Armor & Shields On Units...

[Raging Deadstar]

Q said:
Using the combat simulator PPB and shard cannon against fighters, it seems that neither shields nor armor are skipped. Both weapons have to make the full damage including armor and shield points before the fighter is destroyed. However shield depleters seem to function on fighters.

From my Expirience in game:

Shield Depleters Work on Fighters, Drones and Satellites
Shield Depleters Don't Seem to work on Weapons Platforms and Troops.

Though i rarely use Shield Depleters on troops, Usually i pile them high with Ground Cannons or DUC. Less Protected yes, but the return volley the enemy finds impressive, for the brief few moments it survives.

[Mephisto]

Some correction on the "queue thing" AFAIR. Damage is always check against the unit with the least hitpoints first. Either this unit is destroyed (in this case the procedure starts anew with the remaining damage) or no unit is destroyed and the damage stored for the next hit. I.e. there is no use to build a shield WP to protect other unshielded units. It won't protect WPs with lesser hitpoints, it will just be the WP destroyed Last.

[Fyron]

Mephisto said:
Some correction on the "queue thing" AFAIR. Damage is always check against the unit with the least hitpoints first. Either this unit is destroyed (in this case the procedure starts anew with the remaining damage) or no unit is destroyed and the damage stored for the next hit. I.e. there is no use to build a shield WP to protect other unshielded units. It won't protect WPs with lesser hitpoints, it will just be the WP destroyed Last.

Wasn't this changed to be more random in a recent patch?

3. If Weapons Platforms have 100% functionality when damaged and if a Weapons Platform has Armor and/or Shields can it ever be fully destroyed by Null-Space Weapons or Phased Polaron Beams?

Note that armor skipping weapons fired at ships will damage armor components normally once all internal components are destroyed. You can completely destroy a ship/unit with Shard Cannons and Null Space Projectors. This differs from "Only X" type damage, such as from Shield Disruptors. If there are no valid components to damage (ie: no shield generating components), such a weapon does no damage. Armor skipping damage types ignore this rule.

[Slick]

Imperator Fyron said:

Wasn't this changed to be more random in a recent patch?

I think so. Not sure which patch but I think it was the one that made WP's get destroyed before other units during planet assault. I did some testing a while back (can't find my post) but shield/armor WP's can get damaged (or destroyed) before other WP's. It's not always predictable, but I wouldn't call it "random" either. I *think* that the most efficient way to do this from my testing was to make small shield/armor WP's instead of large WP's. The reason was that the "stored" damage from one turn plus the actual damage might not be able to destroy a large shield/armor WP so the game sometimes would destroy a WP with less hitpoints instead. If you build large shield/armor WP's, this effectively does what Mephisto said in making the shield/armor WP get destroyed Last because no single volley will destroy it so damage sometimes gets shifted to destroy a WP with less hitpoints. This is not what you want. You *do* want it to be destroyed before other WP's or else the accumulated damage is shifted to weapon WP's. Again, from my testing small WP's work better for this.

That being said, it is a little cumbersome to manage and you can achieve almost the same thing by adding some shield/armor to each weapon WP. The effect is the same: it takes more damage to kill one of them. This way the average damage required to kill a WP goes up, you still maintain full function on a WP until it is destroyed, and you are not subject to any randomness which might accidentally kill your weapon WP's before shield/armor WP's.

Clear as mud?

Slick.

[spoon]

Raging Deadstar said:
Shield Depleters Work on Fighters, Drones and Satellites
Shield Depleters Don't Seem to work on Weapons Platforms and Troops.

Shield depleters do work on troops, though not as shield-only damage (because troops can't have shield points). Instead, they deal regular damage -- which makes shield depleters the best weapon to equip your troops with, since they do the best damage. (though it could be argued that this is a bug, so using shield depleters on troops would be an exploit...)