Baffled armor deflects nuke blast

[MacThule]

I accidentally lay a sheet of Standard Armor in perpendicular slab lines then decided to keep it since it looked cool and was a second (outer) layer anyway.

Then during testing I discovered two things. First, firing a cannon or beam directly in between the armor slabs bypasses them and damages the solid layer below - this I expected and was glad to see. Second, the layer of baffled slab line armor seems to really play havoc with nukes when they impact the baffled surface. This is the surface I was testing after FOUR direct hits from a small nuke, with shields down on target:



The small hole in the armor on the left is from the ion beam I was using to take down shields. The blasts did barely anything to the ship, though they still went off full strength as you can see where some armor peeled back just behind the door and the turret near the rear of the ship - far from the impact sites - was erased in the first blast. TWO of the blasts were on the exact same site (the forward-most impact crater slightly to the target's port side).

For reference the weapon is the missile here:



And this is what a single shot from the same weapon does to the same target ship when it impacts anywhere except the baffled armor. This has been tested on multiple iterations of this ship:


EDIT: Fixed grammar

 

[Daro_Khan]

Slabs still act as full blocks they just only appear as slabs. but that is neat that anything but missile bypass them.

Missles use a form of ray trace explosions depending on the surface they hit E.I *Flat surface* they do 50% of the damage and lose the rest of the 50% into space. Anything less then a flat surface (like this lil tiny slabs) would divert more of the damage to space.

One would think though that if a missile got BETWEEN those slabs it would do 75 to even 100% of its damage though....which in this case for you doesn't seem to be that way which i guess lead to your lil discovery

 

[Master_Artificer]

Wow when I stumbled upon this it didn't nearly give me the results that you got, it did reduce damage but was like only 2-3 less layers removed. Maybe I did something wrong, your results are way better.

 

[MacThule]

Wow when I stumbled upon this it didn't nearly give me the results that you got, it did reduce damage but was like only 2-3 less layers removed. Maybe I did something wrong, your results are way better.

It was totally unexpected. I thought my client was glitching at first and the hit just wasn't being calculated, but then I noticed that there was a tiny bit of damage.

It bears extensive experimentation, because damage deflection of that magnitude is a game changer. Currently I'm thinking of this as tech, not a bug, though I doubt it was deliberately coded in. It isn't intuitive, can only be employed by committed engineers who research and experiment, requires a sacrifice of style, and it pushes back against the most OP weapon in the game, therefore doesn't strike me as something that needs to be "fixed". Also, because of angles, it can never create complete cover for a ship.

I'd be interested in seeing results from some other testers using baffled armor.

 

[Epsellis]

This really reminds me of triforcing...

 

[Dire Venom]

This really reminds me of triforcing...

Lol you too eh?

 

[Nickizzy]

Lol you too eh?

Me as well.

I'm not sure how limiting this would be. I know with a bit of tweaking with slopes and slabs you could make some vents or ridge lines.

 

[Daro_Khan]

you basically made a missiles catcher that catches the missiles and tosses it the other way XD

I like heptaing and teteraing though :/ before that it was just called *wedging* lol

 

[AtraUnam]

it pushes back against the most OP weapon in the game

Missiles are only OP for those with lack of skill, effectively utilized cannons are the current meta.

 

[Nickizzy]

Missiles are only OP for those with lack of skill, effectively utilized cannons are the current meta.

Or a good old beam pulse Ion/EMP. Nothing can fight that level of shield and power damage.

 

[Yetimania]

I've been away for awhile, but now that the fleet update is here, I'm interested in drones again. Can I ask what the current 'state of the art' is in terms of drone design? Is there an ideal size, weapon configuration, etc? (Ie, the smallest size possible that can launch 50,000 power worth of missile/beam, or missile/pulse, or whatever).

 

[Keptick]

I've been away for awhile, but now that the fleet update is here, I'm interested in drones again. Can I ask what the current 'state of the art' is in terms of drone design? Is there an ideal size, weapon configuration, etc? (Ie, the smallest size possible that can launch 50,000 power worth of missile/beam, or missile/pulse, or whatever).

Were you intending to make that post here by any chance?

 

[Keptick]

I accidentally lay a sheet of Standard Armor in perpendicular slab lines then decided to keep it since it looked cool and was a second (outer) layer anyway.

Then during testing I discovered two things. First, firing a cannon or beam directly in between the armor slabs bypasses them and damages the solid layer below - this I expected and was glad to see. Second, the layer of baffled slab line armor seems to really play havoc with nukes when they impact the baffled surface. This is the surface I was testing after FOUR direct hits from a small nuke, with shields down on target:

View attachment 22971

The small hole in the armor on the left is from the ion beam I was using to take down shields. The blasts did barely anything to the ship, though they still went off full strength as you can see where some armor peeled back just behind the door and the turret near the rear of the ship - far from the impact sites - was erased in the first blast. TWO of the blasts were on the exact same site (the forward-most impact crater slightly to the target's port side).

For reference the weapon is the missile here:

View attachment 22972

And this is what a single shot from the same weapon does to the same target ship when it impacts anywhere except the baffled armor. This has been tested on multiple iterations of this ship:
View attachment 22973

EDIT: Fixed grammar

Looks like in the test VS normal blocks the missiles were hitting areas with only a single armor layers. It's normal that more damage would be done when compared to your first test where the missile had to go through two armor layers (slab and normal block). You should test the same missile system against a flat surface of dual layer armor (with systems under) and repeat the process with a slab + armor layer (with systems under). If the results are different then yea, something weird is going on.

 

[Az14el]

Doing a little testing with this myself, same pulse nuke array (240k weapon blocks yo) hitting 2 different ships, larger 29k mass destroyer predominately adv armor with double layers top & bottom, even triple depending on the angle (hard to tell whether it hit triple or double, tried to angle it towards the weapon right but ehh), smaller 400 mass baffled armor fighter predominately basic hull (all slabs were basic), still obviously got one shot but, compared to the destroyer it actually had some system HP left, and all computers intact despite being a mere couple of blocks from the impact point..

:/

Less impressive defences when used on a larger object though it seems, my "Overheatin' Gaystation" may as well have been wearing a wet t-shirt (exact same missile was used).

 

[Yetimania]

Were you intending to make that post here by any chance?

Haha, yeah, sorry. I had two tabs open. *cringe*.

 

[MacThule]

NM

 

[Sachys]

Attachments are giving errors for some reason.

 

[MacThule]

Yeah, they aren't showing for me either. I tried shooting them again and not getting same results. Again. Even though the one I just posted was consistent for 3 impacts on the baffle with like 5 others on the rest of the ship... I still had the shields generating at the time.

I gutted the shields and can't reproduce it with no shields at all, even though I was bringing them down before firing before anyway. It's weird that I keep getting those surprising reductions, and consistently only on baffled sections... then can't reproduce them. It may just be a minor effect that only shows up significantly when the shields start to regen right before impact and cushion most of the blow anyway. Extremely heavy damage does seem to make it irrelevant.

 

[Dire Venom]

I guess then the best counter to mass missiles is spikey armour with lots of rods on it :? Detonate the missiles early so they do less damage:?
That being said You could use chain-rotators to create a missile shield that rotates around your ship at extreme speed

 

[MacThule]

I guess then the best counter to mass missiles is spikey armour with lots of rods on it :? Detonate the missiles early so they do less damage:?
That being said You could use chain-rotators to create a missile shield that rotates around your ship at extreme speed

The problem with the baffling is that it's inconsistent. Docked armor - especially rotating, as you mention, is better overall.