Future of Armor 'Tanking'

[TungstenWall]

I read the Jan 20th News, and am still trying to wrap my head around how Armor will work.
With Chambers, Integrity, and clues to how Weapons are being updated, I wanted to try and get a better idea how optimal Armor Design will look in the future.
Has there been any updates since then on how we should expect it to change?

I am trying to design ships around using armor as a primary defense, but I don't really have enough information about what an optimal design will be like in the future.
Will armor composition have greater effect than defense-chambers? Should I expect to put Heat-Resistant or 'Alpha Damage'-Resistant blocks into composites on my ships. Will spaced-armor be beneficial or a detriment due to Integrity? Will I be punished for having spikes, slabs, or any protrusions on my armor?

At this time I am not even sure how to layout an interior, functional or RP, as I have no idea what form armor is going to take with the weapons update. I don't even know if Armor is intended to be an alternative beyond early-game compared to Shields.

Thanks to anyone who may have something new to add.

 

[kulbolen]

I read the Jan 20th News, and am still trying to wrap my head around how Armor will work.
With Chambers, Integrity, and clues to how Weapons are being updated, I wanted to try and get a better idea how optimal Armor Design will look in the future.
Has there been any updates since then on how we should expect it to change?

I am trying to design ships around using armor as a primary defense, but I don't really have enough information about what an optimal design will be like in the future.
Will armor composition have greater effect than defense-chambers? Should I expect to put Heat-Resistant or 'Alpha Damage'-Resistant blocks into composites on my ships. Will spaced-armor be beneficial or a detriment due to Integrity? Will I be punished for having spikes, slabs, or any protrusions on my armor?

At this time I am not even sure how to layout an interior, functional or RP, as I have no idea what form armor is going to take with the weapons update. I don't even know if Armor is intended to be an alternative beyond early-game compared to Shields.

Thanks to anyone who may have something new to add.

there is no information yet.

 

[Nosajimiki]

One piece of this that is answerable is about integrity. Only system blocks have integrity so you can make your armor however complex you want.

Spaced and composite armor will very likely continue to to be integral in your designs based on what info has been released about weapons and armor update plans, but the armor update might make it slightly less important.

I believe the general plan for armor is to make it scale up better for larger ships, but they have not really disclosed how they plan to do that.

 

[JinM]

I am trying to design ships around using armor as a primary defense, but I don't really have enough information about what an optimal design will be like in the future.

I think if you go for more than one block depth of armor you are good to go.

I can't imagine an armor system, that only needs one block thick armor.

So I think more layers. And maybe there will be a new type of block. So if you built a ship with 3 block thick armor, you just replace one layer of them with the new block. Maybe we get armour enhancers. For each ship you can then slave a group of armour blocks to them, and depending on the ship size the group count and size varies.

Just theorising ofcourse.

I just say, that if I would like to make a ship that uses armour, I would make 3 thick walls anyway for lets say a 100m longish ship.

Has there been any updates since then on how we should expect it to change?

Maybe we will hear something in the stream? Even though there is only a small chance, as they aren't allowed to "teaser" in most cases.

 

[Nosajimiki]

I think if you go for more than one block depth of armor you are good to go.

I can't imagine an armor system, that only needs one block thick armor.

So I think more layers. And maybe there will be a new type of block. So if you built a ship with 3 block thick armor, you just replace one layer of them with the new block. Maybe we get armour enhancers. For each ship you can then slave a group of armour blocks to them, and depending on the ship size the group count and size varies.

Just theorising ofcourse.

I just say, that if I would like to make a ship that uses armour, I would make 3 thick walls anyway for lets say a 100m longish ship.
Maybe we will hear something in the stream? Even though there is only a small chance, as they aren't allowed to "teaser" in most cases.

There is actually a mechanic in current armor that works exactly like this: Hull. Hull is way cheaper and lighter than armor or advanced armor, but has almost as much aHP. The downside of hull is that it does not get damage reduction, so it is still easy to penetrate and actually "bleeds" aHP very quickly. So if you put advanced armor in your critical zones, and hull where you do not expect to get hit much (like a decorative interior), then the Hull will buffer the armor with cheap extra aHP which is excellent at mitigating explosive damage and will likely be much better vs direct fire weapons once they start doing radius damage as well. Stack this with armor chambers and you can add a ton of survivability to a ship (at least vs radius damaging weapons).

Remember that armor applies damage reduction first; so, a 1,000,000 damage missile-beam-explosive warhead will only do 100,000 damage vs advanced armor. With armor chambers, you can push (if I remember the number right) 75,000 of that into aHP and only 25,000 actually hits you. Since that damage gets spread across the whole 23m blast radius, most of it bleeds off into space, or gets blocked by the first layer of armor that stops it meaning a missile designed to leave a near max radius crater destroying thousands of blocks might only leave a 3-5 m wide scratch, and a total loss of blocks well under 100, especially if you have any armor spacing to speak of.

So, as you can see, aHP plays a huge role in reducing damage. So that missile hit above could either consume the aHP of 750 adv.armor blocks (187.5 mass) or 1500 hull blocks (75 mass and WAY less material cost). The risk is that if the missile hits your hull, you lose 750,000 aHP which means your armor will fail you much more quickly, so keep your hull buried when armor tanking.

Also, solidly layering armor back to back will always be bad because you are just cluster things to be destroyed It's not even meta IRL. If you look at how real big things like a battleship is armored vs real smaller things like a tank, a battleship does not use proportionally thicker armor plates, instead they use their liberty of scale to build multiple, spaced out hulls and bulkheads to isolate damage. If you mimic their thinking in your ship building, you'll be surprised how big of a difference it can make.