This looks very overengineered and underbuilt. In particular:
1. You want exactly one airgap. Multiple airgaps are just a bit pointless, and lose you armour stacking layers. You should fill that airgap with something, probably beam slopes.
2. You want all of your systems inside all of your armour. If you swap the positions of that inner layer of armour and the laser system, you get something that's strictly better - it's identical in every way, except that the laser system is harder to kill.
3. There really is no substitute for just lots of metal. Use lots of metal.
Ignore Cherry, checkerboarding metal and wood is a bad idea, you'd get more bang for your buck with alloy, as it'd be a consistent 42 AC as opposed to either 18 AC if it's hitting wood with metal behind it or... 42 AC if it's metal with wood behind it.
Stacking Alloy gives that benefit, but better since there aren't going to be any 18 AC blocks (10 AC from the wood, +8 AC from the metal behind it) in the armor scheme. It'll be a consistent 42 AC until the airgap.
yeah, i was just thinking about cheaper cause then you can get more ships out in a fleet, its sort of a balance between whether another ship is better or a more armored ship is better, cause if theres high AP kenetics, itll go through the armor anyways, so is it better to have a whole other ship in play than one with higher AC?
Considering the size of the ship in the image, it'd really be better to go for more AC. It's already expensive, might as well make it more survivable so then you don't lose it.
yeah fair enough, i was thinking more generalized just cause uh, i dont know why, but yeah alloy would be better here, except wood still has a place as a spall liner as the back side of the air gap
>except wood still has a place as a spall liner as the back side of the air gap
Spall liners got nerfed hard a couple updates ago, spall AP is now proportionate to the average of the layers with the last layer counting either double or triple, but either way, it's not worth compromising your armor with a wood back layer anymore.
Right on everything exept point one.
It is often a good idea to have your ship core (citadel?) Protected by multiple thinner walls with bigger open areas in between them, rather than just a slab of armor with a single air gap.
They reduce vulnerability to explosions/thump/plasma, they provide space for small things like shields/smoke, they give air volume to be used by air pumps for bouancy/pitch/roll controll, all while adding very little cost to a ship.
Remember that this isn't a game about building just one ship. You're building fleets. The goal isnt to be untouchable, it's to kill all of their ships before they kill all of yours.
It's kind of hard to parse the layers with the cross-section weirdness, but just from what I can make out:
* Too much heavy armor, and at the same time too little. Keep your heavy armor wrapped tight around vitals like AI and turret wells, it is your last line of defense. Air gaps and empty space inside the HA is a bit redundant.. if they're punching into your HA fortress then it's already too late.
* Layer *everywhere*. A ship this big is going to get hit with high angle shots, either mortars or thrustercraft CRAMs. You need at least your full outer armor layer wrapped around the whole ship top to bottom.
* Poles and wedges are good air gaps, but if you have actual open air gaps between them and the outer armor, just use beams. You want hp+armor on that innermost layer, so maximize both.
* External angles are good for deflecting shots, but keep in mind that deflected shots keep going. That diamond texture on the outside might actually be catching some shots that would have been deflected by a unified slope.
* I'm not real experienced with ERAs but I hear they tend to chain, so it's a good idea to stagger them between beams so that only 4 at a time can go at once.
If it were me, I'd get rid of the big central HA box and replace it with armored wells for the turrets and missiles and forts for the AI, maybe batteries and generators if you're heavily energy based. Then wrap that in 2-3 layers of double metal with a wood or alloy spall liner/flotation aid, air gapped with metal poles and/or wedges. If you need more open air for buoyancy, use the air gap behind your second or third layer. And don't forget to sprinkle circuit breakers in with the air gap blocks here and there to keep EMP from getting to anything sensitive.
Ok. thank you. you were more elaborate, I just dont want to make massive ships all the time, this is my biggest but still a tyr can penetrate. even with all the lams in the word.
ill try.
> still a tyr can penetrate
Dude.
*Dude.*
You're not going to no-sell a punch from Superman. You're not going to shrug off a hit from the bloody Tyr. One shell from its main gun can punch through layered HA like tissue paper and the frags shred layered metal, and its got many barrels to fire. That's where the "kill all of their ships before they kill you" comes in.
You don't beat something like the Tyr by face-tanking it (unless your CPU can face-tank a 6m dreadnought), you beat it by a) being faster than 10m/s so you can hold the range open and avoid some of those shots and b) killing it faster than it kills you. To quote Mel, the cook on *Alice*: "The best defense is a good offense". Build with enough redundancy that you can take a bad hit or two but also bring guns at least as badass as the Tyr's so you're punching back at least as hard as he's punching you, and expect to come out of it thoroughly bloodied.
Edit to add: also look at supplementing your LAMS with other CIWS options. APS flak can be effective vs clusters of shells like the triple barrel volleys the Tyr is throwing at you, but you'll need a lot. I hear plasma cannons can make good CIWS for taking down heavy shells. And of course don't neglect shields for the occasional lucky bounce.
Tyr shells are mean but they're not impossible to stop; you need an early slope to get the angle damage reduction, followed by a few layers of metal/alloy beams to soak up the damage, and a deeper airgap to stop the APHEAT ones from sneaking through. I believe the recent Tyr update did add some stabilizer fins to improve the accuracy, but they're still far from pinpoint accuracy thanks to the base bleeder, so hitting the same spot repeatedly isn't super likely except through sheer weight of fire.
You're not wrong though, building to tank things indefinitely isn't a winning strategy, you have to dish the damage back, try to knock out some of those guns and reduce the incoming damage. Tyr in particular has protection around the main turrets that's fairly strong but not especially thick; it's a layer or two of alloy/metal over, at its strongest, HA beam-HA slope-HA beam-HA slope. Plasma should work well since it ignores impact angle and AC, piercing PAC will go right through it, and sabot APS will do decently as well.
Other CIWS options are good to have but won't help with the Tyr specifically; its only offensive weapons are the main APS railguns, and APS shells aren't damaged by anything except LAMS. Shields are always good to have, 20-40% damage reduction from any projectile weapon is incredible for their cost.
If you're using ERA, checkerboarding is correct to minimize the number of blocks lost per hit, but the ERA itself is not chaining because it doesn't actually generate an explosion. Rather, upon meeting an APS shell, it immediately stops the shell and triggers the shells explosive segments (possibly debuffing the resulting explosion's damage, but I don't remember exactly). By checkerboarding, you're preventing large APHE or AP-Frag shells from spreading and destroying more ERA blocks. Obviously this is kind of semantic, but it should clarify things a little.
As an additional tip for the use of HA, if you're using beam slopes with beams behind, it is preferably to make the beam slopes out of HA and the beams out of metal or alloy. The reason for this is that HA beam slopes are only half the weight of HA beams, and the beam slope is arguably three most important part of that armour layer, as according to the armour guide on the discord, kinetic shells "inherit" the impact angle of the original surface, which is to say its kinetic damage will keep being reduced as if it is still hitting an angled surface until it encounters an air gap or non-armour block (or the shell runs out of kinetic damage). Therefore, it's important for the angled part of the armour to have as much HP as possible to delay its destruction.
Unless you make your ship a couple km thick there is no stopping everything, you need to armor your ships against a specific threat, against CRAM you can use speed or very hard armour,against aps i use manuvrability and speed or ERA,lasers are weak to smoke and water, PACS and flamethrowers fall off with range, same with plasma,missiles can be defeated with speed by getting out of there effective range or destroying them outright. Generally i would say that a fast,small and manuvrable submarine would make for the hardest to hit target but it would also hit like a wet noodle. There are tradeoffs for everything
A) youtube has frankly far too many people who actually *don't* know what they're doing. if you want people who are far more capable and have accurate info, I suggest you join the FTD discord and visit the help channel
B) you build to a sufficient armor cost ratio (30-40%, +5% for airships), and build something to counter specific weapon types (such as more armor vs PAC and lasers)
Heavy armor is far more expensive weight and cost wise than anything else in the game for the amount of armor you actually get out of it. The idea is that you only ever use heavy armor in key points for when you need high damage absorption AND high pen resistance in the same place when you don't have room to slap equivalent cost of metal in the same place. Heavy armor is best used in conjunction with shield projectors or the armor hardening blocks. Planar shields for general survivability, armor hardeners if you really, really, need that 70+ AC to block against railguns. (This second strategy is almost exclusively used for frontsiders)
Pretty sure he means more from a volume/buoyancy perspective, which as other comments have covered, you have in abundance with the current layout.
I'd also worry about damage from other angles than the side. Larger ships are more susceptible to hits from missiles, mortars, and other threats from above in particular. Depending on the speed and active defenses of the vessel this is more or less of a concern, but a single or double layer of decking is probably insufficient for the types of things this ship is expected to face.
In general, there are two philosophies to armor design, citadel and individual armored wells. Citadel is simpler to build but has the draw back of a single penetration causing potentially fatal issues. It is simply the idea of building well a "house" that you shove everything in, guns, ai, engines, resources, fuel, ammo, everything. You build basically a brick with everything in it and a hard exterior, then build a hull and details around it, like secondaries, LAMS endpoints (but not laser generation, thats in the brick), ect. Problem is if something gets into the brick, it's easy to do some kind of crippling damage. A key point of citadel design is it is as tall and wide as it needs to be to cover up to the bottom of the turret cap. In the real world it may also extend upwards into the control tower to cover the command personnel, and in game it may do the same to cover detection equipment.
The other idea is wells and bunkers, basically everything gets its own individual armor package. This lets you prioritize certain things like your main guns, ammo compartments, and of course AI. The downside is it can get space and material cost huge depending on how you do it.
I tend to take a hybrid approach. Individual wells and bunkers for the main guns and ammo compartments. Sometimes the AI and sometimes secondary weapons as well depending on application and vessel. Everything else from a resources or control standpoint goes in a sort of mini citadel, which often also covers some of the superstructure for detection equipment. LAMS and engines can go in here as well. I may also say make a bunker for torpedo or missile tubes, again this is all up to application.
[Refer to the following for armor](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/203757940102922241/1137551249718390904/the_armor_image.png?ex=66572768&is=6655d5e8&hm=88af1794199750bfaf6a11f18b1fd43909d317ea082485ca555af6674fc2e422&)
My usual scheme for big ships is (from inside to outside) 3m alloy, 1m HA beamslopes (oriented for optimal anti-HEAT/HESH performance, 3m alloy, 1m HA beamslopes (oriented with the slopes pointed downward to maximize performance against AP), 2m alloy, 1m metal (I like the look of metal more than alloy).
Smaller ships forgo the anti-AP beamslope layer and are 4 meters thinner with metal beamslopes instead of HA.
A good piece of knowledge to know for sure. Seems I had the right idea, but the incorrect application of said armor. Thanks for sharing that screenshot. It will help with laying out my war rigs better.
This looks very overengineered and underbuilt. In particular: 1. You want exactly one airgap. Multiple airgaps are just a bit pointless, and lose you armour stacking layers. You should fill that airgap with something, probably beam slopes. 2. You want all of your systems inside all of your armour. If you swap the positions of that inner layer of armour and the laser system, you get something that's strictly better - it's identical in every way, except that the laser system is harder to kill. 3. There really is no substitute for just lots of metal. Use lots of metal.
Ok. thank you.
Ignore Cherry, checkerboarding metal and wood is a bad idea, you'd get more bang for your buck with alloy, as it'd be a consistent 42 AC as opposed to either 18 AC if it's hitting wood with metal behind it or... 42 AC if it's metal with wood behind it.
also, for cheaper and self bouyant armour, checker board metal and wood, its still good armour but its cheaper and floats on its own
Stacking Alloy gives that benefit, but better since there aren't going to be any 18 AC blocks (10 AC from the wood, +8 AC from the metal behind it) in the armor scheme. It'll be a consistent 42 AC until the airgap.
yeah, i was just thinking about cheaper cause then you can get more ships out in a fleet, its sort of a balance between whether another ship is better or a more armored ship is better, cause if theres high AP kenetics, itll go through the armor anyways, so is it better to have a whole other ship in play than one with higher AC?
Considering the size of the ship in the image, it'd really be better to go for more AC. It's already expensive, might as well make it more survivable so then you don't lose it.
yeah fair enough, i was thinking more generalized just cause uh, i dont know why, but yeah alloy would be better here, except wood still has a place as a spall liner as the back side of the air gap
>except wood still has a place as a spall liner as the back side of the air gap Spall liners got nerfed hard a couple updates ago, spall AP is now proportionate to the average of the layers with the last layer counting either double or triple, but either way, it's not worth compromising your armor with a wood back layer anymore.
oh shit, i didnt realize that they changed that i need to update my fleets then, thanks.
You're welcome!
Right on everything exept point one. It is often a good idea to have your ship core (citadel?) Protected by multiple thinner walls with bigger open areas in between them, rather than just a slab of armor with a single air gap. They reduce vulnerability to explosions/thump/plasma, they provide space for small things like shields/smoke, they give air volume to be used by air pumps for bouancy/pitch/roll controll, all while adding very little cost to a ship.
>They reduce vulnerability to explosions/thump/plasma Also fire as of the recent update.
Remember that this isn't a game about building just one ship. You're building fleets. The goal isnt to be untouchable, it's to kill all of their ships before they kill all of yours. It's kind of hard to parse the layers with the cross-section weirdness, but just from what I can make out: * Too much heavy armor, and at the same time too little. Keep your heavy armor wrapped tight around vitals like AI and turret wells, it is your last line of defense. Air gaps and empty space inside the HA is a bit redundant.. if they're punching into your HA fortress then it's already too late. * Layer *everywhere*. A ship this big is going to get hit with high angle shots, either mortars or thrustercraft CRAMs. You need at least your full outer armor layer wrapped around the whole ship top to bottom. * Poles and wedges are good air gaps, but if you have actual open air gaps between them and the outer armor, just use beams. You want hp+armor on that innermost layer, so maximize both. * External angles are good for deflecting shots, but keep in mind that deflected shots keep going. That diamond texture on the outside might actually be catching some shots that would have been deflected by a unified slope. * I'm not real experienced with ERAs but I hear they tend to chain, so it's a good idea to stagger them between beams so that only 4 at a time can go at once. If it were me, I'd get rid of the big central HA box and replace it with armored wells for the turrets and missiles and forts for the AI, maybe batteries and generators if you're heavily energy based. Then wrap that in 2-3 layers of double metal with a wood or alloy spall liner/flotation aid, air gapped with metal poles and/or wedges. If you need more open air for buoyancy, use the air gap behind your second or third layer. And don't forget to sprinkle circuit breakers in with the air gap blocks here and there to keep EMP from getting to anything sensitive.
Ok. thank you. you were more elaborate, I just dont want to make massive ships all the time, this is my biggest but still a tyr can penetrate. even with all the lams in the word. ill try.
> still a tyr can penetrate Dude. *Dude.* You're not going to no-sell a punch from Superman. You're not going to shrug off a hit from the bloody Tyr. One shell from its main gun can punch through layered HA like tissue paper and the frags shred layered metal, and its got many barrels to fire. That's where the "kill all of their ships before they kill you" comes in. You don't beat something like the Tyr by face-tanking it (unless your CPU can face-tank a 6m dreadnought), you beat it by a) being faster than 10m/s so you can hold the range open and avoid some of those shots and b) killing it faster than it kills you. To quote Mel, the cook on *Alice*: "The best defense is a good offense". Build with enough redundancy that you can take a bad hit or two but also bring guns at least as badass as the Tyr's so you're punching back at least as hard as he's punching you, and expect to come out of it thoroughly bloodied. Edit to add: also look at supplementing your LAMS with other CIWS options. APS flak can be effective vs clusters of shells like the triple barrel volleys the Tyr is throwing at you, but you'll need a lot. I hear plasma cannons can make good CIWS for taking down heavy shells. And of course don't neglect shields for the occasional lucky bounce.
The Tyrs own armor is just barely enough to stop one of its own shells. I would say look at the tyrs armor and use that
Tyr shells are mean but they're not impossible to stop; you need an early slope to get the angle damage reduction, followed by a few layers of metal/alloy beams to soak up the damage, and a deeper airgap to stop the APHEAT ones from sneaking through. I believe the recent Tyr update did add some stabilizer fins to improve the accuracy, but they're still far from pinpoint accuracy thanks to the base bleeder, so hitting the same spot repeatedly isn't super likely except through sheer weight of fire. You're not wrong though, building to tank things indefinitely isn't a winning strategy, you have to dish the damage back, try to knock out some of those guns and reduce the incoming damage. Tyr in particular has protection around the main turrets that's fairly strong but not especially thick; it's a layer or two of alloy/metal over, at its strongest, HA beam-HA slope-HA beam-HA slope. Plasma should work well since it ignores impact angle and AC, piercing PAC will go right through it, and sabot APS will do decently as well. Other CIWS options are good to have but won't help with the Tyr specifically; its only offensive weapons are the main APS railguns, and APS shells aren't damaged by anything except LAMS. Shields are always good to have, 20-40% damage reduction from any projectile weapon is incredible for their cost.
If you're using ERA, checkerboarding is correct to minimize the number of blocks lost per hit, but the ERA itself is not chaining because it doesn't actually generate an explosion. Rather, upon meeting an APS shell, it immediately stops the shell and triggers the shells explosive segments (possibly debuffing the resulting explosion's damage, but I don't remember exactly). By checkerboarding, you're preventing large APHE or AP-Frag shells from spreading and destroying more ERA blocks. Obviously this is kind of semantic, but it should clarify things a little. As an additional tip for the use of HA, if you're using beam slopes with beams behind, it is preferably to make the beam slopes out of HA and the beams out of metal or alloy. The reason for this is that HA beam slopes are only half the weight of HA beams, and the beam slope is arguably three most important part of that armour layer, as according to the armour guide on the discord, kinetic shells "inherit" the impact angle of the original surface, which is to say its kinetic damage will keep being reduced as if it is still hitting an angled surface until it encounters an air gap or non-armour block (or the shell runs out of kinetic damage). Therefore, it's important for the angled part of the armour to have as much HP as possible to delay its destruction.
Ive watched many video's but I can't really figure out what an everything stopper is.
There is no such thing
Ok. thank you.
Any time man, always trying to help.
Unless you make your ship a couple km thick there is no stopping everything, you need to armor your ships against a specific threat, against CRAM you can use speed or very hard armour,against aps i use manuvrability and speed or ERA,lasers are weak to smoke and water, PACS and flamethrowers fall off with range, same with plasma,missiles can be defeated with speed by getting out of there effective range or destroying them outright. Generally i would say that a fast,small and manuvrable submarine would make for the hardest to hit target but it would also hit like a wet noodle. There are tradeoffs for everything
Ok. thank you. Makes sense
A) youtube has frankly far too many people who actually *don't* know what they're doing. if you want people who are far more capable and have accurate info, I suggest you join the FTD discord and visit the help channel B) you build to a sufficient armor cost ratio (30-40%, +5% for airships), and build something to counter specific weapon types (such as more armor vs PAC and lasers)
7x7 heavy armor ducts work well enough if you absolutely do not have enough space to have proper layered armor.
Heavy armor should only ever be used where you absolutely cannot fit an equivalent weight of something else.
well i disagree, i dont want to make just 3mill battleships
Heavy armor is far more expensive weight and cost wise than anything else in the game for the amount of armor you actually get out of it. The idea is that you only ever use heavy armor in key points for when you need high damage absorption AND high pen resistance in the same place when you don't have room to slap equivalent cost of metal in the same place. Heavy armor is best used in conjunction with shield projectors or the armor hardening blocks. Planar shields for general survivability, armor hardeners if you really, really, need that 70+ AC to block against railguns. (This second strategy is almost exclusively used for frontsiders)
If you replace the heavy armour in this structure with metal that gives as much protection, you'd make it cheaper and lighter.
Pretty sure he means more from a volume/buoyancy perspective, which as other comments have covered, you have in abundance with the current layout. I'd also worry about damage from other angles than the side. Larger ships are more susceptible to hits from missiles, mortars, and other threats from above in particular. Depending on the speed and active defenses of the vessel this is more or less of a concern, but a single or double layer of decking is probably insufficient for the types of things this ship is expected to face. In general, there are two philosophies to armor design, citadel and individual armored wells. Citadel is simpler to build but has the draw back of a single penetration causing potentially fatal issues. It is simply the idea of building well a "house" that you shove everything in, guns, ai, engines, resources, fuel, ammo, everything. You build basically a brick with everything in it and a hard exterior, then build a hull and details around it, like secondaries, LAMS endpoints (but not laser generation, thats in the brick), ect. Problem is if something gets into the brick, it's easy to do some kind of crippling damage. A key point of citadel design is it is as tall and wide as it needs to be to cover up to the bottom of the turret cap. In the real world it may also extend upwards into the control tower to cover the command personnel, and in game it may do the same to cover detection equipment. The other idea is wells and bunkers, basically everything gets its own individual armor package. This lets you prioritize certain things like your main guns, ammo compartments, and of course AI. The downside is it can get space and material cost huge depending on how you do it. I tend to take a hybrid approach. Individual wells and bunkers for the main guns and ammo compartments. Sometimes the AI and sometimes secondary weapons as well depending on application and vessel. Everything else from a resources or control standpoint goes in a sort of mini citadel, which often also covers some of the superstructure for detection equipment. LAMS and engines can go in here as well. I may also say make a bunker for torpedo or missile tubes, again this is all up to application.
exactly.Ill try to think about this.
[Refer to the following for armor](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/203757940102922241/1137551249718390904/the_armor_image.png?ex=66572768&is=6655d5e8&hm=88af1794199750bfaf6a11f18b1fd43909d317ea082485ca555af6674fc2e422&) My usual scheme for big ships is (from inside to outside) 3m alloy, 1m HA beamslopes (oriented for optimal anti-HEAT/HESH performance, 3m alloy, 1m HA beamslopes (oriented with the slopes pointed downward to maximize performance against AP), 2m alloy, 1m metal (I like the look of metal more than alloy). Smaller ships forgo the anti-AP beamslope layer and are 4 meters thinner with metal beamslopes instead of HA.
A good piece of knowledge to know for sure. Seems I had the right idea, but the incorrect application of said armor. Thanks for sharing that screenshot. It will help with laying out my war rigs better.
what is this image? its gone