Lukrah asteroids currently make armor tanking nonviable.

[Winterhome]

At the moment, they're so barren that they're effectively barring an entire ship style (armor tanks) from being viable. Every single person I've spoken to agrees.

And no, Standard Armor isn't an option - it's even less useful than basic hull. Any viable ship over 1000 blocks is able to turn ships with even four layers of standard armor into confetti with ease.

If we could get this problem remedied, that'd be great.

 

[TheWurm]

So.... what's the suggestion then?

Tell you what, I'll fill that part in. Either

A) make fertikeen ore MUCH more plentiful in the galaxy,

B) make hardener much cheaper to craft(like one ore=100 standard armor worth of hardener. That might sound like a lot, but judging by how much other crap I've got lying around waiting on armor to put it into, it doesn't seem too far fetched.) Or,

C) make armor better so it's worth the cost in gathering time. This is the solution I'm least on board with, since it could skew the balance in tournaments, though someone more knowledgeable about the current PvP scene might know better.

 

[Sgtwisky]

I would go for a combo of A, B and C please.... Make it a bit more plentiful, then make it produce a bit more, then give armor a slight buff. Only slight though.

That way no one major change needs to be made.

I DO agree that they are a pain to mine. I use damage pulse as a slave on my salvage ships, so to get good salvage ships I need tons of the stuff.

 

[Zedrackis]

Or maybe not make the asteroids 90% useless rock in the center. Way to much red dirt, sand and lava in our space rocks right now. Of course the long term solution is just to give server admins control over asteroid composition.

 

[Sgtwisky]

that would also do the trick

 

[Tadsf321]

Plenty of other space games feature asteroids that have cores loaded with materials. Most asteroids are, after all, metals and minerals. Perhaps make it harder to get to without the proper resources while players that have the resources to build a large ship could do so with better armour?

 

[Tunk]

The primary problem is the ore only spawns in the outer layer, if it were spawned throughout the asteroid regardless of terrain type things would be far far better.
Currently its more economical to find a field with several smaller asteroids for fertikeen, because a larger percentage of the roids volume contains the ores.

 

[JonasWalker]

The primary problem is the ore only spawns in the outer layer, if it were spawned throughout the asteroid regardless of terrain type things would be far far better.
Currently its more economical to find a field with several smaller asteroids for fertikeen, because a larger percentage of the roids volume contains the ores.

That would be a decent fix, yes.

 

[TheWurm]

The primary problem is the ore only spawns in the outer layer, if it were spawned throughout the asteroid regardless of terrain type things would be far far better.

Must...not...insist... That this is... a logical extension... Of suggestion A.

Woo, I'm good now. Anyway, thank you for taking the time to articulate this issue.

 

[Master_Artificer]

what if red rock could be used for armor :D

 

[Lecic]

Fertikeen asteroids right now are like if the only good part of an apple was the skin.

 

[psteiner]

At the moment, they're so barren that they're effectively barring an entire ship style (armor tanks) from being viable. Every single person I've spoken to agrees.

And no, Standard Armor isn't an option - it's even less useful than basic hull. Any viable ship over 1000 blocks is able to turn ships with even four layers of standard armor into confetti with ease.

If we could get this problem remedied, that'd be great.

One of the uses of armor is to stop torpedoes. You should look @ this thread, evidenced by this pic:

Leftmost is advanced armor, 2nd from right is basic hull...

 

[Az14el]

o yes, those goddam Fert roids
I am blessed to have opted to build every plate out of grey advanced as I can just eat an eta derelict once every blue moon for everything I need.
But for other types? pls, this is impossible, its not even a matter of mining speed there's just not enough of the stuff per sector to keep up with needs compared to almost any other roid. The travel time to find a good sector is the bottleneck at this point.

It's the great Larimar famine all over again (okay at least the asteroids can actually be said to exist in this case).

As for standard armor, it's awesome against weak spam missiles like heat seekers and lock on waffles imo, but like, it's budget advanced armor, which is already theoretically cheap as hell, just a pain in the ass to produce without getting lucky on planet plates.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

what if red rock could be used for armor :D

I don't use it for armor but I do use some of the rocks for building materials in certain environments. Carved Lukrah for desert structures. carved Dolom for Terran cities., Varis for Forest bunkers, etc. If I abandon a base, I often take those blocks with me; replacing them with sand, colored dirt/rocks and regular grey rock. The end results are "rusty/decayed/abandoned" stations and/or cities to supplement/compliment randomly generated cities.

But over alln I agree; we need more fertikeen in the game.

 

[Tydeth]

With this hotfix, we can mark this one off as implemented. Lukrah rocks now have less dirt.

 

[Smoke]

How about switching the crafting prerequisites up a tiny bit, instead of making hardener out of fertikeen, make it out of Macet. It works out in that the dense asteroids are what you need to make dense armor.

 

[Lecic]

How about switching the crafting prerequisites up a tiny bit, instead of making hardener out of fertikeen, make it out of Macet. It works out in that the dense asteroids are what you need to make dense armor.

Fertikeen roids are getting fixed already, and fertikeen wasn't used for much, which is why it was selected for the armor hardener material.

 

[Smoke]

Then spread it out like grey armor of old, half Macet, half Jisper. Fertikeen is used for pulse weapons.

 

[Lecic]

Then spread it out like grey armor of old, half Macet, half Jisper. Fertikeen is used for pulse weapons.

Pulse weapons are the least used weapon, and one of the least used secondaries. It also needs the fewest amount of blocks to make an effective weapon, so even if everyone was just using siege weapons, they wouldn't be using a lot of fertikeen.
Besides, I think it makes sense for the ore that makes heavy weapons to also make heavy armor.

 

[Madman198237]

Well, really, it should focus energy and/or simply be extremely volatile in order to make excellent weapons. A material must absorb energy (Of all kinds) to be an effective armor.


Anyway, yes, please do fix asteroids. If these minerals are heavier (Denser) than the rest of the asteroids (And darnit, it the center's dirt, then the metal ores should be far more dense), then they should follow realism, and be EXTREMELY DENSE in a clump at the center of mass of the asteroid.
Or we could go all iron-nickel asteroid and include rare, random spawns of rocks made of almost-solid ores. For those who don't know, iron-nickel asteroids are fairly common and are basically just a lump of an iron-nickel allow floating in space, with very little other matter.