Light armor vs. heavy armor

[Used_Napkins]

Never started a discussion before so ill apologize up front.

I have just reached a point in the game in single player survival where i can start building a flagship or whatever you wanna call it. Actually planning systems and making the ship look good. i have only built 2 ships but i made them out of light armor. I noticed the extreme jump in resources to use heavy armor. I wanted to use heavy armor but could not afford the scale of the ship so i went with light. my first encounter did not go well ha ha. I was thinking it would be cool if the developers or maybe someone that knows how to mod could make some sort of upgrade function. Build your ship and take flight and as you collect more resources you could just "upgrade" the light armor into medium and then heavy armor. The complex shapes and scale of ships make it time consuming to grind away old blocks and replace them with specific shaped blocks of heavy armor. Anyway just wanted to see what you guys think.

[noviastar]

that would be fun some way to modify existing blocks. But something you can try is armored citadel in the ship core vs all armored ship. Or use the thin armor to skin the ship and make a gap and do layered defense. Works good tr resist explosions. and armor panels don't crumple.

[Capt Fuzzy]

I totally get what you are saying here and I think that it's not a bad idea for the same reasons as you.
That being said, I'm not entirely sure how the developers, or a modder for that matter, might make this idea a reality.
Under the current system that is already in place, the only possible way that this might work would be to create an upgrade system that you could then use on each individual block to 'upgrade' it. The one main problem with this system would be that you would have to re-weld each block to upgrade it, and depending on how your ship was constructed, you may not be able to actually get to some blocks to weld/upgrade them. This would inherently create weak spots in the construction of your ship.

[ShadedMJ]

Although it sounds nice, this would be a pain to manage and implement. You'd have to define ship sections that you did and did not want upgraded and the order to do them in, Then making sure there's component inventory to get it done, ......

What I'd do is install the Nanobot Build and Repair mod. When you want to upgrade a section of armor, grind away a light armor block, put down just the frame of the heavy armor, and let the mod build up the rest.

But.... Changing to heavy armor means there's more mass, so you need more thrust, so changing from light armor to heavy armor frequently means a complete redesign because you have to put more thrusters on it.

[Xorth]

Refinery armour or gyro armour or just don't bother.

[herrschaftg35]

Like its name states, heavy armor is heavy and will make any ship inefficient to move. Use it sparingly to protect the most vital components. Or use it to build a "wall" on the part of a ship that you want the enemy to shoot first.

[Crown]

Reaching the point to build big or go home is a great milestone. Congrats!

Now getting past the obvious differences of light vs heavy that people repeatedly keep pointing out...

Being able to upgrade ships without having to tear them apart would be wonderful. The amount of time saved from upgrading instead of tearing down to replace? Hours in many cases.

A whole host of things "would be difficult to implement" but Keen managed to put them in.

[frag2k4]

I did a while ago put a suggestion on Keens sight about adding a mid tier armour to the game, literal medium armour that sat between both the others in all metrics, sadly neither the players nor Keen seemed interested in it.

As for the idea of upgrading, I doubt it would work due to the sandbox nature of the game, the idea of at least a block swap might work in both creative and survival but might still be a pain to implement.

That said the choice between light and heavy I find is a matter of where to use the latter. Heavy is good if building a hidden underground base for that part which is exposed, generally this lowers cost while still giving good defence, space stations also benefit from heavy armour if you have no plans to relocate them.

For ships, I largely avoid it outside of maybe a hidden battle bridge box/tomb due to both massively making ships harder to accelerate and turn and the cost, add the block deformation issues that can rend them useless anyway and now with piercing ammo with warfare 2 pack, spaced light armour remains as I see it king.

[Xilo The Odd]

one way to achieve "medium" armor would simply be to use any of the half block shapes of both armor types, with heavy being your outer most and light being your inner most layers.

i myself typically use heavy as like a skeletal structure to support and hold together important components of the ship. i rarely go all in on one or the other. its part of the design aspect of things to balance out ship design and its intended use. i'd never build a miner with heavy armor block for example (or really any armor. if i can avoid it. less mass = more maneuverability), for a fighter, i'd have some heavy covering important components and protecting the cockpit to some degree. but the ship wouldnt be 100% heavy block.

then there is the boarding party vessel, where its designed to slam into another ship to inflict damage and carry a crew in to take it over, THAT i'd probably build out of pure heavy block for the mass and the armor to protect the crew inside, but this is a purely PvP thought design, i've never actually made this.

all in all i wouldnt be opposed to a medium armor block, but i could also live without it. what i'd REALLY like is improved window blocks so i can build a custom cockpit more easily... soo many window blocks that simply do not want to connect to certain ones... that and maybe a smaller airtight door of some kind for small blocks. a 5x5x1 was a bit much for somethin i was tryng to make look good, but a 3x3x1 would have been perfect.

and yes i know mods exist, but i like to create things that someone can simply pull from the workshop and it just works.

[Gutless Gus]

On the one hand, I feel your pain, because I've made the cost-saving mistake too several years ago.
On the other hand, it feels like our issues are the same; the difference being that whereas you finished your ship using light armour, I just waited until I had enough resources to put on some proper armour.

We both bit off more than we could chew... and this is basically what happens when we don't think things through.
I got my ship cut in half because a cargo container popped, but that only happened because I let items accumulate in unarmoured containers.
You could've built a "patch" of light armour on your ship and shot it a couple of times to get an idea of how much protection you'd get out of light armour.

Moral of the story is to know your limits, to build up your industrial strength before undertaking these enormous projects (at least when in survival mode), and to think a few steps ahead when making changes to the construction plan.

[WardenWolf]

For any reading this in 2025, I will make a HUGE suggestion: up-armor your small-grid ships with heavy armor panels on any flat surfaces. You won't add that much weight, but you can significantly increase their protection since each heavy panel is worth a little over 3 light armor blocks. I've seen ships that would otherwise blow up if you looked at them wrong be very durable without changing their appearance, and been able to get away with surface-level hydrogen tanks because heavy armor panels provide 3 light armor blocks' worth of protection.

[Ronin Planetary Industries]

In my experience, light armor is mostly decorative. It'll hold up against some gatling rounds for a while until you can escape.

Heavy armor is okay for skirmishes... against lightly armored opposition.

Double heavy armor: it's the minimum I'd recommend if you want a chance of surviving against other players on a public server or battling Factorum ships. Your double armor can consist of one layer of heavy and another layer of blast door armor. Having a non-deforming layer can be advantageous. If you're going to stand and fight, double wrap it.