New realistic armor system

[EpicFailLord123]

Antimatter is going to be in starmade even after the weapons update, so why not make it more complex instead of a standard, everyday weapon?

Antimatter in real life is highly destructive. Antimatter annihilates with regular matter on contact, so it would be necessary to prevent contact, for example by producing antimatter in the form of solid charged or magnetized particles, and suspending them using electromagnetic fields in near-perfect vacuum. Of course, this is no issue with power gens that can produc infinite amounts of power with no input at ALL, and railguns with the ability to launch this stuff. Due to the nature of antimatter, and the fact that it COMPLETLEY IGNORES tensile strength and hardness of a material, the armor used to protect against it would be better the DENSER IT WAS, as there would be more matter there to annihilate. Meaning, titanium would be worse than steel, despite the fact that titanium is almost twice as hard and three times as strong as steel, simply because titanium is about half as dense as steel.

This suggestion asks for hull and hardened hull to be renamed, and two new armor types to be added, and for a new stat to come about.

Here's the rundown:


Armor types


Armor Name
Health
Armor
Mass/antimatter resist


Aluminum
100
25%
.1 / 5%


Titanium
200
50%
.2 / 9%


Osmium
100
50%
2 / 45%


Steel
100
25%
.4 / 19%










The numbers may be tweaked, but as you can see, the proposed adds depth as well as choice. Regular armor affects all but antimatter cannons, and antimatter resist replaces it for AMC dealt damage. Do you want your ship to be good against antimatter but be utterly slow? or do you want it to be fast and strong versus everything BUT antimatter?

The numbers are based on realism, with balance not in mind at ALL. Please reply with suggestions.

 

[platinum467]

nitpicking

 

[WaffulMann]

Yeah, like the current armor system isn\'t shit at all.

 

[NeonSturm]

Don\'t forget to look at mass!

Steel would be the best for space stations, while Aluminium gives you nice hull-deko and Osmium/Titanium layers a good protection...



But would it not be better to also have a chainmail-like hull-sprite?

It would be more resistent vs explosives, because it does not absorb the complete shockwave and let the layer behind them help absorbing it.

 

[EpicFailLord123]

I don\'t know. Maybe other armor types could be added, similar to the ones in the OP but they would resist things like beams or missilesm or mines better than ither armors. This could be the baseline for an armor system just as complex as the new weapons system, with each type of armor specialized for a certain use, as you said.

 

[BeefBacon]

Making the claim that \"antimatter cannons should be changed because of their name\" is silly. As far as I can see the name is largely arbitrary. AMCs could just as easily be called turbo lasers or energy cannons. One could just as easily read it as anti-matter cannon in the same vein as an anti-material rifle or anti-air missile. The name doesn\'t really matter.

Anyway, I do agree that changes need to be made to the armour system, but I think that most suggestions should be held at bay until we see how the new weapon system works; though I do like the idea of armour being effective against certain weapon types. Encourages the use of multiple weapon types rather than building a single massively powerful weapon array.

 

[Captain Fortius]

No one builds armor out of aluminium. It\'s soft and boils away from relatively little heat. It\'s alloys aren\'t much better suited for the task.

Steel is a fine material for everyday earthly construction. Without more exotic alloying however, it\'s unfit for exotic uses, and even then it\'ll be far too heavy for it\'s strength. As a reminder, armored vehicles started givng up on using steel armor in favor of composites roughly 30 years ago.

Titanium is less dense than steel, lighter, yet stronger.

Osmium is rare and also brittle by itself; It\'s only used as an alloying element to strengthen up other, more plentiful metals.

Long story short, there\'s a lot more to metals than their density, and other materials can be used as armor, such as ceramics, plastics, and synthetic fibers.

That sinks the flavor part of this idea.

Function wise, it\'s not enough to just add new types of blocks with different stats. There\'ll always be a cannon that one-shots it.

For armor to be \"realistic\" and fun, and any use at all, it has to dynamically scale in strength much like any other function block; Basically, armor blocks should have higher damage reduction if they have more armor blocks behind them. Just locally of course, counted at the point of impact.

 

[NeonSturm]

For armor to be \"realistic\" and fun, and any use at all, it has to dynamically scale in strength much like any other function block; Basically, armor blocks should have higher damage reduction if they have more armor blocks behind them. Just locally of course, counted at the point of impact.


In Star-Trek Voyager, once the shields are down, you are almost dead.



If hull has different shield channeling powers - armour above shields, it would make sense to use expensive and heavy hull. If we than can repair ships and shields are partially damage-transparent, but more durable...



Aluminium might not be the best armour, but if you throw aluminium plates against AMC projectiles, they explode further away from you and arrive at you sprayed out.



I would really like heavy and leightweight blocks.

• Aluminium/Plastic/Deko for interiors with 1/4 the weight of a hull or rock block for more RP with less disadvantage.
• Some heavy armour with 3* the weight, but only 2* hp and 1* cost would be good for stations - they don\'t need mobility.

Thrusters can have easily 5 thrust per block. That are 50 blocks for 1:1 thrust! Stations need more advantage!!!

 

[Captain Fortius]

In Star-Trek Voyager, once the shields are down, you are almost dead.


In any Star Trek, the Federation has very few actual warships, most being science and exploratory vessels. They aren\'t geared towards war. Naivety in the extreme if you ask me, but that\'s how the story goes.

Regardless, the game needs effective armor.


Aluminium might not be the best armour, but if you throw aluminium plates against AMC projectiles, they explode further away from you and arrive at you sprayed out.


... It\'s not \"not the best\" , it\'s no armor at all. It\'d show barely any resistance to any projectile -including arrows- so you can bet no bullets or energy bolts would explode on contact. Just pass through and do the damage undisturbed behind the aluminium plate.

That is, if it didn\'t get shredded by micrometeorites or space debris first. Or burnt away completely in atmospheric entry.

 

[EpicFailLord123]

Hey, maybe we could have an alloying system for armour.

 

[42828]

STOP THINKING GOD DAM 4 YEARS IN THE FUTURE!!!!!!

 

[Planr]

Long story short, there\'s a lot more to metals than their density, and other materials can be used as armor, such as ceramics, plastics, and synthetic fibers.


What we really need is some good old fashioned Plotanium.









The other testers and I have discussed the possibility of having structured hull blocks. However it is unlikely we\'ll be adding all these kinds of armors. Armor would be relatively fine if it was able to withstand more damage, but then again, people would just build bigger turrets and bigger ships to compensate. This issue is a difficult one to solve. Structured hull would function so that it can only be placed in strands- as in you can\'t have a 2x2 beam of structure blocks, only 1x thick. It can be connected on all adjacent blocks but corner spots will not be accomodated.

 

[NeonSturm]

In any Star Trek, the Federation has very few actual warships, most being science and exploratory vessels. They aren\'t geared towards war. Naivety in the extreme if you ask me, but that\'s how the story goes.


Maybe because they would be outdated as soon as they leave their yard?

I guess the authors thought something similar to: \"Many science vessels with basic weaponry are more effective than 1 war-ship alone. And intelligence is the ultimative weapon - bypass their shields with your new ideas - or make you immune to their already out-dated weapons ...\" ;D

 

[NeonSturm]

With balistic weaponry, I would add fake-projectile guns.

These would shoot very light projectiles with similar signature, to confuse the enemy\'s automatic evasion systems.



And I would try to invent a gun which enclose the anti-matter in very thin invisibility-cloaking which only substracts a tiny part from damage potential







Hey, maybe we could have an alloying system for armour.


But I would prefer to not have new items... Maybe a connector \"alloy\" block and blocks of different materials around... if you really need it.

We just need 4 types of hull: Deko, Station (ineffective on ships because of weight), Ship armor. Maybe - maybe! - military grade ship armour.