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So looking at some quick research on the ships armor ratings in the game---does anyone know how the number was decided on for each ship?

As it's a set number so is for the whole ship basically but from what i can tell this number wasn't averaged....like some ships get the armor number of its best armored locations while other ships seem to get rated for the lowest armored locations on the ship.

Normally for a game that is just going to use 1 number for Deck armor and 1 number belt armor you would think it would be the averaged armor rating of the ship not the best or worst case.

thanks

chaos45 wrote: Tue Jun 16, 2026 1:15 am So looking at some quick research on the ships armor ratings in the game---does anyone know how the number was decided on for each ship?

As it's a set number so is for the whole ship basically but from what i can tell this number wasn't averaged....like some ships get the armor number of its best armored locations while other ships seem to get rated for the lowest armored locations on the ship.

Normally for a game that is just going to use 1 number for Deck armor and 1 number belt armor you would think it would be the averaged armor rating of the ship not the best or worst case.

thanks

I do not have a great answer, but I have noticed this as well. Sometimes the armor even seems to be a median between the belt and deck thicknesses, but there doesn't seem to be a hard-and-fast rule. With that said, I'm quite certain that the durability rating is the great equalizer.
P.S. The belt armor on a few carriers IRL had next to none, but for the purposes of game balance and simplicity, I'm convinced it represents torpedo bulges

ya it just seems all over the place.....Im not sure why a standard wasnt made then stuck to for rating so everything was rated on the same metric.

In general just looking at CVs it seems a chunk of the Japanese CVs got rated lower on Deck armor than actual, while many of the US CVs seemed to get best case for Deck and Belt armor as just one example.....now not sure an extra 20 odd deck armor would really matter when its under 100 but still just seems an odd design choice unless they were trying to represent US CVs just being tougher but that is already supposed to be in play from superior allied damage control so not sure why the artificially inflated armor levels as well.

I normal more reasonable approach would be to average the armor between typical armoring and the more heavily critical systems armor rating which both seem to be easily available numbers....rather than the minimum or maximum levels they seemed to have went with.

This is a case where someone like Alfred would really help.

Somewhere in the lost parts of this forum must be a discussion relevant to these questions. Maybe we should all try searching and see what we can find?

The research is also very old - you can find all sorts of references on the net showing wide variations.

BUT in general, the game database uses the maximum thickness discussed and has calculations based on that. And for guns, it uses the facings (but I bet it then makes a % reduction for the back and tops of turrets).

For my mod, I made tons of tweaks and alterations based on research, and when they disagree, I tend to go for an average. I also added armour for gun shields and splinter-proof items - all missing from the game and working well in my mod.

So I would suggest going for the higher values you find, and the pen of guns, etc., seems to be based on generally higher values and degrades with range- and I suppose angle?

The belt armour is interesting, it's primarily to stop TT, but in-game it cannot, as TT have no real penetration data 9 they all penetrate) - I addressed that because TT did not penetrate BB on occasion, as historically recorded. And the game records about 25% of hits as truly hitting the belt from what I can see - this seems too low. But I get some pleasing results - and no complaints TT would penetrate all belts not of BB quality, it seems - yes.

TT were very expensive, and few nations did true test firing, and even then, the data was probably difficult to collect, bearing in mind you are making a hole under the water.

Cav