Could someone fill me in on the differences between shields and armor so that I don't have to download and read the bible?

I know that weapons do differing amounts of damage to shields and armor (lasers do more to shields, protons are balanced, most projectile weapons do more to armor). I know that they both regenerate. I seem to remember reading that you are disabled at 1/3 remaining armor. But . . .

Are the 100 Armaplast units really 6+ times more protection from proton bolts than one shield cap? It seems like in a lightning I outfitted, it takes a while for 85 units of shields (4x15 from caps plus 25 original units) to get knocked out, but that the 105 units or armor (original plus armaplast) go really quickly (or is it just that I'm closer to being sent to my escape pod without my dinner?). If they are really equivalent, and since it is easy to avoid projectiles, why is armor so dirt cheap? One cap is 90K for 15 units, while you can get 250 units of durasteel for the same price (even if missles do 50% more damage to it and that 1/3 remaining thing means you only get 2/3 of what you're paying for, you still get more than 7 times the protection). Of course mass is a concern, but at 30K and 5 tons, 100 units of armaplast should be the hottest thing on the market. What gives?

In what might be a related issue, laser bolts have about a 10 damage rating, but all my experience is that they do about 1 shield unit of damage. I see about the same ratio with missles and so on. Is there just a factor of 10 scaling in there?

just wondering/wandering around,
-pagangod

Kinda confusing. I'll see what I can make of your questions.

Weapons do damage to shields and armor. While in ResEdit, a proton cannon does 10 damage to shields and 10 damage to armor, there's a subtle equation: damage to shields = shield damage listed + armor damage divided by 4. (let x = listed shield damage, y= armor damage. x + y/4 = total shield damage). Same with armor, just vice versa. Thus a proton cannon actually does 12.5 damage overall. This is out of the shield and armor value listed in ship data in ResEdit. Of course, actual mileage may vary. Armaplast adds however much armor to the armor value listed in ship data in ResEdit. The more armor, the better protection. Weight is something else altogether. Shield capcitators add however much shields to original shield value. At least to proton weapons, shields and armor are one and the same - 12.5 damage to both. Let's say lasers in ResEdit do 4 damage to shields, 0 to armor. In EV, it does 4 against shield, 1 to armor. Thus, armor is better defense against lasers than shields are - it takes longer to bust through 500 armor with a laser than 500 shields.

I hope you get this.

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ColdFusion

I'm waiting for the day when "this side up" arrows appear on grocery bags.

Shield capacitors also add less shields than Armaplast does to armor: +25 to shields, +100 to armor. Protons will punch through shields more quickly than armor, if a ship has equal armor and shields originally. The 1/3 armor disabling rule does not apply to the player - you can fight on at 1% armor. Armor should take longer than shields to knock out - you must just be having bad luck.

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ColdFusion

I'm waiting for the day when "this side up" arrows appear on grocery bags.

Thanks. I haven't been double checking in ResEdit on the numbers, but could. Probably, I just don't start to worry until on armor, and then the time flies because I'm having fun. It may also be that I tend to get to armor when I'm taking heavy hits in the middle of a incoming fusillade, and I don't notice that the last of my shields just blew off quickly too.

You know, you're flying a good pattern and the enemy's turrets aren't correcting for your speed and thrust so you've only flown through the occasional stray shot and the shields are holding ok, and then you turn around at the wrong moment and take a barrage all right in the face and suddenly the shields are gone and the armor is going.

I'd figured out the x+y/4 thing (noting that they were careful to maintain a distinction in ResEdit by designating the damage ratings as "mass" and "energy" rather than "shields" and "armor," IIRC), but was wondering about the factor of 10. It takes about 10 laser shots with nominal shield damage of 10.5 to take out a Defender's 10 units of shields. Similarly, I found it took about 10-12 missles (when I used still used them much) to take down a Corvette, with a missle damage rating of 112.5/75 against Corvette armor and shields of 30 and 70 (taking out the shields first of course). In both cases, it seems like the total damage rating is about 10 times more than the shields and armor.

I don't remember looking at whether armor and shields are in the same units in ResEdit as they are in the ship info dialog in EV (30 and 70 for a Corvette for instance). If they showed up as 300 and 700 in ResEdit, that would make sense, but I didn't think that was the case.

Thanks for the pointers ColdFusion,
-pagangod

Yep. A Corvette doesn't have 30 shields in ResEdit, it has 300. If you translate ResEdit values to game values, then protons do 1.25 damage. However, I think fractional damage is rounded down. Ask around on the developer's board.

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ColdFusion

I'm waiting for the day when "this side up" arrows appear on grocery bags.

Yep, thats why you never want to waste your space on shield capacitors, because they only add 15 shields, which translates to 1.5 on the shipyard scale. So a Corvette w/o capacitors has 700 shields, whereas a Corvette with four capacitors has 760 shields. So not much difference, eh?
Armor is different. Armaplast adds 100 armor, Durasteel 250, and Tritanium 500. So a Corvette, with 300 stock armor, would have 400 with only armaplast, 550 with only durasteel, 800 with only tritanium, and 1150 with all three. That's more armor than a Confed Cruiser! Sorry, I should stop now.

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Luca Rescigno
"And may not every one of the stars or suns have as great a retinue of planets with moons to wait upon them as has our own Sun?" -Christiaan Huygens

I'm not entirely sure that your comments are accurate. Sure, maybe you think extra shields aren't cost-effective. On the other hand, there have been a few times when I've been glad to have the extra defense. It's why I always load up on armor and caps whenever I have the 500,000 to do my standard upgrades.

In a related issue to cost, I hereby nominate the letter ç as official shorthand for "credits".

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KIRK: Very funny, Scotty - now beam down my clothes!

Quote

ElGuapo7 wrote:
**In a related issue to cost, I hereby nominate the letter ç as official shorthand for "credits".
**

One small problem with that: The font EV uses to display things like that doesn't have any of those special characters in it. Besides, I don't know how to type that on the PC I use for Internet Access.

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(Insert witty remark here)

Quote

Knucklehead wrote:
**One small problem with that: The font EV uses to display things like that doesn't have any of those special characters in it. Besides, I don't know how to type that on the PC I use for Internet Access.

**

On a Mac, it's option-c. On a PC, you should have a key caps menu or something like that. (but I think it's the same.) Failing that, open MC Word. That should help you.

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KIRK: Very funny, Scotty - now beam down my clothes!

So, a Lightning (base of 25/5 shipyard I think) with 4 caps and armaplast has (in fact) only 31/15, not 85/105?

It explains my original observation. I had noticed that my armor, which I thought was a little more than my shields (105 vs. 85), tended to deplete faster (on the fraction left status bar) than my shields. But in fact, I had about half as much armor (15) as I had shields (31). I guess that the mass I invested in durasteel was wise (boosting me to 31/40).

It also means I'd probably rather sacrafice the 4 caps so that I can have the proton turret instead of the laser turret (1.25x damage to shields and 5x damage to armor, per unit time). If only the game allowed me to use the remaining 2 tons from that conversion to get a second shield booster.

Sniff. I thought that (since they cost so much) the caps had to be an elegant and potent outfit.

-pagangod
Pirates: galactic fly-through gas-and-cash stations

key knucklehead:
hold alt- type: 01xx
xx is some number, i dunno what. open 'character map' it's prob like 35 or so

as for more shields & armor, every little bit helps i think. in starwars ev, for instance, i got 4 caps & a booster. i now have the advantage over the star destroyer. armor's for those who fear their shields may run out!! case in point, the aliens. they're not worried about their shields going down - they won't... well, they don't survive the forklift, but anyway...

i guess it depends on your playing style, too. if you get shot on often, get the armor. if you fly past 'em and fire like javellins & your prom. weapon, shields (booster, definately)

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