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[bobucles]

only the same cells are taking damage. So you can safely ignore the effect of cells.

Not really. The outer armor tiles may contribute half armor and take half damage, but they can definitely lose more than half their endurance from a single hit. Just shoot a smaller ship with a hellbore shot. A heron for example can take over 900 armor damage in one hit, PLUS extra hull damage, however it only has 750 armor. The remainder outer ring of armor will continue to absorb some damage while the shredded inner ring causes hull damage.

I'm not entirely sure at what point armor damage ends and hull damage begins. It's definitely related to when tiles reach 0 durability, but how many shredded tiles and what proportion of hull damage they contribute is beyond me. Most of my testing was with pure fresh armor and with completely shredded armor, since those are much easier to work with.

The armor damage on the first hit should be pretty accurate, and the effective hull endurance with 0 armor should also be pretty trustworthy. The armor calculator doesn't capture the full nature of the armor tiles but at the very least it should give you some appreciation for what sort of damage your armor can and can't endure. The full armor tile simulator takes more in depth understanding than what I have right now. My main goal was just to figure out how the talents added up into the damage equations, so I could see what talents were great and which ones I could skip. 

[xenoargh]

Honestly, while this is great and all, I find that, in general, you want to put your points into the Shield / Flux skills, not the Armor skills.  You need your Captains to win the Flux war first and foremost; they can do that by doing damage first, doing more damage, particularly to shields, and then having their shields outlast the other guy's. 

The only exception to this is when your shield's arc is too small to take much fire from the flanks; then you're simply going to need all the Armor you can get, because you're going to take hits.

Past that, if it's anything past a smallish encounter, I honestly don't think that the Vanilla skills do a whole lot to slow down the inevitable, even though they look great on paper.  If your ship is Flux-locked, it's irrelevant that you have awesome Armor, if your opponent isn't locked and has enough Flux left to keep shields up and attack (let alone if they're also able to push out and Vent or can kite you). 

Armor / Hull's lack of self-repair makes it considerably less great than shields in long-term fights, even moreso if you're dealing lots of EMP damage (even in Vanilla, the AI will occasionally show up w/ Herons loaded to the gills with Lightnings, which is amusing vs. Low Tech).

[Lucky33]

Honestly, while this is great and all, I find that, in general, you want to put your points into the Shield / Flux skills, not the Armor skills.  You need your Captains to win the Flux war first and foremost; they can do that by doing damage first, doing more damage, particularly to shields, and then having their shields outlast the other guy's. 

The only exception to this is when your shield's arc is too small to take much fire from the flanks; then you're simply going to need all the Armor you can get, because you're going to take hits.

Past that, if it's anything past a smallish encounter, I honestly don't think that the Vanilla skills do a whole lot to slow down the inevitable, even though they look great on paper.  If your ship is Flux-locked, it's irrelevant that you have awesome Armor, if your opponent isn't locked and has enough Flux left to keep shields up and attack (let alone if they're also able to push out and Vent or can kite you). 

Armor / Hull's lack of self-repair makes it considerably less great than shields in long-term fights, even moreso if you're dealing lots of EMP damage (even in Vanilla, the AI will occasionally show up w/ Herons loaded to the gills with Lightnings, which is amusing vs. Low Tech).

Damage Control 3 + Impact Mitigation 1 triples your HP against medium damage guns. Given heavily armored ship, it also makes any high burst or DPS capable gun flux inneficient meaning that even capitals will not have large enough flux pools to destroy the hull.

"Flux-locked" is a situation when fragile ship found itself in a dire need of making an impossible choice: lower shield and die or keep it on, overload and die. Bricks dont have such a problem. Although you do need to pick your weapons carefully, ignoring any high flux per shot/burst weapons, always keeping emergency Sabots and giving a reasonable attention to PD. However, since Power Grid Modulation 2 and Resistant Flux Conduits triple your flux dissipation rate, it becomes a no-brainer to just press V in any situation apart from the volley of incoming Reapers or Hammers. 5 sec venting is better than 15 sec overload.

[Lucky33]

Also, to be of help on topic.

Against 1750 armor.

Weapon.
Damage needed to fully remove complete zone of connected armor blocks by shooting into one of them (through direct testing hence variations).

Reaper.
1943.

Hammer.
1924.

Atropos.
2097.

Hellbore.
2236.

Assault Chaingun.
6692.

Heavy Blaster.
7165.

To illustrate the difference between precision shooting into single block and veering off into two adjustent ones.

Atropos.
2660.

Hellbore.
2830.

Assault Chaingun.
Dont do it.

[TaLaR]

Honestly, while this is great and all, I find that, in general, you want to put your points into the Shield / Flux skills, not the Armor skills.  You need your Captains to win the Flux war first and foremost; they can do that by doing damage first, doing more damage, particularly to shields, and then having their shields outlast the other guy's. 

This is true for player, but AI will always find ways to fail. So they need skills that help survive failures.
Not necessarily full combo, but I usually take AC (to improve PD/ stomp Fighters mostly, but it does help with kinetics too) and IM (IM1 is single most ridiculous skill vs low damage per shot guns, which is most of them).

[Plantissue]

I see, so the outer cells take half the damage as well as contributing armour. That explains the effects of the appearance of a secondary layer of armour. Same effect really, only that there is essentially a 40% not 50% layer of armour. In any case that Armor and you guide you posted is not telling the full truth as it says that armour has taken full armour damage, full hull damage occurs, but that is not the case.

It seems once you done the total of armour i.e. 1000 yellow armour damage to an Eagle, you need to do a further 40% armour damage to the secondary cells i.e. 400 damage in order to be able to do full hull damage.

[FooF]

I get the all offense approach but the easiest way to flux lock a ship is overwhelm it with Kinetics but high Armor is a direct counter to that. Given two equivalent ships built to flux-lock, one with armor skills and one with offensive skills, the one with armor can afford to drop shields while the other can’t. Yes, shields are a renewable resource but taking hits on armor is a tactical decision that can absolutely turn the tide.

It’s not a zero-sum game, though. Get both.

[Lucky33]

I remeber a situation when I parked my AC battery in a perfect location near super heavy armored Onslaught. I overloaded it and turned ACs on. 15 seconds later, that Onslaught came back online, alive and willing to exploit the fact that I was near fluxed out.