Are defensive punch and pierce too expensive?

[Panpiper]

I love the new HP system which eliminates coring and gives one time for a good fight. I love the variable mass of blocks which makes decorating a ship and giving it RP space less of a sacrifice. I love the fact that armor has an effect, but I fear the effect is too little for ships that want to make armor a serious component of their defense.

I have built a couple of pirates who tote cannons that quite literally tear through advanced armor targets like butter (Marauder, Corsair). Having an advanced armor sheath around your ship is not even a speed bump in how fast these ships will tear into you if you are relying on that armor. Shields are the only realistic defense against these things, as long as the regen is high enough.

Shields cover turrets. Shield damage recovers very quickly requiring no repairs and no resource consumption after battle. Armor defense does 'not' cover turrets, requires a trip to a shipyard to repair and has a material cost to do so. Shields are clearly still the best defense. Moreover shields can be reinforced with the Ion passive defense, which while while it does require significant energy to run, requires only 5% of one's ship block count to max out. Armor passive defense however requires no less than 10% of one's ship block count to max out, 'each'!

Now a ship having both maxed defensive pierce and punch certainly could stand up to some fire from those afore mentioned pirates, but it would still need repair and here is the kicker... It would be at the expense of 20% of the ship's blocks which 'could' have gone to shields. If that ship had put that 20% of it's blocks to shields instead of passive armor boosts, it's turrets would be unharmed and it would require no trip to the shipyard.

I posit that the defensive passive effects of punch and pierce are too expensive at 10% each, that while their energy cost is low, the 'opportunity cost' of forgoing that much potential shield defense is simply not worth it. I would suggest that these be changed to 5% of block count instead of 10%.

And then there is the question as to whether the AI in say, turrets, can ever use these defensive effects? Anyone know of an 'always on' circuit that could be used to force docked entities to turn on these effects?

 

[BDLS]

Wait isn't the max passive effect for P and PT only +25 bonus? Last ship I built wouldn't go over that, and required very few blocks. Been a while since I worked on anything, seemed like a good deal.

 

[amimai]

to max out armor passive to +25% (the max) you need 1/180th of the ships total block count...

for a grand total of 1/90th of the ships mass (1.1%)

assuming a ship is ellipsoid in shape, 100/40/40 dimensions it will have a internal volume of 83775 cubes, to layer that with 2 layers of armor would cost an extra 10434 blocks (or 12%) >.<

the minimum size for a ship that can afford 1 layer of armor (20% block count) is 60/20/20

yea armor sucks for small ships

but for massive boats it becomes progressively cheaper
10 layers for a 250m is only 25%
10 layers for a 500m is only 15%
10 layers for a 700m is only 10%
and so on


ADV armor test
top : without
bottom : with 25% punch 25% pierce (50% penetration reduction)

 

[Panpiper]

Oh gods... Am I once again guilty of assuming old mechanics were still in play? Will I ever learn?

 

[amimai]

also worth noting:
BOLT ON ARMOR

because why pay for the whole 100k cube internal volume of your ship when you can just pay for the external 10k armor cubes that actually need armor/shield buffs

WIP super battleship with 100m of bolt on armor currently complete

 

[Panpiper]

because why pay for the whole 100k cube internal volume of your ship when you can just pay for the external 10k armor cubes that actually need armor/shield buffs

Will docked entities such as turrets or your bolt on armor, actually use passive defensive effects? Or do we have to force them on using inter ship wireless or something? (And just how does one do that anyway?)

 

[Olxinos]

Unless I'm mistaken, you can't activate passive defensive effects such as ion, piercing or punch-through with logic (you can however activate active defensive effects such as pull or push). The idea is otherwise excellent, but I don't think you can actually exploit it unless your docked armor plates are manned.
I'll quickly check whether that changed though.

Edit:
It didn't change. However, the effect doesn't deactivate if the ship is unmanned (tested with ion and piercing), meaning you can enter the docked plate, activate the ion/piercing effect, then return to the main ship's core and the ion/piercing effect will continue to be active.
I don't know how this behaves when you spawn a ship or if the effect eventually wears off, but it seems usable (and again, it's a great idea to save blocks)

 

[amimai]

It didn't change. However, the effect doesn't deactivate if the ship is unmanned (tested with ion and piercing), meaning you can enter the docked plate, activate the ion/piercing effect, then return to the main ship's core and the ion/piercing effect will continue to be active.
I don't know how this behaves when you spawn a ship or if the effect eventually wears off, but it seems usable (and again, it's a great idea to save blocks)

I PRESENT!
the novel concept of hallways and doors!