Armor is it that big of a deal

Form the Combat Mechanics post, I'm getting that Armor, is a big deal. That post said that the effect of armor, is equal to an 5% increase in hull point, and an 5% increae in hull repair rate. Even with all the upgrades, you could never get an increase of over 40%, while a ship with 9 points of armor, would get 45% increase easy.

I would look into that post, as it has other bits of info.

AS a general rule, the upgrades to ships are usually not as useful as simply getting more ships, and usually only should be seriously looked at when upgrading your fleet capacity gets too costly (aside from the first levels of hull and shields, which cost no metal at all and are quite cheap, they can sometimes feel worth it, at least to me). You'll likely find
this and interesting read, though, since homefleet mentioned it.

But anyway, armor matters the most, to me, when you're heavily using Repair Platforms or ships that repair the hulls of other ships. Since repair abilities repair straight up hull points, regardless of armor, ships with higher armor gain more from these abilities, since their hitpoits simply count for more. So paying points to armor under these circumstances, at least to me, makes sense.

TEC also, being very heavy on armor and hull but not so much in shields have a good amount to gain from armor. The strikecraft as well of all the factions have no shields, so getting some armor can help somewhat, although due to their overall frailty, having one or two more armor points usually won't help a unit that starts with just 70hp to begin with.

But usually, more ships outperform better ships for the cost, so that should be kept in mind.

Redmaw good post , I actually always went the shield route but I never thought of it the way you say, Im going to re-prioritize certain things next game now.

Does armor really also increase the hull repair rate by 5%? Didn't know it had any effect on the repair rate.

It doesn't actually help the repair rate, but it helps each HP you repair be worth more.

DISCLAIMER: I'm not going to do the math for exactly what armor does for you against a certain weapon. The following is only for the sake of example and should not be taken to apply to any situation!

Let's say you have a ship with 3 armor. It's getting whacked for 10 damage a shot. If it has 400 HP, after 40 shots (plus whatever it's regenned during the battle), it's dead.

Now you do a lot of armor research. It has 8 armor. Suddenly it's getting hit for 5 damage a shot now. It'll take 80 shots plus regenerated health to kill it. It doesn't actually have any more hit points, but the hit points it does have are going to be twice as hard to get rid of.

If you have a repair ship nearby, it will still repair for the same 20 health per second. But since you're taking half the damage due to heavier armor, your repair ship is effectively repairing you twice as fast. Each HP counts for more.


A high-level Kol battleship with max armor and shield regeneration can actually jump into the middle of a medium-sized fleet, start firing in all directions, and regenerate as fast as it's taking damage. It's a beautiful sight.

there's a difference between hull and armor.

hull --> overall HP and HP regen

Armor --> Reduction in damage taken

generally, i perfer shield upgrades.

Honestly the shield upgrades are good against everything but Vasari(the PHASE MISSLE SWARMS ). But if you have a choice between a new ship and an expensive upgrade go for the ship unless you have a huge fleet.

Armor gives your ship an EFFECTIVE regeneration rate increase.

Here's an example (not real numbers).

Carrier without any armor takes 100 damage of its 800 points. It regenerates one point for second, so it takes 100 seconds to completely heal.

Carrier now has armor upgrade. The same salvo that did 100 points of damage now only does 95 points of damage. So now it only take 95 seconds to completely heal.

-- Retro

Redmaw, research upgrades are more effective that most people give them credit for. Don't forget, you can upgrade at the same time as you build more ships, and the upgrades are forever -- a ship once destroyed, is gone forever.

I think this is far more true of weapons upgrades than of armor, although it's true for both. The trick is waiting until you have a big enough fleet that a weapons upgrade increases your fleet's DPS more than buying ships with that money. Armor upgrades are more useful because a weapon upgrade will only help certain ships, whereas armor upgrades help everything.

Largely but not always true. If you have to split your fleet to defend on two fronts, a damage upgrade helps on both of them. A new ship can only help on one of the two fronts.

Plus upgrades to hangar craft defenders come with some weapon upgrades. Don't forget to lump those in.

-- Retro

In my opinion, armor is great, i usually get it right after my first small fleet (the pirate-killing one that goes in front of your colony ships). If you think about it, armor increases the survivability of all your ships , so the sooner you get it the more you save in the long run. I think just getting more ships instead is really short-sighted.

Where is that exactly? I looked in the other forums and I didn't see a pinned post that seemed to reference Combat Mechanics. A link to it would be nice, since I'm still trying to figure out exactly what all the different values do.

I like armor as TEC, because of the basic damage reduction ( as noted by devessi above ).

It works out very well when you're facing numerous small ships. Each doing 10 points of damage. a 5 point per hit reduction is pretty damn good. Evan 2 or 3 points helps a lot. I go for the armor/health/hull/shield upgrades before weapons, since they tend to grant all my ships a bonus.

Should you get the upgrades at the expense of your fleet ? If it means I get 25 cobalts versus 30, then yes. If it means I get 5 cobalts instead of 10, then no.

Combat Mechanics

Something else to keep in mind is that shield's repair quicker then hull - hence doing something to minimise how quickly the hull is destroyed = a ship that is back to 100% health quicker!!!