Confused about armor, question about Advanced Materials

[Elegant Caveman]

One of the first branches to Armor Construction is called Advanced Materials, with a description that says: "Gives all modules an additional +35 armor rating. Stacks."

Does this apply to all modules all the time, even when you're not using an armor module? Or is it just an extra bonus to armor modules?

The description isn't exactly clear.

I'm leaning towards "it applies to all modules all the time", since the other branch improves armor modules themselves, but I'm not sure. I guess it sounds a bit too good to be true, getting a passive armor boost to everything (even though it's not a very high armor rating).

I tried playing around with modules a bit, but unless I missed it, you can't see the actual armor rating of a module anywhere, just whatever the default armor rating of the armor module itself.

Do armor modules give their full armor ratings to themselves and every module they touch, stacking additively with multiple modules?

Say you have two armor modules with 300 armor that are touching, they'd both have 600 armor, and so would any other module touching both of them?

Do we know the exact formula for how armor interacts with damage?

I've tried searching the forum for answers, but all I found was similar questions, neither of which got answered.

So I guess maybe nobody knows, but here I am asking again, just in case...

[Andrew Diamondeye]

I'm honestly not sure. It felt like my ship modules "burnt" less when I researched the "it applies to all modules" ones so I'm inclinced to think it's a general buff to all pieces. But as you said armor in general is rather unclear how it works, my best guess is that it's a buff to the HP of the module and possible entire ship (?).

But I didn't have any issues with having enough research points so I grabbed all of the upgrades.

[Elegant Caveman]

Originally posted by Andrew Diamondeye:

I'm honestly not sure. It felt like my ship modules "burnt" less when I researched the "it applies to all modules" ones so I'm inclinced to think it's a general buff to all pieces. But as you said armor in general is rather unclear how it works, my best guess is that it's a buff to the HP of the module and possible entire ship (?).

But I didn't have any issues with having enough research points so I grabbed all of the upgrades.

I forget what the tooltip/tutorial about armor said, exactly, but there was something about how it works two ways... I think maybe a flat defense, and a percentage? Something about how it's mostly useful against big attacks, but it helps at least a bit against small ones... or maybe it was the other way around...

I really wish there was just a tutorial/help section we could refer back to.

Point being, I don't think it's as simple as just a buff to HP/hull, but more likely there's two formulas for damage mitigation.

They're not super expensive to research, but I have so many things I want to unlock, I thought I'd ask, might help me prioritize.

[Gamerzilla]

1. Armor and HP are separate. HP is obvious and just makes your hull integrity percentages higher. Armor reduces incoming damage by a percentage, but is penetrated more by large single damage hits than multiple small ones.
2. Advanced materials gives every single module a small amount of armor. This stacks with all the other armor increasing researches.
3. Armor also protects adjacent modules buts its definitely not 100%. I dont know exact numbers, but from testing, armor that is adjacent to other armor still buffs each other. Call it 50% for simplicity.