Discovery 5.2 "Dev" Diary - ARMOR PEN

[EisenSeele]

Written on behalf of @Haste

A Cool and Good accounting of Armor Mechanics as they are as of now;

Every 100 points of armor adds your original hitpoint value in effective hitpoints, provided there's no armor penetration in play.
For example: If we take a hypothetical capital ship with 500,000 hitpoints and 100 armor, that means that ship has 1,000,000 effective hitpoints. If that same ship had 200 armor instead, it would have 1,500,000 effective hitpoints instead. 300 armor would mean 2,000,000 effective hitpoints, and so on and so forth. +500,000 (base hitpoints) per 100 armor.

Armor penetration is simply subtracted from the armor value when calculating damage for that gun.
If you're firing a 1,000 damage gun with 0 armor penetration at a 100 armor ship, the gun is shooting at a ship with double effective HP, meaning that you are actually doing 50% reduced damage -- 500. If instead that 1,000 damage gun had 100 armor penetration, fully penetrating the armor, it'd do its full 1000 damage.

Overpenetration has no effect. That is to say, firing a 200 armor penetration gun at a 150 armor ship means you are doing full damage, but not increased damage. 50 armor penetration is effectively "wasted".

Something important to consider is that all fighter weapons have their armor penetration baselined at at least 100, scaling to 200 at the highest. The armor penetration on fighter/bomber weapons is based on their (in)efficiency. The more inefficient the gun, the more armor penetration, as the efficiency formula is based off of hitrates against other fighters, and makes no real sense against capital ships (where hitrate is basically 100%). Armor pen makes up the difference, basically.

Only fighters, bombers and freighters have an armor value below 100. The only guns that have no armor pen at all are cruiser and battlecruiser primaries. The logic here is that those guns do full damage only against very small ships, allowing their efficiency there to be reasonable, without making them best-in-slot anticap weapons by virtue of their crazy velocity.

Light fighters have an armor rating of 50, giving them some resilience against cruiser and battlecruiser primaries, which they need badly as they're made of wet tissue paper. But doing nothing versus other fighters, as all fighter guns have an armor pen value of at least 100.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:
The Donau can only mount two cerberus cruiser turrets because the model only 'fits' on the bottom larger turret mount. Anyone that asks again is subject to admin abuse.

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