Questionable components.

[Doggi3]

OK, some of the components in SE4G either sounds really stupid or I'm missing something really important.
The premise is that in the manual, it is stated that "Damage is applied first to any shields the ship may have. Once the shields are depleted, the armor takes damage."

Problem with emmisive armor: By the time I'm done researching Armor 6 to get Emissive Armor III, everyone will have a weapon that do more than 30 points of damage. Worthless tech?

Problem with Crystaline Armor: "15 points of damage per hit will be channeled into the shield" What shield? There won't BE any shield since the enemy have to strip the shield to reach the armor in the first place...

Both these components suggest that damage dealt in combat are spread between shield and armor, is this true? or is there a big design fluke for these two components?

[javaslinger]

You know I wondered this as well. there seems to be other examples of expensive tech that seems far outdated by other techs by the time it's researched...

[Puke]

i believe that with crystal, every component pumps that much damage back into your shields every time the ship is hit. not each component pumping shields when that specific component is hit.

so your shields are hit, the armor behind it helps regenerate. therefore, enough crystal armor will make you invulnerable.

[Phoenix-D]

"Problem with emmisive armor: By the time I'm done researching Armor 6 to get Emissive Armor III, everyone will have a weapon that do more than 30 points of damage. Worthless tech?"

Used to be. Now it will decrease the damage done to the emissive armor by 30 points. So you take a hit from a 90 point weapon and it only actually does 60. At least when it hits the emissive armor.

"Problem with Crystaline Armor: "15 points of damage per hit will be channeled into the shield" What shield? There won't BE any shield since the enemy have to strip the shield to reach the armor in the first place..."

The armor will regenerate the shield back up. You are right in that it doesn't do anything until the shields are breached though.

Phoenix-D

[Suicide Junkie]

Not quite.

Crystalline armor more or less halves the damage you take.

If you have piles of crystalline armor, and the enemy is using small weapons, it is possible to become invulnerable.

Crystalline armored ships are only invulnerable if the enemy's weapon does less damage than it would take to destroy one unshielded crystalline armor component, and the crystalline ship must have twice the crystalline ability of the incoming damage.
Otherwise, the damage will build up and eventually destroy a crystal, starting a snowball effect, as the crystalline effect weakens.

Gritty details Example:
EG: 100 damage weapon hits a ship with 50 shield points remaining, 5 partial hull damage points, and 3 crystalline armor.
The 5 partial damage points are added to the weapon damage to get a total impact damage of 105 points.
The shields absorb 50 points, and are reduced to 0.
The remaining 55 damage hits the crystalline armor, doing 55 damage to the hull.
The crystalline effect of the 3 CA's totals 45 points. Since 55 > 45, only 45 points are channelled into the shields.

End result:
Shields are down to 45 points, and the ship has 55 points of hull damage.

Further hits by that weapon will only increase the amount of hull damage suffered, and soon one of the CA's will be destroyed.

[ August 15, 2002, 22:56: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[bearclaw]

Problem with emmisive armor: By the time I'm done researching Armor 6 to get Emissive Armor III, everyone will have a weapon that do more than 30 points of damage. Worthless tech?[/QB]

I would think that the easiest way to fix this (which I agree with completely) would be to make Armour tech easier to get to start off with but then have the tech go something like this:

lv 1 - armor I
lv 2 - armor II
lv 3 - armor III
lv 4 - emissive I
lv 5 - emissive II
lv 6 - emissive III
lv 7 - stealth I
lv 8 - stealth II
lv 9 - stealth III
lv 10 - scatter I
lv 11 - scatter II
lv 12 - scatter III

Perhaps Armor should be a tech avaliable from the start? After all, wouldn't heavily armoured ship hulls be something a race would develope _before_ sending ships out into space? Keeping the tech cost the same but having it a beginning tech would bring a better balance to armor tech IMO.

[oleg]

Emissive armor and crystalline armor are most intriguing technologies in SE IMHO. Crystalline armor components stack and regenerate shields. EA subtract damage every shot and is cumulative with CA. Before you complain about them, consider the consequences of even small increases to either EA or CA...

[Doggi3]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
[/QB]
End result:
Shields are down to 45 points, and the ship has 55 points of hull damage.[/QB]

So you're saying that the "15 points channeled damage" applied both to shield and structural damage? i.e. the total damage is not being subtracted by 15 even though that 15 points is converted into shield? hmmm....

[Baron Munchausen]

There's a unspoken assumption here that you probably don't understand. Most of us 'fanatics' remember the oddities of damage allocation in SE IV posted in a thread some time ago. What happens is, the game allocates ONE component on a ship at a time to be damaged/destroyed by incoming fire. Damage is accumulated in a 'special' storage variable until enough has built up to destroy that designated component. Then it is flagged as 'destroyed' and a new component is randomly selected.

Because of the way the damage allocation code works, though, the damage can be 'fixed' on a component by certain circumstances. One is the regeneration of shields. When the shields 'come back' and the next hit occurs to the shields, all of the 'temporary' damage that was being saved up to destroy the crystalline armor (for example) is instead used up on the renewed shields. Only if the shields total LESS than the accumulated damage will any of it remain. So the damage 'goes away' and the armor is effectively 'repaired' by its ability to regenerate shields.

You can see how Crystalline Armor can make you 'invulnerable' in these circumstances....

Normal shield regeneration can have this effect, too, though.

Other weird things can happen, also. Armor skipping weapons can 'channel' damage that was accumulating to destroy a large chunk of armor INSIDE the ship and wipe out a bunch of low-damage internal components -- but also effectively 'fixing' the armor in the process.

Edit: Hey, post #2222. Interesting number.

[ August 16, 2002, 00:11: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[oleg]

The CA trick is that it does not shield-transfer the damage done to it in the shot, but the accumalated registered damage. Explanation:
Asuume that you have 4 CAIII that can recharge 4x15=60 damage to shields. Now, imagine that in one particular instance you have shield down to 0. If in next shot you do 60 damage, you will have after that shield with streangth 60 and CA damage of 60. Now, if you shoot the ship with 55 damage weapon, you will NOT have shields 5 and damage 60. Instead, you will have magically recharged 60 shield although no actual damage has been down past the shield !

CA is one hell of creative engineering I should say.