how doy you make an armored hull?

[harrymcb]

title says it pretty much. i understand the very basics. metal is stronger than wood, beams are better than blocks, but i know little more than that. like is there a diffrence bettween the diffrent shaped beams? what is the best way to shape and layer hull armor? if you could explain or link to a tutorial that explains how to build an armored hull i would love it. at the moment my best design can barely stand a volley from a bayleaf.

[FourGreenFields]

Layered armour is generally the way to go. 2m of metal, directly behind each other are way harder to destroy (using kinetic or explosive damage) than they would be seperately (or with non-armour/empty blocks between them). The maths should be here: http://fromthedepths.gamepedia.com/Damage#Armour

Shape depends mostly on drag and stability. I could be wrong, but last time I checked (which was a long time ago) sloped armour was not implemented properly (hitting a 1m slope from 45° above it would count as 45° AoA, instead of 90°, as if fireing at a normal block).
Keep in mind that big hulls can support more armour (volume proportional to size³, surface area proportional to size²).

Also use internal armour around importand stuff. Metal (on bigger ships heavy armour) around your ammo, AI stuff placed on stone (to prevent EMP strikes from reaching the AI - for all I know they will not try and pass a "bad" block to reach a block the EMP can destroy), etc..


If you are worried about HEAT shells, anything from spaced armour, to ERA, to skirts at some distance to the main armour can work. I definitly recommend ERA around your ammo on bigger designs, allthough the AI doesn't seem to use HEAT that much.


Against HESH add a layer of wood (or, if slightly less woried about it, alloy) as an internal layer to your armour. AI also don't seem to use it that much.

[harrymcb]

thank you VERY much!!!!!! espescialy for the link i bet i can find anything else i need there. again thank you

[harrymcb]

with these tips and a few modifications to my ship i was able to stand against several hits from a bayleaf. i still died because i didn't armor my gun, but still an improvement. thank you

[Lincrono]

I'll add a few more armor + general protection tips.

first, vs HEAT, ERA is the only way to go. a Half decent, mid calibere HEAT shell can easily penetrate insane amounts of armor (i'm talking like double digit layers of steel and air) HEAT does little damage to most blocks, but this heavy penetration, which can even go through shields with the right fuses, is good for hitting deeply burried ammo, AIs and Turret insides. luckily most ships don't use it. however, ERA is also probably the best against Frag warheads, which are very popular, drill through armor, and are hard to stop by killing the shell/missile (the frags still hit) or with shields (you have to detonate outside the shield, which means skin hugging shields, which are bad against other things you are probably trying to stop. and still only stop some fuse detonating frag round.

second, ammo storage is very, very, very important. good ammo strage can make or break (pun intended) a design. spread out your ammo barrels, storing them in small clusters away from vital components. on larger designs it's even possible to completely contain ammo explosions by armoring small clusters of 2-8 with double layered steel beams (easy if you use the bottom or side to give you 2-3 sides already built). you can also get away with far less ammo if you use processors and metal storage. for example. if you have 10 missiles that need 1000 ammo each to reload you can carry 10,000 ammo for one reload. or put the missiles on a .5 second stagger and carry 2k (enough for 1 second of reloading, or 2 missiles) and enough ammo processors to generate 2k every second from non-explosive, more compact metal storages.

third, take advantage of hard counters. smoke hard counters lasers, shields hard counter Adv Cannons (especially the popular Sabot spam), LAMS (laser anti-missiles) hard counter missiles (but require space and a good chunk of power). Lots of the factions have a theme, which can be countered if you build or it.

fourth, don't trust armor too much. many, many ships, both early and late campaign mount large calibre CRAM cannons. these can easily put a hole in 5 layers of steel. Railguns, HEAT rounds, particle cannons, and lasers can easily be built to penetrate straight through a large ship if they just face armor. EMP cannons bypass armor entirely can easily strip a ship of all it's vital control components or even kill the AI if not prepared. finally without a smart, compartmented hull a heavy armor ship will sink under it's own weight with just a few holes, turning all that protection into a death sentance.

fifth, layer your defenses. there are a few tricks to armor.
-layering armor provides a boost to the material's 'armor class' steel has armor class 10, but 5 layers of steel will provide the first layer with somethink like 30, which reduces kinetic and explosion damage, this is because additional layers of 'structural materal' (tool tips tell you if it's structural) provide a fraction of their armor to the layer in front.
-beams have more HP than an equal volume of blocks (and are easy on the CPU) so favor beams when possible, and sloped blocks have less HP then full blocks (their slope is also not counted except for drag, fairly sure this is still true)
-an alloy shell can float a heavy hull, lead can add needed weight to balance an unstable ship, heavy armor can make a super protected internal compartment, or, by using singular blocks/beams, add a significant armor bonus to surrounding blocks (very useful for turrets!) without adding too much cost or weight
-empty space can invalidate massive blasts. explosion radius is capped around 11m and at the max distance from the center has 1/2 strenght. so building important things on the center line of the ship can save them from a one-shot-kill by anything that penetrates the armor if you can ensure enough space between the point of impact and the protected object, or can fit enough armor in to stop the weakened blast--even if your main hull died.
-a wooden box in a large metal ship will stop an EMP blast from getting inside, this is because the pathing algorithm only runs thorugh something like 1k itterations, essentially the EMP will keep looking for something more favorable than the wood, but run out of computting power before it finds anything, no matter how deadily the blast.

applying several of these tricks in tandem will give you a lot more 'armor' for your build and money, but layinering your armor in addition to smart hull design, redundant systems, additional passive and active protection (shields, IR decoys, missile interceptors, CWIS cannons, smoke launchers, LAMS systems, smart ammo storage, EMP proofing, repair bots/ tenticles) can allow a fairly lighlty armored ship to tank quite a lot of damage.

engagement range can also make a big difference - - why slug it out with a larger battleship and it's more massive CRAM cannons when you can use missiles, lasers, and Adv cannons to fight from farther then it can shoot? suddenly you may not need much armor at all and the space/cost saved can go to making sure your offenses kill the enemy before it gets too close to sink your ligher ship.

[FourGreenFields]

Originally posted by Lincrono:

third, take advantage of hard counters. smoke hard counters lasers, shields hard counter Adv Cannons (especially the popular Sabot spam)

Not 100% true no more.

Lasers have got a component that decreases their damage (or AP?) but lets them shoot through smoke (at a further reduction in strength).

Advanced cannons can be set up to fight shielded vehicles. Inertial fuses with big HE filler, or fragmentation warheads (which now pass through the shield if triggered by the inertial fuse) can still deal significant damage through a shield. The new anti-shield shell cap can be used to actively fight the enemy shields, so other weapons (or other shells from the same gun) can damage the target without having to worry about the shield.

Still a good idea to use smoke and shields. But far from letting you ignore lasers and cannons.


Heavy armour (or very thick metal), protected by shields and smoke and using an effective anti-munition system will be pretty hard to beat though. Smoke reduces laser damage, which makes it very tough to cut through the heavy armour. Shields prevent normal cannon rounds from hitting, and triggers the ones with inertial fuses so early that the damage against the heavy armour is low. Anti-munition is likely to destroy the anti-shield shells (as they will be detected way earlier than other shells).

[Lincrono]

Originally posted by FourGreenFields:

Originally posted by Lincrono:

third, take advantage of hard counters. smoke hard counters lasers, shields hard counter Adv Cannons (especially the popular Sabot spam)

Not 100% true no more.

Lasers have got a component that decreases their damage (or AP?) but lets them shoot through smoke (at a further reduction in strength).

Advanced cannons can be set up to fight shielded vehicles. Inertial fuses with big HE filler, or fragmentation warheads (which now pass through the shield if triggered by the inertial fuse) can still deal significant damage through a shield. The new anti-shield shell cap can be used to actively fight the enemy shields, so other weapons (or other shells from the same gun) can damage the target without having to worry about the shield.

Still a good idea to use smoke and shields. But far from letting you ignore lasers and cannons.


Heavy armour (or very thick metal), protected by shields and smoke and using an effective anti-munition system will be pretty hard to beat though. Smoke reduces laser damage, which makes it very tough to cut through the heavy armour. Shields prevent normal cannon rounds from hitting, and triggers the ones with inertial fuses so early that the damage against the heavy armour is low. Anti-munition is likely to destroy the anti-shield shells (as they will be detected way earlier than other shells).

good on the end description, layering defenses is spot on. But i'll stand by the hard counters. hard counter doesn't mean you can't get past it with the countered thing, but that using the countered thing is severely innefficient. A smoke penetrating laser still lacks much punch through shields, sacrifices a lot for the gained ability, and still sufferers against layered smoke. likewise, while disruptor rounds and special fuses are available to shields, the added modules can make some designs unfesable (for example large guage 1m rounds don't have the space) and in the case of disruptor rounds you get shield piercing ability at the expense of making every 3rd or 4th round effectively inert for all other tasks. furthermore shields can still be layered with little difficulty, cutting effectiveness again over large portions of the enemy hull.

you are however, absolutely correct, it doesn't let you completely ignore them.

[harrymcb]

wow. you practicaly wrote a guide just for me!!!!! thanks

[Lincrono]

my pleasure :) i hope it serves some use as you develop your personal built style!

[Enderminion]

Originally posted by Lincrono:

Originally posted by FourGreenFields:

Not 100% true no more.

Lasers have got a component that decreases their damage (or AP?) but lets them shoot through smoke (at a further reduction in strength).

Advanced cannons can be set up to fight shielded vehicles. Inertial fuses with big HE filler, or fragmentation warheads (which now pass through the shield if triggered by the inertial fuse) can still deal significant damage through a shield. The new anti-shield shell cap can be used to actively fight the enemy shields, so other weapons (or other shells from the same gun) can damage the target without having to worry about the shield.

Still a good idea to use smoke and shields. But far from letting you ignore lasers and cannons.


Heavy armour (or very thick metal), protected by shields and smoke and using an effective anti-munition system will be pretty hard to beat though. Smoke reduces laser damage, which makes it very tough to cut through the heavy armour. Shields prevent normal cannon rounds from hitting, and triggers the ones with inertial fuses so early that the damage against the heavy armour is low. Anti-munition is likely to destroy the anti-shield shells (as they will be detected way earlier than other shells).

good on the end description, layering defenses is spot on. But i'll stand by the hard counters. hard counter doesn't mean you can't get past it with the countered thing, but that using the countered thing is severely innefficient. A smoke penetrating laser still lacks much punch through shields, sacrifices a lot for the gained ability, and still sufferers against layered smoke. likewise, while disruptor rounds and special fuses are available to shields, the added modules can make some designs unfesable (for example large guage 1m rounds don't have the space) and in the case of disruptor rounds you get shield piercing ability at the expense of making every 3rd or 4th round effectively inert for all other tasks. furthermore shields can still be layered with little difficulty, cutting effectiveness again over large portions of the enemy hull.

you are however, absolutely correct, it doesn't let you completely ignore them.

yeah Hard counters work but the Anti-shield ACCs are hard countered by LAMS not shields and I always thought that ACCs were not that bad vs. shields anyway. No matter what you do a torpedo is going to hit a ship, there is no counter to them. there is no way to counter a PAC and in percing they are like HEAT while if they are on Impact they break your armour (and anything near it, like shield generators) allowing other stuff, like 2M AP-HE shells

[FourGreenFields]

Originally posted by Enderminion:

yeah Hard counters work but the Anti-shield ACCs are hard countered by LAMS not shields and I always thought that ACCs were not that bad vs. shields anyway. No matter what you do a torpedo is going to hit a ship, there is no counter to them. there is no way to counter a PAC and in percing they are like HEAT while if they are on Impact they break your armour (and anything near it, like shield generators) allowing other stuff, like 2M AP-HE shells

There are counters to torps, allthough they don't work just as well as vs other weapon types.
Mostly torpedo nets, or loads of spaced armour below the waterline. Should also work vs frag torps when adding shields to that.
Pretty sure you could also spam HE/FlaK shells around your ship, with an altitude fuse so they explode at a set depth. Haven't tried it (AI doesn't make use of torps enough to be worth it, at least not the factions I fought so far), but should work.
Not to mention that it's often possible to outrun them, dodge them, or run from them for long enough to have them run out of fuel.