Organic armor fix

[Suicide Junkie]

I've had it with the craziness of Organic Armor, so I'm gonna fix it.

NOTE: if this has already been fixed for v1.41, and nobody has told me yet, please do so now.


Ok, as it is, all pieces of organic armor must be completely destroyed in one turn, otherwise the damage is completely healed.

So, for Pirates & Nomads v2.3, I propose to do the following:
-Change the organic armor ability into an "organic resource generation" ability.
-Give Organic armor a shield generation ability equal to its hitpoints.
-Give Organic armor a shield regeneration ability equal to its old "organic armor" ability.
-Rewrite my AI patcher (My HDD was reformatted and I lost the source, FYI) and program the shipdesign.txt patch to replace "Organic Armor" calls with "organic resource generation" calls.
-Change the description to mention "Bio-electric Field", "provides a shield effect", and "can be tapped to recharge mechanical shield generators"

Thus:
AI's will still use the OA normally.
Against normal weapons, the organic armor work like you would expect it to, from reading the description.
Phased polaron beams will skip the OA's shield effect, but will still have to cut through the armor.
Also, this will remove the invulnerability issue with Organic races who use 10 OAs on a ship (can heal 1500 damage per turn!)

Questions, Comments and Suggestions are welcome

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[Spoo]

I thought Organic Armor stored X hitpoint per turn (X being the regen amount). So during the first few rounds that the ships close on each other the armor is "storing" regen, so even if all of the armor is destroyed on the first salvo, at least some of the armor will grow back. (This is all explained in a previous thread -Armor and Sheild FAQ, or something like that.

What about the situation when a player (or AI) wants phased sheilds and organic armor? Won't the normal sheild generation of the armor make all of the ships sheilding normal?

Just some points to ponder.

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Assume you have a 1kg squirrel
E=mc^2
E=1kg(3x10^8m/s)^2=9x10^16J
which, if I'm not mistaken, is equivilent to roughly a 50 megaton nuclear bomb.
Fear the squirrel.

[Phoenix-D]

Side effect:
Armor-skipping weapons will no longer skip organic armor totally
Organic armor will (probably) not work in a black hole system, or other shield-interfering area.

Phoenix-D

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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Side effect:
Armor-skipping weapons will no longer skip organic armor totally
Organic armor will (probably) not work in a black hole system, or other shield-interfering area

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Well, at least not at 100% capacity. They will still give the armor effect, you'll just lose the shield & regen abilities.

quote:

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What about the situation when a player (or AI) wants phased sheilds and organic armor? Won't the normal sheild generation of the armor make all of the ships sheilding normal?

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Yes. For a human, its not too big a deal; they will use OA until the enemy PPBs appear, then switch to ablative/plasma armor or phased shields.
The AI could be royally screwed by this...

What do you think about giving the lower tech OAs normal, but the high-tech ones phased?

quote:

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I thought Organic Armor stored X hitpoint per turn (X being the regen amount). So during the first few rounds that the ships close on each other the armor is "storing" regen, so even if all of the armor is destroyed on the first salvo, at least some of the armor will grow back.

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In my experience (V1.35), the armor just heals everything at the end of each turn. If all of it is destroyed, nothing comes back.
EDIT: OOps I really should be sure that I've got my path.txt set right before I start doing tests
Looks like the reduced OA ability works OK.

So... My main problem is that the 300 regen per turn I get from the OAs is good, but having the stored-up 3000 OA points before I get in weapons range is just plain stupid.

So the question is: how should I fix this? I can leave in the OA regen, but at reduced levels; which will eliminate the AI patch requirement.
But, I still want the moderate hitpoint regen without having the insane storage effect.

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 15 August 2001).]

[Master Belisarius]

After my tests, I think that currently the Organic Armor, only regenerate other Organic Armors destroyed in the same ship.

I don't know what happened in previous patches, but now I'm pretty sure about that other ship components (no organic armors), are not re-generated if they're destroyed.

An example: one Aquilaeian fleet with DN ships, with 4 Organic Armors every one, engaged in combat a similar fleet of Pyrochette's ships. The Aquilaeian fleet won, but several DN ships had components destroyed and their engines destroyed for the Pyrochette's weapons.
After a second combat against a colony ship (they were placed over a warp point), still the damaged engines/components were not regenerated... but one ship that had one Organic Armor destroyed but 3 Organic Armors intact, after the combat regenerated the damaged Armor.

[Suicide Junkie]

OA ability is limited to the ship its on, plus only affects components with OA abilities, or maybe components with the same familiy number.

If you want healing of any components, use living ships

This is on a battleship with 10 OAs, just so you know the scale.

quote:

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So... My main problem is that the 300 regen per turn I get from the OAs is good, but having the stored-up 3000 OA points before I get in weapons range is just plain stupid.

So the question is: how should I fix this? I can leave in the OA regen, but at reduced levels; which will eliminate the AI patch requirement.
But, I still want the moderate hitpoint regen without having the insane storage effect.

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Hmmm... I'm thinking 10% regen per turn would be OK; the ship would only store enough OA points for one complete restore before combat, and could only survive three armor wipeouts per battle. (Fourth is permanent).

FYI, the current value is 20%, allowing a ship to store two refreshes before shooting starts, and have each armor piece destroyed seven times per battle.

Also, with a value of 10%, and four refreshes per battle, the effective HP/KT of Organic armor is increased from 5 to 20, surpassing even the best alternative: plasma projection armor (14HP/KT)

At 20%, you get up to 35 HP/KT!!!


EDIT:
So far, OA with 10/13/15 regen seems OK. A little powerful, but more reasonable.
also, I've given the organic crossover armor 8/10/12 regen.

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 16 August 2001).]