Replacing the Armor Generator

[Valiant Maverick]

This is my idea for a replacement/rework of the Armor Generator. The armor generator is not fun for the following reasons, and perhaps others I've neglected:

1. You don't generate armor. It's hard stuff on the outside of a ship. This device makes no sense.
   
2. You just slap it on the ship and now you have armor. For some reason it makes the CPU work harder. It doesn't even take power. It's just boring.
   
3. Armor doesn't even protect your systems anymore. It just takes up some of your CPU, and in return you don't blow up instantly when your shields fail. LAME!
   
4. They're an obvious band-aid. To my knowledge they accomplish two things:
   a. Prevent small ships from getting disintegrated instantly.
   b. Prevent huge ships from becoming indestructible by limiting their max durability.
   We need a better, more fun way to do this.

Goals of This Rework:

1. Quasi-realism. In other words, suspension of disbelief shouldn't require a lobotomy.
   
2. Ships get HP from their blocks, but giant ships don't become overpowered by doing so (bear with me, it's possible).
   
3. The Hull Plate Polarizer protects your devices from damage, but only to a point. It's not an alternative to shields.
   
4. Prevent small ships from being shredded instantly, which was the goal of armor generators in the first place.

TL;DR: No more armor, just hull HP based on ship mass. The Hull Plate Polarizer charges part of your remaining Hull HP so it protects devices. Lose all the polarized hull, and you take device damage. More hull gets polarized after you take damage, but losing it all knocks the device offline for a while. When the field is full, it spreads nanos over the hull, repairing it slowly.

New terminology:

• "Armor" is now called Hull HP since it doesn't protect devices anymore.
  
• "Hull HP" is now called Structural Integrity, since the ship will explode or break into scrap when it is depleted.
  
• The "Armor Generator" is now called the Hull Plate Polarizer and its health pool is replaced with a new mechanic.

Core Concept:

• Max Hull HP is a function of ship mass. Simple and sensible. Diminishing marginal returns would be okay, but probably not necessary.
  
• Structural integrity is equal to half of Hull HP.
  
• The Hull Plate Polarizer does not add HP. It "polarizes" part of the existing Hull HP, protecting internal devices. Its capacity determines how much Hull HP it can polarize.
  
• Polarization is indicated by a green portion of the HP bar. No device damage occurs while there's green on the HP bar.
  
• More hull gets polarized when you take damage, but taking heavy damage will break through just like a shield. This knocks the polarizer offline for a bit and leaves the interior vulnerable.
  
• When the hull plate polarizer is at full capacity, it can consume nanomachines to repair the hull very slowly. When the hull is at 100%, devices are repaired slowly, one at a time.
  
• Sci-fi reasoning: Polarization stops weapons from penetrating the hull, but doesn't protect the hull itself. When the field is at full strength, it can be used to distribute nanomachines to damaged parts of the hull. With a fully intact hull, the field can be extended to move nanomachines around inside, but due to the precision involved it is a slow process.

Mechanics Details:

• Each tier of polarizer has a certain capacity, which is the maximum amount of Hull HP it can polarize. It is lower than the shield capacity at that tier. (Start with 1/4 of that tier's shield's capacity and work from there.)
  
• Each tier of polarizer can polarize Hull HP at a certain rate, roughly the same as a shield generator of the same tier. (This might need to be nerfed; playtesting required.)
  
• It takes power to polarize the hull, and a little to make repairs, but none while idle.
  
• Hull Plate Polarizers use CPU. If they go offline, the hull loses 10% of its polarization per second.
  
• If all of the polarized HP is depleted, the polarizer goes offline for a while like a shield generator.
  
• Multiple polarizers stack their effects intuitively. Capacity, polarization rate, and repair rate all combine into a single pool.
  
• Device damage needs to be reworked to ensure that it matters and is fair. See the section below about reworking interior damage.

Optional Extra Help for Small Ships: If, under this new system, small ships are still too easily destroyed, add a mitigation effect proportional to the percentage of max hull HP that is currently polarized, such that:

Mitigation% = (MaxHP / CurrentPolarizedHP)*100% - 10%

(apologies for crappy formula formatting)

This significantly slows damage for very small ships, but doesn't affect large ships that polarize less than 10% of their hulls. The calculation can be tweaked and rebalanced of course, but this is a start.

Note that this makes armor tanking pretty viable if a ship mounts a lot of Hull Plate Polarizers, as long as it isn't too large. It's hard to say for sure if this will have undesirable effects.

Possible interior damage rework:

• All devices are categorized as major or minor. Major devices are important things like power components, shields and polarizers, life support. Minor devices include doors, terminals, etc.
  
• Hits are not positioned based on the part of the hull they hit, but on the (roughly) nearest interior space to the path of the shot.
  
• On a hit to non-polarized hull, the damage is centered on a random critical device near the shot's path, and excess damage splashes to nearby devices (both critical and non-critical), regardless of distance.
  
• Devices with 0 HP are ignored by the algorithm, so damage isn't wasted on them.
  
• (Anti-exploit) if there are no nearby devices, the damage is applied to a random major device somewhere in the ship.
  
• (Tweak/balance) All devices have significantly increased HP so a ship doesn't get disabled in seconds.
  
• Desired effect: Hits always harm something that matters. Since damage still affects a general area, decentralized, redundant systems still have the intended effect, but the design and density of each area is up to creativity. It's hard to exploit the system to avoid damage to specific devices.

Additional Concept 1: Stations shield nearby ships
Part of the reason for adding armor generators was to keep the ship from blowing up before you could get to the cockpit. Since it's really annoying to get popped while you're sitting at a station, station shields should gain the ability to protect nearby ships.

For an NPC station, shooting the ship damages the station's shields instead, until they are depleted. For an invulnerable player station, nearby ships are simply invulnerable as long as the station shield operates.

Additional Concept 2: Ion ammo reworked as non-lethal
Instead of damaging the ship, Ion ammo de-polarizes hull and then damages devices without affecting Hull HP. This can be useful for boarding operations and looting ships.