Has Armor been Buffed?

[-Moose-]

Hey guys I've been away for the last few versions. I've noticed a couple of changes with armor and I just have a few questions before I delve into ship making again.

1. Are Shields still way better than armor?

2. Is armor actually useful now?

3. Is having 2-4 layers of adv hull on the front of the ship a good investment? Or a waste of space?

4. Are other modules passive functions (pierce/punch) effective or should I stick with ion for the shield resistance?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Panpiper]

1: No, though still useful.
2: Yes, especially versus missile explosions.
3: Yes, some would say five, I've heard people profess ten. (Depends on the size of the ship I suppose.) Consider spaced layers as well.
4: For their small module/energy cost, yes.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

1: Yes, they completely stop damage and protect docked entities. Although they will likely be gone most of a fight
2: Yes, armor does reduce the amount of damage you receive, although on a large enough scale it still equates to butter.
3: Yes, thicker armor adds more AHP, and weaker weapons take a long time to chew through advanced armor. Just remember it weights more now.
4: The 60% Ion buff may be harder to achieve now that advanced armor weights more. I actually made a spread sheet that I put in the mass of my ship and how many shields I have and it tells me if I replaced shield capacitators with Ion modules what my effective shields would be, if that number is higher than the base shield result than Ion is worth it. I have not actually played with the armor enhancing systems yet as I have no way to quantify if using them is better or not. If the cost of the modules seems worth it, than they are probably good to use as the majority of fights against evenly matched ships seems to be done without shields now.

 

[MrFURB]

1, 2, 3. I agree with both of the above.
Shields are just as useful as they were before, but everything around them changed. Good armor weighs more but also absorbs a lot more damage than the same number of shield blocks. It pretty much comes down to if you're reasonably sure that a block you place is going to be destroyed in a fight, armor is better than shields. If you think the ship is going to be disabled before the block you're placing is hit, shields would be better.
My own practice has been to focus heavier armor on specific parts or directions that I feel reasonably safe will be attacked most often, sacrificing heavy armor on the other flanks for shields. The shield blocks offset the mass of the heavy armor up front and if the enemy attacks my strong point they have to deal with a whole ship's worth of shielding AND armor.

4. Defensive effects aren't that hard to decide upon. Pierce and punch are wonderfully cheap both in block count and energy cost.
Pierce makes your AHP (ship-wide armor hitpoints) absorb 75% damage up from 50%, which in turn makes your armor blocks last longer and your AHP shorter. The usefulness of pierce is dependent on the enemy hitting armor and your ship having a healthy AHP pool.
Punch reduces any damage to your AHP by 25%, which makes it last longer. I haven't actually found much usefulness for this passive outside of ships that rely heavily on multi-layered advanced armor. It takes a certain armor thickness to go through all your AHP before breaking through the armor blocks into the squishy systems inside. Unless you're using plenty of armor tanking it's safe to go with just piercing.

 

[Mork2]

Effects on EHP
Just the throw some number out for comparison. Advanced armour normally has 1000EHP. When you hit it half the damage goes to the the Armour Hit Points (AHP) of the ship giving it effectively 2000EHP while the AHP is still remaining. With 25% peirce resistance the it goes from 50% to 75% of damage goes against the AHP. So while the AHP hasn't run out of points yet, each block of Advanced armour will now take 4000EHP damage to kill with 25% pierce effect.

Effects a layer of advanced armour has and spaced armour
Adding this up, a single wall of advanced armour with pierce resistance is very good at absorbing and limiting damage to your ship from small weapons and missiles. Consider this as a great way to limit the shear amount of systems damage you would take from the first missile impacts after the shield goes down. Also since the change to how missile damage works, if I'm reading missile damage right, it radiates out from the centre point and must take out a circle of armour before it can hurt the systems behind it. At minimum a surface hit would have to take out 9 blocks of outer hull before it effects the layer underneath. With 25% pierce that's 36,000 damage just to wipe out those 9 blocks of advanced armour. If you have a space between the armour and the systems, in theory the missile would have to wipe out 21 blocks of advanced armour before the explosion would radiate far enough to hit the rest of the hull or 100k damage and it gets progressively worse. So spaced armour will cause the missiles to do more damage to the armour layer but protect the systems underneath it. More layers of armour make it even worse. Two layers should require taking out 30 blocks before touch systems directly underneath. While the AHP is remaining and there aren't holes for missiles to fly through it should reduce your missile damage to systems a lot. This is where guns/eams have an advantage as they can punch holes through the armour to get to the systems underneath. Problem is you likely to have to keep punching holes through each time as your unlikely to hit through the holes until you make enough of them. Missiles might blow a hole in the armour and allow follow up missiles to hit the larger holes but you probably won't do a lot of system damage until that happens.

Punch on AHP
What punch 25% does is, for the 3000EHP damage diverted to AHP for the destruction of a single block of advanced armour only 2250HP damage is taken off your AHP making your AHP effectively take 33% more damage than the listed AHP before running out.

Composite Hull
Due to these mechanics I'm making a composite hull for my titan. The normal hull has the main shields and ion defence. Inside that hull is a docked core with power and ion/pierce/punch effects for an outer armoured hull. The outer hull has ion defence though so shields hits that transfer to the main hull shields are still reduced by the full ion effect. When the main hull is under 50% full, ion hits to the outer hull won't transfer to the inner hull and do no damage to the armour surface. Normal hits will have to ware down the AHP and punch through the armoured shell to start working on the remaining 50% shields on the main hull. Shipyard repairing of damaged armour will really help here. However once that's down the main ship will take massive damage unless hits are to one of the more protected critical areas. Unless you layered a set of armour on the main hull as well.

Using basic hull to backup the advanced hull with extra AHP
5 blocks of basic hull contributes 250 AHP to the ship compared to the same mass of 1 advanced armour block that contributes 100AHP. Use this advantage on large hulls to have all the basic hull not in critical areas to provide AHP for the other areas with advanced armour. With pierce and punch effect all the basic hull blocks on the rest of your build will help protect the advanced armour on the front and make it last longer. This will also cut down on mass giving your ship better acceleration rather than having a layer of advanced armour over everything.

Between all the changes to armour and missile damage mechanics well designed armour can make your ship significantly tougher once the shields are down.

 

[Winterhome]

although on a large enough scale it still equates to butter.

That scale is in the 3 million block and up range.
Most people I've seen still do not use single outputs for penetrating armor, but rather, multiple outputs for massacring systems.

And I've never seen someone seriously using straight Cannon, Cannon-Beam, or Cannon-Pulse.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

That scale is in the 3 million block and up range.
Most people I've seen still do not use single outputs for penetrating armor, but rather, multiple outputs for massacring systems.

And I've never seen someone seriously using straight Cannon, Cannon-Beam, or Cannon-Pulse.

Really? My 5000 mass ship has cannon+beam and has no problem cutting through armor. All fights I've done with this ship against it's self have been the same, once shields are down, those cannons cut strait through the ship, in one side and out the other. They compliment a set of rapid fire auto guns, so every couple of seconds I hit, 2-1 on the keyboard to fire off a heavy shot and go strait back to rapid guns. It's much more satisfying and engaging than simply holding down the fire key.

 

[Winterhome]

Really? My 5000 mass ship has cannon+beam and has no problem cutting through armor. All fights I've done with this ship against it's self have been the same, once shields are down, those cannons cut strait through the ship, in one side and out the other. They compliment a set of rapid fire auto guns, so every couple of seconds I hit, 2-1 on the keyboard to fire off a heavy shot and go strait back to rapid guns. It's much more satisfying and engaging than simply holding down the fire key.

Well, sure, you can pull it off with a high alpha cannon. But the vast majority of people I've seen outright refuse to use high alpha cannons due to the difficulty of aiming and the very low structure damage potential.

 

[Panpiper]

Well, sure, you can pull it off with a high alpha cannon. But the vast majority of people I've seen outright refuse to use high alpha cannons due to the difficulty of aiming and the very low structure damage potential.

Well, that's their loss. We can't help it if most people fly ships that are easy pickings. They won't be doing 'any' structure damage with their 'high structure damage potential' weapons, if they don't crack the armor first.

My standard weapon (other than missiles) is a self powered cannon/cannon/overdrive turret that does in fact do enough damage to crack an advanced armor block with each shot, ten times a second. If it hits an unarmored part of a ship, like a part of a ship that a previous shot has taken the advanced armor off of, it will do punch through damage to a LOT of system blocks beneath it. If my target ship isn't moving or spinning fairly fast, those cannons can easily cut right through a small ship.

One could assert that it is wasting damage potential by firing right through a ship. I would assert that a ship that is being cut right through by such a cannon is not long for the world.

 

[Winterhome]

One could assert that it is wasting damage potential by firing right through a ship. I would assert that a ship that is being cut right through by such a cannon is not long for the world.

I'm more referring to blocks broken per second. If your machinegun is capable of penetrating five layers of advanced armor, then you can get through the armor on most modern ships and do the highest possible structure damage per second. The problem with high alpha cannons is that they're not able to put out nearly as much block destruction per second as an equivalent machinegun, unless that machinegun is unable to get through the advanced armor layers on its target ship.

Armor is still extremely useful for high mass ships, but there is a very, very high mass dropoff point at which point enemy machinegun arrays are able to cut through it reliably, depending on the quantity of machineguns used by the enemy ship.

 

[Panpiper]

I'm more referring to blocks broken per second. If your machinegun is capable of penetrating five layers of advanced armor, then you can get through the armor on most modern ships and do the highest possible structure damage per second. The problem with high alpha cannons is that they're not able to put out nearly as much block destruction per second as an equivalent machinegun, unless that machinegun is unable to get through the advanced armor layers on its target ship.

Armor is still extremely useful for high mass ships, but there is a very, very high mass dropoff point at which point enemy machinegun arrays are able to cut through it reliably, depending on the quantity of machineguns used by the enemy ship.

Well, the turret I am referring to IS a machinegun, firing ten times a second. That particular cannon is my 'medium' turret and it cannot itself penetrate 'five' blocks of advanced armor. That is not really it's job, it's job is to kill drones and similar small craft. To that end, it can crack a single advanced armor block while the armor still has an HP pool, or it can crack the armor and do a few systems blocks damage in addition, or if the armor is gone (or was never there in the first place like for most drones), then it will kill about eight system blocks in a row with each shot... ten times a second. There are few drones that will not be overheating Swiss cheese after a couple of seconds of attention from such a turret.

For dealing with heavy armor, I have my 'megaturrets', which 'can' crack five advanced armor blocks per shot, ten times a second. The actual number destroyed actually depends on a few factors however, such as whether or not the target ship still has it's armor HP pool, whether it has pierce effect, etc.. If it is out of HP pool, each of the two barrels on those turrets will punch through five advanced armor, with subsequent shots penetrating deep into systems, assuming they don't strike fresh armor. If the target ship still has HP pool, each barrel will crack two (and a half) advanced armor blocks, if it has HP pool left 'and' has max pierce effect going, they will crack only one per barrel while the HP pool lasts.

A ship carrying those megaturrets will typically also have ship fired weapons which will usually be an array rather than single or dual barrels, each of which will hit with the same power. We are talking now about titans however. Those megaturrets are far too big to put on smaller ships (they are well over 100,000 blocks each).

My smaller ships will typically have four of the medium turrets which are a tenth of the block count and (for a battle miner) a nice set of heat seeker swarmers.
[DOUBLEPOST=1444669920,1444668988][/DOUBLEPOST]To the OP, note that the last few posts have been kind of sidetracking talking about what people do or can do to get though armor. Most people do 'not' do this, which is Azereiah's point. In both cases however, armor has changed the game. Versus those who have not made provision for cracking armor, having appropriate armor on your ship can make you 'much' harder to destroy. Versus those who 'have' built their ships to deal with armor, well, they've built their ships that way because of armor. Were it not for armor, likely they would be even more fearsome for some other reason.

 

[lilheartless]

I'm more referring to blocks broken per second. If your machinegun is capable of penetrating five layers of advanced armor, then you can get through the armor on most modern ships and do the highest possible structure damage per second. The problem with high alpha cannons is that they're not able to put out nearly as much block destruction per second as an equivalent machinegun, unless that machinegun is unable to get through the advanced armor layers on its target ship.

Armor is still extremely useful for high mass ships, but there is a very, very high mass dropoff point at which point enemy machinegun arrays are able to cut through it reliably, depending on the quantity of machineguns used by the enemy ship.

uhm what? pretty sure high alpha weapons are just as capable of destruction as rapid fire weapons ....... pretty sure all things size etc being equal weapons do the same "dps" which means as long as you aren't "wasting damage" aka firing a shot that goes "all the way through the ship and out the other side" you would be destroying / dealing the same amount of damage in the same time period.... however what you are failing to realize is that alpha weapons are actually superior in that regard since they do all the damage upfront aka if you fire your alpha weapon you take out 5 seconds worth of system blocks in one shot while it takes you rapid fire weapon all five seconds to take out the system blocks meaning the enemy ship actually has extra efficiency while you are using your rapid fire weapon.

Clarity Edit:

In case people were wondering what i meant assume for a second that you have a weapon that fires once per second and this weapon is capable of destroying 1 block per second

on the other hand you have a weapon that fires once every 5 seconds and this weapon can destroy 5 blocks per shot

which weapon is superior?

The second one is superior because it takes out 5 blocks instantly while the first one takes out 5 blocks over time basically allowing the enemy ship use of 4 of the blocks for 1 second 3 of the blocks for 2 seconds 2 of the blocks for 3 seconds and 1 of the blocks for 4 seconds.

 

[Winterhome]

uhm what? pretty sure high alpha weapons are just as capable of destruction as rapid fire weapons ....... pretty sure all things size etc being equal weapons do the same "dps" which means as long as you aren't "wasting damage" aka firing a shot that goes "all the way through the ship and out the other side" you would be destroying / dealing the same amount of damage in the same time period.... however what you are failing to realize is that alpha weapons are actually superior in that regard since they do all the damage upfront aka if you fire your alpha weapon you take out 5 seconds worth of system blocks in one shot while it takes you rapid fire weapon all five seconds to take out the system blocks meaning the enemy ship actually has extra efficiency while you are using your rapid fire weapon.

Dude, penetration depth is logarithm based. It's not linear. It DOES drop off.

For the first few thousand damage per hit, you get more pen depth, and that rapidly starts dropping off as you do more and more damage.

A 100 block machinegun will break 1 block per hit (10 per second), whereas a 100 block alpha cannon will break 20 blocks per 15 seconds, or some such, if that makes sense. I'm just throwing random numbers out there, but you get the idea.

 

[Mork2]

While were getting away from the original post the variations in how armour work effect what is effective in dealing with that armour.

Well you either end up wasting energy by firing large weapons that aren't effective for their power at wiping out large numbers of blocks or you end up using a waffle type weapon (checkboard) which also wastes a lot of power. Either way you end up wasting a lot of energy on your beams or guns. One punches though to start the system damage early the other will have to eat through armour first before it can start on the system blocks.

Both systems in there own way are good for taking out large numbers of systems behind armour. The advantage of large damage weapons punching through is the potential of lucky hits. You have the chance of taking out critical computers, bobby AI, rails, rail dockers etc., while punching through a ship. This can render a turret/drone/escape pod effectively inert/dead or detached.

One note is as far as I'm aware AI turret fire is still focused fire so all the shots aim at the same block. For this reason I typically have only one barrel on each of my turrets for the AI to control as a waffle system will waste energy and still end up aiming all of it at one block. There is a little spread because there is a slight angle difference but I would rather not waste the energy. For more barrels on a turret I end up using a fixed docked module with its own separate AI and single barrel weapon which results in different random aim points. The problem is with enough AIs you start to lag the game pretty bad. As for the waffle guns I have them setup to be player controlled. This results in the AI dropping the shields and punching holes for lucky hits while I'm aiming the waffle gun to take out large amounts of systems.

Back on Topic somewhat
On large ship battles armour plays a smaller role since most guns at that point can punch through armour easy. By the time your main shields are down your probably out a few of your point defence turrets so the missiles might start getting through and they can do massive system damage. At this point armour will absorb lots of missile blast damage from taking large chunks of system blocks and delay your demise. Since your not automatically dead when the core overheats if you have layers of armour around the core might not be directly shot and you might be able to run for a escape pod and jump out though that's harder with jump inhibitors now. So you might have to radar jam in a black ship and fly out. If the enemy cuts through to your core before you overheat they can plaster the area with weapons fire and automatically kill you when you pop out of the core.

Small turrets or drones
With small turrets put advanced armour on the front. As long as each block of advanced armour has 3 extra basic hull blocks You will have the full 250 AHP for each advanced armour block. In theory then each advanced armour block on the front of the turret will absorb 2000 damage before anything gets through to the systems behind it. I'm assuming the 75% damage reduction for the advanced armour also applies to the damage diverted to AHP. Even without the damage reduction its still 1000EHP plus the diversion of damage to AHP. This is much better damage absorption that shields since the area you have to protect is far smaller. 2.5 shield blocks will get you 550 shield HP while the advanced armour block on the front has 1000EHP and up to 2000 EHP with AHP each for the same mass. Also you need all the basic hull to back the advanced armour blocks anyway unless you like uncovered system blocks. Turrets are covered by the main ship shields until under 50% so I don't bother with shields on small turrets. The advanced armour is there to let the small turrets survive against small hits when the main ship shields are under 50%. I do put a one shield recharger in to charge the 220 shields that come with the core block.