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[Retry]

Had kind of a weird question about how exactly armor and hull interact while messing around with modding.

Basically, take a theoretical "test case".  There's 3 weapons, each dealing 1000 damage.  One is a HE weapon, one is a Frag weapon, and one is an Energy weapon.

Each weapon is firing at a test target with infinitesimal, but not zero, armor.  Think of it as, say, 1 point of armor or so, it exists but is basically just not large enough to put a dent on the effective damage coming through.  (AFAIK, the only entities that don't have any sort of armor value are missiles and, possibly, destructible objects such as asteroids?)


Does the armor multiplication/division occur first, and then hull takes damage with the modified value?  In other words:
Energy shot deals 100% damage to armor (1000 damage), requiring negligible damage to clear -> remainder 1000 damage is inflicted to hull
HE shot deals 200% damage to armor (2000 damage), requiring negligible damage to clear -> remainder of that 2000 damage is inflicted to hull
Frag shot deals 25% damage to armor (250 damage), requiring negligible damage to clear -> remainder of that 250 damage is inflicted to hull

Or is that damage somehow "converted back" after whatever damage gets past the armor?  In other words:
Energy shot still inflicts 1000 damage to hull
HE shot, after armor calculations are done, is converted "back" to hull damage -> remainder is ~1000 damage inflicted to hull
Frag shot, after armor calculations are done, is converted "back" to hull damage -> remainder is ~1000 damage inflicted to hull

Or is it something else entirely?

[SCC]

Or is that damage somehow "converted back" after whatever damage gets past the armor?

It's this one, though even when shooting hull there's still 5% armour (or flat 150, if you have Impact Mitigation 1) that reduces the damage, with reduction being still dependent on damage type.

For hypothetical 1000 damage hits of all damage types to the hull of a ship with IM1, high explosive would deal 930 damage, energy would deal 870, kinetic would deal 769 and frag would deal 625 damage. This is to clear any confusion about why when shooting even bare hull you sometimes deal less damage than you expect.