How useful actually is armour?

[kulbolen]

 

[Dire Venom]

How many advanced layers was that btw:? Did it have defensive effects on?

 

[Calhoun]

How many advanced layers was that btw:? Did it have defensive effects on?

6, and I don't believe so.

 

[Lucidess]

Starmade's armor is too heavy and weak, and kills any chance of fleeing any fight because you can't dodge with heavy armor. RIP ship.

My server fixes that problem by making armor lighter and stronger.

 

[kulbolen]

How many advanced layers was that btw:? Did it have defensive effects on?

my ships the same from the other video, but the block dmg beams are turned off to keep from messing up the test.

that ones 6 layers all around with punch iirc. i tried with none, punch, pierce, all. result was about the same. it doesnt even count most the armor dmg the missiles would do because it hits 0 and they move on. lots of the missiles just wander off with notihng to do, and lots of the ones that hit have absorbed damages because the ship itself has hit 0s. the armor melts just like everything else.

armor IS good at helping prevent stray shots undock bits or break computers. imo its worth using sparingly on core components. it will not save you from a focused attack, and barely even slows it down. if it DID save you from a focused attack one time, it probably still wouldnt be worth it because those blocks arent adding stats and are massively weighing your ship down. like it or not, mass is the relevant scale most ship systems and server settings operate on.

there are way better ways of blunting missile impacts than turning your ship into a paperweight.

 

[Panpiper]

there are way better ways of blunting missile impacts than turning your ship into a paperweight.

LOL! That was funny, a paperweight.

 

[Nauvran]

I feel like these test could be a tad more controlled and thorough.
Single output weapons, one of each type with all combinations.
Multiple setups of armour, 1-10 layers of each type to test against each other.
Different amount of the defencive effects on said armour setups.
Shield target that takes up the same amount of blocks , both with a decent amount of recharges and capacity(to make it a fair test).
Each individual test should be done on a freshly spawned armour block as armourHP is a great factor.

 

[kulbolen]

I feel like these test could be a tad more controlled and thorough.

of course they could, but that wasnt the point.

youre free to test anything you like, though.

 

[Winterhome]

Doesn't mean much if you don't show us how large the missile groups are - and judging by the crater sizes, the amount of firepower you unleashed against that brick is far, far, far more than any ship of equal size to that brick should ever be fighting.

This is nothing more than a showcase of what happens when you hit a light frigate with dreadnought missiles.

 

[Az14el]

You don't know they're that big :p
I'm assuming its still the 200k destroyery type thing that was one shotting desps (shouldnt be able to one shot a ship 2.5x your size at any rate but lol offence)

And of course it probably shouldn't be able to just melt that much armor but that's really not hard especially since the block HP changes

 

[Winterhome]

that much armor

All of the missiles struck roughly the same places on a very small cube with armor that's only thick enough to eat a 15k module missile/pulse/piercing from a 50k mass missile boat.

Going with an "all or nothing" armor scheme, 6 meters qualifies as the "nothing". An armor tank of equal block count to anything capable of making holes that size through armor would have 6-8 meters of armor on the sides and rear with 30 to 50 meters on the nose.

 

[GDPR 302420]

This is nothing more than a showcase of what happens when you hit a light frigate with dreadnought missiles.

Well this sounds like a case of people not liking being told they are wrong, because I know for a fact that you are not a clueless noob.

 

[AtraUnam]

 

[Nosajimiki]

Armor takes more skill to do right than shields, but the rewards can be well worth it.

1- Multiple layers of external armor is no more helpful than 1 layer of external armor which is the main complaint people have when using armor in battleships. That said, Internal bulkheads can add a LOT of survivability to a ship, since they tend to stop big bullets and nuke blasts after they have broken the anticipated outer layers armor before they can dig through a ton of stuff, and they are more effective against meta guns that try to use pierce to break your outer layer and exp or pt to dig deeper.

2- Spaced outer armor can waste tons of missiles explosive power for WAY less mass than a comparable shield since the blast will lose most of its damage into empty space.

3- Mixing and matching Adv Armor where you think you'll get hit with Hull where you think you won't get hit will optimize aHP absorption and preservation. Adv armor gives 90% reduction BEFORE you take aHP dam; so, getting hit there can help you essentially shrug off 500 damage per hull block (1000 with armor passives).

4- Other stuff that is kind-of exploitive

 

[kulbolen]

Doesn't mean much if you don't show us how large the missile groups are - and judging by the crater sizes, the amount of firepower you unleashed against that brick is far, far, far more than any ship of equal size to that brick should ever be fighting.

This is nothing more than a showcase of what happens when you hit a light frigate with dreadnought missiles.

The ship being kaboomed is basically a shield capacity tanked ship spamming self sufficient turrets for offense, and it's being slapped around with missile spam. The missiles used in that would be completely blocked by 5 to 7 meters of advanced armor (outside of netcode tomfoolery which can rarely result in missiles exploding internally rather than externally), and it has more than enough space to have 5 to 7 meters of advanced armor all around including on the turrets at the cost of maybe 20mil shield capacity and some alpha damage. Even without armor HP, a warm coat of advanced armor can completely nullify the first salvo of missiles.

just showing 5-7 layers of adv armor isnt worth its stat weight, and doesnt completely block squat. repeated the test on a ship 5x its size with same adv armor layering, and almost as much total ahp as the original 500k+ mass despoiler. it still blew up.

Going with an "all or nothing" armor scheme, 6 meters qualifies as the "nothing".

... "The missiles used in that would be completely blocked by 5 to 7 meters of advanced armor"

 

[Panpiper]

just showing 5-7 layers of adv armor isnt worth its stat weight, and doesnt completely block squat. repeated the test on a ship 5x its size with same adv armor layering, and almost as much total ahp as the original 500k+ mass despoiler. it still blew up.

My philosophy has always been that armor is primarily a way to defend against non-meta cannons and beams. (Though 'really' thick armor can defend even versus meta weapons in many cases.) Versus missiles, the main defense is a game breaking quantity of AMS turrets and maybe a wide waffle of 1/1 cannons firing through the nose. A single layer of (docked) advanced armor surrounding a ship will give a ship a 45 second breathing space in most cases. Having a few such layers on the nose, interspersed with "RP" space to create a space buffer, will stop several warheads that penetrate the AMS, and if it's a docked hull, might keep the shields up.

It is very true that no amount of AMS will stop a salvo of 500 missiles (most of which would be just decoys), and versus such a dedicated glass cannon, missile boat that gets off a shot, there is little to be done. This is not an error however of ship building strategy on the part of players, but an error of design by the developers.

 

[Nosajimiki]

It is very true that no amount of AMS will stop a salvo of 500 missiles (most of which would be just decoys), and versus such a dedicated glass cannon, missile boat that gets off a shot, there is little to be done. This is not an error however of shipbuilding strategy on the part of players, but an error of design by the developers.

There are a handful of ships out there that are built from the ground up as specialized anti-missile boat ships. These ships can kite missile swarms and waffle them once they get all grouped together for very little effort. I've seen ships fire over 100 missiles per salvo and not land a single hit against them. I've also know that missiles tend to start to glitch out way before 500 missiles in real battlefield situations; so, while that salvo might look good on paper or perform well in a controlled fire scenario, once you start throwing out all the weapon outputs of a real battle, most of those missiles will simply freeze up and do nothing. (no AMS needed)

EDIT: this is not to say, missile swarms aren't usually a good tactic, but it does have a hard counter that is becoming increasingly more common.

 

[Panpiper]

There are a handful of ships out there that are built from the ground up as specialized anti-missile boat ships. These ships can kite missile swarms and waffle them once they get all grouped together for very little effort. I've seen ships fire over 100 missiles per salvo and not land a single hit against them. I've also know that missiles tend to start to glitch out way before 500 missiles in real battlefield situations; so, while that salvo might look good on paper or perform well in a controlled fire scenario, once you start throwing out all the weapon outputs of a real battle, most of those missiles will simply freeze up and do nothing. (no AMS needed)

EDIT: this is not to say, missile swarms aren't usually a good tactic, but it does have a hard counter that is becoming increasingly more common.

I suspect the missile swarms you are talking about here are seeker swarms (missile/missile). I doubt such a ship's ability to kite the seekers I build. Each missile gets two missile computers but only the primary gets missile modules, so they are one warhead, full speed. I just build a couple of hundred of them, most of which are one module decoys, and launch them with logic. They launch to the four sides, making them quite impossible to engage with a single waffle pattern.

Missile/beam missiles might be more able to be engaged with a waffle fire, but I have found that mine for some reason zig zag quite a bit, making them hard to hit. While they are turret launched, they are launched from turrets concentrically arrayed around my ship, so they do not all come in a straight stacked line, again making them difficult to hit with a waffle. And they most certainly cannot be kited.

 

[kulbolen]

I suspect the missile swarms you are talking about here are seeker swarms (missile/missile). I doubt such a ship's ability to kite the seekers I build. Each missile gets two missile computers but only the primary gets missile modules, so they are one warhead, full speed. I just build a couple of hundred of them, most of which are one module decoys, and launch them with logic. They launch to the four sides, making them quite impossible to engage with a single waffle pattern.

Missile/beam missiles might be more able to be engaged with a waffle fire, but I have found that mine for some reason zig zag quite a bit, making them hard to hit. While they are turret launched, they are launched from turrets concentrically arrayed around my ship, so they do not all come in a straight stacked line, again making them difficult to hit with a waffle. And they most certainly cannot be kited.

you suspect wrong. =D

 

[Nosajimiki]

There may be some variation from server to server because of sector sizes, ranges, default speeds, etc, but on many servers, a ship with an Overdrive and 1.5-2.0 thrust ratio can kite pretty much any missile class for long enough to get them to cluster, even missile-beams.

Once they cluster, missile count become irrelevant vs a waffle that can fire 2000 rps