How much armor is enough armor?

[Hellfire]

Even thick-skull Paradox learned that numbers and systems must be clear and in the open. Not these devs. Anyway, since I'm free to put on ships any amount of armor without any reference, do more experienced playres know how much armor is enough armor to have my ships reliably withstand a decent amount of alien fire?

[Eltoron]

Originally posted by Hellfire:

Even thick-skull Paradox learned that numbers and systems must be clear and in the open. Not these devs. Anyway, since I'm free to put on ships any amount of armor without any reference, do more experienced playres know how much armor is enough armor to have my ships reliably withstand a decent amount of alien fire?

You can use aliens armor values as a reference. 10-15-20-50. Depends on you drives and ships. Now I'm using 20-30 nose armor on my dreds and in general it's enough to crash aliens doomstack with acceptable casualties. It can't tank direct spinal advanced mag cannon hit, but I prefer to not being hit by such bug shells. For now my engines are pretty weak, so I have only nose armor (1 on every other location) but going to increase it in future.

[wei270]

no.......... it really depends on the weapons aliens is using on you.

20-30 is not enough for alien advance spingal mags, even with adamintains bonus vs kentic, and the 0.95^2 damage reduction research.

[Eltoron]

Originally posted by wei270:

no.......... it really depends on the weapons aliens is using on you.

20-30 is not enough for alien advance spingal mags, even with adamintains bonus vs kentic, and the 0.95^2 damage reduction research.

You are totally right. If they can hit you with advanced spinal mag - the ship is doomed. So it's better to not allow them to hit you. It's easier to intercept this shells on earlier stages than to design a ship with enough armor, dV and thrust simultaneously. When you have high end drives you can go 50 and even 100 armor.

[Hellfire]

Originally posted by Eltoron:

[
You can use aliens armor values as a reference. 10-15-20-50. Depends on you drives and ships. Now I'm using 20-30 nose armor on my dreds and in general it's enough to crash aliens doomstack with acceptable casualties. It can't tank direct spinal advanced mag cannon hit, but I prefer to not being hit by such bug shells. For now my engines are pretty weak, so I have only nose armor (1 on every other location) but going to increase it in future.

I've built 300 armor (per part) titans which still died in a matter of seconds.

[Eltoron]

Originally posted by Hellfire:

Originally posted by Eltoron:

[
You can use aliens armor values as a reference. 10-15-20-50. Depends on you drives and ships. Now I'm using 20-30 nose armor on my dreds and in general it's enough to crash aliens doomstack with acceptable casualties. It can't tank direct spinal advanced mag cannon hit, but I prefer to not being hit by such bug shells. For now my engines are pretty weak, so I have only nose armor (1 on every other location) but going to increase it in future.

I've built 300 armor (per part) titans which still died in a matter of seconds.

Wow. I want to see this battle

[wei270]

Originally posted by Eltoron:

Originally posted by Hellfire:

I've built 300 armor (per part) titans which still died in a matter of seconds.

Wow. I want to see this battle

it was obviously an alien star base battle

[Hellfire]

Nope, just your average 21k fleet orbiting Earth (attached to a single servants ship).

[wei270]

oh

[badgerius]

5 on the nose allows it to tank a few shots from a destroyer's primary beam weapon. The destroyers tend to maneuver pretty heavily, so they don't get nearly as main shots off with the main gun as they do with the missiles or turrets. If you're tanking those with point defense, and you keep your nose mainly pointed at towards their guns, you stand a decent chance. Generally, when I take casualties, it's a shot that gets around the nose, or a failure of point defense.

I find it very useful to design a ship, then save and exit to main menu. You can then go to skirmish, import the ship from your save, and put them up against a default alien ship or fleet. Then, if the design sucks, you can delete it (since you never constructed it in game) and build a better one.

[VoiD]

Reallistically you don't want to try your luck against alien kinetics, ever.

Or missiles.

Armor exists to counter energy weapons, 5~10 should counter all lasers unless they come too close, and I don't remember if any of their plasmas get above 30~45 damage, so it should be in that range, anything above that might let you survive one hit from alien kinetics, but if you get hit once you're going to get twice, or thrice, and then you're ♥♥♥♥♥♥.

So spam point defense, no, seriously, SPAM it, I even have battleships equiping 1 slot regular lasers on every nose and hull slot acting as mobile point defense platforms for my fleet, don't ever let a single shot through and you'll survive.

[nephilimnexus]

Honestly, once I realized that alien weapons obliterate anything they hit in one shot my design philosophy has switched away from SUX-9000 and more towards Sienar Fleet Systems.

Frigates are easy to replace, after all.

[dimm_ddr]

Originally posted by nephilimnexus:

Honestly, once I realized that alien weapons obliterate anything they hit in one shot my design philosophy has switched away from SUX-9000 and more towards Sienar Fleet Systems.

Frigates are easy to replace, after all.

Frigates are also small enough so their armor has lower weight. It is easy to create 1 CP ship with 100-200 armor everywhere that still fly with decent speed and dV. Not early game of course, but quite soon, no need for high end drives or armor for that. Then send them first to get most shots and kill aliens while they are busy trying to get through cloud of those turtles.

[Veniczar B. Fontana]

I tested a "siege" dreadnought to try to destroy alien platforms without relying on a lucky antimatter torpedoe passing through the PD net. With 100 frontal armor, 50 on the sides and rear. Worked pretty well.

Alien lasers can't do anything against these (as 1 armor is roughly negating 1 damage, and at long range lasers are virtually "increasing" your armor).

Alien plasma can't pass through in one hit. However... Each shot damages the armor slowly but surely. I didn't test with 200 armor, but with 100, 9 alien defence arrays managed to chip through this armor and damage then destroy a dreadnought before the base was destroyed.

Another thing, plasma is not so good against armor but some alien ships use incredibly good mag weapons. The assault carrier use rapid fire low caliber mag weapons. They do less damage and but they overload easily a PD net, and they chip through 50 armor in a few shots. So if the AI gets better at designing, I doubt armor will be of much help...

[Sunny]

Originally posted by wei270:

no.......... it really depends on the weapons aliens is using on you.

20-30 is not enough for alien advance spingal mags, even with adamintains bonus vs kentic, and the 0.95^2 damage reduction research.

This. Lategame 100-150 Ada Front on Dread or Titans is normal.

Originally posted by Veniczar B. Fontana:

I tested a "siege" dreadnought to try to destroy alien platforms without relying on a lucky antimatter torpedoe passing through the PD net. With 100 frontal armor, 50 on the sides and rear. Worked pretty well.

Lern to fight manuall.
50 side and rear is massive overkill to weight.
10 - 10 if you know what to do in space combat

[Sinsling]

everything past 30 is just overkill really. at the point, the jump in armor you'd need to provide an appreciable difference is unrealistically high, and the weapons that hit that hard are stopped by point-defense. If you're still having issues at that point, its more likely that drives/weapons are the problems.