Armor unsettles people, year on year, month after month. (17 pages so, "this whole armor thing" August 2013, 11 pages "Ye Ol' Armor debate" July 2012, 12 pages "Armor is not that important currently" in Feb 2012... there are more that are older.) It sounds quite simple but requires quite a big pinch of math to really understand. (attackers shot number, armor piercing, minimum damage and at that point we need to get out the calculator/spreadsheet). I think if it said "Damage from shell x0.2, laser x0.8, energy bomb x1.2" for example it would be more intuitive... but that would wipe out the armor-piercing side and generally buff low-damage units with anything less than max armor piercing. I'd like it to be split into more variables (shields, evasion, size, ECM, material or whatever) but for each to be more clear about the effects and have the explanation fit in the infocard... which could still make things less clear and throw up lots of messy interactions and balancing problems
. In short the stats overhaul sounds painful to me even considering just one statistic. So I can see why it is better to leave some things until an elegant solution presents itself and make tweaks for now.
Armor as is,
The good:
+ It factors in attacker ship type, anti-armor and similar.
+ It has a magnitude, so you can have light or heavy armor
+ Has a minimum damage so ships can still die from scratch damage
- Opaque, doesn't indicate the minimum damage (or even that there is a minimum)
+/- Minimum damage doesn't vary by ship type but attack power, favoring heavy hitters like Golems, Spire ships.
+/- Subtracts from every hit, doesn't help low HP units stay alive. (evasion, ECM, size could all change tohit% and be useful for more agile little things) again favoring heavily armored, heavy hitters (Golems) and punishing small ships which never get much use out of it.
+/- It is consistent, less random-number god tomfoolery for good and ill. (no strange range-to hit interactions of the old shield mechanic)
+/- It's already done, working and took a lot time to get into a state people can live with, it would divide people with drastic changes.
But be it 8.0 or 9.0 or whenever I do feel armor would benefit from a few tweaks or an overhaul. But if superweapons are to become powerful again perhaps just this change:
Have armor indicate minimum damage somewhere on the unit's card and have the bigger, scary ships have a tiny minimum damage so they survive for longer. Golems having "Armor is deducted from hits to a minimum damage of 1% attacker shot power" (or minimum that isn't a % like 10 damage) would keep them alive much longer even if their HP was scaled back significantly.
