Re: [ft2.5] armour v hulls

Thomas Anderson 

> right, here's a really stupid question.
> 
> why bother building ships with hulls other than fragile? for the same 
> mass as an Average hull, i can get a Fragile and a coat of armour.
this

> gives me the same amount of boxes in total, and i take thresholds
later.
> 
> or am i missing something? or, rather, what am i missing?

As the others have said, you forget that armour lets some damage through
to the hull structure - on average 17% of the sub-pack damage,
and 42% of the SML and pulse torp damage; also 17% of the beam damage if
you don't have any screens, but 21% if you have level-1 screens and
almost 29% if you have level-2 screens.

With twice as much armour as hull boxes, an SML- or pulse torp-using
opponent is pretty much guaranteed to kill your ships before they've
lost
all armour, and even a beam user has a better than even chance of
inflicting at least one treshold before the armour goes. (Unless he does
a Teske, of course - in which case you get almost no use out of the
armour!)

Having said this, however, armour *is* better than hull boxes. It should
IMO cost 3xMass (just like weapons) to reflect this.

Later,

Oerjan Ohlson
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
- Hen3ry