Right now we have Class I - VIII Armour Upgrade 'booster packs' right? They have their pro's and con's that we get a argument about now and again.
Now what I propose is different 'types' or materials of ship hulls. What they do is give you some protection against different types of firepower being dished at you. Here are the two that spring into my mind:
(1) - Reactive Nano Armor
The material in this armor is designed to blow off from the main hull when faced with explosive force. The nanobot packs that is contained within the hull pack almost instantaneously, replaces the lost block of armor, but it should be noted that these packs can only replace parts of the armor, and not the internal workings and direct breaches that normal nanobots can repair.
(2) - Electron Reflective Armor
This armor is extremely polished and smoothed to extreme laser precision, and then with exrta power packs, charged with an electron pulse to help slightly deflect any laser or pulse type weaponry to a certain point. This makes conventional fire less damaging.
-------------------
Now the Reactive Nano Armor is going to help protect your ship against ballistics, those would be missiles. I'd say they give up to a 20% damage resistance, much like our shields against certain weapon fire. Conventional gunfire would hurt you all the same.
The Electron Reflective Armor is designed to help protect against the conventional gunfire, lasers, pulse, neutron, tachyon etc. Up to 20% same as above.
What you guys think of these hull types? It could add more strategy and we could have levels of them same as the current armor upgrades.
That, would be quite interesting to see.
Something a little different.
But, Then again. Why not create shields that do just that.
That's what you are describing basically.
Is a new class of shields.
Shields don't buffer resistance, shields ARE the resistance. Once its taken out, missiles do full damage. It only effects the shields, and they were hardcoded to have that effect, since missiles do more damage because of wireframe models, not because they have differing resistances. So this couldn't be coded. Its a good idea, if we could make it work, but as it is, its not possible.
My first thought was: "Neat! More options to customize ships." =)
My next thought was... almost everyone will buy the anti-gun armor since most people comes up against guns more than missiles. Then nothing's customized, everyone will have the same stuff.
Then everyone will NEED to have the same stuff, for PvP.
Maybe, maybe not.
I'm not crazy about the idea of adding MORE armor/shielding/protection, cause it just makes it harder & harder to kill someone (PvP or against NPCs).
The problem is, that it even though it seems everybody wants to get rid of the armor system as it is now, no one really does something.
PLUS it's seemingly not possible / not that easy to do.
I still think we definitely need something to balance armor upgrades / add variety / add a downside / stop everyone from only using MK VIII.