Ship Design for Dummies, weapons, armor, shields, oh my!

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Geo, I normally research to DUC V and PDC III before getting Chemistry or armor. Destroyers with 5-6 PDCs slaughter all early game fighter/missile rush strategies.

Ok, well that makes sense. But if that's the case why bother ever researching armor at all? Go to LC's and start researching shields. You need Physics anyway for all the better beam waepons, you can't stick with DUC's forever. And the only other good thing to come from the chemestry branch is resource manipulation. And you can do without that for a long time. Am I wrong? I am just trying to figure out when the armor should come into play.

Geoschmo

[oleg]

It is not easy to instruct ships to gang up on one ship and pound it. You must use "most damaged" as a first firing priority, but I often see such ships moving aimesly (poor pathfinding) and fire ineffectively from a long distance. IMHO, the most effective priority is "nearest" but that may lead to the spreading of fire and armored/shielded ships can Last longer even in fleet battles !

[oleg]

Originally posted by geoschmo:

quote:

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Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Geo, I normally research to DUC V and PDC III before getting Chemistry or armor. Destroyers with 5-6 PDCs slaughter all early game fighter/missile rush strategies.

Ok, well that makes sense. But if that's the case why bother ever researching armor at all? Go to LC's and start researching shields. You need Physics anyway for all the better beam waepons, you can't stick with DUC's forever. And the only other good thing to come from the chemestry branch is resource manipulation. And you can do without that for a long time. Am I wrong? I am just trying to figure out when the armor should come into play.

Geoschmo

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DUC -> PPB. Now the only protection for a long time is armor !

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by oleg:
DUC -> PPB. Now the only protection for a long time is armor !

The only protection against PPB, yes. But if my tests so far are accurate you are better off with no protection at all and just putting on more weapons. That's entirely the question I am trying to figure out.

Geoschmo

[Suicide Junkie]

The more tests I run on the this the more I get to the conculsion that for fleet combat less armor or even no armor and all weapons is the way to go. What am I missing?

Weapons and engines do add quite a bit of bulk to ships. Weapons contribute to both offense and defense, and are thus especially effective.

In comparison to the minimum 460kt of hitpoints on an LC, a few pieces of armor don't have a whole lot of impact.
Also keep in mind that you should subtract 10 points off the strength of armor, since if you don't put armor, there will still be 10 hitpoints from whatever else you put in there instead.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
In comparison to the minimum 460kt of hitpoints on an LC, a few pieces of armor don't have a whole lot of impact.

Ok, so maybe what I am seeing then makes sense? At least for the stock game? Perhaps the extra damage done by mounts makes standard armor pretty much a bad idea for combat ships? That would explain why it seems to give some value in destroyers but not in the LC's.

Or am I reading too much into it?

Geoschmo

[oleg]

[ July 25, 2003, 20:05: Message edited by: oleg ]