Author Topic: Armour and Tonnage  (Read 2090 times)

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Offline rubicon (OP)

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Armour and Tonnage
« on: February 25, 2010, 05:37:37 PM »
I normally do not post on forums. But since I am enjoying this game so much had to post this to understand something. I have read the entire tutorial all 12 parts. Even printed it out for future reference. The reason I am posting this question is because I like to start my campaigns with conventional technology and build ever thing from scratch without SM mode. While trying to build a jump drive I came across the problem that the jump drive was not large enough to support the tonnage of my design. So I began playing with different components. I noticed that I was not including in my design the tonnage of the jump drive itself. Which effected along with the other components the Armour Area hence the total amount of Defensive armour tonnage. My question is how do you determine the Armour Area. What is the formula for determining  the Amour Area so as to apply the other formula for Armour Strength to get the total Defensive Armour.

Example: Ship Design without any components: Exact Class Size 30 tons. Armour Area: 4.8
I add one bridge component and nothing else: Exact Class Size 100 (I understand about rounding to nearest 50 tons). Armour Area: 7.7

What formula for determining Armour Area to be 7.7, and so on?

To me, knowing this would help me determine in advance tonnage requirements. Hence would not get the problems with adding a component (ie. jump drive) only to find out that it does not support the tonnage of design. If this is not in the right forum posting area, I apologize. As I said, I am not usually a forum posting sort of person. I usually try an figure things out myself. Thank You for any reply, if possible.
 

Offline Erik L

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Re: Armour and Tonnage
« Reply #1 on: February 25, 2010, 06:40:04 PM »
Quoting Steve from the post below yours.

Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Sorry, I misunderstood you. I thought you meant the tech description in the tutorial. I have checked and the armour text in-game is out of date so I'll change it for the next DB release. However, as I keep saying, the most up to date information is in the Tutorial and FAQ forums. If you had read the tutorial you would have seen the following information on armour (shown below):

"Armour Rating is the thickness of the armour and can be increased or decreased by clicking the small arrows to the right of this box.

Armour Area is the surface area of the ship based on the assumption it is spherical in shape

The Armour Strength Required is equal to (Surface Area / 4) rounded up. Armour sufficient to meet this requirement is automatically added to the design as it gets larger. If you increase the thickness of the armour then each extra 'layer' is added to the previous one. As the total size of the ship and therefore the total surface area increases with each layer of armour, each additional layer will be cover a greater area and therefore require greater strength than the previous one. Each type of armour in Aurora has a different strength rating per hull space (HS) so as tech increases you will need less hull space dedicated to armour to meet the Armour Strength Required. As less armour also means a smaller ship, extra layers of armour will also be smaller.

For example, at the moment you have the technology for Duranium Armour, which has a strength per HS of 5. The armour area is 14.1. Dividing by 4 gives us a Required Armour Strength of 3.525. As Duranium has a strength per HS of 5, we need 3.525/5 HS of armour, which is 0.705, rounded to 0.7. As you can see on the design, 0.7 HS of Duranium Armour has automatically been allocated. If you had High Density Duranium Armour, which has a strength of 6 per HS, you would only need 3.525/6 = 0.6 HS of armour. Obviously this make little difference at the moment but as ships get larger and armour gets stronger, it can make a significant difference. Try increasing the Armour Rating to 2. The ship is now slightly larger and there are two layers of armour so the surface area has increased to 16 and the armour strength to 8. Duranium Armour is armour strength 5 so we need 8/5 = 1.6 HS of armour. Put the Armour Rating back to 1 for now. You don't really need to remember any of the details. Just remember that increasing the armour thickness or increasing the size of the ship will increase the amount of armour required and researching new armour tech will reduce the amount of armour required for future designs.

Armour Columns is the 'width' of the armour. The armour system in Aurora combat is similar to that of an old FASA game called Interceptor. The armour is represented by a block of 'boxes' with the width based on the size of the ship and the depth based on the thickness of the armour. Each weapon type has a damage template which determines which armour 'boxes' are damaged. Missiles tend to crater the armour while lasers cause narrower but deeper damage. Some weapons, such as railguns, have a high rate of fire and cause more overall damage than lasers but because that damage is split among many small hits, they tend to sandpaper armour rather than penetrating as a laser does. Any damage hitting in a location where all the armour has been destroyed will penetrate and cause internal damage. It is possible even for a well armoured ship to get unlucky and receive several hits in the same location, which will result in armour penetration and internal damage. That internal damage could even set off a string of secondary explosions, so a Hood style catastrophe is possible. Equally, if a ship has hits distributed all over the armour and doesn't lose any key system or suffer secondary explosion, it can withstand quite a lot of punishment"

Steve

Offline rubicon (OP)

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Re: Armour and Tonnage
« Reply #2 on: February 25, 2010, 07:57:04 PM »
Armour Area is the surface area of the ship based on the assumption it is spherical in shape.

Does not really answer my question. I have read the tutorial through about armour. But the only thing it says is the above about Armour Area. My question centers around getting the formula for determining Armour Area before performing an equation on Armour Strength to determine Defense under components. The reason being, so as to determine tonnage requirements of a particular component (i.e. jump drives) before doing the necessary research, since time and expense is involved. Remember, I am not using Spacemaster Mode to give myself instant components without doing the research. I am starting from conventional technology. The only other way I was able to figure this out was to add components equaling the tonnage of the required jump drive, then removing those components and replacing them with the jump drive. I would rather do the required math before.
 

Offline Erik L

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Re: Armour and Tonnage
« Reply #3 on: February 25, 2010, 08:20:05 PM »
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that is most likely backwards from the way every one does it. :)

For myself, I'll create jump engines of specific sizes, say 4500 tons, 9000 tons, 12000 tons, and 18000 tons. Then I build my ships to those sizes.

Offline rubicon (OP)

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Re: Armour and Tonnage
« Reply #4 on: February 25, 2010, 08:33:48 PM »
Have you every played the game from conventional technology without using Spacemaster mode to give your self instant technology?
 

Offline sloanjh

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Re: Armour and Tonnage
« Reply #5 on: February 25, 2010, 09:57:33 PM »
Quote from: "rubicon"
The only other way I was able to figure this out was to add components equaling the tonnage of the required jump drive, then removing those components and replacing them with the jump drive.
That's what I do.  It's not that hard, and if you're off a little due to crew sizes you can make it up with fuel.
Quote
I would rather do the required math before.
I'm a math geek, and this is more math than I want to do :-)

If you really want to do the math, then Steve has told you almost enough for you to figure the formula (which is actually better called an algorithm, since it appears he puts armor on one layer at a time) out yourself, and you can get the remaining information by doing an experiment.  You need to figure out two constants:

1)  The volume taken up by 1HS (this will let you figure out R for a ship, and from R you can get surface area A)
2)  How many HS of armor it takes to put 1 level of armor on a fixed area.

So simply make a ship that's 100 HS big (actually that has 100HS of internal components) and see how much armor it has, then make one 400 HS and see how much armor this has.  This gives you two data points for determining the two unknowns and Bob's your uncle.

Like I said, though, it's easier to just let the computer do it for you with dummy components, since each layer will require a new calculation depending on the previous layer.

BTW, you shouldn't try to design ships until you've researched TN theory - a lot of the components you'll need don't show up at the beginning of a conventional start, IIRC.

And in answer to your other question, "yes, most of my games are conventional starts w/o instant-tech".  If you're going to do a conventional start, though, you're better off bumping up your population (I start with 1 billion, but will probably go to 2 billion in the future) and HW minerals by a factor of several.

John