Yet another armor idea: Support and Bruteforce.

[Zoolimar]

Unlike other variants this one doesn't rely on any changes to behaviour of weapons, mods and the like. Though it probably doesn't need any AHP due to exponential scaling of HP on blocks. In theory all calculations for armour should be done during ship construction or rebooting.

Upon placing an armour block system checks all three axes for adjacent armour blocks and counts them. It then places a modifier on HP (or resistance to damage) of armour blocks that have other armour blocks adjacent on each of the axes. If number of adjacent blocks is not equal by axes it will choose the lowest number of blocks on one of them.

Let's take this picture as example (though I used hull blocks for illustration) and use power 1.5 as exponential modifier for our HP.

1st Image: Minimum number will be 0 blocks on two axes, so not one of showed blocks will get modified HP.

2nd Image: Most of the blocks will have their HP unadjusted but central block will have 4 other support blocks on each of the axes. So its HP will be (BaseHP*(1+4)^1.5 or 11.18 times it's standard amount of HP. That means that a normal 100 HP block will now have 1118 HP.

3rd Image: Each of the blocks in the cube has 4 support blocks of armour meaning that each one of them will now have 1118 HP.

4th Image: While the armour still has the same width and height its thickness is only 2 blocks, so each of the armour blocks in the plate will have 282 HP.

Ideally standard armour should have better starting stats being more effective if you want to have not so thick and comparatively light armour plating. Advanced armour will have worse basic stats but better scaling with the number of support blocks overcoming standard armour in effectiveness per volume at around 5 blocks and by mass at around 10 blocks.

 

[Dire Venom]

Interesting idea.
So, in essence this is 'structural integrity' , and the larger the armour mass at an area, the better the hp of that armour scales.
This would make larger ships more durable, but hardly affect smaller ships however.

 

[Zoolimar]

Well smaller ships will get a little more durable in critical locations. But they should be relying more on mobility anyway. And larger ships may be able to have enough armour so as not to be pierced from one side to the other in one shot.

Alternatively you may make standard armour much better than it is now and don't give it any scaling at all. This will make it easy to use on smaller ships where you could just slap it anywhere you want but on larger ships you'll prefer advanced armour that gives you scaling HP that will outpace that of standard armour pretty fast.

 

[Arcaner]

I. Like. It.

 

[EricBlank]

This seems fairly reasonable. I suppose it cant recalculate each blocks situation every time its neighbor is destroyed or it could all get laggy.

 

[Valiant70]

But they should be relying more on mobility anyway.

We still need to remove weapon firing arcs and balance turret rotation for this to work.

The most serious problem with armor, as I recently posted on another thread, is that you can defeat it EITHER by depleting armor HP, OR by breaking individual blocks with piercing weapons. The "either or" for defeating it gives armor the worst of both worlds between the two mechanics.

The OP is one possibility for tossing armor HP and instead buffing the actual damage deduction or durability of the blocks themselves. However as others have stated, it favors large ships which I find undesirable.

 

[Zoolimar]

However as others have stated, it favors large ships which I find undesirable.

It's very hard to not favour heavy ships with anything armour related. Unless you specifically make armour to become weaker while it gets thicker. Which is counter intuitive and probably won't be looked at favourably by most people. Even current linear scaling still somewhat favours battleships due to geometry.

Maybe changing how armour works and making shields a much worse variant for larger ships would be better? This way they will still have advantage in initial combat, but due to weaker shields you could win against them through battle of attrition by breaking their armour down.

Smaller ships - effective shields and speed/manoeuvrability.
Heavy ships - effective armour and powerful weapons.

This way as long as light ships evade main weapons they could stay in the fight or use hit and run tactics without sustaining lasting damage. On the other hand heavy ships would be able to plough through a weapon barrage ignoring it for some time and attacking their main target. They also would be able to swat light ships that got into the range of their heavier weapons.

 

[Captain Fortius]

Maybe changing how armour works and making shields a much worse variant for larger ships would be better?

Bubble shields.

Bombers just fly through a big ship's shields and drop their payload on un-shielded armor.