Armor and Weapons Discussion

[zanaikin]

So I realized -- when I was researching for ship designs -- that most of the armor/weapon discussions are either buried, dates back to beta pre-release, or very specific to just a few types/ship builds. I thought I'd create a thread purely to discuss armor/weapons preferences and observations. Maybe even update some of this info to the barethread SR2 wiki if there are enough agreeing opinions.

So please share your opinions, experience, and wisdom ^^ the more the merrier.

My own thoughts on all this:

ARMOR TYPES (note that damage reduction will henceforth be written as DR)

Plate Armor: the default. Good HP + decent DR. If you're unsure what to armor a hex with, use this. It's also by far the best armor for support vessels since they can't use reactive and they're too small to make ablative really worthwhile.

Ablative Armor: low HP + high DR. Best vs light weapons fire (support ships) and the 'spray-and-pray' railguns. Great for coating the outside of frontline capital ships. As DR scales with size, bigger = better.

Reactive Armor: low HP, no DR, but has a damage threshold -- any hits over this threshold gets massively reduced. Cannot be used for support ships. Best armor vs deep penetrating hits like heavy missile/rockets and omg-sized lasers. Also good on small flagships tasked with fighting bigger ones (smaller size = lower threshold) and non-combat flagships (protecting the core of miner/tractor from a lucky missile hit so they can run/hyper away).

Ablative vs Reactive Armor: the question of which should go on the outside has been raised many times. Theoretically, because missiles have longer reach and reactive armor is better against them, the outer layer should be reactive with an ablative layer within. However, it doesn't always work this way due to several reasons:
1. Missiles are slow, especially from side/rear launchers (projectiles often circle around). Lasers are instant; therefore a well-accelerated fleet can actually reach laser range before the missiles even hit!
2. Heavy missiles may breach a single hex and cut deep, but railguns/light weapons (support ships) will pepper the entire outer hull with low quantities of damage.
Based on this, my observation at least is that it's best to line the outside with 1-2 layers of Ablative armor to absorb the railgun/laser spam, then line a single layer of Reactive armor inside it. Plate is also effective as a middle layer. The heavy missiles will destroy an ablative hex before being stopped by the Reactive hex, but very few railgun/laser shots will penetrate through precisely that lost armor hex.
The exception to this is if your enemy has a ton of support ships with medium-sized missile launchers (ones that take up most of a support ship); their volleys will open massive gaps in the outer ablative layer where their railgun/lasers can exploit. My best counter to this is to ditch the ablative/reactive combo with a double-layer of plate armor, and increase support capacity for more laser support ships (more on this below)

Liquid Armor: Same HP as plate armor, no DR, but HP self-balances between different hexes. Despite its sales pitch, this 'rebalancing' only reaches a distance of 3-4 hexes, so a very long liquid armor line doesn't entirely rebalance. Nevertheless, its high HP and low weight (~20% less than plate) should be considered for anyone who prefers a decent-speed ship. Great as an innermost lining of 'last resort' against penetrations; terrible as exterior armor due to its lack of DR vs light weapons.

Neutronium Armor: extremely high HP (3x plate/liquid) + decent DR. Great right? It's also about 4x as heavy as plate/reactive/ablative and 5x as heavy as liquid, not to mention costly. Good for protecting key hexes (like the one that guards your vulnerable laser/railgun mount from a common attack angle) or any armor that consumes interior space. However, with good ship design, very few armor blocks should ever consume interior space -- a well-positioned 3x hex of liquid armor can be almost as effective but much lighter.
(personally, I think Neutronium Armor needs a DR boost to actually make worthwhile)

Interior Space: surface armor does not consume interior space (which you have a limit of in ship design so it's precious). However, what defines as 'surface armor' is more finicky. As long as you can draw a line from an armor hex out of the ship which intersects nothing other than more armor hexes, it's not considered 'interior space'. This rule can be abused verily when creating inner armor layers that compartmentalize a ship (preferably using liquid armor so multiple hexes are triggered at once) from those really nasty hits.


WEAPONS

Railguns: great DPS with decent range (better than laser/rockets) and better firing arcs than lasers. However, railguns have low damage per shot and terrible accuracy, which means that most of their damage is wasted on misses and armor DR. This means that railguns are only really worth their buck if you're shooting into unarmored flanks at point-blank range.
Great for:
-- Support ships set to raid
-- Flagships designed to outflank (possibly with Graviton drives so they can concentrate forward fire while maneuvering)
-- vs Shields at minimum range
-- vs Oko/Verdant ships at minimum range due to their high HP sinew hexes
Terrible for:
-- Shooting at long range or against plate/ablative/neutronium armor

Lasers: decent DPS, but low in range and limited in turret arcs (forcing exposure of turrets). Lasers do have many great advantages going for them: they fire in bursts to overwhelm DR, but the damage comes in pulses so they're not all blocked by a single Reactive plate; they're instant damage and don't miss; they consume power but they're very cheap on supplies, meaning Targeting Sensors (aka range extenders) are a must for them. Since supply piles are so high maintenance, this makes laser ships the cheapest to field in large numbers.
Great for:
-- Killing support ships with light lasers. Laser support ships are by far the best at killing other support ships due to its accuracy + damage combination. Overkill is also reduced as the laser can retarget somewhat during its firing cycle.
-- Tearing and penetrating flagships with heavy, overpowered lasers.
-- Maintaining a large number of ships to guard your far-flung empire
Terrible for:
-- Actually keeping the laser mounts alive
-- Concentrating fire at anything not directly in front of your ship

Missiles: long range weapons with high damage per shot and no firing arc limitations; but with a slow firing cycle and high supply cost. The missile is ideal as an anti-capital weapon due to its ability to pierce heavy armor and penetrate deep into hulls. Side and rear launched missiles often have a tendency to impact the flanks of enemy ships where the armor is thinner. Its launchers can also be well-protected to the rear of a ship thanks to the lack of firing arc limitations. However, missiles are prone to overkill (either on support ships or thin ship designs where they'll shoot through) and are easily stopped by Reactive armor.
Great for:
-- Penetrating flagship hulls with heavy missiles
-- Tears gaps through hull armor with massed missiles; a swarm of missile support ships can quickly waste a flagship
-- Defense Stations (station missiles get boosted to ridiculous range)
-- Support ships orbiting planets / outposts (longer reach + free maintenance!)
-- Well-protected rear launchers
Terrible for:
-- Overkill or punching reactive armor hulls
-- Maintenance costs (high supply usage = more supply piles = high maintenance ships)

Rocket Pods: lowest ranged weapons that fires in salvos and no firing arc limitations; but high supply cost and even slower reload than missiles. The rocket is a very situational weapon: it offers a devastating opening salvo that can tip the scales in your favor, but with neither the long reach of the missile nor the cheapness of the laser.
Great for:
-- Powerful initial salvo that can cripple ships
-- Tears gaps through hull armor
-- Fleets that hyper straight into an enemy's rear
-- Defense Stations (station rockets have boosted range); their lack of firing arcs make them ideal close-in defenses for stations.
-- Well-protected rear launchers
Terrible for:
-- Maintenance costs (high supply usage = more supply piles = high maintenance ships)

Torpedo: the longest reach weapons with good, area-of-effect damage and no firing arc limitations; but a high supply cost with longer reload times make this the lowest DPS weapon in the game. Not that the splash radius actually increases as the torpedo launcher is allocated more hexes, meaning you want this weapon bigger. However, the radius does offer diminishing returns.
Great for:
-- Laying waste to clusters of support ships
-- Softening up Revenant ships / orbital ships before an attack
-- Defense Stations (their range-boosted torpedos can fire into nearby systems)
-- Well-protected rear launchers
Terrible for:
-- Dealing meaningful damage against flagships
-- Maintenance costs (high supply usage = more supply piles = high maintenance ships)

Haven't much experience with the research-unlocked weapons.

[FourGreenFields]

Didn't rails punch through one armor hex or something like that?
Not sure, but I think I heard something like that somewhere once.

Rocket pods are also great for strafing runs btw. Same for hyperdense lasers.

Typo: "Note that the splash damage..."

[Dalo Lorn]

I'm not going to look into the files to check your numbers, but...

1. Railguns also have the ability to pierce through armor to a certain degree. This IS reduced by damage resistance and may be unnoticeable against multilayered armor, but it is still there and can be quite threatening.

2. Lasers don't 'overwhelm DR' - in fact, they are more vulnerable to it than any other weapon. (ESPECIALLY when dealing with Ablative armor, which has a significantly heightened resistance to energy weapons.) You're quite correct that Reactive armor is completely useless against them, though.

As for the researched weapons...

Hyperdense lasers deal less damage per firing cycle (and less DPS), but have a higher damage per tick due to dealing all their damage in a second or so. This makes them kinda like a hybrid between missiles and lasers, with some of the pros and cons of either type.

Muon cannons are, IIRC, more or less a railgun that deals slightly less damage, ignores DR completely, and goes through armor.

[Dalo Lorn]

Originally posted by FourGreenFields:

Didn't rails punch through one armor hex or something like that?

In theory, it should be able to punch through several armor hexes - but as only some of the damage bleeds through, and the damage is affected by damage resistance, the practical effectiveness of the armor piercing effect is reduced in such a scenario.

I'd also note that railguns can be upgraded to knock targets back. This removes the armor piercing.

[FourGreenFields]

Originally posted by Dalo Lorn:

Originally posted by FourGreenFields:

Didn't rails punch through one armor hex or something like that?

In theory, it should be able to punch through several armor hexes - but as only some of the damage bleeds through, and the damage is affected by damage resistance, the practical effectiveness of the armor piercing effect is reduced in such a scenario.

I'd also note that railguns can be upgraded to knock targets back. This removes the armor piercing.

Ok.
I never researched that upgrade. Heard it also pushes you back.
Is there a way to research that upgrade for the higher accuracy without actually changing how the rails work?

[Dalo Lorn]

Uh, it doesn't affect accuracy?

[zanaikin]

@Dalo Lom:

I guess the question is how many times per second do lasers actually 'pulse' ingame? Because if it's not high enough, a flagship heavy laser cannon (I use twin laser cannons as primary armaments for most vessels) with its several hundred 'Beam DPS' will shred ablative armor with ease. In sandbox testing, the heavy lasers actually had more trouble with Reactive armor than Ablative armor, which suggests the pulse frequency is fairly low.

So Muou Cannons can completely ignore armor hexes? Do this mean that they're pretty much best used by themselves?

[Dalo Lorn]

The tick rate should depend on the speed on which you're playing. (Alternatively, event partiality might come into play, which would explain the discrepancy.)

As for Muon Cannons... I don't really know how those behave. I've never seen them in action, but they have an extremely high (above 100%) Pierce, and their damage has the IgnoreDR flag, but there's definitely some armor-bypassing element involved.

[FourGreenFields]

Originally posted by Dalo Lorn:

Uh, it doesn't affect accuracy?

"Increases the accuracy of all railguns" does sound like it affects accuracy though.
We are talking about the "Projectile Impulse" tech, right?

[Dalo Lorn]

Hmm. Maybe I don't remember the tech as well as I think I do.

[mystical4281]

to answer the question about how often a lazer pulses the larger the lazer on the ship and the larger the ship the longer the Cd is for the pulse (every weapon uses this actually its just more noticeable with lazers) imo lazers counter shields more than anything the hyperdense even moreso than the normal lazer.

i have a size one mill ship that has 4 size one hyperdense lazers they fire once every 90secs for 1.5 secs if i changed them to a railgun they would fire once every 3 secs and if i change them to a torpedo its 400 secs

[Dalo Lorn]

No sane match will ever contain a size-1M ship, you know. You're typically lucky if you can build size-3k, much less 1M - heck, the Revenant, which is supposed to be the biggest and most powerful ship in the universe, is only 38k!