The actual protection value of average armor seems to be lower than the listed amount.
I’m using a large enough set of trials that crits aren’t throwing things off, and I’m observing the armor health as I go through with things. Single plate of armor when possible to avoid diminishing returns (which don’t seem to have any mathematical effect to begin with outside of the module divisor).
At first I thought it was a hull bonus not being applied, but I’ve switched to neutral rebel hulls and I’m getting the same effect, on multiple maps.
I’m testing against the cruiser laser, a 15 penetration weapon. The actual penetration appears to be between 17.5(penetration) and 18(deflect) average value on a cruiser.
Similarly, 16.67 armor on a frigate is insufficient to stop a quantum blaster of penetration 14.
Those are the crits, i believe. How do large trails get rid of those, exactly? If you didnt have them, and armour penetration was like shield, you could make invincible ships, with over the max armour pen a weapon has. Ive made them, and they do die.
Additionally, the Deployment screen stat mouseover does not calculate hull/racial bonuses, including tribe hitpoints.
They aren’t. Crits don’t happen every shot.
This is a mechanics/interface problem, not a balance issue. The crit system is already in place to prevent unkillable craft, that is not a concern here.
You can make an ‘invincible ship’ outside of crits, but as this thread suggests, the value of the average hull armor and weapon penetration do not line up and you need to overshoot the threshold value by a large amount. 87+ average armor is sufficient to stop the basic red cruiser beam (while 70, the listed penetration, is not), until crits bring the craft below threshold.