What exactly is considered armor/heavy defense type?

[allmybase]

I'm confused as to what ships/structures count as what armor class. For instance I'm pretty sure that force fields count as heavy defense, but I think that most turrets/guard posts don't count as heavy defense (bombers seem to do normal damage to them).

What units are anti armors good against? Some are obvious like the...armor ships, but I suppose bombers are considered armored? What makes a unit armored? Having shields? Are structures considered armored?

[x4000]

Please note, we don't use terms interchangeably.  Armor and heavy defense are completely unrelated to one another, same as shields and forcefields are not the same thing -- we're really precise with our language when at all possible, to avoid such confusion (my long background in business software encouraged this heavily).

That said, there is a specific class of ship called the Armor Ship. It's like bulletproof fighters, or anti-armor, or whatever -- that's it's name.  Anti-armor ships are also good against a variety of other ships, though I couldn't list them all off the top of my head.  It's a good unit, and some folks' favorite, but it depends on the opposing ship mix as to how powerful any specific ship class is really going to be in your game.

Regarding force fields, those are their own separate thing (though almost everything that is good against heavy defense is also good against force fields, and vice-versa).  Each turret class is its own thing, and is unrelated to heavy defense.  The "heavy defense" is stuff like fortresses, raid engines, and almost all of those big, specialized fixed-position ships that the AI can get.  Ion cannons are another example.  Black hole machines, alarm posts, radar jammers... all that sort of thing is heavy defense.

[allmybase]

When you say alarm post do you mean guard post? And when you say cruiser do you mean frigate?

[x4000]

Sorry, when I say cruiser I do mean frigate -- those were recently renamed, and I still default back to the old lingo because I was so used to that for a year and a half.

When I say alarm post, I mean alarm post -- that's in the expansion, if you don't have that.  There are a lot of new heavy defense things in the expansion in particular.

[allmybase]

I do have the expansion, haven't noticed those alarm posts yet, but I'm still a pretty fresh player O_o

I noticed that bombers are pretty poor compared to fighters against special guard posts, they do seem to get some minor damage bonus but the same number of fighters seem to do much better than the same number of bombers. Is that intentional? (I don't mind either way, just found it weird since I'd think bombers would be the best vs immobile objects).

[x4000]

Alarm posts aren't in every game -- most of the big expansion stuff is not -- so you'll only see those on scattered plants or against specific AI types.  Lots of replay value, the idea being that there is always something new to discover even after dozens of games.

With the special forces guard posts, frigates are the best against those.  Frigates can take them out without a scratch, whereas you're suiciding ships either way if you use something shorter-ranged.  I think that the intermediate tutorial mentions that, but it mentions a ton of stuff.  Bombers are best against really high-hitpoint targets, fixed or otherwise.  So they are not particularly great against turrets, or other things with less than a million or so hitpoints.  But anything that has multiple millions of hitpoints (golems aside, which are mobile and a class of their own) bombers are probably good against.  And, if it's a fixed-position thing with that much health, it's probably heavy defense.

[RCIX]

Please note, we don't use terms interchangeably.  Armor and heavy defense are completely unrelated to one another, same as shields and forcefields are not the same thing -- we're really precise with our language when at all possible, to avoid such confusion (my long background in business software encouraged this heavily).

It also encourages use of similar terms for different purposes

[ShadowOTE]

Hmm... speaking of cruisers, is there going to be a possible update with actual cruisers, perhaps filling a role somewhere between the huge starships and the tiny frigates, fighters, and bombers?

[x4000]

Please note, we don't use terms interchangeably.  Armor and heavy defense are completely unrelated to one another, same as shields and forcefields are not the same thing -- we're really precise with our language when at all possible, to avoid such confusion (my long background in business software encouraged this heavily).

It also encourages use of similar terms for different purposes

Indeed so.  You would not believe some of the terminology from the affordable housing industry.  My favorites were from New Market Tax Credits.  Really smart bunch of people I worked with those clients, but their terminology (and their knowledge of tax law) was pretty unparalleled.

Hmm... speaking of cruisers, is there going to be a possible update with actual cruisers, perhaps filling a role somewhere between the huge starships and the tiny frigates, fighters, and bombers?

We don't add new ship classes outside of expansions, as a rule -- just one-off ships, turrets, starships, defensive ships, etc.  But, I think something like that might be cool for the next expansion, yeah.  Good thought!