Armor

This article is about the ship component. For a discussion of defensive systems, see Armour and Shields.

Description

Armor is used for the outer hull of all ships. All ships carry at least one layer of armor. PDCs get an additional 5 layers of armor for free.

Usage

Armor is the basic passive defense, represented in Aurora as a grid of armor cells. The height of the grid is determined by the armor rating of the ship, whereas the count of columns is determined by the number of components the armor must cover. Incoming fire destroys cells of armor instead of the internal components of the ship. Every larger ship needs some form of armor to survive. The most important quality for armor to have is thickness, as a ship does not need to be completely stripped of armor for damage to pass through to the internal components underneath.

Armor does not protect against Mesons and High-Powered Microwaves, nor does it help against the effects of Shock Damage.

Larger ships get thicker armor for the same percentage of armor, representing that the surface area grows slower than the internal volume of the ship. The first few levels of armor tech also benefit civilian constructions as it reduces the mass used on their single armor layer, although this gets negligible with better armor tech.

Variants

Armor

Type	Conventional	Duranium	High Density Duranium	Composite	Ceramic Composite	Laminate Composite	Compressed Carbon	Biphase Carbide	Crystalline Composite	Superdense	Bonded Superdense	Coherent Superdense	Collapsium
Strength per HS	2	5	6	8	10	12	15	18	21	25	30	36	45
RP cost	250	500	2,500	5,000	10,000	20,000	40,000	80,000	150,000	300,000	600,000	1,250,000	2,500,000

Penetration Mechanics

Armor is penetrated when a column of armor is completely damaged. The way in which this damage is applied varies by the type of weapon causing it. For missiles and carronades, this damage is distributed in an inverse triangle with a step height of 1, whereas for beam weapons (excluding the carronade) the step height is 3. In the graphic below, the missile damage template is shown at left and the beam template at right.

The numbers correspond to the damage needed to destroy a given cell of armor in a single strike. For example, a single hit delivering 1 damage would destroy only cell 1, whereas a 9-damage strike would destroy cells 1 through 9. Damage is applied using the following rules:

• Damage is applied to the lowest reachable armor layer first, if possible.
• If applying damage to a lower cell would exceed the template's step height, the same check is performed against the higher layers.
• If no additional depth is possible, the width of the strike is expanded by one cell.
• When expanding the width of the strike, the cell closest to the point of impact is used.

Observing these rules using the missile template as an example, the damage is first applied to the central cell, then points 2 and 3 expand the width of the strike as going deeper would result in a step height greater than the template limit. When both have been filled in, progressing to the next layer in point 4 is possible. For the next layer of damage, point 5 immediately makes point 6 available underneath it due to points 1 and 2 lying above it. Point 9, however, is not possible until the same process has repeated on the right side of the template.

With the beam template, the greater step height allows the initial application to progress to point 3, at which time points 4 and 5 are necessary to expand width. Since with both 4 and 5 present the step height of the central column is reduced to 2, point 6 may be applied centrally before 7 and 8 are again used to expand width. After point 12, the width must be expanded again but progresses down one side to a depth of six rows due to the preexisting support of the central strike.