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[Arcagnello]

Like Intrinsic_ said earlier in the topic. Armour tanking when used by players is overpowered. Toggling shield only for a fraction of a second to stop a heavy mauler shot or torpedoes means you will win the flux war every time. The problem is armour is not useful in AI hands as they don't use it to its full potential.

That's why that hullmod from a mod that removes shields from ships is overpowered when put on AI ships.

I feel like this whole thread can be simplified into either (A) AI don't use armour to its advantage thus armour sucks. (B) Armor should stack better when going into extreme values, though only really applicable to onslaught or stations.

Armor/hull tanking is exchanging the ability to negate damage for the one of shooting more and generally being more aggressive. Shield Inhibitor (from Ship/Weapon pack) permanently disables the shield for 50% better base flux dissipation, meaning you can install more flux intensive weapons at the cost of heavily, heavily investing in point defence, repair rates, emp resistance and hull hitpoints.

The one thing that prevents it from being OP as far as I'm concerned is simple: it either works wonderfully or fails horribly depending on the size of the ship it's done on and the situation it's in.

Example: My Prophet is the biggest ship in my fleet at 50FP. It has 330 base ordinance points, going up to 363 with skills

-Shield Inhibitor is 10OP (easy enough) but then comes Automted Repair Unit (15OP), Resistant Flux Conduits (15OP) Reinforced Bulkheads (30OP), Solar Shielding (15OP) and a mod Modspec called Integrated Armor (30OP) doubling the residual armor value from 5 to 10% up to 200 on capitals(you can probably use Blast Doors if you don't have this, it's 25OP instead of 30 too). So that's 115 Ordinance Points just to not have it die horribly to just one Onslaught saying Laser go brr.

-It needs 8 dual flaks and 16 small AA weapons plus point defence AI to make sure not one missile taps it and makes it retreat crying for mommy (that's 138 Ordinance points) meaning that one think of my flagship is dedicated to just defending itself against missiles, fighters, mines and bombers.

-As for weapons, the ship has Heavy Weapon Integration to fill those 4 large mounts (2 energy and 2 ballistic, I'm going to use 4 ballistic) but we're going to need even more modspecs for the weapons like Integrated Targeting Unit (25OP) Particle Accellerator (10OP, increases projectile travel speed by 35%) and Weapon Inhibitor (25OP, Reduces ballistic weapon flux generation by 20%, reduces ballistic weapon rate of fire by 10%) and then install some decently flux efficient (and flux intensive) heavy mounts and voila, there's the whole 363 ordinance Points spent

If you've painstakingly read this whole description, you'll realize I did not even have OP left for vents. The Base flux dissipation is now 1600 and the ship firing all of its weapons at the same time eats a whopping 3692 flux/second (3692*0.8*0.9 equals 2658 Flux/second with Weapon inhibitor) meaning the ship with its 20880 flux capacity can only fire for 20880/(2658-1600)=9.73 seconds before going max flux and having to throttle its weapons down to not overload.

This is of course with an officer improving energy capacity and dissipation. The situation it a lot more dire without one but I decided to make the calculation with an officer since I don't see anyone using a 50FP ship without one.

The result is an incredibly resilient ship, almost virtually immune to bomber and missile attacks but that has rather low weapon range (for a capital) with its max range clocking in at 900 units but very vulnerable to hammer and anvil tactics involving a generally resilient ship being supported by smaller, damage dealing typs ike Sunders/Atlas Mk.2s just to name two Vanilla threats.

It will excel and I really mean excel, doing something like 600% damage (with its massive 35k hull hitpoints constituting the 100%) in fighting one slow enemy after another since two of its weapons are basically Kinetic/EMP scattershots and the remaining two are very efficient, 700u range heavy autocannons but it will really struggle with anything above a fast cruiser since it's just a hunk of metal moving at its 22 top speed with brief (Tyrant Microburn levels of movement) bursts of agility and speed thanks to its special ability.

It's like one of those clunky womanizers really, really good at going in (forgive me, could not resist) but having a lot of trouble actually disengaging once the situation comes dire and there's something like a Piranha Legion squaring it in her sights and going. Tach lance Radiant at 0:38

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq5VjeaxC5I

[close]

Also, keep in mind that the Prophet is basically the non-plus ultra for both stock armor and HP that's generally widely avaiable, XIV Onslaught is close but does not have much OP to install everything. Any other ship trying to do this king of low range no shield tanking is going to die horribly. Trust me I've tried. What on the other hand works is cruiser or even battlecruiser sized ships with very good frontal firepower playing the kiting game. The double Gauss Cannon XIV Dominator does really well without a shield just to name one.

[Igncom1]

I suppose one problem is that you can make just about everything else better with a hull mod, and that's just that, but there are a few (not SO as that's a whole focus shift) that have built in trade-offs for complex reasons.

When asking if a hull mod is good, is met with the answer of "not necessarily" then I think we might be getting a little to complex. Which is how I feel about armour. (heavy armour and armoured weapon mounts mostly, I don't really understand weapon hp or what that means)

Shields, hull and flux are relatively straightforward math, but armour requires a whole wiki page to grasp and that kinda feels a little wrong to me.

[DubTre6]

I don't really understand weapon hp or what that means

Relatable statements for 500

I get that when the weapon HP goes to 0 it shuts down for a bit, but that's all of the concept that I grasp.

[Arcagnello]

I don't really understand weapon hp or what that means

Relatable statements for 500

I get that when the weapon HP goes to 0 it shuts down for a bit, but that's all of the concept that I grasp.

The way I see weapon health is the following: say you've got a ship without a shield that's getting fired upon.

Say that in the span of 10 seconds, the damaging weapon takes 2 seconds to take out a weapon on said ship, and it takes 4 seconds for the destroyed weapons to be repaired and will start firing another 2 seconds before being taken out again.

This means that the target weapon will stay disabled for double the time it's firing when bei g damaged, armored weapon mounts increases the health pool of weapons making sure they keep firing longer, while Automated Repair unit repairs them faster. They obviously work very well combined.

I actually do have a question for anyone capable to answer: does increasing weapon mount health also indirectly make it more resistant to EMP damage? Or do all weapons have two separate health pools for physical and EMP damage and whenever one goes to 0 first the weapon is disabled?

[SapphireSage]

I actually do have a question for anyone capable to answer: does increasing weapon mount health also indirectly make it more resistant to EMP damage? Or do all weapons have two separate health pools for physical and EMP damage and whenever one goes to 0 first the weapon is disabled?

I'm almost certain that there's only a single weapon health pool and that Armored Weapons Hullmod will help them against EMP. The reason why you would want EMP is one part because EMP damage ignores armor when damaging weapons/engines (armor also protects weapons and engines from taking damage) and the other part because some EMP weapons get EMP arcs, allowing you to damage weapons/engines on sides that you're not facing. EMP arcing and EMP ignoring armor (and high burst!) is why Tachyon beams will frequently shut down engines on a ship that's facing you.

[Goumindong]

Base armor is very significant on the ship with the highest armor in the game, for which IM1 is least relevant, and even then IM1 is what decides damage once armor is stripped, rather than base armor.  On other ships with less armor, IM1 is even more important.

Its significant even for smaller ships for kinetic damage. Consider 5% of 400 armor vs 50 kinetic dmg. This is worth 80% of your base hull in HP vs this weapon. (Weapon dmg is 50 x 25/45 =55% of normal weapon damage). A Brawler has 450 armor. An Enforcer 750 armor.

Lets say you're getting shot by a vulcan cannon. It has a hit strength of 6.25 and so DPS is reduced by a factor of  6.25/26.25... this multiplies the value of hull by 4.2)

I don't really understand weapon hp or what that means

Relatable statements for 500

I get that when the weapon HP goes to 0 it shuts down for a bit, but that's all of the concept that I grasp.

This is my understanding

Weapons mounts have a HP associated with them. When a weapon impacts the armor/hull the weapons in those areas take the damage as well. Each weapon mount size (and type: turret/hardpoint) has both a hit point value associated with it a repair rate associated with it. IIRC weapons are being continually repaired at the repair rate. When they hit 0%(or some other threshold) they turn on and when they hit 100%(or some other threshold*) they turn back on. EMP damage is special damage that only deals damage to weapon mounts and engines(maybe other systems not sure). But otherwise is like normal damage when applied to a weapon and stacks normally with it.

So if you have armored weapon mounts your weapons have double hit points and so it takes twice as large a burst in order to shut them off. This includes EMP damage. If you have an automated repair unit your weapons have twice the repair rate and so it takes half as long to get weapons back online and you're insulated from twice the consistent DPS in shutting off weapons.

*it could also be both at 50% as an example and i have not tested to find out.

[Goumindong]

Consider how that might play out in a fairly typical engagement where a weaker high-tech ship will dart in, trade, and back out when its flux is high, vs a low-tech target.

Sure, but there have to be some advantages to high tech ships with low armor. Otherwise the armor tankers with good shield management get the best of both worlds. They get to eat HE off shield and eat Kinetic on armor. And ships with weak armor do not because their armor is not high enough to prevent even kinetic weapons from dealing minimum damage.

And consider how it works right now. The weaker high tech ship darts in, trades, and backs out when its flux is high, then does it again because the stronger ship cannot damage its armor or hull. The result is that the stronger ships loses this engagement. Always, every time, regardless of whether or not it lets itself take some chip damage on armor. Its successfully being harassed until the weaker ship is out of CR. If somehow the weaker ship doesn't run out of CR first then the stronger ship with the proposed rule would start to put its shields up when the armor damage started to be above minimum. And so all we would have done is shift the armor damage portion of the fight from the end to the beginning. Which isn't ideal but its not exactly terrible. The "weaker ship" wasn't actually weaker and was going to win anyway.

Plus. If there is an override that keeps shields up vs underwhelming firepower this isn't an issue unless the "weaker ship" isn't actually weaker. And an override that makes you vent in the face of underwhelming firepower produces the problem that you're suggesting we not implement armor tanking AI for. The AI will trade on shields with the weaker faster enemy, then it will vent when its flux is high in the face of its underwhelming firepower thus taking free armor damage from the weaker faster enemy.

@Goumindong
RE: discussion of armor and the flux war

I will comment that a key assumption of the flux battle analysis was that ships fight to the death always. That guarantees that spending armor will result in a flux advantage and eventually a kill. The concern when that assumption breaks is that the AI will spend armor to gain an advantage in the flux war, but then the enemy will escape/vent and the armor will be wasted. A perfect AI actually needs to identify situations where it can successfully spend armor to win the flux war and deal damage/kill. I think I understand Alex's reasoning: this is actually a very difficult judgement, and making the AI use armor as a defensive resource when flux is high ensures that the armor will get some value in allowing for a retreat/escape or extended engagement. Maybe a better solution still exists, but you definitely don't want the AI wasting all it's armor when it can't get much benefit either. I think you do definitely want the AI to use shields at lower flux to avoid slowly getting armor chipped down while never achieving anything.

I actually think the current AI behavior can be good at exploiting itself too. If you put an aggressive AI in a dominator, it will lets its flux get very high, then drop shields. The enemy AI will think that it has a big flux advantage because your flux is high and try to push in for a kill, but it's actually just dumping damage into armor while the dominator is getting its hits in as well. Maybe it would work if the flux level required to drop shields was lower when armor was higher. Like if the armor is nearly full, then drop shields at 60% flux instead of 95% flux.

Armor that is spent on not getting a kill is not necessarily wasted. Armor spent not getting a kill is very often flux that you can subsequently spend shooting other ships without waiting. Its flux that you can use to defend yourself from incoming HE missiles and projectiles. When i was broadslaughting you would very consistently get situations where a smaller enemy would come harass you. And the solution was not to raise shields if you couldn't kill them as this would just raise your flux and prevent you from responding to things you needed to. It was to let them do their thing and then you go do things you can do.

If you're not getting armor/hull damage on the weaker ship every iteration that it comes in you're not winning the fight anyway so it barely even matters if you're taking some chip armor damage. (Remember that our rule is that you raise shields if a projectile would not do more than minimum armor damage) If they harass you to the point where its no longer chip armor damage the fleet engagement is probably over or one of you is out of CR. Either way you're losing the fight in a way that won't make you explode whether or not you take chip armor damage or not. You are successfully being harassed. If taking some damage lets you do some damage in response the more powerful ship is almost certainly coming out ahead in this trade because it ends its condition of being harassed sooner than it would otherwise.


Re: AI and high flux. Sure this can be an issue... But if it is then you can just design your armor tanking ship to have more weapon flux than it can fire consistently... which it should have as a general rule (E.G. suppose a ship had no armor. If it could not shoot above its dissipation it would not be using its capacity at all). The dominator is going to get high flux shooting its guns anyway. Raising the shield just means it does less damage during the point when that flux is increasing (and prevents it from dealing with reapers/enemy ship explosions) because it could be shooting that flux instead.

[RustyCabbage]

Weapons mounts have a HP associated with them. When a weapon impacts the armor/hull the weapons in those areas take the damage as well. Each weapon mount size (and type: turret/hardpoint) has both a hit point value associated with it a repair rate associated with it. IIRC weapons are being continually repaired at the repair rate. When they hit 0%(or some other threshold) they turn on and when they hit 100%(or some other threshold*) they turn back on. EMP damage is special damage that only deals damage to weapon mounts and engines(maybe other systems not sure). But otherwise is like normal damage when applied to a weapon and stacks normally with it.

So if you have armored weapon mounts your weapons have double hit points and so it takes twice as large a burst in order to shut them off. This includes EMP damage. If you have an automated repair unit your weapons have twice the repair rate and so it takes half as long to get weapons back online and you're insulated from twice the consistent DPS in shutting off weapons.

*it could also be both at 50% as an example and i have not tested to find out.

Minor correction and some notes:
-There's a slight delay after being hit before weapons begin regenerating HP again. I didn't check exactly how long, but it's not continuous.
-The weapons turn back on once they hit 100%, but they can't be damaged further while repairing when repairing from 0.
-Also worth noting that Armored Weapon Mounts doubles the repair rate at the same time that it doubles HP, in case anyone was wondering. It's probably more intuitive to think of it as each mount having a set time to repair.

[FooF]

Just popping in to say:

a.) Armor is cool and good. It's an extremely well-thought out mechanic as-is. Also, Armor Cells exist and it's not quite as straightforward as subtracting the full damage to armor from a single cell (someone pointed this out earlier).

b.) Heavy Armor "costs" too much. The OP is enough, the malus pushes it too far (or vice versa).

c.) The only thing I would add, maybe to Heavy Armor (maybe to another hullmod/skill entirely) is a one-time "maximum damage to armor" option. Any single hit that would wipe out 99/95/90/85% or more of the armor in that cell (and neighbors) is reduced to that respective %. Perhaps another caveat is that total armor value in that cell has to be above 50%. If you throw that on Heavy Armor, with the heavy OP cost and malus, I think that makes sense. Basically, it allows you to tank a Reaper, Atropos, Hammer-type hit without it completely ruining your armor. It may lead to Frigates being able to take a Reaper but if you're paying for the perk, that's part of it.

I do agree that Reapers are ubiquitous enough and are so inherently dangerous to even the highest levels of armor that Armor needs some recourse.

[Igncom1]

Yeah that's one thing, pirates have access to ALL of the base games missiles, which kinda feels wrong.

There is lore around the use and development of the Hammer-class Torpedo "The go-to strike weapon of the desperately under-equipped, the Hammer is most often employed by poor independent militias, Pirates, and especially the Luddic Path." yet pirates also have access to the best missiles that exist in the sector too.

One way of changing how effective armour is, is to change the distribution of who has what kinds of missile. If not everyone has reapers, then not everyone can break open armour like it's nothing.

[SonnaBanana]

Will Shield Shunts provide other bonuses on top of EMP resistance? Reduced CR decay? Or reduced maintenance?

[Warnoise]

I wonder if a hullmod that offers passive armor regeneration in battle would be OP or not...

[Grievous69]

Armor regen was actually a part of one combat skill before, and yes it was very OP. Players could easily cheese AI this way with certain ships. It didn't do too much for AI tho, since the player is the one who dictates engagements and deals finishing blows.

[SCC]

It wasn't armour regen, it was hull regen.
In the current version, it's possible to exploit Field Repairs 2 and Damage Control 2 to repair some armour and hull damage between deployments.

[FooF]

Regenerating armor, if it existed at all, would have to be reserved for some extremely niche prototype ship with other major downsides. I believe BRDY had/has a ship like that at one point and it was offset with it not having shields and a host of other oddities.

I'm OK with armor being limited but as I said, defeating even elite armor just isn't that difficult. I'm also curious about the Shield Shunt because not being able to flicker shields for a torpedo better have some upside. Does it increase flux dissipation by some amount?

Another out-of-the-way/probably-bad-idea I had awhile ago was some kind of ablative armor. Just as armor has to be defeated before hull can be directly attacked, ablative armor has to be defeated first before the armor underneath is exposed. In my head, it adds 25% of the total armor HP into another armor pool that is equal to the total armor value. For example, an Eagle (1000 armor) would have an ablative belt of 250 armor HP but for the damage calculation would always be 1000 armor. Here's the kicker, though: a strike sufficient of defeating the ablative armor is then reduced by whatever % of the ablative armor was left before it goes into the actual armor. Thus a Reaper, which would totally destroy the ablative armor in one hit, is reduced by 100% to the armor below. If the ablative armor was worn down a bit, say by 50%, the Reaper's effect on actual armor is only reduced by 50% so it would behoove a player to not launch a Reaper as an opening salvo. Once the ablative armor is gone in that section, everything works as normal.

Extra belts of armor obviously add mass, hence why I think it appropriate for ships with it on to be reduced in maneuverability or top speed. If Heavy Armor also existed asi-is but was just a heavy OP cost and Ablative Armor had both a moderate OP cost and evasion malus, that gives more options to the low-tech style of play.