Astro Galaxy - a realistic space exploration game

We really need a way to remove damaged armor.  As it stands now the only way to remove it is to repair. For those of us who forget they even had some and want to replace it with superior shields, this means we must first repair it. So we have to waste time and resources. I'd much rather just pull it off and maybe either repair it later or sell it for a reduced price.

It's been in the game forever, JJ.

You should be used to it by now.

...I mean, "DUH!"...

Used to it and liking it are two different things.  This is an issue that I am sure frustrates new players more then me. Especially since many of them make the mistake of doing COMs with armor earlier on.  I didn't even notice I had damaged armor on some of my older ships because I am so used to not using armor now. lol

lol

yeah, I know. but it's still just a matter of maintaining your ships...

This would make doing so much easier.

Sorry to revive an old thread, but I wanted to throw my lot in with JJL on this one, but also to go a step further. It seems to me - and I'm fairly new, so anyone can feel free to step in here - that armor needs a little bit of a buff to even be faintly relevant in this game. It's much more expensive to use armor if you factor in maintenance costs, not to see extremely tedious even with a little ship. And if you were ever to try to use ONLY armor, you'd only be able to do one (maybe two?) COM mission before going home to repair. The one redeeming aspect to armor is that it scales better than shields at the high level, so you could potentially get more max power for your RP buck... but this redeeming aspect is nullified by the fact that armor only counts half towards ship power. If it at least counted like shields, it might see use as auxiliary protection that also buffs your power for getting higher value COMs... any chance, Sir Emi, that we could add something to the upcoming fixes to allow armor to count as normal towards ship power? Or even some other buff, if you could think of something. It just seems like a shame for that entire tech tree to be essentially useless. Also I'm bored of building shields  0o.

Did you know that 1 armor power point counts as two armor? It takes 2000 normal damage to take down a 1000 armor. 3000 damage if you are using lasers. 1500 damage if you are using railguns. :)

Raph, are you saying that a mk 1 crystalline armor, 15000 power, protects against 30000 damage? Or that it protects against 15000 damage but counts as 7500 power? Because the latter is my understanding, but if that's not the case, then I'm very wrong about armor....

15000 armor protects against 30000 damage. 

In the total ship power calculation, it only counts as 7500.  :)

yes, that is how it works.

Well, that's better than I realized... but I still say armor should be worth it's given power, to make it more valuable for COM ships. As it stands, I'd only ever go hard for armor on a PVP ship, if I one day have one of those. And even then, by winning you'd probably be losing, cause that would be crazy expensive.

you should able to remove and replace damaged armor with another and not have use up a slot on ship.
sometime you can not repair in space have has to go back to sol. that can be a great distance.

I think armor will be useful if aliens got guns that bypass shields, that was announce (if I remember well) but remain to be seen.

I think your confusing the guy.  Let's break it down simple for you.

Armor and Shields contrary to popular belief aren't much different.  They have to be completely breached before they are destroyed. Problem with armor is it is possible to even partial damage it while shields just regenerate after the battle.  For the purpose of further explanation I will use the MK 1 Crystalline armor plates for comparison. For shields I will use a MK 21 Adv Electromagnetic shield .


15000 armor
15000 shield


Now vipers will damage these both exactly the same way. A MK 27 Viper has 15000 attack not including any bonuses the ship will likely have. Enough to bring down 1 module of either of these if it hits right.

Lasers will work different. A MK 7 laser has 15000 attack.  However even with a good shot, not including bonuses, it is only going to do roughly 7500 to the armor. To the shield it will easily pierce it.  To get through the shield you only need a MK 2 laser.  For the armor you would need a MK 17 laser.

Now railguns also work different. A MK 2 Railgun has 15000 attack.  Against that armor even a MK 1 will do nicely.  Against shields you would need a MK 7. 

The problem with both Armor and Railguns is the fact that they are both expensive to build. When it comes to cost effectiveness, your better off going with shields and vipers. Why vipers? Because for COMs they are equally effective against both shields and armor. Enemy COM ships of course have both. You can also just marine up if you prefer.  When designing a PVP oriented ship you want lasers.  Most people just aren't going to use much in the way of armor. Lasers while more expensive then vipers, are cheaper then railguns and are what is needed to get through enemy shields quickly.  Yes if the enemy has a lot of armor you may need some railguns. But the odds of that being the case isn't very high simply because even with PVP ships, most of us just don't want to shell out the cost for it.  Granted we can easily build some of that with stuff we get from nest. But if we got to repair it, it is going to be pretty annoying. That is why I worked on phasing out armor. It is even more annoying that we have to repair it to even remove it.  You should be able to remove it without repairing it.  Only it would be worth a lot less in that shape if you were to sell it. Which of course makes sense and would be fine with me.  There is one thing I want to comment on now before ending this.



Only if the 30,000 is from a laser.  I haven't seen anything to prove otherwise.

You are not following the conversation. Read it again. LOL

I follow.  You said



Where you get that it protects from 30,000 damage I am not really sure. I have never seen any indication of this. Though I have given up on armor. Not that my armor really takes many hits anyways.  It's rare for enemy COM ships to get through my shielding.

He meant crystal armor mk 1, so that's 15,000 armor points. As per SirEmi, each armor point counts as two armor, so that's 30,000 armor. As per SirEmi again, lasers do -33% less damage vs. armor, so you need about 45,000 laser damage to get through 30,000 armor. Normal damage (marine, viper, nuke) would need 30,000 damage.

Is it clear now?  B-)

it's clear to me, and that is how I see it happening.

If you trust in your shield strength, add some armor (if for no other reason than to tweak the power levels, resulting in higher rewards for COM's)

My big ladies have both powerful shields and powerful armor (and why not, all you need is 1 or 2 high armor modules).

All I need to do is keep enough raw material to build 2 armor MK I's, and any repair needs will be met.


The bottom line is this:

Whenever possible, use your captured cargo to repair your armor before you sell anything!

I was wrong on the percentage.  My brain hasn't been all here lately so the exact number slipped my mind. That said I haven't seen much to show that 15,000 armor points count as 30,000 damage.  Since we don't see the exact damage done in battle right now, we can't be sure what your saying is the case. Once that is fixed in the game though we will be able to see for sure if what you say is actually true on that.  That said I am thinking of at least putting 1 high MK armor on my ships. Though part of me just wants to use shields instead.