- Edited
Here are a few tips on how to ensure your ship has good survivability, and damage within the ship is limited.
Armour is your main resource when trying to keep your ship safe, armour comes in 1x1, 2x1, 1x1 slope, and 2x1 slope variations in vanilla Cosmoteer. Armour is also found on Cannons, their Heavy Cannon counterparts, and Flak Batteries, which is very useful when trying to construct a defensive surface. As some of you may know, armour is especially useful for stopping projectiles from dangerous penetrating weapons such as cannons and railguns from reaching the "Guts" of a ship, I.E the corridors and vital systems within that must be kept safe to ensure a ship runs effectively. armour is also effective in keeping fires in check on large ships, as partitioning areas off with armour either into modules or merely so that they have small entrances (beware, this may cause crew to "Clump" and slow down power and ammo etc) can stop fires from spreading to other areas of the ship for long enough that your faithful crew can deal with them.
Another major advantage for armour, is that it acts as, like the game says, a "Lightening rod" for EMP effects, meaning that EMP missiles and the discharges of electro bolters will prefer to jump to armour rather than your ship's important innards that you need to keep running.
Remember: 1x1 slopes have lower health than 1x1 cubes, 2x1 slopes have lower health than 2x1 rectangles, though they have the same health as 1x1 cubes. this is an important factor in deciding which shape is better for a certain job.
Effective armour practices:
When placing armour try to keep the following in mind,
1: 2x1 armour blocks are most effective when "Staggered", as shown below, due to the fact that projectiles will in many cases have to destroy three of the blocks to reach beyond the armour, think of this strategy as effectively building a brick wall with the armour, the wall is stronger if the bricks support each other, which is why walls are not built of directly vertical stacks of bricks, as the wall would not be as stable.
2: Another less expensive trick to make your armour more effective at defense is to create an ablative shield of structure pieces in front of the armour surface, this stops light projectiles like lasers, and will cause missiles to explode before they hit the armour, preserving it's integrity at the expense of the structure, it will also slow and leech damage from cannon shells and railgun rounds, though the latter only fractionally.
3: "Laminate" armour. This is a term used by some for a style of armour used mostly in the competitive scene, it is an effective way to keep a vessel light, ensure that it is protected, and also (if you ask me) give it the look of something that just crawled up your trouser leg. It is debated that this style gives more protection than the standard "Brick wall" effect armour strategy as the pockets between the armour layers mean that often projectiles fired at part of the first layer that has been subsequently destroyed, may not reach the second layer of protection. this does take rather more space than simple layered armour though, and is slightly more expensive due to the structure spacers.
4: Effective range shielding on gun batteries; This is a strategy that can be used for gun batteries on ships that are designed to counter long range weapons such as railguns or missiles. Similar in theme to the Laminate or Ablative Shielding options, and often used with one or the other, this method uses an armour or structure "Shield" to prevent damage to a ship's weapons before they get into range. This can then by the use of explosive charges be detonated to remove the obstruction when the weapon enters range, the only disadvantage being that sometimes your shield can then get in the way of your own guns, the pros however in many cases outweigh the cons, and this is a very useful trick to know.
Guide in progress, more to come.
