Gap Armour

[raymazoida]

So how do folks build their "Gap armour"? For their larger ships?

Obviously at some points you have to join it to the layer beneath, and this creates areas where they are just normal armour layers which if you have too many joins become weak spots where a lucky shot could go through.

Of course if you have too few a lucky shot or 2 may mean a whole section of armour falls off and either floats off, or ends up damaging your own ship!

For my next big ship I was thinking of a 3 layer design with the joins being the corners of a 10x10 square on layers 1-2 and on layers 2-3 the joins being a 10x10 square offest to be near the center of the layer 1-2 square. So that there is never a connection between all 3 layers, and that in any 10x10 square of armour there are at most 5 blocks where you could hit 2 connected layers.

Opinions? Is this too many joins? too few joins? or do you have a better join strat you want to share?

[SievertChaser]

I basically use blisters that are solidly connected at the edges. You may also use "pins" at regular intervals.

[raymazoida]

blisters?

[SievertChaser]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-torpedo_bulge

[raymazoida]

hmm that is interesting. Thinking about it the way I'm curving the bottom of the station I'm working on it is effectivly one big blister.

[SievertChaser]

Keep in mind that you can't just curl the bottom. This is space - it's 3D.

[raymazoida]

Originally posted by dennis.danilov:

Keep in mind that you can't just curl the bottom. This is space - it's 3D.

yeah lol

[DarkExcalibur42]

i did actually build a few torpedo blisters back in the days before volumetric damage. Now? I don't believe they offer any concrete benefit. Requires testing.

[raymazoida]

I've tested a lot against plate layers v gap armour and found gap far better, but i was aiming where I knew the gap was, now I'm trying to think throug how to combat the "weak points" - links - in the best way.

[SievertChaser]

Why do you consider link points weak? With the current model, they do not transfer damae to the strucrutre underneath.

I plan on using the blisters for gyros and batteries.

[DarkExcalibur42]

Originally posted by dennis.danilov:

Why do you consider link points weak? With the current model, they do not transfer damae to the strucrutre underneath.

I plan on using the blisters for gyros and batteries.

They're points of connection. If they're destroyed, the entire armor section could be removed. Then it switches from being armor to a battering ram surrounding your ship.

I am still suspicious that the empty space is actually helpful as volumetric explosions are supposed to mean damage is not transferred to blocks underneath without the top block first being destroyed.

[SievertChaser]

The volumetric system completely defeats the point of spaced armour, for sure. It, however, might still have merit in case of colissions, and putting more stuff in the way of rockets.

[raymazoida]

Originally posted by DarkExcalibur42:

Originally posted by dennis.danilov:

Why do you consider link points weak? With the current model, they do not transfer damae to the strucrutre underneath.

I plan on using the blisters for gyros and batteries.

They're points of connection. If they're destroyed, the entire armor section could be removed. Then it switches from being armor to a battering ram surrounding your ship.

I am still suspicious that the empty space is actually helpful as volumetric explosions are supposed to mean damage is not transferred to blocks underneath without the top block first being destroyed.

dunno if it's working as it should then.

I have a "Test range" world

I had 2x 20x20 blocks of heavy armour.

The same warhead every time pierced 4 layers of solid.

But on gap armour it stopped on the 2nd gap - so did not touch the 3rd layer of actual armour

So they both went the same distance inside the armour. But in the gap armour that resulted in half the number of blocks destroyed - and a slightly smaller hole.

I did more than 100 such tests with a basic kinetic missile no defences and got the same results. Don't know how - but the gap = less blocks destroyed.

[SievertChaser]

I agree. Blast doors have even weirder effects - I've seen armour behind them damaged, but the blast door blocks remain intact.

[DarkExcalibur42]

Ray, what sort of warhead were you testing?

[raymazoida]

Originally posted by DarkExcalibur42:

Ray, what sort of warhead were you testing?

Artifical mass accelerated to 100m's with heavy armour kinetic front "punch" Standard stuff, no warhead, had battery and merge block launcher at the rear, oh and a timer to turn the mass "off"

Tested from multiple distances up to 3km too.

There were more remains of the missile vs the gap armour too. I think what was happening was that the armour slows it down enough that it didn't pierce the 3rd layer (or do any obvious damage) of gap armour, and that in both cases it "stopped" at the same point into the armour (row 4) due to lack of velocity.