A question on hull vs armor vs other blocks

[Hades]

Hi all,

I had an understanding that you can build your ship anyway you like... and that there wasn't necessarily a need to "hide" soft parts like glow blocks, energy generators etc.

So as long as you had full integrity block and shield coverage, you could go crazy with designs.... because your ship health bar determined your total health from the sum of HP from all the different parts, whilst shields covered the entire ship period.

Now 2 things have thrown me a bit:

1. I've noticed that enemy ships managed to shoot off the integrity block on a part of my ship... which left the entire area exposed to ... more damage I guess?

2. I understand the railguns per their description, are supposed to tear through things and that you require armor blocks to effectively stop them.

Based on this... I think one has too design ships based on the following principles:

A. Armoured hull at the front to "tank"incoming shots from enemies, with a normal hull to cover your "soft spots".

B. Integrity blocks need special protection (e.g. via armor blocks) because they tend to get shot out by enemies by preference.

C. The idea of those spindly thin ships with nice glowy blocks is a really bad idea against enemy AI as they will tend to shoot out your weaker parts.... thus you are better off going for "blocky, chunky" armoured ships that have soft guts inside.

D. All ships need to have a mixture of strong shields and strong hull to protect against the likes of railguns.

E. One more thing... engine and thrusters if I'm not wrong don't require surface area... I was reading something about beta software that emphasised wafer thruster blocks rather than cube blocks... but it seems that depth adds to thrust also.

Does this about right?

I got the feeling the devs wanted ships to be really creatively built.... but it seems there is a technical argument against that.

[ravien_ff]

You only need to worry about railguns if they have shield penetration or your shields go down.

In my time in the game, it's really rare that an enemy ship has any shield penetrating weapons, and even then you can usually notice the damage being done and boost away quickly. The only exception are ships with pulse cannons, those will basically act like your shields don't even exist.

So yeah, it's always a good idea to cover your important ship parts. You can always add thin slices as decorative parts.

As far as thrusters go, surface area determines how much of their thrust goes in that direction, whereas volume determines the overall power of the thruster. So if you build a thruster that is a size 1x1x2, for example, the majority of the power of the thruster will be directed along the sides that are wider. If you build it 2x2x4, then it will be twice as powerful as the 1x1x2 sized one.

Directional thrusters output their power in only one axis, making them good for strategically placing them far away from the center of your ship to turn on a specific axis, or as powerful reverse thrusters.

[Zara]

While I've only been playing with my usual guild for about 2 weeks now, only about 1 in 30 or so fights has there been any enemy who has penetrated my shields (such as with Pulse Cannons), even in the core. This has led me to have 0 armor or stone on my ship, as I've had plenty of shields for most fights, and when they get low I just boost away and let them regen some. Of course you'll still want Integrity blocks affecting your entire ship for those few enemies with pulse cannons that naturally penetrate shields, just so you're not losing blocks willy nilly.

[Tactical Nuclear Coffee]

Originally posted by Storm:

Hi all,

I had an understanding that you can build your ship anyway you like... and that there wasn't necessarily a need to "hide" soft parts like glow blocks, energy generators etc.

So as long as you had full integrity block and shield coverage, you could go crazy with designs.... because your ship health bar determined your total health from the sum of HP from all the different parts, whilst shields covered the entire ship period.

Now 2 things have thrown me a bit:

1. I've noticed that enemy ships managed to shoot off the integrity block on a part of my ship... which left the entire area exposed to ... more damage I guess?

2. I understand the railguns per their description, are supposed to tear through things and that you require armor blocks to effectively stop them.

Based on this... I think one has too design ships based on the following principles:

A. Armoured hull at the front to "tank"incoming shots from enemies, with a normal hull to cover your "soft spots".

B. Integrity blocks need special protection (e.g. via armor blocks) because they tend to get shot out by enemies by preference.

C. The idea of those spindly thin ships with nice glowy blocks is a really bad idea against enemy AI as they will tend to shoot out your weaker parts.... thus you are better off going for "blocky, chunky" armoured ships that have soft guts inside.

D. All ships need to have a mixture of strong shields and strong hull to protect against the likes of railguns.

E. One more thing... engine and thrusters if I'm not wrong don't require surface area... I was reading something about beta software that emphasised wafer thruster blocks rather than cube blocks... but it seems that depth adds to thrust also.

Does this about right?

I got the feeling the devs wanted ships to be really creatively built.... but it seems there is a technical argument against that.

In addition to the above comments,

Altho your ship has a total HP its just a visual cue to how strong your craft is. If you have a weak middle section your ship will no doubt be shot in two regardless of how much total HP it has.

A. Armor should be enough, even a 0.05mm plate will work. That being said a 0.25mm is 5x stronger and if you want a better armor plate add 0.05mm integrity followed by 0.20mm armor. No need for "hull" blocks.

B. Not really, obv you want them covered because they only effect other blocks by making effected blocks 10x harder to destroy.

C. No one likes those thin ships, im sure they will be generated differently at some point. effective... but weak and rediculous.

D. I think railguns punch through one slab of armor (regardless of how thick it is) so having two slabs or a composite would be ideal. If you really want to make the most out of your armor you should build it along the lines of 0.10mm integrity, 0.05mm armor, 0.05mm armor then another 0.05mm armor which would give it a total thickness of only 0.25mm but have all the railgun stopping power you need. That being said it would really only be an option for square ships or along the sides. Cant really do that with any other block to have the same thickness and effectiveness.

[EDIT] Lastly one massive slab of armor is more effective than small slabs. Keep that in mind when your building to spec. Altho the games fairly easy once you have shields so its only really useful to know early game. but the bigger and thicker the armor the more damage it needs to break off so if you can, merge the whole craft after you have built it.

As far as i can tell tho, only square blocks merge, you will need to replace any sloped armor yourself even if they should merge.