Discussion on Armor

[invaderzim]

Because I am a pirate too. So I have to shoot them when they drop by my colonies.

[necaradan666]

Doesn't armour protect against Missiles too? Beams won't get through armour as well as Rail Guns right?

When a Giant Kaltor attacks it'll start eating your engines right through the shields and then your dead.. unless you have a few bits of armour to help you survive.

most importantly a starship with heavy armour is more cool than one without..

[MartialDoctor]

Guys, please keep this on topic. It's a discussion about armor and it's effectiveness. Not about ways to counter rail guns or any such things...

ORIGINAL: Plant
The problem is that armour doesn't seem to need to be destroyed to take damage. The Galctopedia seems to not be telling the truth.
The damage might be reduced, but unless the reactive rating is greater than the damage of the weapon, the components seem to always get damaged.
So, in the end, armour seems practically useless till the late game with robotic repairs, and a much more effective armour combined with less effective railguns.

If this is true, it would explain why armor just gets sliced through like it's not there. Also, if it's true, I don't see the point in having armor in the first place.

Can anyone verify it?

ORIGINAL: Plant
Also, railgun/armour relationship seem to be a bad game design in general. What does 50% less effective mean? Half damage? Armour rating is doubled? Needing to research end tech robotic repairs to counter railgun damage. Railguns becoming near useless at the end tech, so much so, that is is pointless to research the last two weapons and the side tree, in an already shortened railgun tech tree.

Based on this discussion, I'm beginning to wonder what the purpose of armor is. As well as why rail guns were created...

[Plant]

This is just an example, but not definate proof. This picture shows the aftermath of a railgun attack. You can see that not all the armour pieces need to be destroyed for other componets to be damaged. There is no robotic repair.
The only other thing I can think of is gravitic weapons, but I think it unlikely that all the ships that I face against with railguns just happen to have gravitic weapons as well.
http://img541.imageshack.us/img541/7279 ... oureff.jpg

So, the Galactopedia semms incorrect, and having more than a very small amount armour components is near useless.
The races which favour armour designs are essentially crippled.
Same with those who favour railguns.

As to why railguns were created, my guess is that people keep asking for moar weapon types, without thinking about the effects of these weapons.
It's like with most of the features requested when you go though the wishlist. Most of them are just thoughtless, without explicitely stating what they wish to see and they how think it should work.

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: Plant

This is just an example, but not definate proof. This picture shows the aftermath of a railgun attack. You can see that not all the armour pieces need to be destroyed for other componets to be damaged. There is no robotic repair.

Looks pretty convincing that armour isn't protecting as the documentation says it's supposed to.

You should re-post in tech support, identifying it as a defect - either in rail-gun implementation or the docs. They both cannot be correct.

[Carewolf]

If rail guns seem too powerful it is because armor is too powerful. It is circular logic to say armor is useless and then claim the thing that it protects against is overpowered. Railguns are only good against you if you too dumb to put enough armor on your ships

[Plant]

I don't think it is a bug. I think it's been like that since the original Distnt Worlds. I have never checked to see the other expansions changed how armour worked, I just presumed that the Galactopedia is incorrect.

Carebare...what are you saying? Railguns powerful because armour is too powerful? The point is that armour is near worthless against all weapons, including railguns, which are supposed to be ineffective against armour.

The only time armour is of any use against railguns is the mid/end game, where railguns are useless anyways, since you would be better off researching any other type of weapon.

You don't make any sense at all. Nobody has said armour is overpowered, just the opposite, because they don't seem to work as they should do.

I guess you are too dumb

[MartialDoctor]

No need to get into flame wars guys. Let's keep this civil.

And, unfortunately, I think you are right, Plant. I seem to remember this is intended. And to make matters worse, it seems to be almost random what components get hit. It doesn't even seem to be that armor has a higher chance of getting hit. I've been watching instances of where internal components are hit even before armor is hit. No wonder putting more armor on my ships seems to have little effect!

Here's a picture of one of my frigates in a recent fight. I had put extra armor, 20 enhanced armor, in order to give it better protection. Out of the 33 components damaged, only 12 of them are armor!! The other 21 are all important internal components. 8 of the armor slots are still totally intact! And I had watched it earlier, picture not included, where very few armor slots had been hit yet many internal components had already been damaged!

So, based on this, armor is even less effective than I previously thought. [:(]

[MartialDoctor]

And, as people were saying to compare normal techs, I have done so now.

Corvidian Shields:
Purchase Cost: 125
Maintenance Cost: 35
Strength: 100

Standard Armor
Purchase Cost: 67 (~2x less)
Maintenance Cost: 14 (2.5x less)
Rating: 10 (10x less)

So, corvidian shields are 10x more effective than standard armor yet only cost 2x more in purchase cost and 2.5x more in maintenance. And that would be assuming that armor gets hit first before internal components do, which has been shown to not even be the case! So, standard armor is even less effective than that!

[Plant]

Nice to get another person's confirmation that armour isn't working as the Galactopedia says.
I think how armour works, is that armour is always hit first, but the Basic Rating takes damage only from the amount that the Reactive Rating has prevented/absorbed. Any damage that isn't absorbed by the Reactive Rating simply goes on to damage any other component.
Pure conjecture of course.

Rather annoyingly for me, the component to be damaged seems to be biased towards the hyperdrive component.

To be fair MartialDoctor, if armour works as described, it would be a space efficient defence as you can fit 10 Armour into the space of 1 Shield, as well as the absorbing effect.
But then again, steel and carbon fibre are the main limiters for production, which are what armour is made out of.

[MartialDoctor]

Yes, I'm not sure myself. Maybe Eric or someone familiar with the details can fill us in.

My guess is that it's intended to be expensive and more of a last ditch sort of defense.

In that case, when facing rail guns, the idea would be to either keep your distance or use rail guns, or gravity weapons, yourself. Anytime you move into close distance with a rail gun heavy craft, you are pretty much toast, regardless of how much tougher your ship may be on paper (in terms of weapons rating).

As was stated earlier, though, having damage control and repair bots may even out the field more. I'm not sure on that part... just been looking at pure armor at the moment.

[feelotraveller]

Some very good points made already.  But-
 
a) shields are absolutely useless against monsters
b) shields are next to useless in supernovae
c) shields are somewhat useless in nebulae, depending on length of stay
 
They are two forms of defence which have different roles to play and both have strengths and weaknesses.  So I think a direct comparison of shields to armour is not a good one.  It is like comparing blasters to missiles; given the circumstance one or the other is likely to be better. (Last Legends game I had a fleet whose sole purpose was to fry bugs in the nebulae and I'm sure they racked up more kills per ship than any other fleet and they were shieldless.  [;)])
 
Maybe armour is still too weak (I don't find it so) but let's not overstate the case.  Good topic though. 

[MartialDoctor]

Thanks, traveller. Good to get someone else to add to the discussion.

ORIGINAL: feelotraveller
a) shields are absolutely useless against monsters

Monsters are a small part of the game and no enemy empire or pirate faction has monsters.

ORIGINAL: feelotraveller
b) shields are next to useless in supernovae
c) shields are somewhat useless in nebulae, depending on length of stay

Those are very specific circumstances. And battles rarely occur there due to nothing extremely important being there (e.g. no colonies).

ORIGINAL: feelotraveller
Maybe armour is still too weak (I don't find it so)

The three things you just mentioned were very specific cases and only a small part of the game. The main part of this game is ship vs ship battles that are in normal systems...

Edit: And I guess I should add that you state that they have "different roles" but they do not. They both are used for protection. They have no other usage.

[feelotraveller]

So you build all of your ships without armour?  [X(]

[MartialDoctor]

ORIGINAL: feelotraveller

So you build all of your ships without armour?  [X(]

If you're asking me what I do personally, I tend to put light armor on them.

Recently, though, I have been facing many ships with rail guns. After putting high amounts of armor on them, I found it did very little. Also, I tried using rail guns myself and found them far too effective...

Thus, I started researching armor further and started this thread [8D]

[feelotraveller]

Sorry for the quick response which left out some bits.  But the thrust of it was why, thinking as you personally do, would you use armour?  (OT: light armour is my usual preference.)  For me I always use at least one piece of armour for its reactive property.  And this leads to one role which armour fulfills but that shields do not, damage mitigation (could call this reduction but then the discussion might get confused with the effect of repair modules).  Shields do not do this. This effects all battles as far as I am aware.  Any ship you want to protect from mauling by monsters needs more.  Any ship which will freqently pass through storms needs more.  Any ship which you expect to operate for any length of time in a shield draining environment needs more.  (Last time I checked this game was not called 'Gratuitous Space Battles' [:D], sorry for the poor joke at your expense.)  I also add a few bits or armour to my ships when other components will do no further good (too big, not enough energy, etc.) since some protection is better than nothing.

(Aside: I max monsters so probably pay them more heed, but they are not insignificant as they usually guard the best colony/resource locations.  Nebulae are also pretty widespread and opponents can be lured into these traps easily.  I have also had them (edit: nebulae, to avoid confusion) penetrate colonies so although not common you do get battles in them even without arranging it to be so. Supernovae are indeed very rarely contested.)

Rail guns is another topic and not one I want to get into too much at the moment, until I have played Shadows more...  They could be overpowered but that would not mean that armour is underpowered, no?

[MartialDoctor]

Traveller, again, you keep referring to specific cases while I am referring to armor in general. Even at max, which I have played before, monsters are not a major threat. And, you, again, bring up another specific case, nebulaes... I don't see how you lure them into these "traps" because, as I have seen, the AI, smartly, tends to go for colonies. But, even so, we're talking about armor in general, not specific cases.

ORIGINAL: feelotraveller
(Aside: I max monsters so probably pay them more heed, but they are not insignificant as they usually guard the best colony/resource locations.

They are insignificant when compared to a huge fleet of an enemy empire. They pale in comparison.

Now, you are bringing up another point. You say reactive property... nowhere is it explained what that actually does. So, if you understand what it does, please explain what it does and how it works. How does it mitigate damage and how much does it mitigate? If you read before, Plant had mentioned that but no one has explained how it works or how putting more armor on affects damage mitigation...

If you know, please explain it to the rest of us [:)]

[MartialDoctor]

ORIGINAL: feelotraveller
Rail guns is another topic and not one I want to get into too much at the moment, until I have played Shadows more...  They could be overpowered but that would not mean that armour is underpowered, no?

It could have been possible that rail guns are overpowered and armor is fine. But, I've already done a whole analysis above showing how that's not true... that, along with observation, has shown me that it's the armor that is the problem, not rail guns.

Now, if you have a thorough knowledge about how armor mitigates damage, then maybe there is something that I haven't calculated.

[elanaagain]

As I understand it, reactive armor has a reactive rating, (a small single digit number). Any incoming damage that is smaller than the reactive rating of the armor is ignored. Basically, this means a ship with decent reactive armor will laugh at early fighters, and other enemy weapons that do small amounts of damage per attack. Example (made up numbers!): Ship/base has reactive armor with reactive rating of 4. Any weapon attacking the armored ship, that actual range does 4 or less damage per hit does zero damage to armored ship/base. It may be 'hit' 500 times in one second, but as long as each hit scores 4 or less damage, the armored ship will take zero damage. I think hits that do more than 4 damage 'get through' the reactive affect, and do damage - 4, the first 4 damage points are nullified (per hit).

[invaderzim]

The it sounds like Impact Assault blasters are a better choice against armor than Shatterforce Lasers which do less damage but have more range. But it sounds like even the best armor won't do much against high damage weapons like Titan Beams or even low to medium torpedoes.