Armor over shields?

[elanaahova]

Yes, it is a chore finding the ships in need of repair. I use the window in the lower left corner of the screen, and click thru the ships. The image will show a wreck image if the ship is bad off. And, when the civ is first damaged, a message comes up, "ship needs repair, yada..."

*** It would be nice if the ship / base menu screens (top of monitor) had more filters. *** Havn't tried it, but, perhaps, the set of buttons along the left middle of the screen might allow user to cycle thru the ships quicker?

I don't use the auto update on ship design - is this where you are wishing the AI did a better job?

[Data]

no, putting the ship on auto once it's out there is the setting in question
the auto upgrade is another story [:)]

[unclean]

ORIGINAL: Data
i just checked the pedia on the assumption that they indeed repair only internal systems and not armor (like in MOO2 for example) but have not found a definitive answer in there....it should be easy to test, since you don't see them repairing the armor I suspect that they don't

They definitely repair armor.

Repair bots have always worked fine for me, not sure why it's going wrong for Abraxis.

[Data]

thanks, unclean, good to know that for sure

[Abraxis]

Weird, were you using the special Ikkuro repair bots? I let both these ships sit around for months and the repair bots definitely weren't damaged. I can't think of any other factor other then maybe the Ikkuro bots are bugged, unless you were using them too... I'll have to play around with them a bit more. If they weren't working at all maybe I need to re-do the experiment.

Edit: Okay, apparently I am on crack or something. I just loaded the file again, thinking maybe it wasn't working cause they were low on fuel (in the red). I refueled them and they started repairing. Then I got mad and reloaded again because that didn't make sense (they still had energy and some fuel after all).
I sent one ship into deep space (where I'd watched them last time [months before this] when nothing happened) and left the other in the star system. Both started repairing. So I don't even know what to say, I wrote that comment above well before I made this save and the number of damaged components is the same up there as upon loading it. Yet right after loading they begin to repair.

Perhaps I've angered a higher power or I've gone mad...

I any case, the rate at which they repair still seems too slow to be useful in combat

[Foraven]

Unless it has been changed in the expansion, armor do soak some of the damage it receive before getting damaged. At higher tech levels, armor can soak a lot of damage and makes the lower tech weapons unable to dent it, and reduce incoming fire by a lot. For armor to be viable as the main defense though, it needs to be of a pretty high level, low level armor will just allow your ships to take a few more hits before internals takes damage. Not sure, but i think damage control does make armor more effective as damage received gets reduced.

[Data]

afaik damage control applies to internal systems only, not armor