Armor is not that important currently

[keith.lamothe]

Thanks for the summary

As long as people want something different for armor than we have now and aren't fully happy with one of those ideas, keep talking.  We won't be moving on this sort of thing very soon, but the more thoroughly things have been thought out before we do something (if we do something, but I figure at least something will be changed), generally the better results.  Or at least the better my ability to share the blame if it doesn't go well

[Diazo]

Heh.

Wish I'd seen this thread before I posed in the other thread.

Note, what is NOT on the table for this thread is the "standardizing" the logical purpose of hull types. That is a discussion for another thread.

I have to disagree with this, as long as the damage bonus system exists, it cannot be separated from this discussion because one determines how much damage a ship is taking and the other determine how much damage a ship does not take and those have to be linked.

However, as the suggestion I currently prefer gets rid of armor entirely, I will go put it in the other thread.

D.

[Philature]

2. Keep armor, but make it limited in scope (aka, most ships would only have 0 armor), but buff the armor of the few units that keep armor, to make it more obvious in the cases where it does come into play. Possibly rename armor (like to deflectors or something)
    * This does give the question of what to do with armor piercing, armor boosting, and armor rotting. One suggestion is to allow armor rotters to take allow armor to go to "negative effective armor", to some sane cap of course. This way, it has use against even the now majority of ships that have no armor
    * The few ships that have armor may be subject to the changes in the armor mechanic proposed above.

To make armor rotters or booster effective one of the base ship need to have a large armor rating. If bomber had, let say 1200 armor instead of the current 600, then armor related mechanic ship are always revelant no matter how the armor mechanic is rolled out or modified since at least one ship on your side and their side have a good armor rating. This is at the core of the problems I believe, making sure the mechanic is always relevant and this have to go through a base fleet ship or, alternatively, a massive modification of all guardian and turrent but so much easier to change a single fleet ship.

[Wanderer]

If a base ship was to be used for that purpose (and I agree it's a decent idea), I'd rather see it be the missile frigate.  They're currently underwhelming, and that might give them some extra oomph in comparison.  Bombers are already the god of the triangle, there's no reason to push them higher.

I'm not sure what to do with armor, personally.  I definately believe armor should be applied before the multipliers occur for damage boosts.  Armor is so all over the place that keeping track of the mechanic for usage on the field is somewhat difficult at best and in the blob it doesn't matter so much.

I already dislike high ROF ships because of the armor mechanic as is.  In general I'd like to see very particular ships be the only ones who get armor (or piercing) and make it particular to a style of the craft to allow for more effecient balancing then it being all over the place.  In most circumstances I'd personally assume Hit Points to incorporate 'basic armor' as everything out there would have armor.  I don't think it should be as pervasive, so I definately agree with that.

Now, as to the actual mechanic itself.  I'm not sure.  I dislike logarithmic type functions because I really don't want to be trying to do complex math in my head when I'm trying to determine what's a good raid group vs. what the AI has and... yeah, no.  KISS, please.  However, I don't necessarily have a 'better idea' then what's there now, just that it really needs to be overhauled.