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VDmitry Oct 17, 2022 @ 8:20am
How Armor works in the game?
It's year 2042. I had some battles behind. And still have no any understanding of how Armor works in the game...

Last battle I had cruisers equipped with large arc green laser guns. It does 15 damage per shot. At 500km distance target armor should be treated as 200% I believe. So I should destroy 7.5 armor per shot, right?

The game shows every hit on a target, saying ~15 damage each shot. There is some randomization it seems, so it's around 13-18 per shot. The game shows armor damage as well, but it's 100% of dealt damage. I never seen total damage 15, but armor damage 7.5. Though this might be current UI issue.

Anyway, my ship shot some targets with may be 20 hits on that distance (we were flying on parallel courses for long time). The average enemy armor was like 9/3/3. How on Earth I did ~20 x 15 damage hits before destroying them? I see 15 armor damage for many rounds and 0 structure damage, again and again, like armor is not destroyed until you shot it ~10 times first.

My current assumption is that armor, may be at least non front/rear armor, is not a single piece. And every laser shot is hitting different armor pieces.

Any thoughs?
Last edited by VDmitry; Oct 17, 2022 @ 8:22am
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Originally posted by VoiD:
Originally posted by VDmitry:
I've performed some tests using custom designs for custom battles...

1. Battleship with 0 armor is done with a single hit of 8-inch battery (2.5 damage). Tested multiply times, unlikely accident. Thought it might be an issue with just 1 utility slot (heat sink) on the target ship? So I filled all the slots, including weapons. Result: target still destroyed after a single hit of 8-inch cannon. WTF? After all there is utility module which is suspected to double internals health!

I've tried to add that one utility module - and NO DIFFERENCE! May be this is a bug of some kind (like multiplying by 0)? That makes no sense. A single hit of one of the smallest guns destroys all 3 sections of battleship! Anyway, I continued the testing with targets having just heat sink and no weapons (but with engine and some other mandatory stuff), so they don't fire back or something.

2. Next target had armor of 2. And I started to fire with the same 8-inch battery.

2.0. While target had some armor, it was not going to die with a single received hit (meaning of course hits breaking through armor).

2.1 While we were closing the hits were above 2,5 damage (up to 5). But when we were flying on parallel courses with similar speed - damage lowered to 1,5-2.5. That means to me that the damage which we can see in the ship designer is probably when you fire on immobile target (relative to you), so taking into consideration the kinetic force of that situation. But you can get more or less depending on relative speeds.

2.2. The strange part is that 2,5 damage hits did not break through 2 strength armor (per damage printed 3rd number was always 0). While 5 damage hits broke through armor being reduced by by 3,2 points (2nd printed number), so dealing 1,8 damage to internals (3rd printed number). So how is that? Armor of 2 decreases damage by 3,2 points?

NOTE. See later. May be adamantane armor caused this. So it could improve armor by some percent against kinetic, like +60% in this case.

Anyway, I was able to increase my speed towards target to increase damage up to 16-20 points (yes, by the same 8-inch battery). Interesting that armor reduces varying numbers: 20/7/13, 16/6/10. And this is much more than I would expect from armor of just 2 points.

NOTE. Well, if it's due adamantane armor then it works differently. Like affecting exactly kinetic part of the damage. Greater kinetic damage - more damage resisted.

2.3 As 8-inch battery has flatChipping 0.2 (20%) I wanted to see the impact. So I moved to parallel course to the enemy again, hitting it with 8-inch battery for period of time. Somewhere around 80 hits I noticed that some of them were going through armor (2nd printed number 0). But I believe we know that already.

3. Then I switched to laser of 7.5 damage and target with armor of 10 points. Going on parallel courses at distance 200km, armor should have 92% effectiveness (green arc laser).

That been said I did 400 shots, and only 1 of them went through armor (marking a single section with red color immediately). I believe it was radiator hit (Cobalt dust).

And that contradicts with my earlier thoughts. Most likely succesfull laser shots I observed earlier were because enemy was facing at me with different sides having less armor, and not because lasers burn armor over time. They do not.. And so like every weapon in the game lasers can be totally useless. (Missiles can be shot by PD, kinetic projectiles being shot too or missing their targets)

4. Then I switched to Krait missiles (17,5 damage) against the same target of 10 armor. And all 10 hits dealt... below 3,5 points of damage each, all reduced by armor. No any noticable internal damage.

My assumption it's because missiles were not able to get proper speed from distance of 200km.

Switched to Viper missiles (45 damage). They dealt below 9 points of damage each. Some of them broke through armor a bit (like 8/6.5/1.5). No section colors changed on enemy after all 16 missiles hit it. Just in case - my ship was on left side of enemy all the time (may be there is some difference between front/rear and board armors?).

Switched back to lasers (hoping missiles dealt some holes at least). 1st laser hit was reduced by armor. 2nd laser hit destroyed the whole ship... Again, very unexpected. Laser is doing 7.5 points of damage. Even if a hit goes through, how on Earth it destroys whole battleship (with at least 2 sections still not even yellow)? I don't believe it is by luck, it looks similar to issue with ships having 0 armor been destroyed with one hit. Note that target had just heat sink with many empty slots. So I can believe a single lucky short destroyed the single module and so the ship (as there were no other modules/HP left)

Well, at this point I remembered that I use Adamantane armor, which has kinetic resistance. This may explain how 2 points armor reduced more than 2 points of 8-inch battery hits. Same may apply to missiles to some degree. I don't know how much this resistance helps exactly though. Anyway, 45 damage missiles dealing just 9 points of damage and most of that fully reduced by armor of 10??

Switched distance to 1000km and fired the same missiles - no difference.

5. Changed target armor to nanotubes - still no differnce for missiles. WTF? Why even 45 damage missiles can't brake through 10 points of armor?? The enemy did not change any colors. Switched to 7.5 damage lasers from ineffective ~500km distance... And may be 1 hit out of 50 broke through armor completely, but again - looks like radiator hit.

For Krait missiles I could assume that 80% goes to armor damage (right per description of Explosive), and only 20% remains to hit as normal. That gives exactly 3.5 damage which I observed.

But it's not the case for Viper missiles, which are Fragmented, so they should damage armor by 50% only of that 45 total. But I observed below 9 damage dealt, not 22.5. Unless it's split into 3 fragments and we can only see impact of one.

5.1. 8-inch battery hits however now reduced properly by up to 10 damage of armor. So it was really adamantane kinetic resistance which could improve the numbers for kinetic. But not missiles, that's still unclear...

6. Finally want to know how much damage needed which went through armor to destroy a ship. Since lasers and missiles are harder to use I take 8-inch battery again. Will speed up to score larger hits. Target has the same 10 nanotube armor.

6.1 Target with 1 heat sink only - took ~160 damage through front armor before destroyed.

6.2 Target with 4 more marines - took ~180 damage through front armor before destroyed.

6.3 Target with 3 marines and 1 component armor module - took ~310 damage through front armor before destroyed.

NOTE. These are not very precise numbers (could easily be +/-20%).

Looks like ships have some HP as long as they have non-zero armor. As battleships have structuralIntegrity=18, I can assume at this point it's per module installed.
That's my main issue with the combat, other than the controls ofc.

But ships really are made of paper, if you get -anything- through armor, the ship size often doesn't matter, nothing matters, it's going to blow up.

Honestly, ships should have hundreds of not thousands more HP for some real entertaining battles, the only real advantage of larger ships is in the number and size of guns you can bring per MC, because an escort is just as squishy as a Titan unless you decide to use more armor on the titan, for some reason.
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Showing 1-15 of 102 comments
corisai Oct 17, 2022 @ 8:35am 
No, 1 point of damage NOT destroying 1 point of armor (while 1 point of armor is blocking 1 point of damage). I don't remember exact formula (but it not-linear) now, sorry :)


Originally posted by VDmitry:
Last battle I had cruisers equipped with large arc green laser guns. It does 15 damage per shot. At 500km distance target armor should be treated as 200% I believe. So I should destroy 7.5 armor per shot, right?
No you will barely destroy any armor at all. Lasers are for knife-fighting only if target have adequate armor. If you want killing enemy at range - coilguns are your best pick.

Originally posted by VDmitry:
The average enemy armor was like 9/3/3.
Aliens are usually using anti-laser armor so their efficient armor will be even higher then 18/6/6 on 500 km range :)
#1
VDmitry Oct 17, 2022 @ 8:39am 
It was battle against 10 Initiative ships, not aliens. I destroyed 6 and damaged the rest 4, all with lasers mentioned (installed on 2 my cruisers).
#2
VoiD Oct 17, 2022 @ 8:44am 
Yeah lasers can't pierce armor at all, even a very low ammount will make you basically imune to it unless you're very close, then it just ignores most/all of it and often instakills ships.

Plasmas can't be shot down either, but they also don't seem to damage armor, so it's a binary, either you have it and ignore all plasma fire, or you don't and get wrecked.

Kinetics and missiles just forget about it, armor is not going to save you. Only PD will.
#3
VDmitry Oct 17, 2022 @ 8:45am 
Originally posted by Badger BrownCoat:
look in combat for the 3rd symbol during damage ( cracked shield icon)
- that's how much you "chipped" - degraded - armor.

So you think the 3rd number is armor degradation rather than internal structure damage?

Then how do I do shot after shot and at some point I notice armor degradation? I short from the same distance with the same exactly laser gun.

There is one more uncertainity here - how the game determines direction of the hit. I was observing that once and found it not really intuitive. For example ship firing behind the enemy could damage the nemy front section.

That would be easy explanation. Some shots hit the hardest frontal armor and some hit go to weaker side. But I don't believe in that yet. In particular I damaged enemy cruiser frontal section first.

- on other hand; the icons are fast, tiny, hard to read ( for me ) and I've not found much actual documentation.
there's a bi of discussion on several of our observations on this ( in-game )
if you'd like a link

I'd like.
Last edited by VDmitry; Oct 17, 2022 @ 8:47am
#4
VDmitry Oct 17, 2022 @ 8:49am 
Originally posted by Badger BrownCoat:
post script-
you'll also notice for example the 'better' missiles get progressively better at "skipping" armor rather than trying to brute force it -
not sure you saw my post b/cas of the order; but yeah;
- me n Cori up there never agree- and we agree on that point-
ideally you want to skip the armor and get to the goodies inside-
ammiright?

Skipping armor sounds as weird option as enemy lasers will be a problem. Obvious point of armor is having some to counter enemy laser from large distance. Everything else - right, PD is good choice (including maneurability to avoid hits)

I'm not getting what different missiles explanations really do. To me it seems as some newer missiles do LESS armor damage.
Last edited by VDmitry; Oct 17, 2022 @ 8:50am
#5
Badger BrownCoat Oct 17, 2022 @ 8:52am 
Originally posted by VoiD:
Yeah lasers can't pierce armor at all, even a very low ammount will make you basically imune to it unless you're very close, then it just ignores most/all of it and often instakills ships.

Plasmas can't be shot down either, but they also don't seem to damage armor, so it's a binary, either you have it and ignore all plasma fire, or you don't and get wrecked.

Kinetics and missiles just forget about it, armor is not going to save you. Only PD will.
ps: Void; you also notice almost no games-
speaking of plasma weapons-
ever seem to tke into ccount the purpose of our only IRL plasma weapon; Marauder/SHiva?
I mena, hey whatever floats the boat- but it's more odd to see that overlooked in "hard" sci-fi than say, I dunno stellaris or xcom
#6
corisai Oct 17, 2022 @ 8:53am 
Damage chipping is applied only to NEXT hits.

Missiles&biggest kinetics don't skip armor - they deal enough damage to break through it :)
#7
VDmitry Oct 17, 2022 @ 9:02am 
Do you mean missiles are armor piercing? No matter how many armor?

I was thinking they are doing less armor damage similarly to lasers.
Last edited by VDmitry; Oct 17, 2022 @ 9:02am
#8
corisai Oct 17, 2022 @ 9:03am 
Originally posted by VDmitry:
Do you mean missiles are armor piercing? No matter how many armor?
They are not. But they usually attack sides of ship where armor is always thiner.
#9
Mistfox Oct 17, 2022 @ 9:06am 
Originally posted by VDmitry:
Do you mean missiles are armor piercing? No matter how many armor?
Yes, it's in their description but remember that most missile damage outclasses armor anyway?
#10
Mistfox Oct 17, 2022 @ 9:07am 
Originally posted by corisai:
Originally posted by VDmitry:
Do you mean missiles are armor piercing? No matter how many armor?
They are not. But they usually attack sides of ship where armor is always thiner.
They are, it's in their text description but the damage they normally do is so high it is moot.
#11
Mistfox Oct 17, 2022 @ 9:12am 
Originally posted by Badger BrownCoat:
( even our slap-charges are *someaht shaped-directional)
- and that's represented with -arguable- effect in game-
SLAP isn't explosive, it's 100% passive kinetic.
#12
corisai Oct 17, 2022 @ 9:23am 
Originally posted by Badger BrownCoat:
it IS an explosive- but you're not relying on the explsoive to break it, you're using it as force; directed.
same as a bullet, really -
Ablative armor still able to stop them. Even if it isn't very efficient againt it.


Originally posted by Mistfox:
They are, it's in their text description but the damage they normally do is so high it is moot.
I looked a bit into weapon detailed stats and my first impression - no, missiles aren't skip armor. But they have very big base chipping value so you are not going to survive multiple hits :)

Now I need to check data on weapon damage types - maybe I will see something here.
Last edited by corisai; Oct 17, 2022 @ 9:23am
#13
VoiD Oct 17, 2022 @ 9:34am 
Originally posted by Mistfox:
Originally posted by corisai:
They are not. But they usually attack sides of ship where armor is always thiner.
They are, it's in their text description but the damage they normally do is so high it is moot.
This is my impression as well.

Whether it's piercing or not doesn't matter, the damage is so high that there's no way to make a ship capable of taking missile fire to the hull, if you get hit, specially by alien missiles, pray ECM saves you or expect to blow up.

Nuclear missiles are also overkill, I'm using them because the effect is pretty neat but I've taken down alien motherships with a single torpedo, think it was Athena or Ares, either way they deal far too much damage for armor to stop, one is 5.4kMJ (273damage) and the other is at 37kMJ (1853 damage)

Even the big spinal coilguns are far too much already and I've had alien dreadnoughts explode on the first landed hit, 4.2kMJ(214dmg).

So yeah, if you want to make some cheaper ships you can just get enough armor to survive the strongest plasma guns, just in case, and then just spam PD and small lasers.
#14
nephilimnexus Oct 17, 2022 @ 9:37am 
[ { "dataName": "SteelArmor", "friendlyName": "Steel Armor", "weightedBuildMaterials": { "volatiles": 0.02, "metals": 0.98, "nobleMetals": 0, "exotics": 0 }, "requiredProjectName": "", "density_kgm3": 7850, "heatofVaporization_MJkg": 6.8, "specialty": "ChippingResistance", "iconResource": "shipbuildericons/ICO_SteelArmor" }, { "dataName": "TitaniumArmor", "friendlyName": "Titanium Armor", "weightedBuildMaterials": { "volatiles": 0, "metals": 0, "nobleMetals": 1, "exotics": 0 }, "requiredProjectName": "", "density_kgm3": 4500, "heatofVaporization_MJkg": 8.77, "specialty": "ChippingResistance", "iconResource": "shipbuildericons/ICO_TitaniumArmor" }, { "dataName": "SiliconCarbideArmor", "friendlyName": "Silicon Carbide Armor", "weightedBuildMaterials": { "volatiles": 0.5, "metals": 0.5, "nobleMetals": 0, "exotics": 0 }, "requiredProjectName": "", "density_kgm3": 3210, "heatofVaporization_MJkg": 9.9, "specialty": "None", "iconResource": "shipbuildericons/ICO_SiliconCarbideArmor" }, { "dataName": "BoronCarbideArmor", "friendlyName": "Boron Carbide Armor", "weightedBuildMaterials": { "volatiles": 0.5, "metals": 0.5, "nobleMetals": 0, "exotics": 0 }, "requiredProjectName": "", "density_kgm3": 2520, "heatofVaporization_MJkg": 7.14, "specialty": "KineticsResistance", "iconResource": "shipbuildericons/ICO_BoronCarbideArmor" }, { "dataName": "CompositeArmor", "friendlyName": "Composite Armor", "weightedBuildMaterials": { "volatiles": 0.5, "metals": 0.25, "nobleMetals": 0.25, "exotics": 0 }, "requiredProjectName": "Project_CompositeArmor", "density_kgm3": 1930, "heatofVaporization_MJkg": 15, "specialty": "None", "iconResource": "shipbuildericons/ICO_CompositeArmor" }, { "dataName": "NanotubeArmor", "friendlyName": "Nanotube Armor", "weightedBuildMaterials": { "volatiles": 0.6, "metals": 0.35, "nobleMetals": 0.05, "exotics": 0 }, "requiredProjectName": "Project_NanotubeArmor", "density_kgm3": 1720, "heatofVaporization_MJkg": 29.6, "specialty": "None", "iconResource": "shipbuildericons/ICO_NanotubeArmor" }, { "dataName": "AdamantaneArmor", "friendlyName": "Adamantane Armor", "weightedBuildMaterials": { "volatiles": 0.55, "metals": 0.35, "nobleMetals": 0.1, "exotics": 0 }, "requiredProjectName": "Project_AdamantaneArmor", "density_kgm3": 1800, "heatofVaporization_MJkg": 59.534, "specialty": "KineticsResistance", "iconResource": "shipbuildericons/ICO_AdamantaneArmor" }, { "dataName": "ExoticArmor", "friendlyName": "Exotic Armor", "weightedBuildMaterials": { "volatiles": 0.25, "metals": 0.25, "nobleMetals": 0.1, "exotics": 0.4 }, "requiredProjectName": "Project_ExoticArmor", "density_kgm3": 2200, "heatofVaporization_MJkg": 70, "specialty": "None", "iconResource": "shipbuildericons/ICO_ExoticArmor" }, { "dataName": "HybridArmor", "friendlyName": "Hybrid Armor", "weightedBuildMaterials": { "volatiles": 0.3, "metals": 0.3, "nobleMetals": 0.2, "exotics": 0.2 }, "requiredProjectName": "Project_HybridArmor", "density_kgm3": 1400, "heatofVaporization_MJkg": 80, "specialty": "LaserResistance", "iconResource": "shipbuildericons/ICO_HybridArmor" }, { "dataName": "AlienAdamantaneArmor", "friendlyName": "Alien Adamantane Armor", "weightedBuildMaterials": { "volatiles": 0.55, "metals": 0.35, "nobleMetals": 0.1, "exotics": 0 }, "requiredProjectName": "Project_AlienMasterProject", "density_kgm3": 1800, "heatofVaporization_MJkg": 59.534, "specialty": "KineticsResistance", "iconResource": "shipbuildericons/ICO_AdamantaneArmor" }, { "dataName": "AlienExoticArmor", "friendlyName": "Alien Exotic Armor", "weightedBuildMaterials": { "volatiles": 0.4, "metals": 0.4, "nobleMetals": 0.1, "exotics": 0.1 }, "requiredProjectName": "Project_AlienMasterProject", "density_kgm3": 2200, "heatofVaporization_MJkg": 70, "specialty": "LaserResistance", "iconResource": "shipbuildericons/ICO_ExoticArmor" } ]
#15
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Date Posted: Oct 17, 2022 @ 8:20am
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