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[Goumindong]

When would I take heavy armor on an Onslaught?  Never.

When would I put heavy armor on an onslaught?

Spoiler

[close]

always

[SonnaBanana]

How does the AI Armor tanking behavior work?
Do all ships do it?

[Arcagnello]

How does the AI Armor tanking behavior work?
Do all ships do it?

No AI ship tanks with the armor. None whatsoever. They will always raise the shields up first and keep blocking with them until litterally the next shot forces them to take it down to avoid overload. The only way to prevent said behaviour is to either drive ships yourself and never raise the shield or search for mods that have modspecs disabling shields in exchange of flux or armor.

[TaLaR]

Armor is powerful when used right, problem is - AI doesn't do that.

[SCC]

Indeed. AI used to be decent at armour tanking, but is now way too cowardly. In fact, I'd say that low-tech ships' AI shouldn't even bother blocking anything but high-explosives, because it's going to do way better by going for unrelenting offensive, rather than get stuck at high flux. I don't use low-tech ships often, but when I do, I can pull some incredible stunts despite their low mobility precisely because they have so much armour, anything that isn't high damage is barely tickling.

Damage multiplier = 1500/(1500+1750)=.462
Damage Inflicted = .462*1500=692, Armor remaining (at that location) = 1058 (about Eagle level)

Not quite. (I think)

So you’re generally correct the trick is that each bit of armor is an individual location and when damage is done to a section of armor it isn’t actually done to a section of armor alone.

The point hit takes 50% of the damage and the remaining damage is spread to the surrounding sections (pretty sure this happens after DR is calculated).

So a Hellbore would land for 346 on the immediate section and then spread the remaining 346 around to surrounding sections. Leaving 1404 armor on the relevant section.

I am unsure but it may be the case that explosions (Rather than point dmg sources) do their damage to armor multiple times because they effectively “hit” more than one base section at a time. This is how I think things go simply because harpoons seem to be generally more dangerous than point dmg sources like hellbore and HIL and tachyon lances. Not tonnes since the explosion is small but enough to matter. This is also why a reaper ends up taking away a larger radius when it impacts than a harpoon or Hellbore.  If the first point got 4k of 8 and the surrounding armor got 4 then the surrounding armor would only take 800 dmg and rather there is a huge hole made when impacted by a reaper that is larger across than when armor is penetrated by successive hellbores

wrong

Spoiler

Armor Cells

Armor isn’t a single value on your ship, it’s actually made up of a grid (“cells”) that cover the hull. Any particular point has the Total Armor Value available to it at the start of a fight but cells lose their armor as they take damage, drawing from the immediate cells around them.
 
Since the technical side is, well, technical, hear it from the source:

…the resulting armor value can go all the way up to the listed armor value for the variant. Also, the cell that was hit, plus the eight surrounding cells, contribute 2x as much to the effective armor value as the 12 cells on the outside. In effect the hit area looks like this:

 111
12221
12221
12221
 111

Cells marked 1 have their armor contribution halved; cells marked 2 contribute their full amount. The starting armor in each cell is 1/15th of the listed armor value.

So, for a hit vs undamaged armor, with the base armor value A, you get:
9 * A / 15 + 0.5 * (12 * A /15) = 15 * A / 15 = A

What this means is that cells are working together to provide the Total Armor Value but as cells degrade, they no longer can contribute as much. Since the outside cells (the “1s”) only contribute half their armor, they are also losing armor half as quickly, giving a more graded decline in armor under sustained fire. On the other hand, a single missile or Torpedo can wipe out every point of armor affected if there isn’t enough armor to mitigate it.

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[/quote]

[Alex]

Hmm, regarding armor tanking - I guess that depends on exactly what you mean by it. The AI absolutely will take some hits on armor, even when flux isn't maxed, and will do this more for kinetic damage. It'll also vent in the face of weaker firepower, which is effectively exchanging flux for armor.

So I think... well, it won't armor tank as a dedicated strategy, right. But at the same time, it'll also make reasonable use of armor, just not in an aggressive, committed "I will use it to win the flux war and this duel" sort of way. Generally speaking, those kinds of committed decisions are hard for the AI to do well (you have to reliably predict that not only will you "win" the next few seconds, but that you'll also be able to capitalize on it!), and I think are usually best left in the hands of the player. To facilitate this, there's a new "Shield Shunt" hullmod - it has a low OP cost, removes shields, and grants bonus EMP resistance.

(There's also an Industry skill that gives ships armor and survivability related bonuses based on the number of d-mods they have, but that's a bit separate...)

[Toxcity]

With all the mentions of changes/additions throughout the forums, any chances of patchnotes?

[Alex]

Yeah. Not, like, now, but I'd say in the pretty near future

[Arcagnello]

Hmm, regarding armor tanking - I guess that depends on exactly what you mean by it. The AI absolutely will take some hits on armor, even when flux isn't maxed, and will do this more for kinetic damage. It'll also vent in the face of weaker firepower, which is effectively exchanging flux for armor.

So I think... well, it won't armor tank as a dedicated strategy, right. But at the same time, it'll also make reasonable use of armor, just not in an aggressive, committed "I will use it to win the flux war and this duel" sort of way. Generally speaking, those kinds of committed decisions are hard for the AI to do well (you have to reliably predict that not only will you "win" the next few seconds, but that you'll also be able to capitalize on it!), and I think are usually best left in the hands of the player. To facilitate this, there's a new "Shield Shunt" hullmod - it has a low OP cost, removes shields, and grants bonus EMP resistance.

(There's also an Industry skill that gives ships armor and survivability related bonuses based on the number of d-mods they have, but that's a bit separate...)

Hm...why EMP resistance tough? We already have reinforced flux conduits for that. Modspec like that should cost nothing higher than 0 actually since it's a traedoff and a mediocre one at that. Having additional, more expensive modspecs that still shut shields off permanently but give you better tradeoffs like more armor or better flux management would also be welcome.


As for the AI's tendency to overuse shields in the long run, I personally am under the opinion that being able to modify officer/doctrine behaviour in more ways than aggressiveness or lack thereof would go a long way to make the AI control your ships the way you want; some examples:

1)A notched slider to tell it to fight enemies only bigger than X ignoring anything smaller
2)A notched slider to tell it to avoid enemies bigger than X, engaging with everything below
3)A notched slider to instruct the ship to either tank everything with the shield, to only stop missiles/torpedoes/High explosive damage, all the way down to not using them at all and how this behaviour changes as the ship's armor is stripped.
4)A slider to adjust the ship's target retention, from always changing to the nearest target (like now) to stubbornly chase it for a while, giving little care about other enemies unless they're really close and some time from targeting said enemy has passed

[intrinsic_parity]

Hm...why EMP resistance tough? We already have reinforced flux conduits for that. Modspec like that should cost nothing higher than 0 actually since it's a traedoff and a mediocre one at that. Having additional, more expensive modspecs that still shut shields off permanently but give you better tradeoffs like more armor or better flux management would also be welcome.

EMP resistance is virtually required for any ship that wants to not use shields, so this seems like a very nice addition to shield bypass type hull mod. Presumably it stacks with reinforced flux conduits. Obviously shield bypass is not always good, but on some ships, its pretty clear benefit, even without any other perks.


I don't think hard conditions like 'never attack ships larger than x' would ever be useful. A wolf with a heavy blaster will still tear up an onslaught if ignored, and a few destroyers working together can easily handle a capital. I don't see why you would ever want to rule out certain interactions like that. Also, having ships 'stick' on targets can easily turn out very badly, and I think the AI has to make those decisions contextually to work properly.

I think the fleet wide aggression slider combined with the ability to select officer aggression is already enough control over AI behavior, and those should just be tuned more. Maybe there could even be officers with no skills that you could use over the officer cap to set individual ship behavior or something like that. In general, I think excessive control of ship behavior is way more likely to turn out poorly for new/inexperienced players than it is to improve the experience.

[Arcagnello]

Hm...why EMP resistance tough? We already have reinforced flux conduits for that. Modspec like that should cost nothing higher than 0 actually since it's a traedoff and a mediocre one at that. Having additional, more expensive modspecs that still shut shields off permanently but give you better tradeoffs like more armor or better flux management would also be welcome.

EMP resistance is virtually required for any ship that wants to not use shields, so this seems like a very nice addition to shield bypass type hull mod. Presumably it stacks with reinforced flux conduits. Obviously shield bypass is not always good, but on some ships, its pretty clear benefit, even without any other perks.


I don't think hard conditions like 'never attack ships larger than x' would ever be useful. A wolf with a heavy blaster will still tear up an onslaught if ignored, and a few destroyers working together can easily handle a capital. I don't see why you would ever want to rule out certain interactions like that. Also, having ships 'stick' on targets can easily turn out very badly, and I think the AI has to make those decisions contextually to work properly.

I think the fleet wide aggression slider combined with the ability to select officer aggression is already enough control over AI behavior, and those should just be tuned more. Maybe there could even be officers with no skills that you could use over the officer cap to set individual ship behavior or something like that. In general, I think excessive control of ship behavior is way more likely to turn out poorly for new/inexperienced players than it is to improve the experience.

Resistant flux conduits and automated repair unit are more or less intrinsic requirements to running a ship without a shield. Having it add even more EMP reistance is overkill anyway. I've got my set of two battleships in my campaign that can eat a triplet of Atlas Mk.2s spamming dual Squall without issues just with the two modspecs just to make one example.

If a ship is set to never attack "X" ship but the battle ends up with only enemy X remaining, then the ship obviously will attack it. I'd rather see this option as a way you can tell your brain damaged frigades to steer clear of the damn [Redacted] flagships without setting fleet-wide avoid orders than "my Aneurism inducing Wolf frigade did not blindly charge straight into that 4 tach lance Paragon and that's why I lost".

The "target retention" slider would actually work wonders on big ships. They usually have a smaller ship on its last legs but then decide to do a 180 in order to chase the itty bitty destroyer nibbling at its buttocks. It's going to do what you tell it to and that in my book is a giant step in the right direction. You can already put a reckless officer into your battleship and regret it later, a slider setting just that would help control the behaviour better.

If controls are deemed excessive then have them inside a pop-up in the officer slot while in the refit screen or something. There's never a malus in adding more customization if it's done tastefully and with appropriate explanation of what everything does.

[basileus]

Armor tanking... my ships do that at the start of combat when they spend the first 20 seconds running into each other.

[Arcagnello]

Armor tanking... my ships do that at the start of combat when they spend the first 20 seconds running into each other.

Nobody must know how many destroyers I lost because I spawned along my battleships at the start of the battle and they got punted into a star fortress.

Nobody.

[Igncom1]

There is a kinetic weapon from the Yuri mod that is just exceptionally good at punting enemy's across the map.

Fires small asteroids I believe, terribly good fun.

[Warnoise]

There is something else that people forgot to mention, in order to make the armor stat worth it, you have to invest about 90 OP worth of hullmods.

For example on an onslaught you need:

Heavy Armor: 40 OP
Armored Weapons mounts: 15 OP
Integrated point defence AI: 20 OP
Resistant flux conduit: 15

Optional:  Automated repair unit: 15

You add in solar shielding when facing energy weapons heavy fleet: 15

So that is 90 or up to 110 points worth of ordinances just to make high armor survive a little longer (which still melts to tachyon or long range large anti armor weapons in my experience). Here we are still not counting other important hull mods like flux dissipation, expanded missile racks and ITU.

Without those hullmods, the onslaught is simply at disadvantage when compared to mid-line capitals or high tech capitals.