalline armors are also important, but with the limited space on a dreadnought, I think two spare emissives is a better use of the space.

[Enigma]

thanks I am following your advice, we will see how I stand up in the next round of battles.