armor differences

C

Chernikov

Spaceman
This has probably been covered, but is there a thread somewhere that covers the differences in armor notation? 'Claw (strike carrier) with a piddling 24 cm, then the Concordia with 600 (!) and finally the Ranger class (oldest in the fleet, with 1000 cm of armor)

I remember something about equivalency and a new material from somewhere, but IIRC it was only .1CM = 1CM or something like that, not enough to explain why an escort carrier from the good old days has at least 4 times the armor of an assault carrier.
 
New material is correct -- isometal (for example) is 60 times as strong as plain old durasteel.
 
Presumably, even the oldest ships in the fleet were given a new layer of armour... that's gotta be cheaper than building a new ship, after all.

Actually, it's a funny thing about the Concordia. She does actually have 500cm worth of shields in the game (note: for shields, any value over 100 will count as phase shields), but she's only got 77.5 centimetres of armour. This confuses me to no end - I mean, I know they changed some stats in the game to make it more balanced, but that's a pretty vast change.

But then, if the Kamekh had 300cm of armour as the manual says, we'd suffer...
 
Really Q, jeeze, the Connie is supposed to be invincible, I would think that they would allow her to have those 600, I mean a Kamekh is only a corvete class so shouldn;t a Dreadnought have better armor? Does this mean that it would take fewer torpedoes to take out the Connie in comparison to lets say an of the kilrathi cap ships?
 
I think you misunderstood, Napoleon. By making the note about the Kamekh, I was actually sorta implying that all WC2 capships have significantly lower armour values in the game. As for how the Concordia compares with Kilrathi capships, she's got the best shields, bar none (everybody else has 100 or less). Her armour is better than a Ralatha (35/35/30), but weaker than the Fralthra (85/85/85). What is most amusing, however, is the fact that the fabled K'tithrak Mang has the same armour level as a Kamekh - 20/20/18. That means that if it didn't have phase shields, it'd be inferior to the starbase we destroyed in Venice :).
 
As it is, with armour differences being so drastic between games, we'll be setting up capship shields/armour to take a certain number of torpedo hits, and we will take a bit of liberty (but try to keep the ship durability in proportion to ships of the same size and/or same time period).

For instance, the Gilgamesh-class would be much weaker than the Fralthra, a little weaker than the Ralatha, and only slightly stronger than the Exeter. Bengal-class (we will make no distinction between 625m, 690m, and 700m models), would fall quite a bit short of the Concordia in firepower, but almost match it in durability, and have superior evasion. All WC1 capships will be outfitted with antimatter cannons.

For fighters, to allow decent balancing, we will give everything from WC1-2 and Privateer WC3-strength armor, making no serious difference (actually what we do is use a conversion algorithm between WC's CM and XWA's SBD and RU...and we just add in a large division for the WC3 armour). It makes things interesting chasing down Thunderbolts in a Raptor...

Oh, and btw...I've seen the Concordia suffer -two- torpedos and live...and the reason the manual says 300cm for the Kamekh is because it also says phase shields, and the armor values listed for phase shield ships are automatically inflated. Of course it doesn't have them, though. :)
 
Still, with the 60 times strength difference of isometal the old Ranger class still carries equivalent armor to the Bengal class, as well as far better shielding. Isometal lighter as well?

and what are weapons sudden ability to punch through shields attributed to in WC3?
 
it was attributed to more powerful weapons. and, if you think about it, to punch through armour 60 times as strong, youre going to need some MUCH more powerful weaponry, so its not surprising if it punches through shields
 
There was a quantitative increase in the firepower of fighter based weapons that shielding technology did not increase equally with untill sometime inbetween '73 and '81 when once again fighter based weapons could not punch through capital ship shielding
 
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