Hull protection or armor protection?

[roadrunner0177]

Pros and cons of crystal forged plates (hull) vs armor plating please. Which do you prefer and why?

[iamoutofnames]

Armor, usually. I remember someone saying that hull damage causes ships to lose performance, so I use shields and armor to prevent that.

Only exception is Fallen Empires and any other enemy that has weapons that bypass shields and armor, then buffing hull is the way to go.

[climbingeastofwinter]

I believe that crystal plating ends up being considerably cheaper to build and maintain (paid for in crystal) than armor (paid for in alloys). Unless you're up against weapons that deal serious bonus damage to hull, hull is a pretty safe and economical way to go. Once you have 10-20 repeatable armor buff techs under your belt, armor may become a better deal though.

[Half Phased]

One advantage of hull buffing is that ships withdrawing is combat is a RNG roll, that is checked each time the ship takes hull damage.

More hull strength means the ship can take more hits to the hull, giving a greater chance to disengage and not be destroyed.

[corisai]

Hull plates is GREAT early, but even with just 5-10 repeatables in armor - it's better. For example my current corvette have 500 HP, 425 armor (one dragon-scale) and 906 shield. It's no-kinetic run so my engineering busy with only armor & minerals :)

Even in case of protecting corvettes against being one-shotted by NT armor is still superior.

Originally posted by climbingeastofwinter:

I remember someone saying that hull damage causes ships to lose performance

Yes.

Originally posted by climbingeastofwinter:

Unless you're up against weapons that deal serious bonus damage to hull, hull is a pretty safe and economical way to go.

Almost ALL endgame weapons that AI's using are have bonuses against hull (aside from stupid disruptors that some AI so loving).