Armor for STO units?

[nakorkren (OP)]

Polling the brain trust: Do you typically use max available armor for your STOs? It significantly increases the cost i.e. doubles it from light to medium armor, meaning you could build two lightly armored units for the cost of one medium armor unit. Seems to me like best defense is twice as much offense, but I'm curious what other folks do.

Edit: technically it doubles the cost, which I assume doubles the BP required to build it, and doubles the vendarite cost (which is very small relative to the other minerals), but does not impact the other mineral costs. Wanted to be clear on that.

[nuclearslurpee]

I always use minimum armor. The cost is so much already that doubling it is not worth it - and frankly I don't even use armor for other Static units. The major benefit of the Static base class is 3 base HP (instead of 1 for infantry) and 3/6 max fortification (with/without CON units) which makes the best defense for a Static unit not getting hit in the first place - especially because extra armor is often useless in cases when you are being hit with shots that overmatch your armor anyways (likely when facing railguns or particle beams, almost certain when facing lasers or plasma). Given that, I'd rather be able to build 2x or 3x as many units to develop weight of firepower. This is in addition to the strategic factors, e.g., as a lower cost per unit makes it possible to field those units before they are rendered obsolete by technological advances (this is a general consideration with ground forces).

I do want to make one note: In strictly tactical terms, pure weight of numbers by itself is not the reason to use light-armor STOs or other statics. This is because the effect of numbers scales quadratically, and the value of armor versus weapon penetration is also quadratic. The main reason is that armor is wasted if the enemy weapon overmatches it, and this is frequently the case for STO vs beam ship combat.

N.B. This calculus may change considerably in the late game, if you have more ground construction capacity than you need and can afford to splurge on large masses of expensive units. I have yet to ever reach such a point in my games, the war machine always demands millions more men to satiate its hunger.

[Lord Solar]

Polling the brain trust: Do you typically use max available armor for your STOs? It significantly increases the cost i.e. doubles it from light to medium armor, meaning you could build two lightly armored units for the cost of one medium armor unit. Seems to me like best defense is twice as much offense, but I'm curious what other folks do.

Edit: technically it doubles the cost, which I assume doubles the BP required to build it, and doubles the vendarite cost (which is very small relative to the other minerals), but does not impact the other mineral costs. Wanted to be clear on that.

Well it takes longer to build, but it only costs vendarite. The extra armor is significant in that it makes the unit potentially twice as hard to kill, so generally I would say: Lots of Vendarite (all the time) & ground build capacity go for medium armor, lots of other minerals needed for weapons and just looking for guns quickly with less build capacity, go for light.
If you go for medium armor it also makes them better for the same weight for transport consideration too.

I will add that additional armor is not worth it at all if you have low racial armor tech but it's better later in the game.

[DawnMachine]

Technically it doubles the cost, which I assume doubles the BP required to build it

That's the point. I am not a very experienced player and have only faced attacks on my colonies a few times. But always I also had my fleet in orbit or near. I distracted the enemy with my fleet and tried to lure them out under the fire of my STO. In this case, the number of guns has more weight, imho. Also, even without armor, they take a very long time to build. And the capacity of industry is always not enough for me, with the rapid expansion of the empire

[kilo]

It is a hard question to answer whether or not you should armor your STOs. The difference in mineral cost is microscopic, but the build time and wealth cost goes up significantly. Wealth is a renewable resource, while minerals are not. From that point of view armoring them is a good idea, as you protect your rare material. From an economical point the difference is the output of your barracks, as the most heavily fortified guns require three times the build time compared to the lightly armored counterparts. If you have the production capacity, I would go for the armor.

From a tactical point of view, armor might not make a difference, as the penetration of ship weapons is almost always sufficient to pierce them. A special case are 10cm railguns, which are good when it comes to defeating lightly armored infantry on the ground, but suck at combating fortified STOs. The main feature that protects STOs is not the armor, but the planetary terrain. Bombing an STO on a mountain & jungle world is extremely costly in MSP and ships, as the hit chance is extremely low (<1%) and the STOs will have a field day.

This is why I try to put them in places where the ground protects them from enemy fire by terraforming colonies until they have at least temperate forrests. If I have to put and defend a supply depot, I try to find a mountain planet, even if it is a venutian planet, as it is too costly to dig them out.

[Gabethebaldandbold]

If you are doing a slower research game, and can afford to spend several years to build an sto brigade, and have the ground force production facilities to make them in quantities large enough for your purposes, do so, it will cost you time and wealth, but will ultimately save minerals. If you invest in enough armour tech of course. I think the scaling of tech ends up favouring armoured stos in what I like to call the mid game, where the technologies start costing 6 digits instead of 5. in the end that decision depends on wether: do you have a ton of ground production facilities, and is your armour tech good enough compared to the enemy weapons to make it worth it.

[xenoscepter]

 --- I typically go for armor on mine, but some I leave unarmored. They're a little more resistant to enemy groundfire when they're armored, and that's always nice to have.