How does Armour work? concerning thickness

[Micro102]

What if a missile hit the edge of that first crater (The second layer)? Would it do one point of internal damage and cause 2 more destroyed armor boxes? Or since there is one empty box where the explosion would normally damage, and one box to the left of this missile, would the damage be different?

[Father Tim]

The missile would do two points of internal damage, one from the 'point' of the triangle penetrating the single (remaining) layer of armour, and one from the edge where the armour is already breached.

So untouched level 2 armour would look like this:
[][][][][]
[][][][][]

After the first 4-pt missile hit:
[]......[]
[][]..[][]

And after the second:
[]........
[][]....[]

  (with two points penetrating)

[Micro102]

Now hold on, when the first missile hits, it destroys the 3 boxes below where it hit, so if that second missile hits that edge, shouldn't it destroy the 3 boxes on  the second level?

[][]......[][]
[][][]......[]

like that with  1 point of penetration?

[sloanjh]

Now hold on, when the first missile hits, it destroys the 3 boxes below where it hit, so if that second missile hits that edge, shouldn't it destroy the 3 boxes on  the second level?

[][]......[][]
[][][]......[]

like that with  1 point of penetration?

No.  A strength-4 missile warhead does damage to 3 columns of armor: 1 to the left, 2 to the center, 1 to the right.  When an armor column is damaged, the damage is done from the top down.  It is impossible to get an overhang like you've drawn.  The damage pattern is NOT calculated by looking at the column where the hit is located, finding the depth of the first undamaged square, then applying the damage template starting at that depth (which seems to be what you've drawn).

John

[Micro102]

What about this?

[]....[][]
[]....[][]
[]....[][]
[]....[][]
[]..()[][]
[]..[][][]
[][][][][]

What if the missile hits the "()"?

[sloanjh]

What about this?

[]....[][]
[]....[][]
[]....[][]
[]....[][]
[]..()[][]
[]..[][][]
[][][][][]

What if the missile hits the "()"?

With a strength-4 missile warhead  it would be

[]......[]
[]....[][]
[]....[][]
[]....[][]
[]....[][]
[]....[][]
[]..[][][]

with no internal damage (but there is a breach)

With a strength-9 missile warhead it would be (the damage per column is 12321):

..........
[]......[]
[]....[][]
[]....[][]
[]....[][]
[]....[][]
[]...[][]

with 1 point of internal damage.

John

[Vanigo]

Hey, I've got a related question. What does turret armor do? It doesn't seem to raise HTK. Does it reduce damage dealt like hull armor used to?

[Father Tim]

Component armour (turrets, magazines, power plants, engines, fuel tanks, etc) reduces the chance that a point of internal damage (all internal damage is applied one point at a time) will destroy one HTK of the component.  The chance is equal to (armour) / (armour + HTK), so 2 points of armour on a 3 HTK turret means 40% of the time it will be undamaged by a hit.