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Just had a cruiser get totally scrapped by a pack of Kraltor.... and it got away, with some minor damage.
34 components damaged.
Working items include:

• 1 Hyperdrive
• 1 Quantum Reactor
• 1 shield
• 2 blaster
• 3 engine
• 1 fuel cell
• 1 torp
• 1 targeting system
• 1 troop compartment
• 1 hab module
• 2 life support

Yes, that works out to 34 of 49 components damaged (31% functional).
Guns wern't working (may have related to the drop in stored fuel to 0, may have related to the lost command center, not sure), but it did manage to limp away. I would like to ask, what else could I lose and still have a moving ship?

Obviously, I could lose the weapons, shield, target system, and troop compartment. I could also drop any duplicate components. That pares the list down to:

• 1 Hyperdrive
• 1 Quantum Reactor
• 1 engine
• 1 fuel cell
• 1 hab module
• 1 life support

Is there anything else I could lose and still have a moving ship?
Clearly, I will need either a hyperdrive or engine, but will I need both? Is the fuel cell required to make the engines happy? (I seem to recall dead ships without fuel cells, but those tend to have been shot up a tad in other places). From my expierence with construction, I know I need the hab module and life support (or is that just one of the two?)

The point? If I'm aiming to make a survivable ship, I need to know what items it can't work without. To that end, what do I need spares of in a design to keep it running?
//Torrenal

Seems pretty standard that you need only a few things to move.

Your going to need:

Life support
Hab modules
Fuel cells
Engines
Reactor
Hyperdrive

In theory you should need a commnad center too but looks like in practice this isn't the case. Of all of those things only the hyperdrive is singular, you cannot put more than one on your ship. Also putting duplicates may not always work as we don't fully know how damage is applied, this isn't like SEV where you have outer and inner hulls.

Actually, you can put more than one hyperdrive in a ship.

You do get a warning of 'Only one HyperDrive component is required.', but it is only a warning and you can still save the design. This little battle makes a good argument for multiple hyperdrives in ships designed to be durable. Such ships will already have multiples of everything else on the list.
//Torrenal

I miss outer and inner hulls, but at least the armor works the same

Damaged components can be armor plates and shields generators, your ships can have a lot of them to spare.

True, but golden-BBs suck.

I'd rather an enemy need multiple lucky hits past the armor to disable a valuable ship, not just 1.

I did see a ship rebuild itself from almost nothing (1 repair bot and about 3 other components survived -- the moon it was attacking moved out of attack range letting the thing repair -- The reactor was scrap, trying to recall what the ship did have, but it wasn't much).
//Torrenal

From what i noticed in all the battles i had so far, once the shields are down, your ships don't last long... Still i seen one construction ship take a lot of damage that way and survived long enough for help to come; the ship needed a fellow construction ship to repair it, but it survived (it had damage control on it though).

Another one...
Just had a ship hyper next to a port (not to, alas...), with the following components working:

Hyperdrive x1
Reactor x2
Blaster x1
Fuel Cell x2 (21 fuel onhand)
Energy Collector x1
Damage Control x1
Hab module x2

No life support.
No thrusters.
(and about 24 other broken items...)

It'll need a tow to reach port...

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In reply to Foraven -- that applies to 1 v 1 battles. In a many-v-many battle, you may outnumber and outgun the enemy, but he's still going to take a chunk of your ships with him. Even if you are on the loosing side, badly damaged ships have fair chance to flee. Especially if you have short-activation hyper-drives on your ships (in this case it was the race tech velocity-drive, with a 4 second activation).
//Torrenal

In reply to Foraven -- that applies to 1 v 1 battles. In a many-v-many battle, you may outnumber and outgun the enemy, but he's still going to take a chunk of your ships with him. Even if you are on the loosing side, badly damaged ships have fair chance to flee. Especially if you have short-activation hyper-drives on your ships (in this case it was the race tech velocity-drive, with a 4 second activation).

I did some further testing and i can say that armor does the same thing as shields, you just don't get the shield effect (the half circle when hit). In early game, going all armor is a waste because each plates offer so little protection, but better armor can reduce damage by a lot, making weaker beams less useful against it. The health bar seem to combine armor and shields, when it's out it's because your hull is taking damage.

Naw. Select a ship, and watch when the health bar nears zero -- you'll see shields reaching 0 too.
Armor, being a physical component on a ship, with damage recorded by the same mechanic as any other damaged component on a ship, will show as hull damage (holes appearing in the ship). You can verify this by double-clicking the info-panel in the lower left while a ship is selected, and review the components to see what's damaged. This does make it hard to see when armor runs out and systems start taking hits.

The big disadvantage to taking blows on the armor is that they will cause fired shots to vanish (attack a LSP, and you'll notice your ships stop taking damage when its shields drop, even tho the keeps firing away (shots vanising mid-air.... urk). I do hope they fix this, it renders armor of rather limited use on a port.
//Torrenal

Armor has the effect to annoy the space zoo as it has already been said by others. Five to six armors are enough to make worms and their friends to leave you alone when you encounter them. It looks as shields alone won't have this effect.

ORIGINAL: torrenal
Naw. Select a ship, and watch when the health bar nears zero -- you'll see shields reaching 0 too.
Armor, being a physical component on a ship, with damage recorded by the same mechanic as any other damaged component on a ship, will show as hull damage (holes appearing in the ship). You can verify this by double-clicking the info-panel in the lower left while a ship is selected, and review the components to see what's damaged. This does make it hard to see when armor runs out and systems start taking hits.

The armor value isn't displayed, but it's part of the blue health bar; as long as you have armor, the ship don't take any holes. I said earlier i made a ship protected only by armor, it did take a pounding before taking hull damage (had put 12 standard armor on it). Armoring a ship is viable, it's just armor value are not displayed in the current game version (1.0.6.0). The vanishing bolts are just the armor taking the blows.

Working this through...
Currently examining a ship after a fight -- Shields still at 78/360.
Bar representing the 78/360 is proportionally as full as the ship's "health" bar in the main view.
Reviewing the design: Shields - 3 Corvidian XHX100 -> 3 120 strenght shields -> 360 shield depth, as reported in the design screen, as reported by the shields bar.
Also present, 50 armor (5 Standard armor x 10/armor, with a Reactive strength of 2)

Now examining same model of ship, just leaving the construction dock:
Shield strength: 0/360.
Armor: 50/50.
Blue bar: Showing empty, matching the shield strenght bar.

---

Next example: Forbidden Wanderer - 50 armor (5 unitx x 10 armor/ea)
120 shields (1 shield unit @120 strength).
Health Bar -- Full
Shields: 120/120
Components: 3 damaged.
Examining damaged components: 3 armor are damaged.
Visual: Holes appear in the armor. (Image attached - Compare image of Dubious Ruse, same model of ship, undamaged and at similar angle).

Conclusion: The blue bar is purely shield strength. Armor damage is represented same as any other component damage: By placing holes in the hull.

//Torrenal

ORIGINAL: torrenal
Conclusion: The blue bar is purely shield strength. Armor damage is represented same as any other component damage: By placing holes in the hull.

Try that while fighting ships, not giant kaltors (they ignore shields and damage components right away). And try a ship with only armor, you'll see what i mean.

Um.... one of those was while fighting ships.

I'd missed the bit about not having shields. I have no such designs.

I hate to have to repair my ships anytime they stroll through a rough nebula, or merchants that happen to be caught in crossfire between 2 other empires at a spaceport. Both have taught me that a ship without shields is a ship that wastes unnecessary time getting repaired. Even if it comes with repair bots. (Ohmygoodness... I'm out in the middle of nowhere, and I have 1 piece of damaged armor, that will require 2 seconds to repair myself. Time to head to port...)
//Torrenal