emissive armor possible fix

[Jack Deth]

heya all, my first time at the forums, been here all day, heh.

ive seen several reports that emissive armor is not working. think i may have a fix. ran into a problem with some enhanced armor i was working on, and had to put the emissive part as the first ability, or it didnt work.

old emissive:

Name := Emissive Armor I
Description := Armor which absorbs energy and radiates it back into space.
Pic Num := 30
Tonnage Space Taken := 20
Tonnage Structure := 30
Cost Minerals := 500
Cost Organics := 0
Cost Radioactives := 200
Vehicle Type := Ship\Base\Sat\WeapPlat
Supply Amount Used := 0
Restrictions := None
General Group := Armor
Family := 45
Roman Numeral := 1
Custom Group := 0
Number of Tech Req := 1
Tech Area Req 1 := Armor
Tech Level Req 1 := 4
Number of Abilities := 2
Ability 1 Type := Armor
Ability 1 Descr := Is damaged before any other components on a ship.
Ability 1 Val 1 := 0
Ability 1 Val 2 := 0
Ability 2 Type := Emissive Armor
Ability 2 Descr := Negates any damage of 10 or less.
Ability 2 Val 1 := 10
Ability 2 Val 2 := 0
Weapon Type := None

possible fix:


Name := Emissive Armor I
Description := Armor which absorbs energy and radiates it back into space.
Pic Num := 30
Tonnage Space Taken := 20
Tonnage Structure := 30
Cost Minerals := 500
Cost Organics := 0
Cost Radioactives := 200
Vehicle Type := Ship\Base\Sat\WeapPlat
Supply Amount Used := 0
Restrictions := None
General Group := Armor
Family := 45
Roman Numeral := 1
Custom Group := 0
Number of Tech Req := 1
Tech Area Req 1 := Armor
Tech Level Req 1 := 4
Number of Abilities := 2
Ability 1 Type := Emissive Armor
Ability 1 Descr := Negates any damage of 10 or less.
Ability 1 Val 1 := 10
Ability 1 Val 2 := 0
Ability 2 Type := Armor
Ability 2 Descr := Is damaged before any other components on a ship.
Ability 2 Val 1 := 0
Ability 2 Val 2 := 0
Weapon Type := None

[Suicide Junkie]

Which dosen't help the big problem that Emissive is either useless or unbalancing.

The fix for that has yet to come...

[Jack Deth]

heh, in my personal mods, emissive armor seems to be working ok, but is not really available till higher tech lvls, and has about 10 levels of strength. gotta work for it. figure if your gonna put that much effort into researching it, it should help. also kinda expensive, good shields are pretty much better, but my personal race doesnt use shields much.

[Suicide Junkie]

What I mean is, either (a) you take no damage at all, or (b) the emissive ability does nothing.

As is, the emissive armor can only stop a solitary, small fighter's weapons. A stack of fighters or ship -size weapons, and the emissive does zilch.

If you boost it up to block ship size weapons, then anything below LC is harmless, and emissive does nothing against the large/heavy mount capital ship weapons.

*sigh*
/SJ longs for SE3-style Emissive ability

[Lerchey]

From a balance perspective, would it make sense to make emissive armor do what it does now, but make it take up a LOT more space? That way, you can shove it onto a large ship (BB, DN, whatever) and basically "shrug off" attacks by LCs and smaller, but will still take damage from larger ships. You could also make it available only to larger class vessels.

Just a thought.

General John

[Q]

I don't think making the emissive armor big would help. SJ is right it would be unbalancing if you push the resistence too high. This is a very old problem I already had in SE III. The only real use I see for emissive armor is to make the total damage to destroy a component higher than shields per kT of structure but still keeping the emissive part low enough so that it is not invulnerable. Then you would have an effective alternative to shields but for the price that you must repair some of the armor after each combat.

[Q]

Jack are you sure your fix works??

I tried the switch of the abilities you proposed and it did nothing. The emissive ability is still not functioning.

[Suicide Junkie]

The problem is that, with an emissive of 100 points, a 100 damage bLast does nothing, but a 110 point bLast does 110 damage.

An interesting Version of emissive would be: "negates half of a weapon's damage, up to a maximum of 100 points negated"
Where you could set the % in value1, and the maximum capacity in value2.
Tons of flexibility for modders, and you'd get SE3 normal EA by using 100% in value1.

I also recall having a problem in v1.35, where if a ship had many emissive armor components, it lost its emissive after the first EA component was destroyed, even though the backups were still intact.

In my mod, I'll just have to simulate emissive with a crystalline effect. (one per ship)
That way, you can stop the first x points of damage, even though you don't get credit for that until the next hit, and shield sappers can drain of your emissive power.
It really is too bad that this simulation requires one-per-ship, and dosen't require the damage to hit the armor piece with the ability.

[Jack Deth]

major, the change worked for me. ive tested it in ship to ship combat.

were the weopons you tested with low enough damage? remember, if the weopon hitting the armor has a higher damage rating than the emmisive rating of your armor, it does full damage

[Skulky]

Or the emmisive could just remove that amount of damage from the hit, a 30 damage weapon would still do 0 but a 70 damage weapon would only do 40. Maybe would need hardcode though.