Suggestion: Make armor great again

[ryuicy]

Hi,

there seems to be no late game usage of armor, as the damage pierces through the ship, the slots will most likely be used with more weapons, shields and engines.

Armor decreases direct hull damage, the game states it is more effective in reducing little blows, but not those large blows (missiles, axial cannon, drones and bombers), it still provides a basic protection against those, though.

Please consider my suggestion to change the part, how armor works:

1.: Armor should fortify the hull. In addition to the old system, let's add a second lifebar to the hull bar (propably orange). The orange bar represents the amount of fortification the ship has from any sort of armor upgrade.
---> The orange bar is used first at hull damage, damage only on plates yield no crew loss.
For the amount of "hull"points this provides consider taking 3-12% of the sum of all armor ratings (possibly increased & activated through research) shipwide.

This increases massively the usage of armor modules in the mid-game, as it not just protects against hits onto the protected modules, but also each armor module increases up to 7 times the armor rating (it self and nearby modules)

Also this helps to not loose crew, as kite station will propably not having unlimited supply of fresh, adult & trained crew members.

For the idea: the repair rate is identical to the hull repair rate, the hull is repaired first, armor behaves like a extension of the hull bar. Nanite swarms repair Hull and afterwards armor.

Feel free to discuss the suggestion

Regards

[Palandus]

I like it. Even moreso than making armor modules free, in terms of slots.

[Palad1n]

This would make armor OP and frankly you would basically have a game where you simply never worry about taking any real damage.

This is also the purpose for crew the option to add crew rings which in turn increases your max crew which in turn increases your ability to heal up between engagements.

I have to ask, what difficulty are you playing on? What tactics are you using when fighting other ships?

There are research pts you can spend that does exactly what your saying about minimizing crew casualties, we don't need even more ways above that.

Armor works perfectly fine right now with how I have seen it is intended. You place 1 armor pieces center and build around it, thus allowing the armor to "overlap" it's protection to everything it touches.

You also can then invest in research to enhance regular components AND armor, which essentially lets you build a very solid, heavily protected ship if you know how to utilize the armor pieces.

The only thing I like about the suggestion is having the orange bar indicator to show the overall strength of what your getting from the armor and reinforcements from research.

[ryuicy]

Playing on ultra and higher for difficulty.
In late game it is more viable to build weapons, shields and so on instead of using armor.
Armor feels always a waste on higher difficulty, that is in fact the statement of my first post.

It IS pretty viable on the lowest difficulties though, as the damage is not very high, but i am not a fan of casual

The damage protection is not very useful for preventing damage, even on max armor research. So for most players they don't even waste on a upgrade in armor (except the all modules (hull) upgrade)
Saving the slots for shields plus missiles, flak and axial with extra gens.

The idea for preventing casualities by having the enemy shoot down your ships armor plates first was just an addition to the idea, as it would be unimmersive loosing crew when the internal modules are undamaged.

Nonetheless, thank you for your opinion, discussion is always appreciated.

Regards

[Mandrid]

Agreed. Currently there is no point in using armor ever again, after getting Shields.

[Darke]

Originally posted by Mandrid:

Agreed. Currently there is no point in using armor ever again, after getting Shields.

Agreed. Played a mostly armour game the previous version with a couple of crew rings, and in the current version I went with no-armour shields-only and it was much easier even though I only had a single crew ring.

Seems like there needs to be some rebalancing at least in the default difficulty.

[Palandus]

Armor seems to be only really useful for close-quarters builds, ie Plasma or Beams. The problem though with that is Plasma works best when there are tons of empty space around each turret. The problem with beams is that of all the weapons, except maybe Axial, they need a massive number of generators to make them usable, and so its better to have more generators than armor in that case.

You don't use armor with missile, drone, or axial builds, as you want speed and maneuverability, rather than protection. And as armor is super heavy and greatly reduces maneuverability, you do not want any of it for those builds.

[Fasalrod]

I'm seeing some very strange behavior with sentinel lasers vs my ship armor in the last game Ultra+.

My ship is fully armored with every module being connected to an armor module. Max armor module (although not general armor) tech for the 900+ armor.

Vs any 4 laser ship in particular, although it happens with any number lase enemy, they'll start with taking very little damage, but then all of a sudden ship health suddenly drops from nearly max ~2700-ish to dead in under a half second. This is far more noticeable if I rotate my ship, but it still happens sitting in place or just coasting along in a strafe.

I can't tell any consistent behavior when it will happen vs when it won't - sometimes the ship is instantly destroyed when they open lasers on me, sometimes it takes a few seconds before the massive hull damage gets me.

[ryuicy]

Originally posted by Fasalrod:

I'm seeing some very strange behavior with sentinel lasers vs my ship armor in the last game Ultra+.

My ship is fully armored with every module being connected to an armor module. Max armor module (although not general armor) tech for the 900+ armor.

Vs any 4 laser ship in particular, although it happens with any number lase enemy, they'll start with taking very little damage, but then all of a sudden ship health suddenly drops from nearly max ~2700-ish to dead in under a half second. This is far more noticeable if I rotate my ship, but it still happens sitting in place or just coasting along in a strafe.

I can't tell any consistent behavior when it will happen vs when it won't - sometimes the ship is instantly destroyed when they open lasers on me, sometimes it takes a few seconds before the massive hull damage gets me.

Well this triggers some kind of fast repair, too. The hull repair rate goes wild when this occurs (and you survive). With the numbers displayed a ship with 50 crew has around 2-3 Repair / tick (5-10 /sec). When the lasers deal this instant crushing damage the repair rate goes insanely high, up to 50 and higher.

As for the armor deflecting only the first few shots: that is part of the system, I think. The armor rating will propably reduced with lowered module hitpoints.

Modules have around 50-100 Hitpoints and Lasers which reduce a module to 0 start damaging all connected modules. So at first your armor rating reduces the damage of the lasers to really low values, after the first "killed" module the armor rating seems not to be applied anymore, as the armor rating of the module hit is 0.

We should test if rotating the ship lowers this burst when it occurs...

Also, I never tested if there is a difference with the 40% minimum health of modules research (as I always use it), it should propably help in reducing damage as the armor rating could not go to 0.
But it still occurs there when the first module is "dead", the damage goes insanely high.
A sentinel flenser is a pain if stuck somehow near it

The only consistent protection versus lasers are shields for this moment.