Problems with "New" Organig Armour.

geoschmo · #1 October 14th, 2002, 06:53 PM

I think the point is that organic armor was not supposed to be equal to shields. It's got advantages to shields in some areas, and deficencies in others. This "advance regeneration" or whatever was pretty clearly a bug. It wasn't described in the description of the components. It wasn't totally clear for a while what exactly was happeneing. It took some smart people a lot of testing to figure it out. And it wasn't all that well docmented as "features" go. Most people that didn't play roganic races a lot had no idea, and I'll venture a lot that did play organic races weren't really aware that's what it was doing.

By all means if you want to mod in a higher regen rate, you are free to do so. But I disagree that a change should be made to the stock data files jsut to maintain the status quo. Organic armor still has quite a bit of value. It just might be a different value than what some people have grown accustomed to.

Geoschmo

spoon · #2 October 14th, 2002, 07:02 PM

The most important aspect of OA is that it costs you no minerals to build. Even without any regen ability whatsoever, it would still be amongst the most important tech (if not THE most important) that you get from choosing the Organic Racial trait.

Regenerating lost armor after battle is like icing on the cake...

-Spoon

Taera · #3 October 14th, 2002, 07:14 PM

Organic Armor is not supposed to be the best armor in the game, hence the low cost. Same as with crystalline. It is supposed to be something "different" and it is, only the regenerate-after-combat makes it worthwhile in my eyes. And for the defense/per/kT remember that in fact the armor is vulnurable only to two weapons - NSC and CSC while shields are vulnurable to Shield Sapper & Distruptor, NSC, PPB (normal), with a total of 4 - double. Shield Sapper is extremly powerful weapon if used against shields and one this makes the organic armor cost the racial points - remember that 30kT of organic armor ships would build at least 1 turn faster than those using normal armor, especially if it is some kind of more advanced scattering/stealth/emmisive armors. Crystallines are good here too because AFAIK they are the cheapest armor aviable, and the 15-to-shields works as good as emmisive armor if there are any shield regenerators.

Wardad · #4 October 14th, 2002, 08:37 PM

Cheap Armor is not much of an advantage. The cost of the basics (bridge, life support, crew quarters, and engines) are just too high.

QuarianRex · #5 October 14th, 2002, 09:59 PM

Pardon me for being slow, but what exactly is the change in OA?

Previously it worked by building a regen pool from the regen rates of all existing OA comps (originally until they were first destroyed but later fixed to continue adding regen points after being restored) that was then depleted for in-combat repair of OA comps while still being added to by all existing OA.

That was how it used to be. Now it sounds as if you're saying that the regen pool has been scrapped and damaged OA is only regenerated from the regen points of the remaining OA's. that would mean that a ship with 5 OA III's that has taken enough damage to destroy 4 would then take 5 turns to regenerate 1 OA comp, etc. (but with the capacity to repair all OA at the end of combat so long as one survives).

That is a huge shift!

And what is all this talk of regenerating partial damage? Currently there is no partial damage, any damage that doesn't destroy a component gets handed to the next shot as a bonus to damage (with rare exceptions). Is that sopposed to be changing too?

If not then OA is hosed even more, as smaller weapons can whittle away at OA without engaging the regen.

Is this depiction of the proposed changes accurate? If not then how?

geoschmo · #6 October 14th, 2002, 10:16 PM

Sounds like you about have it there. Except what do you mean by smaller weapons whittleing away without engaging the regen? As soon as a piece of OA is destroyed the other organic armor components will begin to repair it. It will no longer be "repaired" before it is destroyed, but it will repair as soon as it is destroyed (Assuming you have other functional OA components left)

Geo

QuarianRex · #7 October 14th, 2002, 11:23 PM

Geo:

What I meant was that a weapon that inflicts relatively small amounts of damage (say, lower level wpns in the early game) that would take a couple/few turns to take out an OA comp are capable of accumulating this damage even though the it may be lower than the regan capacity of the individual OA.

It may sound petty but it can make a big difference, like in the early game, when you can only fit a few OA's on a ship.