Armour Block Comparison

[Hexed]

And if I want to replace shields with armor all together?

I have done so with several of my ships, which I have since had to refit. Arnour only manages to serve as a viable substitute to shielding if you aren't concerned over factors such as mass and energy. I've found that several of my larger ships were almost incapable of sustained thrust without several external generators due to the insane thrust requirements needed to move all that advanced armour. But in terms of combat? Oh yeah, works great.

 

[Pflame]

That was punch through pre-HP update. The new passive works sort of like ion but for armor, reduces incoming AHP damage by up to 25%.

With how little space and energy punch/pierce passives take, most ships that utilize heavy armor should be able to pretty easily fit them. Pierce on full effect will double the effective HP of your armor blocks (once again) and punch will offset the increases damage to AHP.

So how does 25% defensive punch interact with advanced armor that already has .8 reduction? Does it reduce damage by 25% before splitting between block HP and armor HP? Does damage split between armor HP and block HP and then 25% is reduced from just the block HP? I'm still confused.

 

[Joe Tuber]

Yeah, they've been redone. Let me grab the block config file and see what morsels of knowledge it may share... Huh.

Punch:
For cannon and beam primaries punch seems to add 50% additional block damage and 25% additional armor HP damage with no downsides. That's rather powerful on paper, since the two stats would work together to decrease the amount of time needed to get through any type of block, armor or not.

For missile and pulse primaries it adds 5 meters to the radius and increases AHP damage by 50%.
Missiles with punch might seem a bit odd considering their sub-par DPS values, but I think that a good hit with a punch missile might be able to deal enough alpha to clear out a big chunk of pierce-hardened armor and the improved radius would mean you could damage some of the squishy bits behind the armor.


Pierce:
For cannons and beams punch adds 25% additional block damage, 50% additional AHP damage, -50% armor efficiency, and -100% shield damage.
I'm going to assume that -50% armor efficiency means armor is only half effective against a pierce weapon thus a higher % of the weapon's damage is applied to the block's HP. If that applies to both block armor and AHP then it is definitely worth the downside. That could easily turn a 5,000 EHP armor block into a 500 EHP butter block even without the bonuses to block and AHP damage. If it only applies to block armor then that's still much more (up to 3x) damage being applied to AHP and block HP.
Tests will need to be run to ascertain it's actual usefulness.

For missiles and pulses it adds 5 meters to the radius and -50% armor efficiency.

Be aware that while I use punch and pierce for a number of my weapons, I haven't done any dedicated numerical testing with them post-update. Someone who has could probably give a more accurate assessment.

i tested this with a cannon and everything you said seems to be true, except curiously the armor damage bonus was +90% for both. I used only a 1 cannon module/1 effect module setup and got 19 armor damage per shot with both punch-through and pierce, when I expected 12 and 15 respectively. didn't test with missiles

 

[MrFURB]

So how does 25% defensive punch interact with advanced armor that already has .8 reduction?

What punch does is it nullifies up to 25% of the AHP damage that would have been dealt. This ONLY affects your armor HP bar, not anything else. It doesn't make you tankier but makes your tankiness last longer, making your armor bar go down slower. It's useful if you've got a lot of advanced armor and not much standard or basic since it takes more AHP to destroy an advanced armor block than the block provides.

 

[jorgekorke]

Uneven armor distribution gives a good flavor to the battle -> weak spots on ships for the enemy to look for, and exploit it.

 

[Sgtwisky]

hum... I like the idea of week spots on ships due to thinner armor. Not sure how easy it will be to take advantage of that unless you take the target by surprise though.

 

[jorgekorke]

hum... I like the idea of week spots on ships due to thinner armor. Not sure how easy it will be to take advantage of that unless you take the target by surprise though.

I can see it happening - example, ships that are more agile (due to size or light armor purely) could outmaneuver heavier ones. Attacking together with other people, so one can take out from behind.... that kind of thing

 

[AtraUnam]

Ok so now that I have someone confirmation that armor can replace shields if you're willing to put up with the downsides I have another question. How much armor do I need? for example how many layers is equivalent in usefulness to 1 mil of shielding?

 

[Rokiyo]

Ok so now that I have someone confirmation that armor can replace shields if you're willing to put up with the downsides I have another question. How much armor do I need? for example how many layers is equivalent in usefulness to 1 mil of shielding?

Theorycrafting time! To keep things simple I'm going to assume infinite Armor HP and that your enemy is only hitting your advanced armor blocks.

Each block has 1000 base EHP, and as long as you have some Armor HP left then that jumps to 2000 EHP. If you max out pierce/punch that apparently doubles to 4000 EHP (not 100% sure of this bit, but running with it for now).

With 4000 EHP per block, you're looking at 250 advanced armor blocks to hit 1mil block EHP (but you're going to have to ensure that all 250 of them get hit before your system blocks do, if you want to match the usefulness of a shield).

For example, if you put a 5x5 layer of 10-thick advanced armor on the front of your ship, then you will have 25 "lines" of armor in that spot (each able to withstand 40k damage).

• If you manage to angle yourself so that the incoming damage is spread very evenly across this plate, then it'll absorb the full 1 million damage.
• If your enemy consistently out-manoeuvres you and manages to keep hitting exactly the same spot from exactly the same angle, then it only absorb 40k damage.

So if you are fighting multiple NPC pirates that are slowly orbiting you and naturally spreading their damage all over your ship, then armor is going be ridiculously effective for the number of blocks used. I don't have any PVP experience though, so I can't tell you how realistic it is to ensure the incoming damage gets spread around in a PVP scenario.

In conclusion, how much armor you need to match the effectiveness of shielding is going to vary wildly, depending on how well you can predict and/or control where your ship will taking damage.

 

[Hexed]

In conclusion, how much armor you need to match the effectiveness of shielding is going to vary wildly, depending on how well you can predict and/or control where your ship will taking damage.

This is a good summary, for small ships it shouldn't be too hard really although I've found that creating a heavily armored interceptor is largely a waste of time due to the thrust module requirements to reach what I consider an acceptable thrust/mass ratio. Having a low capacity, high recharge shield is far more useful. And for larger ships in PVP the key thing to remember is that rolling is your friend. The front of your ship should always be heavily armored anyway since it will normally be facing the enemy. But if they are able to get out of your front arc of fire then rolling is the easiest way to spread damage around.

 

[EricBlank]

Heavily armored interceptors don't make a whole lot of sense regardless. You want them to maintain agility to tackle smaller craft and destroy them quickly. Some weak shielding and basic hull is probably all they'd need. Survivability would come from that agility and cooperation with other craft, and the swift end of opposing fighters.

I am definitely enjoying this discussion. Its nice to see how the rules have changed, what the next big players will be in terms of tactics and strategy.

I had an armor-tanking battlecruiser lined up, if I ever get around to it. However, I'm now thinking about refitting my frigate/corvette vessels to take better advantage of this. Corvette gunship already has a nice adv. armor sheath around some components. For the frigate, armoring the bow would be simple. It would just be thickened up in place of the shields that would have gone underneath.

Now, with armor being able to actually stand in for shields for once, how should we reimagine the ratios of components? Obviously we need extra thrusters if speed is a concern. More power too.

 

[Hexed]

Now, with armor being able to actually stand in for shields for once, how should we re-imagine the ratios of components? Obviously we need extra thrusters if speed is a concern. More power too.

This is where I hit a snag in my experimentation. The larger craft (350+ meters) required a great deal more thrusters to achieve a 1:1 ratio (obviously) but it was to the point where the energy requirements where unsustainable at the power soft cap. This is bearing in mind that I frequently have at least 2 other effects active as well as whatever turrets may be firing. So I consider this to be an untenable way of designing my ships, the power inefficiency is unacceptable and external generators create a weakness in the ship I would rather avoid.


All of that being said, a few heavily armored sections: Front, power generation and turret battery's mainly. Had next to no noticeable effect on my overall thrust/power requirements for the larger ships.


The medium ships had basically no changes that I was aware of, I'm talking 60-350 meter ships. I typically over equip these ships however so your mileage may vary.

And as I said previously, and you so accurately reaffirmed; smaller craft and advanced armor are simply not a good mix. The loss in maneuverability makes the craft more vulnerable rather than less.

 

[Sgtwisky]

Instead of using docked outer generators for your ship. couldn't you design, using rails a way to store said power generator inside the ship? Maybe have large plex doors or something? That way the mothership's shields have to come down completely before it becomes a target.

 

[Lecic]

Instead of using docked outer generators for your ship. couldn't you design, using rails a way to store said power generator inside the ship? Maybe have large plex doors or something? That way the mothership's shields have to come down completely before it becomes a target.

Most people have their reactors internal already.

 

[EricBlank]

You're going to want to provide extra armor and shielding for those internal reactors and their rail docks, though:
On servers like Elwyn Eternity, the admins, and players, are extremely concerned about lag from collisions. So, if a stray round happened to derail one or more of your internal reactors, you'd have a reactor in a box bumping everything and generating lag, which will of course bring the wrath of the admins down on you, who will probably just delete your ship. Wouldn't be such a problem if objects dumped from docking in a confined space just didn't move relative to their parent because there was nowhere for them to go, as I posted in another thread.

 

[Tunk]

I would love it if there was a period of alignment after undocking similar to astronaut alignment/attachment.
Sort of soft docking until it exits the bounding box of its parent entity under its own power.

Would save a lot of collision shenanigans.

 

[Hexed]

Instead of using docked outer generators for your ship. couldn't you design, using rails a way to store said power generator inside the ship? Maybe have large plex doors or something? That way the mothership's shields have to come down completely before it becomes a target.

Sorry, when I refer to external generators it is just a way of denoting a power supply from a docked entity. These are of course always inside the ship in question.

Regardless of it being inside however, if the generator receives damage to it's logic blocks or dock then it ceases to function. So it is relatively easy to cut off a far larger supply of power from a ship with external generators than with one that is self sufficient. And for the ships that I was having to implement these on, they were far too small to be able to effectively account for this shortcoming.


This is all just my preference of course, YMMV.