Armor is better than warheads

dmm · #1 September 26th, 2000, 01:35 AM

I rammed an escort equipped with a full engines, an ArmorIII, and a WarheadIII (300 damage, weighs 50 kT) against another ship (a frigate, I think) with a total damage resistance of 305 kT. The outcome surprised me. Both ships were affected equally by the explosion, so both were destroyed. On the other hand, replacing the warhead with 5 more ArmorIIIs and doing the same ramming test resulted in the destruction of the frigate with only armor damage to the escort. So armor is better than warheads for kamikaze ships. Which leads to the question: what are warheads good for?

Psitticine · #2 September 26th, 2000, 04:07 AM

Umm, they're for when you don't want your ship back!

IOW, for suicide rammers - real kamikazes. When they blow, they take the ship they're mounted on with them. They're for sending something cheap (or outdated) like an escort to take on a much larger (and costly) opponent.

dmm · #3 September 26th, 2000, 04:18 PM

I think you're missing my point. (But maybe not. See below.) The warheads are so heavy that ArmorIII does more damage to the enemy ship.
ArmorIII:5x10kT=50kT weight and does 5x70kT=350kT damage
Warhead(II?):50kT weight and does 300kT damage

Having slept on it, here's my answer to my own question (which maybe is what Psit. meant?):
1) Warheads are faster than armor to put on a ship as an upgrade because they're only one item. (Heavy items don't take any longer to repair/upgrade than light items.) So if my Yard can do 5 repairs/turn, then in one turn I could either turn one outdated escort into an armored rammer, or I could turn 5 outdated escorts into 5 warhead rammers. So if I'm in a hurry, then warheads win, no contest.
2) A warhead rammer that's down to 5 strength in the warhead and 5 strength in one engine can still sneak up and ram the enemy, doing the full 300 damage. So the enemy is forced to destroy it totally. An armored rammer down to 10 strength will only do 10 damage, so the enemy doesn't need to worry about it. (And if the enemy has EmissiveArmor or CrystalArmor, then he can ignore damaged armored rammers at even higher strength levels.)

One thing I've learned from my discussions about armor, is that new technologies are often not as good as a high level of an old technology. But if you keep researching to higher levels of the new tech, eventually the new tech has significant advantages.

Baron Munchausen · #4 September 26th, 2000, 05:17 PM

You're still using the .51 demo if you've got 70kt damage per armor component. That's very high and out of proportion. The .56 demo has much less value for armor and higher value for shields. You would find the warhead more valuable in that demo. In the final release, of course, you can adjust things as you see fit.

It's easy to add some power to the warhead and make it work the way you expect. And then it's easy to go back and change something else to correct game balance if you find it too powerful.

Cyrien · #5 September 26th, 2000, 07:18 PM

Hrmm...

I start a game with High Tech look and see...

70kt damage resistance on Armor III for a space take up of 10kt. I know for a fact I have .56, it even says so in the corner when I start it up

Version 0.56 DEMO

Hrmm... perhaps there is a bug here? Maybe it has to do with upgrading from .51 or dling .56 straight? I don't know but this is what .56 has for me.

Psitticine · #6 September 26th, 2000, 08:36 PM

quote:
Originally posted by dmm:
1) Warheads are faster than armor to put on a ship as an upgrade because they're only one item. (Heavy items don't take any longer to repair/upgrade than light items.) So if my Yard can do 5 repairs/turn, then in one turn I could either turn one outdated escort into an armored rammer, or I could turn 5 outdated escorts into 5 warhead rammers. So if I'm in a hurry, then warheads win, no contest.
2) A warhead rammer that's down to 5 strength in the warhead and 5 strength in one engine can still sneak up and ram the enemy, doing the full 300 damage. So the enemy is forced to destroy it totally. An armored rammer down to 10 strength will only do 10 damage, so the enemy doesn't need to worry about it.

Actually, I hadn't thought of the first point. The second is what I had in mind though. Sorry for not making myself clear!

I've only been ramming as a final option for badly damaged ships and, as you note, a ship's normal ramming damage, i.e. without a warhead, is based on its remaining damage capacity.

When I get to the point where I can't cram enough stuff onto an escort to make it worthwhile to keep the hulls around, I put a warhead on each one and use them as a screen for the more valuable ships. If the enemy damages one badly, and it can still reach them, there's some payback before they go up in a puff of flame and smoke.

I don't really want to pay the maintence costs of them anymore anyway, so why quietly retire an old warrior when it can take down one more opponent on its way out?

quote:
Originally posted by Cyrien:
70kt damage resistance on Armor III for a space take up of 10kt. I know for a fact I have .56, it even says so in the corner when I start it up

Version 0.56 DEMO

Hrmm... perhaps there is a bug here? Maybe it has to do with upgrading from .51 or dling .56 straight? I don't know but this is what .56 has for me.

I've got the same thing in my 0.56 demo. I never had 0.51 - 0.56 was the first (and, so far, only) Version I've installed.

Herr Baron is a beta-tester. It must be hard to keep track of what's in the Version you were using several updates ago, so perhaps this was actually changed after 0.56?

jowe01 · #7 September 26th, 2000, 09:18 PM

In addition to its explosive damage, doesn't the warhead also do "impact" damage just because of its weight ? Physically, (destructive) energy is proportional to mass. The warhead's mass should therefore increase damage as well. If it afterwards explodes, well, that's additional damage.

dmm · #8 September 26th, 2000, 09:56 PM

That brings up another very unrealistic thing about ramming. As I'm sure you all remember from high school physics (hehehe!), the formula for kinetic energy (KE, the energy from ramming) is
KE = 0.5 * m * v^2
where m is the mass and v^2 is the relative velocity squared. So an escort rammer with 6 quantum engines blazing that zooms head-on at full speed into another ship that's also moving at full speed ought to do a lot more damage than a crippled medium freighter with only one movement point that bumps into someone at rest. Remember what that comet did to Jupiter, mainly because their relative speed was so high? Didn't the folks at MM take Drivers' Ed? OK, maybe relative speed would be tough to figure out, but the current system could be improved somewhat.

In MM's defense, maybe they are just using remaining damage strength as a measure of remaining ship integrity. Like the difference between getting hit with a handful of sand and getting hit with a canvas bag full of sand.

Baron Munchausen · #9 September 26th, 2000, 11:03 PM

Yes, I have pointed out the real effects of ramming many times. Even moderate sized meteors hitting the earth are more powerful than the entire nuclear arsenal of the super-powers at their height. There's no way that a ship could survive the energies involved. Ramming would realistically be suicide no matter how much armor you crammed into your ship. <shrug> Warp points are not realistic either.

Enough people want the ramming option in the game that it's going to stay. I would prefer that there at least be a "special" tech required to build a ship that can survive a ram, then most ships could not survive and it would really be a Last-resort suicide tactic. Not sure what imaginary science you could invent to make it survivable, though. A ramming-prow made of some incredible substance that can be a "Shock absorber" maybe? It would have to be ablative, meaning you use it once and it's destroyed. A material hard enough to hit another ship and simply "take it" would also be immune to just about any weapon you can imagine.

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 26 September 2000).]

Cyrien · #10 September 27th, 2000, 12:33 AM

Perhaps an alternative view for Warheads there? Instead of explosive you could explain them off as forward mounted exotic metals designed to take the forward impact of a ram on the ramming ship while not getting involved with the invincibilty of the component, it only covers the front after all... course that doesn't deal with all the issues involved but...