Reactive armor

PewPew

Good evening, I come to make a suggestion to make less efficient a type of ships that I find much too powerful. These ships operate on the principle of a first devastating salvo combining cannons and missiles in large numbers combined with a high speed of movement. This allows several bursts of cannonballs to be fired, which become blurred as they arrive at the same time and cause considerable damage. I am able to snatch a quarter or even a third of a cerberus in one salvo with this method. The other ship has absolutely no chance to counter-attack or protect itself effectively against such brief and devastating attacks.

Also, to add to the game an effective counter against this type of designs based on a first devastating salvo, I thought about adding a new type of armor: reactive armor. It consists of a powerful explosive that fires at the impact of a projectile and neutralizes it by propelling shrapnel that destroys enemy projectiles nearby.

Specifically, the reactive armor would be a 1x1 block with only one side in contact with the rest of the ship, producing a large one-way explosion. It will explode only in contact with a powerful physical projectile, cannonball, missile, railgun shell, etc. Lasers or small projectiles (if added later in the game) do not trigger the explosive and continue to destroy it like a classic armor block. It is a single-use block, it blocks all close projectiles once and is destroyed in the explosion.

I think it would be an effective way of countering ship designs abusing cannons or missiles, without making them useless in normal situations.

jbox1

PewPew So... one shot high power PD?

Sombreroman

PewPew Ah, Reactive Armour. The Tank's Anti Missile method. Nice Idea!

PewPew

jbox1 I see it as a complementary block to the PDS, the PDS fires the missiles in small amounts, in a very large area, as long as it has enough to shoot and it is not destroyed. Where reactive armor is a way to counter an entire salvo that can cause huge damage, but only one and only if it touches that particular block.

It's inspired by a defense system that really exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactive_armour

Lafiel

As long as weapons have infinite ammo a one-shot defense is meaningless. I suppose you meant to give the attacked an opportunity to fire back once. But it still would be just that. The result would be the same as the imbalance is already a fact that can't be overcome.

Besides this has been requested so many times such that NERA armor has already been part of the Abh mod since last year.

PewPew

Lafiel No, the goal is not to allow a kind of barout but, to effectively cash a first devastating first salvo to give a chance to a different design not to be obliterated immediately. Cannons can have ridiculously large range if you use them properly, if you have time to accumulate bursts while advancing, the result at the finish is far beyond what can cash a ship, even very well defended. The goal is to include in the game an effective way to survive this kind of scenario.

I have seen several tournaments where ships with cannons have won like that, because the other weapons of the opposing ship did not have the necessary reach to counterattack. But, sooner in a closer fight, the other design would have quite a chance to win I think. Some say that the electrobolt is OP, but how can they be OP in front of ships that destroy them all before they can shoot? It's no match.

Then I did not talk about NERA (Non-Explosive Reactive Armor) but, ERA (without the "non-"), it's the same defensive principle but, not the same method to get there. I'm not talking about armor bouncing the projectiles or part of the projectiles but, an explosive charge to shoot down a volley of projectiles.

ja7833

Lafiel

Suggest that reactive armor could be "reloaded" with cannon ammo - cost would need to be high I think - maybe 3 ammo per 1x1 piece. Question would be how much armor does depleted reactive armor have vs regular armor?

Dalas120

The simplest defense against this type of cannonball stacking is to back away. Cannon salvos only work when the enemy ship can accelerate quickly towards you, so moving backwards cancels out that acceleration. Fast ships can also strafe/turn to dodge the volley entirely (cannon shells are very slow). You noted this type of defense in your original post, and IMO it's a very effective one.

Regular armor is also an excellent defense against enemies that rely on burst damage. "A" shaped designs or missile barges usually have large armor sections in the front, and can easily absorb volleys of cannon shells. Burst damage isn't any better than sustained damage against armor.

Even if you're both slow and unarmored, you still have a fighting chance. You'll have the money for more weapons than the salvoing ship (which spent lots of money on engines), so you can afford to take some up-front burst damage. Spreading out weapons also makes a huge difference against focused salvos without needing lots of engines or armor.

I do like the idea of reactive armor and hope it gets added into the game at some point (variety is always good!), but I don't think there's a pressing balance reason for it. Even with the ability to salvo, cannons are still not top of the "meta" at the moment.

Lafiel As long as weapons have infinite ammo a one-shot defense is meaningless. I suppose you meant to give the attacked an opportunity to fire back once. But it still would be just that.

I disagree. Regular armor is a "1-shot defense," but it's very effective. Just because a defense doesn't last forever doesn't mean it's useless.

Mc2

PewPew
Lafiel is correct, once weapons has infinitive ammo, one shoot defense is meaningless, even if you defend alfa strike , how you will force enemy not to use it again?
By the way, who force you to face alfa strike by ship defensive systems like shields and armor ?
P.S.: Way how ship move now is not for ever, game still under development, once maneuvering and dodging will be again good defense (like few versions ago) and not clear disadvantage like now.

Lafiel

ja7833 In order to allow them to be reloaded means you can only have one layer of armor. The nanite repair parts do this better at a huge energy cost, will cost more when multi ammo use feature is added.

In-game a volley is not just one shot but all shots in the magazine (batteries) of a weapon. ERA can only stop one shot so it's still no good.

Instead of one-shot ERA it's far more effective to just build a one layer armor shield and ditch it later or build structures or a hammer shield and then turn around. https://wiki.cosmoteer.net/index.php/Ship_design

PewPew

Mc2 To allow cannons to really shoot continuously is not that simple, it requires a lot of logistics behind to really shoot without interruption. The first waves are often more devastating than the next bursts, more disordered and spaced in time. The biggest danger coming from salvos that are superimposed while your ship is moving towards its target, that's what I was trying to explain. There are currently no effective counter to such designs, such salvos superimposed for a ship of similar weight and aiming at its center are almost impossible to avoid and cause decisive damage.

I write another answer with pictures but, it is not approved yet, you will see what I want to talk about as a type of situation. I show how I have accumulated three large salvos merged into one and the damage it can cause a well-defended ship and striking its strong point.

PewPew

Before :

After :

Take into account that this is just one example to show the destructive potential of this method. I was there like a nag, normally my ship takes a lot less damage or none. Like here where I shot only at a great distance :

Note that the enemy missiles were not even fired, while I destroyed almost all his front-line weapons to his right. My ship didnt even shoot ... Against this kind of bursts, no amount of armor or shields will save you. I only see two ways to avoid this fate:

Reactive armor, as I described who would be able to destroy the salvo itself.
A ship capable of maneuvering fast enough to avoid these shots (maybe with the boosters provided).

In any case, I had looked carefully at the Trello to see if the idea had not already been proposed, I did not find anything like it. I still think that just as there are different types of ammunition planned, different types of armor could be a good thing also to have more varied designs and to avoid clone ships.

Lafiel

PewPew The problem in this example is that the defender's design is faulty. The problem here is explosion ignore shields and have reach. All you needed do was set one set of shields on the first layer, and the rest as before. And use some armor to cover them if possible.

minimurgle

PewPew Sorry about that, It seems Askimet flagged it as spam. I've gone ahead and corrected that.

PewPew

Oh ok, thank. 🙂

PewPew

Lafiel I created this, quickly:

As you can see, 5 layers of armor, 2 rows of shields, an excellent defense, far superior to any of my ships.

It will hurt:

Result:

We can see that the 5 layers of armor were pierced, the first row of shields was passed and the second row of shields had begun to weaken too. So, certainly the bursts were stopped without damaging the shields. But, there are several big problems with this way of doing things:

Shields take manpower and energy that would be more useful to feed weapons.
Reload the weapons is longer because it has to carry ammunition and energy for 4 blocks more.
Moreover, as we have seen, the first layer of shields doesnt hold, even complete, so imagine with holes to pass ammunition and energy, all the weapons in this place would have been destroyed. You're still alive, ok, but in life without weapons, it makes your ship a punching bag.

I dont see where I could put this kind of defenssive structure in one of my ships, it's too restrictive.

Lafiel

Dalas120 The ERA armor he described is not the same as armor. It's gone after one hit regardless of how powerful or puny the hit is. Even if ordinary armor survives a hundred shot the ERA as he defines it won't last beyond one.

PewPew

Dalas120 I disagree. Regular armor is a "1-shot defense," but it's very effective. Just because a defense doesn't last forever doesn't mean it's useless.

You're right on several points Dalas, I'm going to stop talking about cannons, this is not the main subject. And I particularly agree with the point I just quoted.

I thought that this reactive armor could be used to stop some shots of railgun targeting sensitive areas of a ship, for example. In real life, the railguns are weapons that deliver a lot of energy to the impact. One can quite imagine that the ammunition causes fire along its course in the ship. So, stopping it before it can come in can be very interesting, I think.

Mc2

PewPew Now I do agree with you, when Railgun comes in, than some kind of antirailgun solution should be be in game as well. Reactive armor, is possible solution. while one railgun shoot should take lot of time, one time usege armour part could be acceptable.