Ship Armor
- Thread starter Stone
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- Tags spaceships
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- Aug 9, 2019
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It has been expressed that there will be specific forces in Starbase that you have to design your ship around, IE, surviving the pressures of Warping, or flying through a nebula with corrosive gasses. So I think we will see a need for composite armour, so using an outer-hull to protect your armour from corrosion to using armour layers to deal with different munitions (soft-point, explosive then heat layers.)
While the game simulates armor better than almost any other it isn't a proper simulation. There is a page on the wiki that describes some simple formulas. Damage types merely alters the effect the projectile can have on the voxels when the object has low hipoints. If the object has low hitpoints, a projectile can pass through and deal reduced damage to the object behind it.
https://wiki.starbasegame.com/index.php/Damage
When a projectile hits an armor plate (probably the same rules for ANY part) both the armor and the projectile lose certain values, which seem similar to conventional hitpoints. The projectile loses "Projectile Energy" equal to the "Armor value" and the armor loses "Armor value" equal to the projectile's energy multiplied by several factors. "Transformability" of the material, density of the material, size/weight of the part, current corrosion stacks. So the damage of the projectile is spread through each object it passes through. A damaged piece of armor will have less of an effect on projectiles that hit it. Damage seems to work on a part by part basis, so you get better damage by consistently hitting the same part, but hitting the exact same spot does not further improve anything.
https://wiki.starbasegame.com/index.php/Damage
When a projectile hits an armor plate (probably the same rules for ANY part) both the armor and the projectile lose certain values, which seem similar to conventional hitpoints. The projectile loses "Projectile Energy" equal to the "Armor value" and the armor loses "Armor value" equal to the projectile's energy multiplied by several factors. "Transformability" of the material, density of the material, size/weight of the part, current corrosion stacks. So the damage of the projectile is spread through each object it passes through. A damaged piece of armor will have less of an effect on projectiles that hit it. Damage seems to work on a part by part basis, so you get better damage by consistently hitting the same part, but hitting the exact same spot does not further improve anything.
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Starbase devs are keen to get players playing, interacting and building. Devs will grow it overtime and our children will be playing it still. I am over waiting for SC. It's too complicated and focus has been too much on realism. Starbase will get the formula right, I have complete confidence in them.
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Star Citizen is still chugging along nicely, don't know where you got the badly managed thing from.
I'm indeed hoping we can start making armor arrays that improve protection, but it comes with the same fear I have with Space Engineers. I fear that I'll spend 2 hours coming up with a armor array for my ship that provides good protection, only to find out other people managed it in 10 minutes. It takes away from the enjoyment and why spend so much time on designing an armor array if everyone else is using it already anyway?
I'm indeed hoping we can start making armor arrays that improve protection, but it comes with the same fear I have with Space Engineers. I fear that I'll spend 2 hours coming up with a armor array for my ship that provides good protection, only to find out other people managed it in 10 minutes. It takes away from the enjoyment and why spend so much time on designing an armor array if everyone else is using it already anyway?
Spaced armor is only really useful for limiting the effectiveness of explosives, which now have proper line of sight for their damage bubbles, and then the spacing still needs to be somewhat extreme to be totally effective, increasing the weight of the supporting framework. What's more interesting and technically complex is the actual methods of layering armor. This is more complex than you'd think since Oninum has a weak enough SI that you can't stack two plates of it on a beam with a long bolt like you can with other armor.
It's also important to consider that the voxels themselves ARE a part's hit points, which has damage modelling implications I'm still grappling with while we continue to find out more about the mechanics. So, contrary to my original assumptions, striking armor on an angle does stop more damage because it puts more voxels in the way, but we don't have any bounce mechanics, so it's much simpler than something like Warthunder.
There're also plenty of reason to avoid over-armoring something. Fighters and light gunboats can use the top end of the speed scale to avoid damage by creating a large lead for attackers to aim at, meaning in-flight maneuver and speed retention will be at least somewhat important in a fleet's doctrine and tactics.
It's also important to consider that the voxels themselves ARE a part's hit points, which has damage modelling implications I'm still grappling with while we continue to find out more about the mechanics. So, contrary to my original assumptions, striking armor on an angle does stop more damage because it puts more voxels in the way, but we don't have any bounce mechanics, so it's much simpler than something like Warthunder.
There're also plenty of reason to avoid over-armoring something. Fighters and light gunboats can use the top end of the speed scale to avoid damage by creating a large lead for attackers to aim at, meaning in-flight maneuver and speed retention will be at least somewhat important in a fleet's doctrine and tactics.
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