Suggestions: armor and penetrating

[jijiji]

Can I or you (may be) make a thread about ALL suggestions about armor and penetration? Choosing between different suggestions is better than one suggestion as I think.

Well, yes, why not. I would be grateful if you did it.

Some people think that armor is weak and/or penetration is too big.

Here is list of suggestions. Some of them are from forum:

1. akimzav's suggestion: Armor would have a penetration resistance that would increase the more blocks of armor a shot would line up against. If a shot is insufficient to penetrate the armor, it would do zero damage. It it exceeds the penetration value, it deals some block damage to the armor, but possibly not enough to destroy it, and continues to do damage beyond it.
2. Edymnion's suggestion: The armor hit point pool would act instead as a form of second shield, such that armor blocks would not be destroyed at all until the AHP runs out. After that, armor blocks would be destroyed as normal, as they would without AHP.
3. jijiji's suggestion linear: To penetrate armor, bullet wlll loose X amount of penetration.
4. jijiji's suggestion nonlinear: To penetrate armor, bullet will loose X^[WIDTH] penetration.
5. taisong's suggestion: Armor should spread much of the damage it sustains to any armor blocks surrounding it, making it necessary to do a lot more damage to actually break through that particular area of armor.
6. StarWars1981's suggestion: Armor should have a resistance value that increases depending upon the quantity of armor that is in line with the shot. Great depths of armor (IE: 30 blocks deep) could become exceedingly difficult to penetrate. The difference with Akimzav's seems to be that Akimzav's resistance would be lower and permit penetration without total armor block destruction.
7. kaemcedlra's suggestion: Both armor and shields should have penetration resistance percentages versus weapons, but that resistance would be effective versus only either kinetic or energy damage, so a ship wanting equal levels of defense versus all types of damage would be required to have both shields and armor.
8. aRottenKomquat's suggestion: is essentially the same as StarWars1981's suggestion.
9. [NEW]Lancake's suggestion: Armor resistance should scale depending upon how much armor hit points are in the armor pool. So a small ship without a lot of armor would have rather low block armor percentage, whereas an armored battleship would have maximum resistance, while it's AHP pool was high.

You can suggest! I can't find all the suggestions. You can post your own suggestions here. If you want me to add a suggestion, send me a link.

This thread made for discussion about armor and penetration. You can feel free to prove and disprove any suggestions! Don't keep silence. Say what you want and it might change the game.

 

[Lancake]

Thanks, if you find more of them, make sure to add them to the original list.
I already made most of my own conclusions on this matter but it always helps to read other suggestions related to the subject.

 

[Panpiper]

You have left out Lancake's suggestion. It would also be useful to have a summary of all the ideas here.
[doublepost=1482198022,1482197000][/doublepost]I attempted to summarize each person's ideas. If anyone feels I have done so inadequately, please post here what I got wrong, and I will try to fix it. jijiji, feel free to use my summaries in your main post.

1. akimzav's suggestion - Armor would have a penetration resistance that would increase the more blocks of armor a shot would line up against. If a shot is insufficient to penetrate the armor, it would do zero damage. It it exceeds the penetration value, it deals some block damage to the armor, but possibly not enough to destroy it, and continues to do damage beyond it.

2. Edymnion's suggestion - The armor hit point pool would act instead as a form of second shield, such that armor blocks would not be destroyed at all until the AHP runs out. After that, armor blocks would be destroyed as normal, as they would without AHP.

3. jijiji's suggestion - Linear, armor should have a damage resistance which must be exceeded in order to do damage to the armor block.

4. jijiji's suggestion - Non-Linear, armor should have a damage resistance that increases exponentially as the armor gets thicker.

5. taisong's suggestion - Armor should spread much of the damage it sustains to any armor blocks surrounding it, making it necessary to do a lot more damage to actually break through that particular area of armor.

6. StarWars1981's suggestion- Armor should have a resistance value that increases depending upon the quantity of armor that is in line with the shot. Great depths of armor (IE: 30 blocks deep) could become exceedingly difficult to penetrate. The difference with Akimzav's seems to be that Akimzav's resistance would be lower and permit penetration without total armor block destruction.

7. kaemcedlra's suggestion - Both armor and shields should have penetration resistance percentages versus weapons, but that resistance would be effective versus only either kinetic or energy damage, so a ship wanting equal levels of defense versus all types of damage would be required to have both shields and armor.

8. aRottenKomquat's suggestion - is essentially the same as jijiji's linear suggestion and/or that of StarWars1981.

Lancake's suggestion - Armor resistance should scale depending upon how much armor hit points are in the armor pool. So a small ship without a lot of armor would have rather low block armor percentage, whereas an armored battleship would have maximum resistance, while it's AHP pool was high.

 

[akimzav]

If a shot is insufficient to penetrate the armor, it would do zero damage

it might be my fault to putting it unclear, but i was saying that it usually deals very minor damage to the armor blocks tested against, and, on occasion of shot being too weak (there should be some threshold), it deals no damage.
[doublepost=1482200696,1482200448][/doublepost]Also, i would like to suggest a both creative and productive (in terms of brainstorming armor) (and also somewhat labour-consuming) use of this tread: to break down each of listed suggestions into more-or-less abstract individual ideas, as it is now (when all the suggestions happen to be in one lost) clear that there are similar, if not equal, ideas behind those suggestions.
When this hard task is done, more complex analysis can be made, and that ultimately leads us to a most appropriate solution.
[doublepost=1482203191][/doublepost]Reading other suggestions made me think that the best armor system will be a mix of 1, 4 or 8, 7. Here goes.
Shields and armor react to different weapons in a different way; not only damage is different, but also the behavior.
When an explosive or energy beam/pulse hits the hull, it just melts/evaporates it, dealing damage in a way close to what we have now.
When a kinetic something hits the hull, it tests against line of blocks to traverce, which are summed up with both weigths (based on type of armor) and non-linear factor (based on distance): something like T=i*a*n^(1+g), where 'T' is total armor factor, 'i' is "individual hardness factor", 'g' is "group hardness factor", and 'a' is "adjacency hardness factor" (which is defined by 4 adjacent blocks, not standing in a line of fire; a=sum{I}, 'I' is 'i' for each of those 4 blocks). Then, if damage of the projectile is greater than N*T, where 'N' is some fixed number, blocks are destroyed and the projectile continues its way, with its damage reduced by N*T. If not, all blocks are left intact, and the projectile is considered to ricoshet.
This model:

1. considers adjacency
2. considers thickness
3. considers shield/hull ability of stopping different weapons
4. make overall armor thickness less, due to non-linearty

Therefore, it will:

1. introduce more challenging armor designing process
2. assign different combat roles to kinetic and energy weapons (am i the only one who sees Stellaris here?)

Well, that's it.

 

[Panpiper]

Individual factors usable in the design of an armor system, either currently or suggested.

Block armor hitpoints. The amount of damage an individual block can sustain. Currently we have three different sorts of blocks with three different amounts of block armor hit points; basic hull with 50, standard with 75 and advanced with 100.

Armor hitpoint pool. In addition to the block armor hitpoints each armor or hull block possesses individually, they also contribute the same to an armor hitpoint pool. As long as there are hitpoints in that pool, damage to an armor block is split between that pool and the individual hitpoints of the armor block, making armor blocks twice as hard to destroy as long as there are armor hitpoints remaining in the pool. The number of hitpoints in the pool can be modified by the addition of punch resistance passive effect.

Damage reduction. We are using this currently and calling it simply 'armor'. Damage reduction reduces damage done to the armor block by a certain percentage. That percentage can be modified by the addition of pierce passive effect. Standard armor has a damage reduction of 60% and advanced armor 75%.

Damage resistance. This is a damage threshold that must be exceeded in order to do damage to the armor block. We are not currently using this. With damage resistance, a weapon that does not exceed the damage resistance of the armor block would do zero damage. IF it exceeded the damage resistance, it would do it's damage minus the damage resistance. Several people have suggested using such a system and increasing damage resistance based upon the depth of armor blocks in line with the shot.

Shield effect. Currently shields are used as a straight damage 'hitpoint' absorption. It has been suggested that the armor hitpoint pool could be used similarly.

Damage differentiation. Currently all weapons affect shields equally unless modified by ion or piercing effects, and the same with armor. By making shields particularly vulnerable to some and armor vulnerable to others, we could create greater motive for players to have both sorts of defenses and possibly create more nuance in weapon and defense choices.

Armor or hitpoint depth. A few people have suggested factoring in the quantity of armor blocks in line with a shot and using that depth to affect some other factor such as damage reduction or damage resistance. Lancake has suggested doing something similar but tying the factor to the absolute quantity of armor hitpoint pool remaining.

Damage spread. The idea here is that damage to armor would be spread over adjacent blocks so as to make penetrating individual blocks more difficult. Of course actually achieving a penetration would leave a correspondingly larger area of armor weakened.
[doublepost=1482204883,1482203867][/doublepost]Balance factors to consider.

We want both ship building and ship combat to be interesting and both to have tactical choices to be made. Maneuvering to place shots into weaker areas adds to both tactics during a fight and decisions during construction.

Size matters. Small ships may find themselves severely disadvantaged in their ability to either use armor or penetrate armor. This may contribute to the problem of size creep. On the other hand, given that smaller ships are substantially more maneuverable, if an armor system is designed such that a ship has strong armor to it's fore, but much weaker armor elsewhere that smaller ships 'can' penetrate, this might add to tactics.

The offense must be superior to the defense. This is to avoid the situation where ships could be built that are essentially unkillable. We can make a ship hard to kill using hitpoints that take a long time to reduce, but we have to be careful about allowing outright damage resistance from scaling too high.

 

[akimzav]

Size matters. Small ships may find themselves severely disadvantaged in their ability to either use armor or penetrate armor. This may contribute to the problem of size creep. On the other hand, given that smaller ships are substantially more maneuverable, if an armor system is designed such that a ship has strong armor to it's fore, but much weaker armor elsewhere that smaller ships 'can' penetrate, this might add to tactics.

The potential balance problem with large ships being absolutely invulnerable to small ships can be solved by altering weapons' mechanic a bit. For example, we can make beam weapons only consider 5 blocks surrounding targeted block, instead of a whole line of blocks which stand in it's way (so it is more like melting or evaporating armor than penetrating it); the other thing that can be done is making turret maximum turning speed depend on the amount of mass enhancers and momentum of the turret, while, in addition, making mass enhancers consuming energy to rotate turret. Theese measures will boost small ships' evation a lot.

P.S. Realy appreciate the work of both jijiji and Panpiper done on this tread. I think we might chang something about this 'armor' problem (or, at least, produce some constructive thoughts).

 

[jijiji]

Thanks, if you find more of them, make sure to add them to the original list.
I already made most of my own conclusions on this matter but it always helps to read other suggestions related to the subject.

You have left out Lancake's suggestion. It would also be useful to have a summary of all the ideas here.

Added. Sorry can't find all the stuff.

I attempted to summarize each person's ideas. If anyone feels I have done so inadequately, please post here what I got wrong, and I will try to fix it. jijiji, feel free to use my summaries in your main post.

1. akimzav's suggestion - Armor would have a penetration resistance that would increase the more blocks of armor a shot would line up against. If a shot is insufficient to penetrate the armor, it would do zero damage. It it exceeds the penetration value, it deals some block damage to the armor, but possibly not enough to destroy it, and continues to do damage beyond it.

2. Edymnion's suggestion - The armor hit point pool would act instead as a form of second shield, such that armor blocks would not be destroyed at all until the AHP runs out. After that, armor blocks would be destroyed as normal, as they would without AHP.

3. jijiji's suggestion - Linear, armor should have a damage resistance which must be exceeded in order to do damage to the armor block.

4. jijiji's suggestion - Non-Linear, armor should have a damage resistance that increases exponentially as the armor gets thicker.

5. taisong's suggestion - Armor should spread much of the damage it sustains to any armor blocks surrounding it, making it necessary to do a lot more damage to actually break through that particular area of armor.

6. StarWars1981's suggestion- Armor should have a resistance value that increases depending upon the quantity of armor that is in line with the shot. Great depths of armor (IE: 30 blocks deep) could become exceedingly difficult to penetrate. The difference with Akimzav's seems to be that Akimzav's resistance would be lower and permit penetration without total armor block destruction.

7. kaemcedlra's suggestion - Both armor and shields should have penetration resistance percentages versus weapons, but that resistance would be effective versus only either kinetic or energy damage, so a ship wanting equal levels of defense versus all types of damage would be required to have both shields and armor.

8. aRottenKomquat's suggestion - is essentially the same as jijiji's linear suggestion and/or that of StarWars1981.

Lancake's suggestion - Armor resistance should scale depending upon how much armor hit points are in the armor pool. So a small ship without a lot of armor would have rather low block armor percentage, whereas an armored battleship would have maximum resistance, while it's AHP pool was high.

Thanks a lot! Much less work for me.

But 3 and 4 works in another way. Here is penetration resistance.

P.S. Realy appreciate the work of both jijiji and Panpiper done on this tread. I think we might chang something about this 'armor' problem (or, at least, produce some constructive thoughts).

Thanks a lot. He made more work than me here as I think.

_________________________________________________
Should we to make similar threads to discuss and choose suggestions among popular themes? For example one about weapons, one about AI, one about warp? I think it will help to sum them up and compare. But I am not sure that I can hold all the threads. Should we? Or may be you want do it?
[doublepost=1482228934,1482228041][/doublepost]

I already made most of my own conclusions on this matter but it always helps to read other suggestions related to the subject.

Can we merge threads? Would be gread to do it and save description with votes.
[doublepost=1482230601][/doublepost]

The potential balance problem with large ships being absolutely invulnerable to small ships

I don't think so. Cause I made 20-30 light drones which are able to kill ship with about 150 000 mass.

 

[jijiji]

I will write my oppinion about armor problem.

As I think, in real life we have different material's paramethers:

• Durability: it's amount of damage that block can take without distruction. In game it's called "HP".
• Fatique durability: it's amount of damage that construction can take without distruction. In game it's called "AHP" (and "damage spread"). When progectile hits an armor, it makes waves inside structure which does micro damage to all structure by destroying molecular connections. Of course it depends on range to source of wave, but AHP is enought.
  
• Impact resilience: it's amount of energy that block will consume while deformating and destroying. Not ingame.

So I suggest to add third paramether to armor block. Let's call it "penetration resistance" (PR).

PR is amount of penetration required to penetrate target block.

So if bullet have 10 penetration, it may to penetrate:

• 10 block with PR = 1;
• 5 blocks with PR = 2;
• 2 blocks with PR = 5;

This is my linear suggestion. Of cource advanced armor should have more PR than basic armor. We can make PR of advanced armor between 3 and 5, and 2-3 for basic armor.

Spoiler: How to implement

Add new paramether "penetration resistance". Projectile will loose PR penetration to penetrate a block.

Nonlinear suggestion:

When bullet hit an armor block, it "pay" amount of penetration calculated by amount of blocks it's have already penetrated. For example, if formula of penetration needed is [Bullet penetration] = [PR=2]^[Depth]:

• To penetrate 1 block = 2^1 = 2;
• 2 blocks = 2^2 = 4;
• 3 blocks = 2^3 = 8;
• 4 blocks = 2^4 = 16;
• 10 blocks = 2^10 = 1024;

For PR = 1.5:

• 1 block = 1.5 ^ 1 = 1.5 (1);
  
• 2 blocks = 1.5 ^ 2 = 2.25 (2);
• 3 blocks = 1.5 ^ 3 = 3.375 (3);
• 4 blocks = 1.5 ^ 4 = 5;
• 5 blocks = 1.5 ^ 5 = 7;
• 10 blocks = 1,5 ^ 10 = 57;

So in this case PR of armor should be between 1.5 and 2.

Spoiler: How to implement

Every bulled should have paramether: amount of penetrated blocks (APB).
When bullet hit new block, it will loose {if(APB == 0) penetration -= PR else penetration -= PR ^ APB} penetration power, but not less than [PR]. If it enought to penetrate, APB will increase by 1.

Thick armor will stop penetration while it's thick. Narrow armor will be penetrated easily.

 

[Jojomo]

As I think, in real life we have different material's paramethers:

• Durability: it's amount of damage that block can take without distruction. In game it's called "HP".
• Fatique durability: it's amount of damage that construction can take without distruction. In game it's called "AHP" (and "damage spread"). When progectile hits an armor, it makes waves inside structure which does micro damage to all structure by destroying molecular connections. Of course it depends on range to source of wave, but AHP is enought.
  
• Impact resilience: it's amount of energy that block will consume while deformating and destroying. Not ingame.

I don't know if trying to emulate real life in-game is a good idea, but if that's the aim some adjustments may be in order:

• "Durability": this is called "toughness" in real life, it's a combination of strength and ductility.

• Fatigue resistance: is a long term property, something to worry about over periods of years, typically, caused by vibration and cyclic loading. Probably not of interest to us.

• "Impact resilience": toughness determines whether a hull will break on impact, but I suspect there may possibly be more to the story for extremely high speed/pressure impacts that we might see from weapons, and they're outside the bounds of my knowledge. Material hardness will have some role re. piercing by projectiles.

• As for "amount of energy that block will consume while deformating and destroying" this is a quite accurate description of toughness (called "durability" above) - it isn't something different.

 

[jijiji]

Fatigue resistance: is a long term property, something to worry about over periods of years, typically, caused by vibration and cyclic loading. Probably not of interest to us.

It is long term only for light forces. Projectiles without enought penetration may break very heavy armor after some hits.

Idea of suggestion is increasing of PR. It will increase penetration needed to penetrate armor.

 

[Jojomo]

It is long term only for light forces. Projectiles without enought penetration may break very heavy armor after some hits.

This is accumulation of the total energy the material has had to absorb, it's not the correct use of the term "fatigue" with respect to material failure.
Each hit is hard enough to cause permanent deformation, but a single hit isn't enough to cause failure.

Repeated impacts not strong enough to cause permanent deformation, that cause micro failures, would be fatigue, but it isn't (correctly) describing the situation of a projectile breaking armour after multiple hits.

 

[jijiji]

Fatique durability: it's amount of damage that construction can take without distruction

This is accumulation of the total energy the material has had to absorb

Find 10 differences

 

[Jojomo]

Find 10 differences

Take an engineering course at your local university. I'm not giving one here.

 

[akimzav]

Find 10 differences

Take an engineering course at your local university. I'm not giving one here.

No need to be rude, people. There clearly is a misunderstanding, probably caused by language barrier.

The more i think of it, the more obvious it is to me that the effectiveness (in terms of providing a fun and challenging gameplay) of armor mechanics is widely connected with weapon mechanics, more specificaly (cap'n here) the weapon-armor interaction mechanism.

This is why i think it is also important to disquss all possible elemental ideas that can be applied to said interactions.

There are some that instantly came to my mind:

1. Difractional diverging of a beam weapon, lowering its penetrating properties (or, if no such properties assigned, then lowering damage) as range increases. This will allow to safely raise beam's DPS and lower distance, not introducing disbalance, as it will effectively make it much more desirable to use in close combat. (And it may become a reason for ships to want close distance also)
2. Differing damages done to different armor kinds (now we have 4 kinds: hull, stnd, adv, cryst), and make it somehow connected with physical properties of each kind. For example, it can be hardness that determines the effect: crystall better handles energy weapons while easily shatters if attacked with explosives, while soft hull being good at handling explosions, however failing to protect from high-AP projectiles and so on.
3. One of my boldest ideas: make slaved weapon systems not only affect stats of master systems, but also the way they shoot. For example, slaving damage pulse to cannon makes cannon fire energy pulses, having changed not only the appearance and damage values of the projectile, but also interacting with armor in some different way. (as in paragraph 2 of this list)
4. Non-permanent effects (better known as debuffs in lots of games), applied by weapons with corresponding effect modules slaved to them, such as: temporarily lowered armor, temporarily more vulnerable to a specific weapon, etc. This, while being uncomfortably much mmo-ish, can probably lead to more teamwork in battles.

 

[jijiji]

Take an engineering course at your local university. I'm not giving one here.

No need to be rude, people. There clearly is a misunderstanding, probably caused by language barrier.

We are fine

He just said what I said. It's the same. Cause damage is similar to energy (if not the same).

Differing damages done to different armor kinds (now we have 4 kinds: hull, stnd, adv, cryst), and make it somehow connected with physical properties of each kind. For example, it can be hardness that determines the effect: crystall better handles energy weapons while easily shatters if attacked with explosives, while soft hull being good at handling explosions, however failing to protect from high-AP projectiles and so on.

I have this idea too.

That's good, but I think that we should focus on penetration at the moment. Cause 30 blocks penetration is too much. I prefer to fix it to avoid placing of 30 blocks of armor.

 

[Jojomo]

He just said what I said. It's the same. Cause damage is similar to energy (if not the same).

Yes, we did both write a sentence each that were similar, but yours was describing "fatigue" and mine was telling you that's why it's *not* fatigue.

I know terms like fatigue, damage, durability, resilience etc are often used in normal conversations, and the other people in the conversation will generally understand the ideas being conveyed even without detailed explanation, but in material science there are formal terms with specific meanings, and if you want to start getting technical you have to use them correctly, otherwise everyone's speaking different languages and no ideas are transferred accurately.

 

[jijiji]

I know terms like fatigue, damage, durability, resilience etc are often used in normal conversations, and the other people in the conversation will generally understand the ideas being conveyed even without detailed explanation, but in material science there are formal terms with specific meanings, and if you want to start getting technical you have to use them correctly, otherwise everyone's speaking different languages and no ideas are transferred accurately.

You can crack thick wire using bensing. It may be so fast. I just want to say that material can loose it's fatoque durability so fast.

But this is not important now. I just suggest to increase penetration resistance for armor. That's all.

Did you get my suggestion?

Also taisong's suggestion is good for me too.

 

[jijiji]

taisong's suggestion: Armor should spread much of the damage it sustains to any armor blocks surrounding it, making it necessary to do a lot more damage to actually break through that particular area of armor.

I did some tests and decided that this suggestion is awesome now. I think we should implement it. But we can increase radius of spreading damage or make it to depend on weapon and it's effects.

 

[Mork2]

Isn't that already in-game. If I remember correctly, damage to armour blocks is by % diverted to the Armour HP (AHP) of the ship. Better armours divert move of the % damage to the AHP. Imagine the AHP as your damage buffer.

Punch defensive effect increases the % damage diverted to AHP. Increases the amount of damage diverted to AHP reducing individual block damage but increasing the amount of damage the buffer takes. Effectively it makes your armour more resistant to attacks attempting to punch through your armour by diverting damage to AHP.

Pierce defence effect reduces the damage applied to the AHP. AHP takes reduced damage. The damage buffer resists damage by %. Making the buffer last longer.

I might have the offensive effects mixed up.

Punch offensive effect: weapon does extra AHP damage. The damage is spread out more by damaging AHP faster. This depletes the overall buffer making it easier to drop the pool fast enough to get more shots through the armour later when AHP runs out.

Pierce offensive effect: weapon reduces damage % diverted to AHP. More damage is applied to blocks but not as much damage is diverted to AHP. It punches holes though blocks but not effecting the AHP buffer as much.

Between all of this you can use existing effects to tailor your armour and your weapons somewhat.

 

[jijiji]

Isn't that already in-game. If I remember correctly, damage to armour blocks is by % diverted to the Armour HP (AHP) of the ship. Better armours divert move of the % damage to the AHP. Imagine the AHP as your damage buffer.

Punch defensive effect increases the % damage diverted to AHP. Increases the amount of damage diverted to AHP reducing individual block damage but increasing the amount of damage the buffer takes. Effectively it makes your armour more resistant to attacks attempting to punch through your armour by diverting damage to AHP.

Pierce defence effect reduces the damage applied to the AHP. AHP takes reduced damage. The damage buffer resists damage by %. Making the buffer last longer.

I might have the offensive effects mixed up.

Punch offensive effect: weapon does extra AHP damage. The damage is spread out more by damaging AHP faster. This depletes the overall buffer making it easier to drop the pool fast enough to get more shots through the armour later when AHP runs out.

Pierce offensive effect: weapon reduces damage % diverted to AHP. More damage is applied to blocks but not as much damage is diverted to AHP. It punches holes though blocks but not effecting the AHP buffer as much.

Between all of this you can use existing effects to tailor your armour and your weapons somewhat.

He said about it. It's a bit different things.

Lets make it so the armor will be able to actually stop bullets.

In real life, firing a gun at an armor will probably dent it, but the whole structure will be able to survive the shot. A similar mechanic is already in the game as Armor HP, but I think it is not enough. So, I will propose this.

Whenever an armor block takes a hit, that armor block will take some of the damage, and will spread the rest to adjacent armor blocks (armor blocks ONLY). The amount of damage the block will spread is calculated through the number of adjacent blocks.

The calculation formula for the damage the block will take when hit is;
= 100% - (8% + (ArmorHP ÷ ArmorHPCap) x 10%) x (number of adjacent armor blocks)
Then, the damage will be deducted by the traditional armor system.

If there are 4 adjacent armor blocks and your armor value is full, the block will take 28% of the damage and spread the rest to the adjacent blocks equally. If there are 4 adjacent armor blocks and your armor HP is zero, the block will take 68% of the damage and spread the rest.

This new system will buff armor against Cannon-cannon machinegun but does not effect Cannon-Beam or Cannon-pulse snipers.
Also, this opens for more weapon effect diversity, such as the "pierce" effect decreasing the damage spread, and punch increasing the block damage and also damage spread.