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.

A major limitation of armor is that it may only be repaired in a shipyard or hangar.

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, the penetration depth is equal to the square root of the total damage. For Railguns and Particle Beams the penetration is equal to the square root of twice the damage, and for Lasers the penetration is equal to the square root of triple the damage.

While those penetration equations hold for lesser damage levels, extremely high-powered lasers are prone to penetrating several levels deeper than the square root of triple their damage.