Armor/Shield Balance

[terololo]

How you usually balance this? i read on some forum posts that armor is not really that useful, so how much do you usually put this two components on your ship designs? [&:]

[Canute0]

Ohh armor is useful.
Special when the enemy use railuns or gravity weapons which bypass shields.
You can even try to made armor tanking ships, when you got good repairbots.

But you are right shield are the main defence, and you need to focus to increase them.
If you got an active game, try to look at your ships during a battle and how bad they got damaged. Best would be the damaged would just hurt the armor instead internal structures.

But i can say for my ships i add so many armor like i add shields. But when i need some space for other things i realy need, i may reduce the armor.

[Fenrisfil]

If I'm tight on space the armor tends to be the thing that takes the hit, but I only trim it down if I need space for vital components (including enough vectoring engines to get a good turn speed). I sometimes skip armor on civilian ships however.
I normally run with something like: Escort 1-3, Frigate 2-6, Destroyer 4-10, Cruiser 8-15, Capital ship 15-30 (depending on size).

[Cauldyth]

There was a bug in earlier builds of the game where armour wasn't working correctly, which was fixed in 1.9.0.6:

-fixed bug where normal components were getting damaged before Armor was completely destroyed

The forums posts you saw may have been prior to that, as the bug was identified by the community.

[DeadlyShoe]

The utility of armor is somewhat dependent on AI settings.

If your ship is set to retreat at 20% or 50% shields then the primary utility of armor is to help your ship live long enough to jump - so you don't need all that much.

If your ship is set to never retreat then armor is just as useful as shields. Or if the combat involves heavy use of jump deniers so your ships can never jump away anyway.

Armor utility also scales with the weapons enemies are using. It's extremely useful against lower tech opponents as the majority of their attacks will simply bounce off good armor - especially if they are using railguns and/or missiles. Shields only scale strength, they don't scale deflection.

Armor isn't very useful against energy torpedoes, phasers, or assault blasters/titan beams.

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: terololo

How you usually balance this? i read on some forum posts that armor is not really that useful, so how much do you usually put this two components on your ship designs? [&:]

FYI -

This is Erik's explanation on how armour works:
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3345990&mpage=1&key=?

[elanaagain]

Also, in the early game, armor is essential for taking on kaltors, etc. as they eat your ship (literally) and shields seem to be ignored by by the dining monsters. Armor is effective stall so kaltor doesn't eat your weapons and they can keep attacking the kaltor.

[andyinkuwait]

I'm still struggling to understand the early game. I sent my explorers newly equipped with hyperdrive and 300 odd shield strength into the next system. When they got there, the shields were at about half strength. Anyone know a reason for this?

Do the shields use excess energy in order to operate and hence drain if there is not enough excess energy? If this is so, how much energy is needed to power a shield generator? Could the hyper drive have drained the shields?

[ReadeB]

Only thing I know of that steadily reduces shields are certain gas clouds marked with lightning bolts.

If you have reactors and fuel, the shields should recharge fairly quickly.

[Cauldyth]

You may not have enough reactor output to power both the hyperdrive engines and the shields. In that case, the shields will gradually discharge while your hyperdrive engines are active, then recharge again once they shut down.

[andyinkuwait]

Ahh, you mean the hyperdrive drains the shields for the extra energy if there is not quite enough excess energy for the hyperdrive?

That makes sense.

[Cauldyth]

It's more that the hyperdrive is hogging all the output, so the shields aren't getting enough to even maintain their charge. Shields require some power just to maintain themselves, even if they're already fully charged.

[andyinkuwait]

Any idea how much power? I can't find it anywhere....

[elanaagain]

Go to the ship design screen, load in the ship design in question. Look at the readouts... like maximum warp, etc. Most early ship designs need at least two fission generators to get max warp speed. Warping = OK? Then look at sprint speed power consumption (higher than cruse speed), add this to weapons usage (per second, I think) and compare this to total power output of reactors. Output greater than this amount of power consumption? Yes, = OK. Now shields. Shields consume energy output as well. This part I have never figured out. What works is to always have reactor output to be greater than sprint usage + weapons usage, and add some for shields. Amount added is a guess on my part. If ship's output is sufficient, than the draining shields may be due, as indicated above, to being in an electrical storm cloud. BTW, these clouds also damage ships and bases. So don't build a mining base in there.

[Tcby]

tm.asp?m=2970969

This explains how all energy consumption is calculated, including shields.

[andyinkuwait]

Actually, that link says nothing about energy required to have shields apart from recharging, which we already know is a different topic. So, is energy required simply to run static shields and if so, how much?

[CyclopsSlayer]

ORIGINAL: andyinkuwait

Actually, that link says nothing about energy required to have shields apart from recharging, which we already know is a different topic. So, is energy required simply to run static shields and if so, how much?

Simply mouse over any or all of the Shield Tech boxes, you could see easily that all show "Static Energy Used": 0
Megatron Z4, Corvidian or Meridian all only consume energy to recharge.