Armor thickness

[voidCaster]

I just built a new ship design which is fully encased in Iron Armor which is 0.25 thick. A web search for armor thickness turned up a link to this forum right here, which suggests this is 2.5m thick armor plate, or about 9 feet thick, and that 0.1 is plenty. That thread was most recently active in 2017.

Even so, this stuff is tissue paper. I was mining out an asteroid, had to turn around to go after pirates who just warped in, ran into an asteroid at extremely low speed, and while I didn't lose any armor blocks I lost 2 whole engines along with dozens of little component stacks on the top and bottom of each engine.

So what's the right answer in 2025? What's the bare minimum for armor thickness, if I actually want the ship to behave like it's encased in armor as opposed to being armored but behaving like it has none at all?

[Elimm]

Answer: Integrity Field Generator.
Armor is meant to protect your internal components form penetrating attacks such as railguns. When it comes to complete protection integrity fields are the better option.

[voidCaster]

Originally posted by Elimm:

Answer: Integrity Field Generator.
Armor is meant to protect your internal components form penetrating attacks such as railguns. When it comes to complete protection integrity fields are the better option.

That's not an answer at all. It's not even helpful. I'm in a brand new game, all the asteroid fields have low yields, and the pirates are making it extremely difficult for me to advance into Titanium.

[lalelunatic]

as this is a bit longer... you have to differentiate between ramming dmg and taking enemy fire. ramming into an asteroid has another dmg formula afaik as beeing shot. and yes its much worse... so dont use "getting hit by asteroids" for a benchmark on needed armor thickness, as the answer to not losing stuff to ramming into things is to avoid that in the first place (if you really wanna ram stuff, long armor spikes of the weight your ship can support at most, and you still will lose some stuff)... soo.... for actually getting shot...

...until you get impenetrable shielding mods and depending on your difficulty, i would at least wrap the ships core (generator, shields, batteries, thrusters etc.) in at least 0.01 thick armor. and make it tight, so no holes (not that you could use any less =P).

most enemies wont hit below your shields (if you use them, what you should) but the ones with pulse cannons and certain torpedos can. on veteran difficulty this still didnt kill me even close up until the point where i got my first shield impenetration protection (max i lost was about 2/3 hp, so minor repairs and a few blocks at most), and since then, i never again got a shot below my shields up to the galaxy center.

nonetheless, i still use the prophylactic 0.01 core wrapping and of course integrity fields. just for the case stuff hits the fan hard. which then usually means im dead anyway if something cracks my 100 mil shields...

now... if you play on harder difficulties, be aware that not only the dmg taken rises, but also the critical point for block destruction, as well as the armament the enemies use. sabot torpedos, emp torpedos, guns with pulse cannon penetration modifications, etc. plus, they probably are beefier, thus you have longer fights you have to survive.

for that i certainly would up the armor thickness to at least a 0.1 wrapping just to be sure. especially as its iron man mode from everything above expert.

if you want to save weight i suggest using reflector blocks for stuff thats just decoration and set its primary color to ghost white, which is the same as black color for all other blocks. core wrapping in 0.01 is still something i always would suggest, as well as integrity fields all around, and to still have some armor, use spaced platings above important stuff.

with important stuff i mean all the blocks you need to successfully hit the hyperdrive if stuff goes down the drain. that means thrusters to turn and aim at the hyperdrive rectangle, engines to actually speed up straight and of course generators/batteries. those blocks should (at least in form of a "in the ships core"-reserve variant, be wrapped in armor.

and of course, more is always better. but that depends on how you like to drift around...

[Seoc]

An intermediate-length/depth response:

It's almost better to think of "armor" as a decorative block and not armor in the "universally prevents/negates damage" sense because it doesn't.
Each hit, the armor itself takes damage and will eventually/quickly get destroyed. Thicker armor means it'll take a few more hits, but also adds weight and makes you slower.
So relying on it alone means you're gonna be replacing it and the blocks under it frequently.

Integrity Field Generators (IFGs) functionally provide a massive increase to the hit points of any block they reach/affect. Crudely, you can think of it as a localized shield available in the early game. On normal difficulty, the difference can feel like blocks going from tissue paper to invulnerable.

So you're waaay better off with a smaller ship with the exterior blocks covered by IFGs than having a larger ship with just armor of any thickness. Then in build mode, scale the ship up as you get more of the ores you need.


Personally, I have a separate save that has all build restrictions off that I use to do ship creation and to test how well they scale.
When satisfied, I save the ship as a template so I can apply it in my actual game's new & existing ships.
I also have an "IFG pod" saved as a component that is just an IFG with armor blocks covering all sides but one that I can size and stretch to add to a ship to quickly cover sections.

Also, when starting a new game, I'll leave the initial ship in the safety of the starting system and spend ~20-30 minutes hopping around to the nearby systems in my drone mining titanium until I have enough to replace the starting ship with the desired size, IFG-covered template ship.

[Luke]

There should be occasional titanium asteroids as early as the starting sector, and a little goes a long way for integrity fields.

Armour isn't about thickness, it is about hitpoints per piece.

If you have a complex design with lots of small pieces, you will need it to be thicker to have any HP.

If you are flying a brick with a single giant slab on each side, 0.1 is more than enough. Maybe 4x more, depending on the size of your slabs.

[voidCaster]

Originally posted by Luke:

There should be occasional titanium asteroids as early as the starting sector, and a little goes a long way for integrity fields.

Armour isn't about thickness, it is about hitpoints per piece.

If you have a complex design with lots of small pieces, you will need it to be thicker to have any HP.

If you are flying a brick with a single giant slab on each side, 0.1 is more than enough. Maybe 4x more, depending on the size of your slabs.

Yeah, there's a trickle of titanium which is a lot smaller than the trickle of iron I'm getting. How do you suggest I obtain the Building Knowledge when I can't even mine without having to throw down 10k on repairs, because the armor is a joke? I sure can't stand up to a fight of any kind.

[lalelunatic]

you either got a superbad seed roll, doing something wrong, or have very bad luck, if you tell me you cant mine titanium "anywhere" without pirates hunting you down in the starter area...

green blips only... sector security will wrap up those pirates before you can even engage thrust... (if that still doesnt work, linger around the outer region of those green blips, as pirates always spawn in the middle area), get some roids to sell there and finance your repairs or buy stuff necessary... jump up to naonite for bigger and more frequent titanium roids (counter intuitive, but it works pretty well)... or as last resort, if its not working out, reduce the difficulty (or start freeplay without building knowledge restrictions).

[voidCaster]

Originally posted by lalelunatic:

you either got a superbad seed roll, doing something wrong, or have very bad luck, if you tell me you cant mine titanium "anywhere" without pirates hunting you down in the starter area...

green blips only... sector security will wrap up those pirates before you can even engage thrust... (if that still doesnt work, linger around the outer region of those green blips, as pirates always spawn in the middle area), get some roids to sell there and finance your repairs or buy stuff necessary... jump up to naonite for bigger and more frequent titanium roids (counter intuitive, but it works pretty well)... or as last resort, if its not working out, reduce the difficulty (or start freeplay without building knowledge restrictions).

I feel like you don't believe me, but at the same time I don't believe I got 2 bad seeds in a row.

Last game I spent days on end playing hours per day, then got done up the rear by bad programming when I hit Xanion, tried to use a Turret Factory, and couldn't find a single Ammunition Factory selling Ammunition S when I had the entire quarter of the galaxy scouted out. I posted questions about that BS on here and the best answer I got was a couple of witless troll trash talking about how I necro'd a thread from 2017, when the real problem is either totally witless or totally apathetic devs if the same problem has been in the game that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ long.

This game I've been trying for a couple of days and yeah, most sectors have 60-90 asteroids total, unless I go off the gate network. I can't get more than 5k titanium in hours and hours of play. And if I go off the gate network I'm either getting raped by pirates or else by Xsotan, and for some reason in this Galaxy the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Xsotan are always instantly hostile where usually they leave me alone unless I shoot at them first. And I'm not at enhanced difficulty by any means.

I don't know how long you and the other responder have been playing the same old savegame where everything's quick and simple because you have unlimited funds and materials, but you're both giving advice that's comparable to the idea that it's somehow my fault that all the documentation for Avorion online is either outdated or else was total BS to begin with. Given your posts, I'm guessing the latter.

[Luke]

Originally posted by voidCaster:

Yeah, there's a trickle of titanium which is a lot smaller than the trickle of iron I'm getting. How do you suggest I obtain the Building Knowledge when I can't even mine without having to throw down 10k on repairs, because the armor is a joke? I sure can't stand up to a fight of any kind.

I dunno man, I believe you that you're having a hard time, but I never struggled like this so I'm not really sure how to advise you.

a little 0.1x0.1x2 sliver of titanium integrity block will cover a decent sized ship for almost no cost, and you can just space those out to cover even larger ships.

It has been a little while, but I thought the tutorial just gave you the first building knowledge so you didn't need to buy it or fight for it.

I built NPC ships as soon as I could, and set them to mining. staying in civilized sectors keeps you mostly safe as the defenders can almost always clean up the pirates on their own.

I never had to fight in the early sectors, I just stayed in civilized areas and let the local defenders take care of the pirates for me. Sometimes I'd shoot at the pirates enough to get a reward after they were defeated. And you can still pick up the modules they drop, so pretty soon you have more guns and modules and can do the fighting on your own.

[rickcarson]

There's literally a tutorial mission which tells you to get like 90%+ integrity field coverage ...

If you're ignoring the basic game tutorials don't insult us, we're not the problem.

[lalelunatic]

well, getting bad seeds isnt as uncommon as you might think... the one i play atm, for yes... quite some time... has 0 (zero) turret factories in the 45 tech region, that have ANY good turrets. so the game made me skip ogonite stuff technically, what might be because i got a single faction in the inner galaxy center and those guys have exactly 2 systems at 46 tech... the rest is 44 below...

i get PD guns dropped that have more dps than most of the real guns since a few days ago and i never found a single gun with about 1k dps that isnt one of the 2 coaxials i got in all that time. most avorion stuff i get dropped is around 200 dps at most, seldom some 300 to 400 ones... i literally can gear only 1 ship with guns that have enough dps to not fight hardcore pirates for minutes one at a time. and in the last game i got a 1k dps epic launcher 5 min after reaching the barrier... that thing alone killed everything pre center...

so the switch to defense was necessary and for now im practically immortal at veteran diff... 100 mil shields, impenetrable above 30%... full integrity coverage, and a seemless 0.1 armor wrapping... lets me facetank behemoths... cant kill them at all with my dmg, but whatever...

and my economy sucks, as i circled around the barrier multiple times, and havnt found a second spot for the early easy plat/gold roid mines. so yeah, 1 single plat/gold mine... sure could have set them up without the full boni... but thats heresy! =P

anyway, long story short, bad rolls at rng based seeds are the goat of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ for games and pretty common. i also do believe that you can have such a bad roll beeing the culprit, albeit, as said, it has to be a reaaallly bad one. what i dont understand though is, why you dont just restart again... even if you say its the second time already... ask me how often i reroll starting maps in strategy games, as the rnd can be a deathblow even before start. if you´re just at titanium... its techncally a 5-10 min thing if a roll fits, to get where you are now.

[voidCaster]

Originally posted by rickcarson:

There's literally a tutorial mission which tells you to get like 90%+ integrity field coverage ...

If you're ignoring the basic game tutorials don't insult us, we're not the problem.

You are the problem when you're telling somebody without Titanium building knowledge that the answer to "what is the minimum effective armor thickness?" is "build something which requires the Titanium building knowledge."

By the way, if you found this derailed and spammed up thread with a web search engine because you have the same problem: The minimum effective armor thickness is 0.5 -- there's still light damage from everything, amounting to just a few hundred or a few thousand units of ore to repair, but it will prevent components underneath the armor from getting destroyed if a feather lands on your outer armor plating.

[voidCaster]

Originally posted by lalelunatic:

anyway, long story short, bad rolls at rng based seeds are the goat of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ for games and pretty common. i also do believe that you can have such a bad roll beeing the culprit, albeit, as said, it has to be a reaaallly bad one. what i dont understand though is, why you dont just restart again... even if you say its the second time already... ask me how often i reroll starting maps in strategy games, as the rnd can be a deathblow even before start. if you´re just at titanium... its techncally a 5-10 min thing if a roll fits, to get where you are now.

I have zero problem dealing with a bad RNG roll. All I asked in my OP is, "What is the minimum effective armor thickness, because I took advice I found all over the web, but it's from years ago, and it's bad advice."

I was literally taking more damage from bumping into asteroids at 50ms than I was from just sitting still while allowing enemies to gun me up for a minute or two.

I also wasn't able to survive more than the first wave of those pirate-controlled sectors, and the frequency of pirate and Xsotan attacks in this galaxy is way over the top. While trying to mine in one off-the-gate-network sector I was attacked by pirates, then immediately had to deal with another pirate incursion based on that one thing where a friendly ship warps in with a bunch of pirates chasing it and asks for help, then immediately had to deal with Xsotan whose "subspace signals" messages I missed because I was dealing with a literally nonstop flood of pirates.

So after all this ridiculous spam about building Titanium tech without Titanium Building Knowledge, I spent hours yesterday and today experimenting and the answer to my own OP is 0.5

Once I collected enough iron to rebuild that monstrosity, I was suddenly able to survive light collisions with asteroids AND finish a couple of "Lost Friend" missions, so now I'm doing ok.

I want to thank the users who posted sincere and helpful and informational stuff.

[Eye Aye]

when you obtain your first Titanium ore you are sent a message which contains the building knowledge for Titanium ships take it then hit P on your keyboard go to your inventory it will show Titanium building knowledge, you then double click on it and Voila you have the knowledge,
Out of curiosity why on earth are you bumping into asteroids ? Go slower and steer around them, its what ALL other players do. Its too expensive to keep repairing ships.
By the way if you have 200% mechanic staffing, they will repair your ship for free over time but they can not replace missing blocks.
Early game before you have a decent ship if you enter a pirate sector with a shipyard, bug on out of there. They will eat you up, when you get a better ship you can kick their butts.

[Blueberry Muffins!]

I was literally taking more damage from bumping into asteroids at 50ms than I was from just sitting still while allowing enemies to gun me up for a minute or two.

Any Judge would rule that suicide. Armor thickness is the wrong question here. 50m/s is 180km/h, 111mph, it is not a speed meant for running headlong into Really Big Rocks. "Lithobraking" is meant to be a dark *joke*, son.

My early ships have no armor at all. None. Nor hull, for that matter. I play on Insane, only a completely-irrelevant-here mod, and I'm telling you: taking any damage *at all* that isn't in combat you chose to enter because you expect to win means you're doing it wrong. Unless you're doing something even wrong-er than taking expensive amounts of damage, you will have Ti building knowledge in something like ten minutes, maaaayyyybe double that with really bad luck.

edit:

I can't even mine without having to throw down 10k on repairs

You're doing it wrong. If you can't learn to control your ship better than that you're going to have a very bad time in this game.