Shields or Armour

[Alpharius]

Hi guys,

Quite new to this game, would I be correct in saying that you can research anything but your ships can either have shields OR armour, not both.

I'm playing that campaign and all my Corvettes (as an example, as i've progressed in my research) have gone from armour variants to shield variants, and not both. Is this correct?

Any way to get both in?

[Rhonin the wizard]

The ship designs you see are based on the best defense, which is more or less the one that will have the highest values.

You can design your own ships with both, or all 3 defenses.
shields protect against beam
armor against kinetic
point defense against missiles

I suggest you see what your enemy or your soon to be enemy civ has outfitted on their ships and then design against them.

[Alpharius]

Cool man, that helps a lot :) Thanks

[redrussell88]

I Researched Shields and Armor. For a while it let me have Armor, then Shields but no Armor. Is there something you have to Research to get both at the same time?

[Dray Prescot]

In earlier versions of GC the various defensive techs (shield, armor, and ECM) worked best against (beams, guns, and missiles respectively) but gave some protection against the other types of weapons. That is NO LONGER the case. The ONLY defense against Beams are shield related items (in that branch of the tech tree), The ONLY defense against (Rail) Guns are Armor related techs, and the ONLY defense against Missiles are ECM related Techs.

So when I design my warships I will try to give them at least some defense against all 3 Weapons types, with more defense in the areas I see my actual and potential enemies using a lot of in most of their ship designs. Sometimes, if there seems to be no threat in a particular area I might leave that area out of my defenses. It is still important to do the basic research in the low levels of all 3 weapons and all 3 defenses.

As a Human Player I am always near the bottom of the Military Power scales versus the AI Players for a long time (they will have MANY more warships than I do, but generally most of them can not reach me quickly), so I want most of my ships to survive the battles that I win (if I lost the battle they are ALL dead), I can not afford to keep loosing ships in large numbers, even while winning battles. So my ship designs tend to be heavy on defenses, and I try to have better tech than the AIs. I also try to avoid building a lot of tiny and even small warships, they are going to die because of their size no matter what they have in defenses. Fighters (of various names and designs) on board carriers are a different matter, they will be replaced after the battle. Speed is a VERY important consideration also, faster ships/fleets can choose which battles they fight and can concentrate their strength.

Getting intelligence on the ship designs of your possible enemies is critical in designing your own ships, in time for it to be useful.

I also try to research a lot of Techs to increase the amount that my (war) ships can hold and to reduce the size of their weapons and defenses, as well create defensive support ships to help other ships in the same fleet. Most of my warships are equal to the enemies' next larger class, i.e. my small warships can match their medium warships, and my medium warships can match their large warships, because of interior space and tech.

[masmart63]

Good answer, Dray! I thought that was the case, so I wanted to design my own ships. However, I have been frustrated in trying to understand exactly HOW to design ships. Most posts, videos, etc., I have seen talk endlessly about how to make a cool looking ship. I could not care less how the ships look, I just want to put in useful things. Any help on this?

[Dray Prescot]

I TOTALLY IGNORE the how the ship LOOKS side of the ship design process, since as far as I can tell it is all decoration and TOTALLY NONFUNCTIONAL. All that matters is what it can do, which comes from what equipment you put on it.

Where you put a weapon or a defense on the ship in GC3 does NOT affect how it works for your ship, so why pay attention to that? There are many SF games where location of a piece of equipment on a ship makes a difference. GC (in any of its versions) is NOT one of those games.

[Dray Prescot]

If GC ever did try to make itself into a game where location of equipment on the ship mattered, then MOST of the MANY, MANY, MANY ship designs (that you can see in the Workshop) would become obsolete and therefore tick off (annoy, etc) in a big way a big part of it's fan base who play the game.

All of these designs derived from every possible source in the Science Fiction and even Fantasy world (including other games , Movies, TV, Hollywood, etc.) can not possibly be compatible with each other and be equally effective, in a game where location mattered in ship design.

There are scads of people who spend oodles of time designing the LOOK of their ships to match some outside source. That seems to be what they really like about GC. To me it is a meaningless exercise that I refuse to bother with, as long as it IS meaningless. I let them do what makes them happy, and ignore them in my own solitaire games of GC3.

But Star Dock can not afford ignore it's player base. So they try to satisfy both camps in ship design, the artists and the functionalists, without annoying them in a big way. As long as Artwork or appearance of ships has NO COST or BENEFIT, I will ignore it. Only when they affect the ability of the ship to function will I pay attention to them. At present I do not bother with non equip side of the ship design menu and I just accept the default location that the ship design program uses. My only concern is for the main Game Map, to distinguish between my own ships, for the purpose of finding and controlling where I move various ships. Things that affect the appearance of my ships on the Main Game map do matter, but only for that limited purpose.

(Please note that I will never use any strong swear words to describe other peoples actions or feelings, that is not how I think, speak, or write anything, even inside my own head. I was raised in more polite times and do not think that way. I also never insult their intelligence. I rewrote a couple of words above so that I would generate any heart's being substituted for them).



Take a look at what they are proposing to do in the very long delayed Distant Worlds 2 (that we finally learning something about), versus the old Distant Worlds 1 where ships were 2 D and location did not matter.