Liquid Armor Question(s) :-P

[Itharus]

Does liquid armor only share health with immediately adjacent hexes? Or does it chain together and draw from ALL connected liquid armor hexes? For instance, if you had a line of 7 hexes, and the central hex got hit - would it draw health from the two adjacent hexes, or from all 7 as necessary?

Thanks :)

[Dalo Lorn]

On impact: Damage would be shared with the two adjacent hexes.

After impact, it becomes a bit longer but still fairly straightforward:

1. Health flows in from the two adjacent hexes to equalize with the central hex.

2. Health flows from the hexes adjacent to the 'two adjacent hexes' to equalize with them.

3. Health flows from the hexes adjacent to the hexes adjacent to the 'two adjacent hexes' to equalize with them.

4. Rinse and repeat until all seven hexes have the same amount of HP.

[IllyiaSvara]

You've got two questions there :p

Liquid armour total effective health is between all liquid hexes in an unbroken chain.
It can not however magic health from the other side of the ship into itself it well flow through from the ones connected into it and repeat for all of them trying to equalise out.

It's effectievely diffusion.

In your example your drawing on how it functions on adjacent pieces and how it well draw from adjacent hexes.

I believe if in a perfect scenario only a single hex is hit and damaged all the pieces around wel try and equalise the health out between them all starting with the damged hex since that is the one at the start with no damage.
Once multiple pieces are damaged I think(note the think) it will pick a random hex it can flow into on each tic rather than go straight to the lowest only flowing into ones that are lower than itself not ones that are higher.

[FourGreenFields]

Side note on liquid armour, although not strictly related to the question:
Recently built a commerce raider (size 300 iIrc) with one row of liquid armour as front armour, and it got its front subsystem-hexes taken out long before the liquid armour even got down to 1/2 health. Probably not missiles due to the way damage got distributed; my guess is the piercing effect from rails or muons - either way, don't rely on liquid armour too much.

[Itharus]

Awesome, it works how I was thinking, then :) Kind of like sinew on crack. Good external layer methinks. Thanks for answering you two three! :D

I put a thick plug on the tip of a ship that wraps around the sides a little bit - it's yet to see battle but I was just trying to figure out if it'd work as I thought it would. Underneath the liquid armor is reactive backed by plate, supported by nano-mesh, too ;)

[IllyiaSvara]

FourGreenFields - This is because of how damage penetration works as per your guess :p.

If the armour hex is put to 0 health from an incoming damage instance damage left over passes through and in turn causes damage to the hexes behind. Due to this liquid isn't the best frontal armour but niceish elsewhere on the ship given its health to weight ,

[FourGreenFields]

IllyiaSvara původně napsal:

FourGreenFields - This is because of how damage penetration works as per your guess :p.

If the armour hex is put to 0 health from an incoming damage instance damage left over passes through and in turn causes damage to the hexes behind. Due to this liquid isn't the best frontal armour but niceish elsewhere on the ship given its health to weight ,

Tbh I don't think that's what was happening - pretty much every hex for 2 rows behind the armour was at 0 health, but the armour still mostly fine. If there'd have been that many hits dealing more than the current armour-hexes' health, the armour should have suffered way more.

Going to test in sandbox anyway.

[FourGreenFields]

As for the testing:
Screenshots are muons, rails, laser, and rails vs plate. All weapons about a dozen cores or so, neither rails nor muons more than 100 damage per hit iIrc (way less than the LA health anyway).
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=692778659
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=692778752
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=692778832
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=692778902

As you can see, the muons ignore the armour, as they should (? except 2-3 neutronium hexes? Anyway).

The rails damage the armour, but some of it pierces through it. Intendet from what I heard, but not in the tooltips.

Laser gets stopped by the armour, as long as the health lasts.

Vs plate armour the rails pierce alot less - they still pierce through to the subsystems, but it is way safer behind plate than behind liquid armour.


TLDR: I probably was right. They didn't onehit the hexes, it was just the pierce from the rails.

[Ryan]

Here are some of my liquid armor designs. In the Titan design, armor health from the starboard side can flow to the port side. It's also modular, so the front sections can be destroyed and still have some extra armor layers as protection. I learned that rows of armor straight through the ship do not count as internal space.

I can't take credit for the Assault Ship as I downloaded that design from the Community and modified the armor. The designs are post engine techs as in game all my ships have 5+ speed.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=692852906

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=692852825

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=692855156

[Itharus]

Ryan původně napsal:

I learned that rows of armor straight through the ship do not count as internal space.

No kidding?

Four: You know, I always thought it seemed like rails pierced armor some, too... but I kept being told that they don't.

[Lucas]

Flagship railguns have 0.6 Pierce. Plate Armor has 0.5 Resistance, so there's about 10% bleedthrough with plate armor from a railgun shot.

Liquid Armor is more susceptible to Pierce though, as discovered earlier in this thread. Liquid Armor only has 0.1 Resistance, so about 50% of flagship railgun damage actually pierces through the liquid armor.

[MysticVoid7x9]

I am somewhat sure that there are some weapons that can pierce through 1 or 2 layers armor without the armor being at 0 hp.

[Itharus]

Huh, good to know on the railguns! Sounds like liquid needs a couple layers :)

[Gorice]

Interesting about railguns. I also wonder how many hexes hits can pierce through; I've noticed my muon designs struggle to do get through multiple layers of armour.

I find liquid works best as an inner layer. I like my armour 'hard' on the outside and 'soft' on the inside.

[Itharus]

I'm curious... do most people make layers or armor - or sort of checker it to make a more "mixed" composite? I started out doing the latter, but then began doing the former... starting to wonder about going back to the mixed up composite, though. Hard to tell which is better.

[Gorice]

It's funny, because I started with homogeneous layers and moved to mixed armour. An outer layer of ablative with checkered reactive and plate behind works well, but I really need to experiment more.