Invincible ships?

Hi all,
I’ve just tried SAC and NEC challenge. And… my fleet was decimated. All my lasers and plasma just show “No Effect”.
Are they using modded ships? Their ships seem to be invincible!

there called tanks, as far as my knowledge is you cant make a ship invincible

Some people will use ships loaded with enough armor to be nearly immune to any vanilla module. The only way to penetrate is the small (3%) chance of scoring a lucky shot.

Wow this is interesting!
I want to try make ones. So, all I have to do is just to add lots of armor?
But doesn’t make sense. Wouldn’t putting more armor mean that the armor would still be chipped away, only last longer?

I have just created a tank.
So far I haven’t found the best design for it. Still as not effective as my normal cruisers.
How many armor stack to be considered as tank?

Correct; in terms of onboard weaponry, such cruisers are not intended to be combat-effective. Indeed, to get the full benefit of the armor-tanking effect you don’t want them to be combat-effective. Why? Because many of the best armor-tank cruisers are actually built as a mostly-empty hull, with only one offensive weapon to draw aggro from the enemy; minimal crew and power; only 2 or 3 engines at most (whatever’s just barely enough to maintain fleet speed with the rest of your formations); then you add as many of the strongest armor plates available in order to get your average armor resistance over 73.

The reason why you want a mostly-empty hull is because the more NON-ARMOR modules you add, the lower your armor resistance drops. That’s because there are now more items present, and that armor resistance is calculated as an average that’s divided across the total number of non-armor modules on board. So you see why you cannot have a combat-effective armor-tank cruiser – every additional weapon, every additional shield, every additional crew compartment and power generator beyond the absolute minimum is diluting the armor defense, due to that resistance being averaged by the total number of modules that aren’t armor.

I know the concept may seem a little wacky and therefore be a tad hard for some folks to grasp when they’re still new to GSB; to say it’s not very intuitively grasped is an understatement. :slight_smile: But it’s a crucial part of the game and one which heavily affects whether you live or die.

Are you referring to the extra “ARMOURBOOST” bonus value that some hulls (Alliance ships, mainly) enjoy as a built-in benefit, or just the average armor resistance value? Regardless, the answer is: whatever means necessary to get your average armor resistance up above 73. The cruiser Proton Beam weapon has the highest armor penetration value in the game (73), so you need to have your ship’s armor resistance number reach and exceed 73. If you can accomplish that, the effect of all weapons-fire will be a 97% chance of “No Effect,” and only a 3% chance of a lucky shot that actually causes armor damage.

Remember that cumulative armor damage isn’t just slowly lowering the actual amount of armor aboard your ship…it’s also slowly lowering the armor resistance value, too! That means your (for example) 74 is being steadily sandpapered down to 73, then 72, 71, etc. Every lowering of that armor resistance means your overall armor state is inexorably lowering to the point where additional cruiser beam laser-type and fusion beam-type weapons’ armor penetration ability can now lay down some serious hurt onto you. So a player can feel free to laugh for a while at the ineffective nature of the enemy attack, but every one of those infrequent-at-first lucky shots that does hit is also contributing to your armor-tank ship’s eventual demise.

The above is just a short summary of the entire armor-tanking mechanic in GSB. There has been a great deal written about it over the years by many other players. Determined use of this forum’s Search feature will uncover more info on the subject. For now, you’ve got the overall concept; good luck. :slight_smile:

i wish i could make shield tanks but fighters would get the best of me

That doesn’t quite work, as the resistance has no stack. The only possible way for a shield tank is a modded module with >55 shield resistance.

I also notice a “shield stability” bar, and often see weaponry bypass shields (only missiles so far)

Thank you for your kind explanation ^^
You’ve got me tickled to try the tank design again.
Let me try.
Btw, from where can I see that number 97?

97? You mean 73? Armor Resistance is in the stat tab on the ship design screen.

I like to put and EMP cannon and painter on my tanks to neutralise some enemy ships and set them up for missile attacks from me while they can’t fire.

Hmmmmm. Since neither of those “weapons” inflicts any damage to targets, I am unsure that you can successfully draw enemy aggro to your armor-tank cruisers. The lack of that eliminates a great deal of the usefulness of tanks; drawing aggro towards them is a lot more valuable than just having a cruiser which can say, “i have a very useful yet annoying [ :slight_smile: ] weapons loadout and it’s behind a ton of excellent defense”. That’s not to say that the systems you mentioned aren’t helpful; rather, those systems are good to have at least a few of somewhere in your formation, but I believe that it’s hurting your strategy if you place them (and no other offensive firepower) aboard your tanks.

How patronising.
I don’t intend for them to draw fire. They very useful for shoving enemy ships around the map - set the engagement distance to minimum. A ship disabled by an EMP cannon and unable for move extended periods dies quickly. If they aren’t drawing fire they can do this for the whole battle.
That said, they still get destroyed from time to time so they must draw fire.

Point defence is able to generate aggro, so I think EMP and painter are able to!
The only problem is if the enemy is ordered to “retaliate”…

A shield tank in GSB is the same kind of tank that in MMO => LOT of shield point to take an high punishment…

Missile can’t pass trough the shield, put a fighter with a short range missile launcher under a shield and you will see the missile explode instantly went fired (and hit the shield BTW).

And how abrasive of you. I never intimated that your preferred tank usage was a reflection upon you personally, even though you felt free to intimate that me calling attention to another tactical style was somehow a reflection upon me.

When I wrote “i have a very useful yet annoying [ :slight_smile: ] weapons loadout and it’s behind a ton of excellent defense,” it’s clear from the context (and the emoticon) that I meant annoying for the enemy – I certainly wasn’t writing that as a slur upon you, mate, but as a compliment. It’s unfortunate that you interpreted an alternate point-of-view as being patronised; that was never my intent.

It seems one of your mods would disagree. As you know, there was only one enemy attacker.

Error!
The actual weapons is under the shield ^^

The slot position is under the shield but the hardpoint is on the ship.

I’m not quite sure what you mean by that.

I have seen many ships, especially vanilla, destroyed by frigate/cruiser weaponry, without the shields ever failing.

It’s like the Grand Goremaul

As you can see, the weapons circle is far away from it’s location on the ship.
In the case of beam weapons, if the circle in below the shield, it bypass it.

True and false at the same time.
If you are outside of a shield bubble, you can’t damage the ship below with a few exceptions:
1)If you use radiation weapons that can damage the shield, the enemy don’t have any armour, there is a chance that the radiation effect directly hit the hull
2)If the ship use multiple shield generator, there is a big chance that one of them “fall” before the other. If there is 4 generator on the ship and one of them run out of shield point, any weapons able to damage the remaining shield will see 1/4 of is damages (on average) striking the hull/armour (3/7 if there is 3 shield gen out of 7 ; 5/29 if there is 5 shield out of 29…)