Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => Aurora Suggestions => Topic started by: alex_brunius on October 26, 2012, 04:27:04 PM
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So I wanted to build some really badass Battleships inspired by WW2 designs (Yamato, Iowa, Bismarck exc). ;D
The first big design problem I encountered was that all these classical Battleships used an "all or nothing" approach to armor allocation.
What this means is that critical components such as the Main Weapons, Magazines, Command(combat bridge) and Engines get a very thick armor layer, while all other non-critical components get none at all.
In Aurora however it's only possible (as far as I found) to give extra armor to magazines and laser turrets. Since I wanted to build a bad-ass classical style Battleship I was obviously using railguns to throw big chunks of metal at far ranges.
So what I suggest is two things:
1. ) The ability to give individual armor to any internal component working like a second layer. Or the ability to group them into a armor box, with a set secondary armor layer.
2. ) The ability to mount railguns into turrets for armor protection. I don't care for their tracking bonus, if tracking would make them overpowered remove the tracking and let us just be put into turrets for cool and armor.
Since these could historically be placed in a smaller box the armor could be around 2-4 times as thick as if it had been spread out evenly over the ship.
Also I don't really agree with the design logic that weapons have the same tracking speed as the ship speed. A big ship can turn be a bitch to turn around even if it goes fast (inertia).
And finally a question since I'm a newb that only played 6. 0 for a week so far. Is it really intended that Annual Fail-rate % grows so crazy out of control as ships start to grow big?
The same ratio of Engineering spaces will have 800% AFR on a 10k ton vessle, 1600% on a 20k ton, 2400% on a 30k ton and so on. . .
When you get to 100'000 ton it gets so bad that you need to dedicate 40% of the entire tonnage towards engineering spaces to get it down to 100% AFR.
For a 5000 ton design 2% engineering spaces is enough!
Why would anyone ever want to build these big battleships ??
Edit: Removed some pictures and links since first time posters apparently are not trusted with links and pictures :)
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As regards to the annual faliure rate, that isn't really the value you want to be looking at. The important one to look at is Maint Life, as while your AFR goes up as ship size increases, so too does the amount of MSP carried. Having a high AFR simply means that there will be multiple uses of maintainance supplies each year, but if each use only takes a small amount of the total carried it isn't really something to worry about.
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Larger components have a larger HTK(which is mechanically what the armor on turrets/magazines is anyway), so build a bunch of size 1 reactors if you want no armor on them, and so on.
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As regards to the annual faliure rate, that isn't really the value you want to be looking at. The important one to look at is Maint Life, as while your AFR goes up as ship size increases, so too does the amount of MSP carried. Having a high AFR simply means that there will be multiple uses of maintainance supplies each year, but if each use only takes a small amount of the total carried it isn't really something to worry about.
Ah thanks for clearing out that confusion. Maint life does still seem to go down a bit with size and constant engineering space % but not nearly as drastically as AFR. If you got 100 times more components just anyone of them failing will be more frequent, makes sense!
Larger components have a larger HTK(which is mechanically what the armor on turrets/magazines is anyway), so build a bunch of size 1 reactors if you want no armor on them, and so on.
This I don't understand. When I check the game one size 30 reactor has 15 HTK which is half of what 30 size 1 reactors will have combined.
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The difference there is that any damage will destroy the sie 1 reactors while if only a small amount of damage impacts the larger reactor it has a chance to not be destroyed.
Chance for a component to be destroyed = damage done / HTK of the component.
So if for example only 1 damage penetrated the armour the size 1 HTK 1 reactor would automatically be destroyed, while the size 30 HTK 15 reactor would only be destroyed 1/15th of the time.
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The difference there is that any damage will destroy the sie 1 reactors while if only a small amount of damage impacts the larger reactor it has a chance to not be destroyed.
Chance for a component to be destroyed = damage done / HTK of the component.
So if for example only 1 damage penetrated the armour the size 1 HTK 1 reactor would automatically be destroyed, while the size 30 HTK 15 reactor would only be destroyed 1/15th of the time.
But you will still only lose one of the 29 reactors when hit right? So after 15 hits you should still have half your power left.
With everything in a big one you have a 6. 6% chance to lose it all every hit (even the first) and after 15 hits you only have 35. 5% chance that it's still alive ( (1 - 0. 06666)^15)
Sounds to me like smaller would actually be better in terms of survivability.
But all that is beside my point. My point is that I want to build Battleships with armored internal components and with railguns in armored turrets :)
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Not entirely its one reactor which is 30x larger than a single reactor, rather than 30 small reactors in one location. HTK stands for Hits to kill and on average it means that 15 1 damage hits will kill the component or destroy it, and the Explo chance is the chance that the component will explode when destroyed or hit. - that is if i'm right -
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Don't forget explosions tend to cascade.
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Likewise < 1.0HS components have no HTK, so 60 0.5 reactors will all die at the same time if you do that. But that giant 50cm railgun? its going to survive a few hits.
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But that giant 50cm railgun? its going to survive a few hits.
Will it really survive more hits then another weapon of similar size that's in a turret with armor?
Or will it survive more hits then any other component of similar size without armor?
What I want to do is move armor protecting insignificant things like fueltanks and crew spaces, onto protecting things that are critical in battle like the rail gun and the engines.
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Will it really survive more hits then another weapon of similar size that's in a turret with armor?
Or will it survive more hits then any other component of similar size without armor?
What I want to do is move armor protecting insignificant things like fueltanks and crew spaces, onto protecting things that are critical in battle like the rail gun and the engines.
Those things are already basically HTK=1, which means unarmored, one hit and they are done. Only militarily valuable stuff can be built that big in any event.
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Those things are already basically HTK=1, which means unarmored, one hit and they are done. Only militarily valuable stuff can be built that big in any event.
Did you even read my post? If you put 10 levels of armor ALL OVER YOUR SHIP then they are NOT unarmored!!! That armor will protect everything equally much.
When I look at the damage allocation chart my ships fuel storage, crew quarters, engineering spaces, hangars and other not combat vital systems tend to typically make up around half of it. That means if they didn't have any armor I could have had twice as much protecting the stuff I really need to work in combat.
What those things lack in HTK they make up for in numbers. It's not uncommon for bigger battleships to have over 100 crew quarters.
If I wanted to put most of my armor on the main-guns I could make it even thicker. If you look at for example the Iowa she had 19,7" armor protecting the main guns, and 6" general armor protecting the deck. That's over 3 times as thick.
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Build em and see what happens, I think though that you will find the armored internal components not helping a ton, either the enemies never get through your ten or so layers of armor, or if they do they will be doing enough internal damage that they won't care about your armored components.
Might make for an interesting AAR though, and I would be more than happy to be wrong.
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if you want to beef up your internal HTK use magazines. They're pretty imba in terms of HTK :)
Even non-abusive uses of magazines result in magazine ships having like twice the HTK of box launcher ships.
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Did you even read my post? If you put 10 levels of armor ALL OVER YOUR SHIP then they are NOT unarmored!!! That armor will protect everything equally much.
When I look at the damage allocation chart my ships fuel storage, crew quarters, engineering spaces, hangars and other not combat vital systems tend to typically make up around half of it. That means if they didn't have any armor I could have had twice as much protecting the stuff I really need to work in combat.
What those things lack in HTK they make up for in numbers. It's not uncommon for bigger battleships to have over 100 crew quarters.
If I wanted to put most of my armor on the main-guns I could make it even thicker. If you look at for example the Iowa she had 19,7" armor protecting the main guns, and 6" general armor protecting the deck. That's over 3 times as thick.
Which is why you add additional armour to the turrets, and the base armour is effectively deck/belt armour, so have that at 1-2 then use mostly turrets with thicker armour... much thicker armour. Also the main reason it's difficult to simulate is that in space, your entire ship is armoured/protected and there isn't really a surface deck, and there isn't a need to designate which areas of the ship require more/less armour because you can't target subsystems only individual ships, if you could say target the weapons, or the dorsal turret of the ship then armouring weapons would be beneficial as you can keep your guns firing for longer if the enemy can't neutralize them ASAP.
So to cut a long convoluted paragraph short, due to limitations of the combat system there isn't any need to integrate a complex armour system; despite this there are ways to simulate it.
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Which is why you add additional armour to the turrets,
Which I can't do to railguns (since you can't put them in turrets) ;D
Also the main reason it's difficult to simulate is that in space, your entire ship is armoured/protected and there isn't really a surface deck, and there isn't a need to designate which areas of the ship require more/less armour because you can't target subsystems only individual ships, if you could say target the weapons, or the dorsal turret of the ship then armouring weapons would be beneficial as you can keep your guns firing for longer if the enemy can't neutralize them ASAP.
So to cut a long convoluted paragraph short, due to limitations of the combat system there isn't any need to integrate a complex armour system; despite this there are ways to simulate it.
I don't agree. Ofcourse there is a need to have a better armor system.
Targeting in WW2 naval action was also 100% random just like it is in Aurora, do you think you could aim for individual subsystem at 30'000 meters away using optical aiming?
Sometimes you score a critical hit in the magazine (Hood), sometimes you can't even sink the ship after turning it into a wreak (Bismarck). Whats true for both Aurora and WW2 is that most shots at long range will miss.
To summarize:
Armored magaizine = Possible, Great! :)
Armored railgun turrent = Not possible (please make it so)
Armored Engines = Not possible (please make it so)
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You are correct and I did forget about that, yet still in Aurora you'd think that targeting was more precise. Aim that missile for the engines, for example. Especially with Railgun turrets and so forth, which would have much more precise targeting systems. In any case, I fully agree with you... Although for a different reason, I tend to hate using missiles and base all my civs around Railguns/speed/fighters. The only ships with missile tubes tend to be the carriers and only then they get 1-2 missile tubes.
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Actually targeting wouldn't be more precise.
If a missile or gun has 50% chance to hit (which they do) there is simply no chance to target them at specific systems at all seeing how only half of them are able to hit the target at all.
If targeting gets more precise it just means you can start firing further away. (and distances in Aurora + the speed of things you try to hit are pretty extreme).
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Yes but a computer can do the targeting calculations far faster than a person could. The way I think about is that the 50% chance is 50% that you're target does evasive maneuvers and your targeting system didn't expect/account for, or in the case of a missile you missed due to that and or countermeasures, rather than you firing in the wrong direction/missing.
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Yes but a computer can do the targeting calculations far faster than a person could. The way I think about is that the 50% chance is 50% that you're target does evasive maneuvers and your targeting system didn't expect/account for, or in the case of a missile you missed due to that and or countermeasures, rather than you firing in the wrong direction/missing.
Which still doesn't matter.
Since if it's 50% chance they did evasive manouver big enough for the shot to miss, 45% of the remaining 50% hits probably include smaller manouvers which meant hitting other parts of the ship then intended or aimed at.
It doesn't matter if it's human or computer controlled aiming, No weapon exists that miss a target 50% of the time and hit the minimal bullseye the other 50%.
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To take the two suggestions you have left in order.
Railguns have been deliberately excluded from turrets. Highly doubt that will change.
Engine armor used to exist. If I Recall Correctly, it was removed by acclaim somewhere around v4.9. It was a hold over from the original game implementation and really didn't work well. Steve may reintroduce some version at a later date.
The way armor used to work is that it was a specific value that the per hit damage had to overcome before damage was applied to internal systems. This was changed to the current system about 4 years ago. Something to remember is that in Aurora ships have no facing, movement being the exception. Armour columns are calculated based on the surface area of a sphere.
Magazine "armour" is roughly just additional htk points at the expense of hull space allocation to storage.
Keep in mind that Aurora evolved from games that stressed strategic simulation not detailed tactical, ship design is basically an abstract representation not a detailed simulation.
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Actually, I think that engine armor was removed in 5.4. I recall using it on some ships when I first started playing in 5.3.
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Keep in mind that Aurora evolved from games that stressed strategic simulation not detailed tactical, ship design is basically an abstract representation not a detailed simulation.
Is it a strategic or a tactical simulation choice between 0. 5 or 0. 8 size engines for missiles? ;)
To be honest I think Battleship armor allocation is on a whole lot bigger level of abstraction then many things you do in Aurora like detailed control of fighters/missile design and micromanagement.
And that you can't armor main guns and put them in turrets is just silly.
Ship main guns have been encased in turrets since the era of monitors and they still are.
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Did you even read my post? If you put 10 levels of armor ALL OVER YOUR SHIP then they are NOT unarmored!!! That armor will protect everything equally much.
I did read your post, you want to move HTK(and stay with me here, armor is not htk) from crew quarters to guns.
When I look at the damage allocation chart my ships fuel storage, crew quarters, engineering spaces, hangars and other not combat vital systems tend to typically make up around half of it. That means if they didn't have any armor I could have had twice as much protecting the stuff I really need to work in combat.
DAC is the likelyhood of any component getting hit once the belt is penetrated. DAC is likewise, neither HTK nor armor. Indeed, that just means that the non-critical stuff has a 1/2 chance of taking the hit for your vital components(you'll find out just how vital crew quarters are in lethal environment combat in short order however).
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The answer to your query is both. Strategic in that it impacts logistics, tactical in that it impact speed and range (among other things).
Frankly the bulk of your argument is specious at best. You will get much better reception if the suggestions were delivered in a way that showed that there is actually a benefit to the game structure and flow. At the end of the day if Steve doesn't see a benefit that he is willing to pursue it will never happen in Aurora.
Now that the cranky NCO in me has said his piece here is some friendly advice. Play Aurora as it is. Figure out how it works and how to get the most out of it. It's detailed. It's abstract. It can be a royal pain. It can be one hell of a lot of fun. I'm been involve at one level or another ever since Steve told us that he was starting down a new path and started soliciting ideas.
If you really want to see what Aurora can really do play multiple races at odds with each other, with you in control of each race. That is where you will find the fine details really come into their own.
@Byron, your probably correct about when engine armor was dropped. I haven't used it since at least when ship armor was changed to it's current form and really haven't kept track.
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I'm going to second what Charlie says. The game is as it is, much like the real world. However much you want to do World War II In SPACE!!!!!!! this isn't the game to do that with. Find out what works and what doesn't. Some things that seem like cool ideas just don't work, and the real world also works that way.
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I think the game could use a more initial fragility. I love leaky damage, no matter the game. Non-leaky makes it a game of focus fire to actually knock ships out of the fight; with leaky damage, spreading your fire out can be a valid tactical option for degrading enemy systems.
That could take the form of 'concussion' damage from normal hits, or perhaps an inner/outer hull mechanic that leaves some systems partially exposed to weapons fire (engines, weapons, sensors) while others require armor penetration (life support, reactors, magazines).
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I think the game could use a more initial fragility. I love leaky damage, no matter the game. Non-leaky makes it a game of focus fire to actually knock ships out of the fight; with leaky damage, spreading your fire out can be a valid tactical option for degrading enemy systems.
That could take the form of 'concussion' damage from normal hits, or perhaps an inner/outer hull mechanic that leaves some systems partially exposed to weapons fire (engines, weapons, sensors) while others require armor penetration (life support, reactors, magazines).
I certainly wouldn't object to something like that. Damage systems have always been difficult to implement. One thing I would like to see is soak. Systems should still absorb some damage after they break, as they don't magically go poof when destroyed. Inner/outer hull would be very nice, and is somewhat akin to what the OP suggested.
The list of things I'd like to see from a realism standpoint is fairly long. Besides the crew and ground combat stuff I posted elsewhere, a more realistic approach to shipbuilding would help. For example, it should be fairly easy to do electronics refits, particularly if you're replacing a size 1 Thermal-6 with a size 1 Thermal-8. Designating outside and inside would lead to both some interesting tactics, and more verisimilitude in refits. Outside refits would have far less overhead than inside ones, and turret armor would become useful. You could either build ships with lots of small guns, and try to smash the "upperworks" or with a few large guns, and try to get through the armor.
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I did read your post, you want to move HTK(and stay with me here, armor is not htk) from crew quarters to guns.
So you did read it but didn't understand it (or choose to misunderstand it).
DAC is the likelyhood of any component getting hit once the belt is penetrated. DAC is likewise, neither HTK nor armor. Indeed, that just means that the non-critical stuff has a 1/2 chance of taking the hit for your vital components(you'll find out just how vital crew quarters are in lethal environment combat in short order however).
Combat performance in tough situations is about keeping weapons and engines online for the next seconds or minutes, I have a hard time seeing how crew quarters can be vital in that situation.
@Charlie Beeler
My gameplay argument is that it would give us more flexibility in ship design. Ships that rely on speed could have no armor and a bit of extra armor for their engines to ensure they are not knocked out by lucky hits. Slow dreadnaught ships relying on providing long range firepower could have their railguns armored so that even if all other systems are knocked out they remain as a stationary artillery platform for the rest of the battle.
Forcing us to armor all componens equally goes against everything in this game seeing how the rest of the game is all about open design choices and almost anything is possible.
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Alex I could make an incredibly blunt and condicending reply. I'll leave it at this. Your statements demostrate that you don't have a good understanding of Aurora.
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"Your statements demostrate that you don't have a good understanding of Aurora."
And your statements demonstrate that you are not willing to consider change to a system you obviously have invested far far to much time into loving and defending.
Feel free to prove me wrong though and do something constructive:
How would YOU want to change and improve the very simple armor system currently in Aurora? (given your much superior game knowledge).
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It appears that the general argument is it doesn't need change, Aurora is a space empire sim, combat is a very small part of it. The designs you are looking to make simply won't work very well in this system. The idea of long range artillery fire with railguns is kind of ridiculous when applied to a world where you can design a missile that hits over 50% of the time from thirty million kilometers away at a very low tech level, in that situation your slow moving armored dreadnaught is just a target.
For the designs you appear to want, you should look into the Pulsar game being developed in these very forums, it is based on Steve's ideas for Aurora 2 and contain a lot more flexible ship design ideas.
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Well, i'm just going to throw my two cents in one again. It seems to me that the entire combat system of Aurora seems that you are pigeon holed into missiles from the very start, and every other weapon type is only good for PD. (there are obvious exceptions to this but most of them are late game.)
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Missiles are supposed to be 'better'. But the economic cost is immense. You can win battles going just missiles, but it only really works because of thin-skinned NPR designs and faults in NPR missile defense. Two reasonably armored and defended fleets can exhaust eachothers missile stocks. Of course, most of the time one side or the other is superior... *shrug*
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Well, i'm just going to throw my two cents in one again. It seems to me that the entire combat system of Aurora seems that you are pigeon holed into missiles from the very start, and every other weapon type is only good for PD. (there are obvious exceptions to this but most of them are late game.)
I think others have done a study on this, but it is very possible to create a fleet that has no missiles and to use that very effectively against a missile centric enemy.
Small, fast ships with massed PD fire can be used to kite an enemy missile fleet and once their ordnance is expended you can zip in and slash them apart. Even if the missile fleet escapes to it's home port and resupplies, it will run out of missiles eventually and/or tank it's economy and minerals reserves trying to replenish.
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Combat performance in tough situations is about keeping weapons and engines online for the next seconds or minutes, I have a hard time seeing how crew quarters can be vital in that situation.
Well if your ship loses its crew quarters the best you managed is called a draw, and if your opponent spent less to kill your crew quarters than you spent to wreck his guns, it is actually a win for him. your proposed idea of putting crew quarters outside the armor belt is something that no one has ever done with a battleship before.
If you want HTK to change(what magazines and turrets call armor is really just additional HTK, these are two different concepts and they are handled differently), then crew quarters are already minimally protected. any less and all of it would evaporate on the 1st hit. Likewise, the max a railgun can have is larger than the max a magazine can have, and is only surpassed by reactors and turrets, and in the case of turrets consider that a quad turret has the HTK of 4 lasers/mesons/gauss cannons before "armor" is added.
That said, post your battleship design, how much tonnage you don't want protected by the belt, and I'll do the math for what the armor would cost without various components being added to it, so you can see how better protected your guns would be under your model.
I do personally think that turrets should be outside the belt, and that their armor cost should be cut by 1/4th, to make that more useful to people to armor turrets.
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I think others have done a study on this, but it is very possible to create a fleet that has no missiles and to use that very effectively against a missile centric enemy.
Small, fast ships with massed PD fire can be used to kite an enemy missile fleet and once their ordnance is expended you can zip in and slash them apart. Even if the missile fleet escapes to it's home port and resupplies, it will run out of missiles eventually and/or tank it's economy and minerals reserves trying to replenish.
Despite that it is still clear that a number of designs aren't viable all of which would be far more variant to the standard missile cruiser/destroyer fleets, a lot more variation could easily be gained just by decreasing the ranges of missiles considerably, yet making them more powerful. This would make them more of a super weapon that can be used if needed but shouldn't necessarily be the primary weapon used. Then again I seem to desperately want a BSG style ship to be viable so i'm biased that way. Even so I still think the combat would be improved by tweaks to missiles that would make alternative weapon systems more viable.
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I think that Alex has some valid questions about some things that could be changed in future versions of Aurora. Some components such as weapons, turrets, missile launches, engines, shield generators (etc..) should require their own armour since they are components that are rather exposed (to some degree) on ships.
Exposure of such equipment could be an interesting change in the game mechanics and would also set shields apart from ships deck armour as well.
Any hit in a ship should have a chance to actually strike exposed equipment and damage them accordingly. If you spend additional armour to protect them you should benefit from it. It would also make it more appealing to spread your fire among several targets and not do as much focus fire.
I agree that ship design is complex as it is, but I believe that an additional value for component exposure and armour would not have to be all that much additional complexity. Most ships should also have weak spots in their armour and some critical hit chances where part of the damage could penetrate armour, even though its not yet breached. This could also be an interesting feature for the future.
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Well if your ship loses its crew quarters the best you managed is called a draw, and if your opponent spent less to kill your crew quarters than you spent to wreck his guns, it is actually a win for him. your proposed idea of putting crew quarters outside the armor belt is something that no one has ever done with a battleship before.
Not true at all, assuming that you're talking about real battleships. The belt was there to protect the magazines and machinery. If the quarters were armored, it was to protect the buoyancy of the ship, not the quarters themselves. In Aurora, we don't have a choice to build a battleship that way.
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If you want HTK to change(what magazines and turrets call armor is really just additional HTK, these are two different concepts and they are handled differently), then crew quarters are already minimally protected. any less and all of it would evaporate on the 1st hit. Likewise, the max a railgun can have is larger than the max a magazine can have, and is only surpassed by reactors and turrets, and in the case of turrets consider that a quad turret has the HTK of 4 lasers/mesons/gauss cannons before "armor" is added.
I guess what I'm really asking for is a better representation of armor and damage in general. HTK doesn't really work well if said components just evaporate when "killed".
Ideally every component (or component type) you armor should have it's own box.
I like other ideas posted here before aswell about damage "bleed" such as fires or hull breaches started that can spread throughout a ship. That should mean laser or a single big railgun round piercing the armor can eventually mean doom for ships that don't have armored magazines/reactors, even if it's not a direct hit to those components.
Exposed components would also be a cool thing. Sensors for example are in their nature very exposed, and even if usually small a single unlucky hit can render the biggest battleship blind (unless it's built for redundancy with several of them). Should it however be possible to armor sensors and shields? Imo it's a bit in their nature that they have to be exposed and unprotected to work.
I do personally think that turrets should be outside the belt, and that their armor cost should be cut by 1/4th, to make that more useful to people to armor turrets.
Agreed. I think the armor system I'm asking for is a separate armor box for every component you choose to armor, with turrets outside the "main belt" and internalt component like magazines and engines having their armor box inside.
Something like this:
(http://i.imgur.com/rhtsQ.jpg)
http://i.imgur.com/rhtsQ.jpg
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I actually think this idea is rather good without complicating things too much. You would have one general value for a ships overall hull armour while you could choose to armour certain components individually to your liking.
Then, some components could be completely vulnerable with a % chance to be hit and destroyed even with hull armour intact, such as sensors, shield emitters and things like that.
In addition, there could be some small chance for a critical hit where shots/impacts more or less bypass the hull armour.
I could definitely see military ships being more careful protecting weapon systems, engines and generators than fuel tanks and crew quarters.
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A change like that would require a complete change of how damage is allocated. The components would have to go from a generalized abstract to specific distribution within the hull. This is something that Steve was very specific about at the inception of Aurora that he was not willing to code. I've seen nothing that indicates that he's changed his mind where Aurora is concerned, Aurora2 may be a different matter.
This has nothing to do with whether I'm willing to embrace change or have anything "invested" in to current mechanics.
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A change like that would require a complete change of how damage is allocated. The components would have to go from a generalized abstract to specific distribution within the hull. This is something that Steve was very specific about at the inception of Aurora that he was not willing to code. I've seen nothing that indicates that he's changed his mind where Aurora is concerned, Aurora2 may be a different matter.
This has nothing to do with whether I'm willing to embrace change or have anything "invested" in to current mechanics.
I'm not entirely sure it would be a complete change, just additions to what is already there.
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I'm not entirely sure it would be a complete change, just additions to what is already there.
Charlie's right on this one. The current damage system would have to be totally rebuilt to accommodate this. I'm not opposed to that happening, but we need to make sure that we don't get our hopes up. Steve is kind enough to share this with us, and we need to play the game we have. That doesn't mean we can't ask for things, but there is a limit, and according to Charlie (who's been here a lot longer than I have) this isn't going to happen.
The best thing we could do that's fairly simple (I think) is the soak system, where systems still absorb damage after they've been killed.
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I'm not saying it wont happen, but the likelyhood is low... in my opinion.
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To be honest, I'm not that bothered about the armour system my primary gripe has always been with missiles and there extremely long range.
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To be honest, I'm not that bothered about the armour system my primary gripe has always been with missiles and there extremely long range.
Which part?
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The components would have to go from a generalized abstract to specific distribution within the hull.
Not necessarily, damage could be allocated(to outside components) the way that it is allocated to the armor belt in general. if the random number picks the slot the turret is on top of that takes the hit. Or psuedo armor columns to represent such components, it could be done.
Agreed. I think the armor system I'm asking for is a separate armor box for every component you choose to armor, with turrets outside the "main belt" and internalt component like magazines and engines having their armor box inside.
That part wouldn't necessarily work out like that, you can't pick the number of columns you want, that is decided by the volume->radius->area calculation, and putting stuff on the outside would corespondingly weaken the belt, which would probably make the ship as a whole less well protected. A 750 ton turret would have 3-4 columns to start out with for instance, and the HTK model might actually turn out to be more survivable for them.