Uses for armor?

[Apheirox]

It seems counter-intuitive to have unarmored warships ships (like how the AI loves to design many ships) but when you look at what it actually does and how much it costs you have to wonder if it makes sense to use armor at all. It is very expensive compared to shielding.

Obviously, armor is best as a counter to low damage weapons like lasers because of its reactionary properties, negating part of the damage. But the damage deflected isn't that great, and the armor itself doesn't have a lot of hitpoints (around only 10% of a comparative tech level shield!).

So what is armor good for? Why not just slap on an extra shield instead?

[Sabin Stargem]

Armor comes in bite-sized pieces, so you can use it to fill out the maximum space of a vessel when you can't fit anything more worthy onto a design. (1,500 is the max for regular vessels with the best construction technology.) They also provide protection against spacefaring monsters, while shields don't for some reasons. It is a good idea to place at least 1 piece of armor onto a ship to gain the damage negation bonus. Armor works if there is no power on a ship, but that is pretty darn rare and probably a hopeless situation anyways.

[Apheirox]

I hope somebody comes in here and posts something else. 'Use armor if you really can't fit anything better' is precisely what I feared to hear.

[Data]

Armor is the first component to get damaged, especially since we don't have armor piercing weaponry (yet).
So, if you have lots of ships on auto and with slow initiation hyperdrive time armor will buy you the time to make a run for it without getting the bad luck of losing the reactor or hyperdrive first.

Obviously, the same can be said about shields but early game even a storm can lower the shields enough to do internal damage.

[Apheirox]

Hey data,

I understand about armor being a defense before internal components start to get damaged. But why not simply add an additional shield and/or tell ships to flee on 50% shields instead of 20%?

Shields don't help against storms, no, but that's a REALLY marginal use for them. Are we seriously playing a space game where something as basic as the concept of ARMOR ON WARSHIPS does not apply?!

[Data]

tbh we're playing a game that's not balanced in many aspects...so what? we're playing for fun and we know all of these (including armor) will get fixed at one point or another

and there is another use for armor....when I want to clear a kaltor infested hyperdrive dead zone I use lots of armor along weapons as kaltors also ignore shields and my speed is heavily reduced
and I'm sure there are even other uses for armor atm

[Larsenex]

Kaltor Clearage, hrmmm. and what point and builds to you use?

I like my destroyers to be around 400-450 points, NO troop hangars or Fighter bays. Lots of beams/torpedoes and plenty of thrust and long legs. How bout you?

[Sabin Stargem]

I kind of wish that Armor worked differently from shields and regular components. That they instead just change what the ship is made of - minimal or no effect on the size of the ship, just increasing the durability and expense, according to how much coverage it has when opposed to ship size. EG: 100% coverage for a ship of 1,500 size would double the durability of the ship, then multiply it according to what level of armor is used.

Once again, theorycraft. I so love and hate that element when thinking about how to build a game. [:'(]

[Noble713]

Are we seriously playing a space game where something as basic as the concept of ARMOR ON WARSHIPS does not apply?!

I'd argue the utility of armor varies depending on the background of the universe. Armor in Star Trek, for example, works pretty well (example: USS Defiant's ablative armor). Armor in Star Wars, however, doesn't (don't have a quick example, just lots of research and conclusions done by others).

In most scifi as weapons power rises it becomes increasingly difficult to develop/deploy materials able to absorb the energy, and instead is easier to direct energy generated by reactors into some sort of electromagnetic barrier.


The problem in DW is that the armor isn't really cost-effective at ANY point along the tech progression timeline. Reducing the research and production/maintenance costs should make armor useful up until, say, Titan Beams come into play.

[Data]

same here, Larsenex, heavily armored fast long range torpedo kaltor killers

[J HG T]

I thought about the whole armor issue yesterday evening and come up with possible solution to it:
When enough fire is concentrated at the ships shields, the damage starts to bleed through and damage the ships directly, and so armor would be necessary even for heavy shielded ships. Ships with no armor would get easily damaged by heavy fire no matter how much shields they have.
I'm not sure if repair bots should fix armor in this case, or would ships need to repair it on spaceports.
I remember seeing this on some other game and I think it would work on DW too. Just my thoughts.

[Data]

it's a good ideea and realistic also, I also wanted to see this....not sure if enough fire should disable that hole particular shield arc or just punch through it. We could have some techs for all these options.

[Sabin Stargem]

Letting the repair bots go to work would make sense if the armor got damage. Leaky Shields sounds like a good idea to me, but I would like to add something else to it: Armor is 100% effective, but once 'destroyed', it is giving some protection, but is considerably leaky, still blocking potentially 10% of the damage, along with negating any damage below 10 for UltraDense armor.

[Bingeling]

ORIGINAL: Larsenex

Kaltor Clearage, hrmmm. and what point and builds to you use?

I like my destroyers to be around 400-450 points, NO troop hangars or Fighter bays. Lots of beams/torpedoes and plenty of thrust and long legs. How bout you?

Not that experienced with the expansion yet, and no super tech levels. Very early game I want to kill them with a fleet. One sheep kites them, while the others kill. A bit later I go a bit more guns blazing with a fleet.

Once I get some 500 point cruisers (not that far into the game with manual research), I send a single cruiser on to them, with some fighters to do the dirty work. Killing a kaltor is micro management for me, and so mmo-ish. Once ships becomes better, there are more choices of course.

[Apheirox]

ORIGINAL: Data

tbh we're playing a game that's not balanced in many aspects...so what? we're playing for fun and we know all of these (including armor) will get fixed at one point or another

So you are OK with a paid for beta release?

Frankly, armor being broken is unacceptable. Which, clearly, it is if all you can think of using it for is hunting Kaltors.

Increase armor hitpoints and size by 1000% and make its damage mitigation scale better with the increasing power of lasers - fixed.

[Data]

Agreed and I'm sure it will be done at some point. In the meantime, I still love to play it.

[Howard Mitchell]

Looking at the tech tree, each 10 size will get you either a shield unit or 10 points of armour. So we have per 10 size points:

Column 1:
Sheild strength 100, armour plating strength 100

Column 3:
Intensified shield strength (the strongest of the three available) 180, high density alloys 180

Column 5:
Advanced shields strength 220, Ablative metals strength 250

Column 7
Exponential shield effects 320, Indestructable components 400

Weight for weight there is little difference and in some cases armour is actually better. Shields will cost you less and (critically) recharge, armour has a reactive rating, but I don't think it is so unbalanced as to be unacceptable, certainly not to the extent of increasing the protection it offers by 1000%. If you want to improve armour I would suggest simply making it much cheaper.

[Raap]

Never even considered using armor until I saw that short summary. They're much closer than I'd have thought, at least late-game with a good repair unit.

[Apheirox]

I don't have the expansion so I don't have access to those columns.

Fixing it by making armor cheaper is fine by me - I'm just criticizing the fact that shields offer roughly 10 times as much protection at comparable cost. Unless the developers know something we don't and there's something we're all overlooking I can't fathom how such a major design flaw slipped in.

[Raap]

Well, shield-penetrating weapons would change things around a good deal.