I haven't been completely happy with the armour system for a while. The problem is that in the early and middle tech levels, increasing the amount of armour is expensive and with the power of many weapons it doesn't make that much difference. One of the best armour damage systems I have seen in a game was in FASA's Renegade Legion series, which used a grid of boxes for each of six armour facings. Damage from different weapons was in different shapes, so a Laser drilled a single column of damage straight into the armour, a Neutron Particle Cannon did more damage but in a triangle shape, while an Electron Particle Cannon did wide, flat damage. This created situations where a ship might take damage early in a battle but then survive several crunching hits that hit undamaged armour, or a powerful ship might have a weak spot due to several concentrated hits in the same location.
Yesterday, adding something along these lines to Aurora was just an idea I had been considering for a while but I looked at the possibility of coding it and it proved relatively easy to implement. The changes to the game are as follows:
Armour Levels are now multiplied by four, compared to the existing game, while using the same amount of armour. So the Tribal class destroyer below is exactly the same as it was before, in terms of components, costs, etc., except the armour level is four instead of one.
Tribal class Missile Destroyer 5950 tons 380 Crew 706.8 BP TCS 119 TH 360 EM 420
3025 km/s Armour 4-29 Shields 14-300 Sensors 10/0/0/0 Damage Control 0-0 PPV 27
Magazine 180 Replacement Parts 5
Nuclear Pulse Engine E7 (9) Power 40 Efficiency 0.70 Signature 40 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 120,000 Litres Range 51.9 billion km (198 days at full power)
Beta R300/10.5 Shields (9) Total Fuel Cost 95 Litres per day
Mk 2 VLS Single Cell Launcher (60) Missile Size 3 Hangar Reload 22.5 minutes MF Reload 3.7 hours
SPG-1 Missile Fire Control (2) Range 21.6m km Resolution 20
Katana Anti-Ship Missile (57) Speed: 16700 km/s End: 21.4 minutes Range: 21.5m km Warhead: 5 MR: 15 Size: 3
Recon Drone (3) Speed: 3300 km/s End: 321.4 minutes Range: 63.6m km Warhead: 0 MR: 10 Size: 3
SPS-375/75 Active Sensor (1) GPS 3750 Range 37.5m km Resolution 75
SPS-32/16 Active Sensor (1) GPS 320 Range 3.2m km Resolution 16
SQS-2 Thermal Sensor (1) Sensitivity 10 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 10m kmIt also gains a new concept, which is the "width" of the armour. Unlike Renegade Legion, there are no facings in Aurora so the armour is one solid block. The width of the block is equal to the total armour strength required divided by the level of the armour. Because of its size and armour level, the Tribal needs armour equal to strength 117 (which is 14.6 tons of composite armour). Therefore it has an armour width of 117/4 = 29.25 (rounded to 29). This creates an armour block for the Tribal class as shown below. This screenshot is taken from a new tab on the Ship window.
Shown below is the state of the armour after receiving a hit from a nine point missile warhead
As multiple hits come in, they will hit already damaged sections of armour. In this case, a second 9-point missile hit lands 3 columns to the right, leaving the armour looking as it does below. The point of damage from the first column affected by the second hit is in the same armour column as the fourth column of the original hit, increasing damage in that column from 2 to 3, the second column of the second hit (2 points) was in the same location as the fifth column of the first hit (1 point) so that column also has 3 points of damage. The third column of the second hit (3 points) lands in an undamaged column, doing three points of damage, etc.
A third hit lands in the already damaged section of armour and four points of damage penetrate. From this point on, internal damage is treated just as before.
Here is the armour of a Tribal that has suffered five hits from strength-10 warheads
Any armour level from 1 upwards can be selected, which gives far more granularity than before in terms of armour protection. An v2.6 armour level 3 ship is equivalent to an v2.5 armour level 0.75 ship in terms of tons of armour required. A ship could have 6 levels of armour in v2.6, which is equal to armour level 1.5 in the existing game. Freighters, colony ships, etc will come down in size a little because they can have level 1 armour, which is 1/4 that in v2.5 and half the "thin-skinned" concept I implemeted for v2.6.
Different weapons will also have different damage "shapes", such as lasers having less width and more penetration, and I will be creating these over the next few days. It also gives scope for new weapons that are distinguished by their damage shape. If a weapon with a wider shape than the total armour width hits a ship, the extra columns of damage wrap around and damage sections already damaged by the same hit.
This is going to make ships considerably harder to destroy, which also reduces the power of the new missiles in comparison to beam weapons because the beam weapons will eventually get through the armour while the missile weapons are limited by their numbers. It also opens up some additional tactical options as fighter weapons will now eventually penetrate ship armour
Although this is a major change, I am not going to restart my current campaign because I can set the armour levels for each class to match the existing armour tonnages.
Steve
