Revisit- Armor should have a minimum threshold for damage
This got archives some time ago, I'd like to get it back into the discussion.
Cliffs notes summary is that armor should have damage thresholds, below which certain classifications of weapons simply won't damage them. Example, you can shoot at a real life tank armor with a 9mm pistol all day and best you're going to do is scratch the paint. No appreciable damage.
This could be summarized like this:
- Anti-personnel weapons (small arms, guns, SE1-style interior turrets) damage soft targets (i.e. space engineers) and un-armored components of grids. This would mean that precise targeting would be required to hit the un-armored parts of a ship if all you have is one of these. These might do greatly reduced damage to light armor and zero damage to heavy armor.
- Light anti-ship weapons (Gatling turrets, handheld rocket launchers and similar) Full damage against light armor, reduced damage to heavy armor and extra damage to soft targets.
- Heavy anti-ship weapons (big guns). Full damage against everything, and extra damage against light and no armor, but these are (in SE1) currently too accurate. These should have reduced accuracy against smaller targets (I've actually had my space buddy picked off by heavy artillery while flying too close to an enemy grid)
The point being that each gun classification has its own strengths and weaknesses. Your heavy artillery shouldn't even bother to fire at soft targets and even if it does, it should be incredibly unlikely to hit anything small and fast. Your ship build would want anti personnel turrets for soft targets, light anti-grid weapons for smaller craft and heavy ones for big grid to grid combat.
This would also reward different types of ammo for different guns. AP ammo, High explosive, sabot, etc each with different characteristics. Is your explosive ammo contact or delayed fuse (to allow it to penetrate some armor prior to exploding around soft targets), etc. Straight high explosive ammo is less effective against heavy armor because it's exploding outside the armor for example.
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At the core, this essentially means that not all weapons should be able to damage all armor blocks. There should be some types of armor that you need heavier weapons to even scratch, but what that does is provide opportunities for more precise targeting. A tank (literally) you aren't going to hurt the main armor with lighter weapons, but you can still try to hit more vulnerable or more lightly armored areas.
At the core, this essentially means that not all weapons should be able to damage all armor blocks. There should be some types of armor that you need heavier weapons to even scratch, but what that does is provide opportunities for more precise targeting. A tank (literally) you aren't going to hurt the main armor with lighter weapons, but you can still try to hit more vulnerable or more lightly armored areas.
In SE1, you can tell your turret (or overall AI) to target specific things, like weapons or power. This could be enhanced with concepts like 'is the power subsystem behind heavy armor', lighter weapons might not even target (let's talk about whether scanning other ships should even be able to find said components through certain armors at all or do they provide signal shielding of some sort) those power components if they're behind heavy enough armor and you could setup the turret config to 'target unarmored components first' or somesuch.
In SE1, you can tell your turret (or overall AI) to target specific things, like weapons or power. This could be enhanced with concepts like 'is the power subsystem behind heavy armor', lighter weapons might not even target (let's talk about whether scanning other ships should even be able to find said components through certain armors at all or do they provide signal shielding of some sort) those power components if they're behind heavy enough armor and you could setup the turret config to 'target unarmored components first' or somesuch.
The simplest way to define minimum damage could be based on a armor block’s durability/resistance/number of hit points. A portion of the armor block’s hit points would be concentrated in the block’s shell/surface (1/4? 1/6?). This would simulate a situation where the outer layers are made of thicker material than the block’s internal structure. Blocks are predominantly “cubic” in shape, so each side of the cube would have 1/24? or 1/36? (1/6 of 1/4 or of 1/6) of the block’s total durability.
The minimum energy required to damage a block could then be defined as the energy needed to overcome the material’s resistance at the block’s surface.
As a result, large blocks would have significantly greater resistance to damage than small blocks, and a structure built from large blocks would be more durable than one built from small blocks.
For this to work in a “reasonable” way, it is necessary to define the energy of the impacting projectiles and the resistance of the armored blocks in the same “units”—most simply, in kilojoules.
If the "largest" armor block is a cube measuring 2.5 × 2.5 × 2.5 m and the "smallest" armor block is a cube measuring 0.5 × 0.5 × 0.5 m, then the largest block has a total resistance 125 times greater than that of the smallest block (the large block has a volume equal to 125 small blocks).
The surface plates of the small blocks have a total area of 125 × 6 × 0.5 × 0.5 = 187.5 m². However, the surface plates of the large block have a total area of 6 × 2.5 × 2.5 = 37.5 m².
Therefore, the large block will have a minimum energy required to cause damage that is at least 5 times higher.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
The simplest way to define minimum damage could be based on a armor block’s durability/resistance/number of hit points. A portion of the armor block’s hit points would be concentrated in the block’s shell/surface (1/4? 1/6?). This would simulate a situation where the outer layers are made of thicker material than the block’s internal structure. Blocks are predominantly “cubic” in shape, so each side of the cube would have 1/24? or 1/36? (1/6 of 1/4 or of 1/6) of the block’s total durability.
The minimum energy required to damage a block could then be defined as the energy needed to overcome the material’s resistance at the block’s surface.
As a result, large blocks would have significantly greater resistance to damage than small blocks, and a structure built from large blocks would be more durable than one built from small blocks.
For this to work in a “reasonable” way, it is necessary to define the energy of the impacting projectiles and the resistance of the armored blocks in the same “units”—most simply, in kilojoules.
If the "largest" armor block is a cube measuring 2.5 × 2.5 × 2.5 m and the "smallest" armor block is a cube measuring 0.5 × 0.5 × 0.5 m, then the largest block has a total resistance 125 times greater than that of the smallest block (the large block has a volume equal to 125 small blocks).
The surface plates of the small blocks have a total area of 125 × 6 × 0.5 × 0.5 = 187.5 m². However, the surface plates of the large block have a total area of 6 × 2.5 × 2.5 = 37.5 m².
Therefore, the large block will have a minimum energy required to cause damage that is at least 5 times higher.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
If we really want to dive into it, assuming no sloped armor adjustments, there are existing equations that are used to determine this exact point, called the Alekseevskii-Tate (or sometimes the Tate-Alekseevskii) model.
What we're talking about is basically the yield strength barrier. which is the threshold where the physical behavior of an impact shifts from standard mechanical crushing to high-energy ballistic penetration.
<nerd>
If an incoming projectile cannot generate enough localized pressure to overcome the armor material's dynamic yield strength, it enters a state of absolute defeat. Instead of gouging, cracking, or piercing the vehicle, the projectile absorbs 100% of the kinetic energy internally and destroys itself, leaving nothing but a smudge of lead or copper on the vehicle's surface.
When a small weapon hits this structural barrier, the laws of action and reaction dictate what happens next. Because the tank armor refuses to yield or move, the kinetic energy has nowhere to go but backwards into the bullet. The energy of the impact travels into the armor, hits the unyielding atomic structure, and bounces back into the bullet as a massive tensile shockwave. The softer jacket and core of the small-arms bullet immediately exceed their own yield strength. Then the bullet flattens into a pancake (mushrooms) or shatters into tiny fragments. This instantly widens the impact area, dropping the pressure even further and guaranteeing zero damage to the armor.
In this context, real armor already has these calculations performed to determine what the minimum thresholds are. In SE, we're talking about 2.5 meters of 'heavy armor', comparatively equals ~98 inches of armor, which is half again the thickest front facing modern tank armor currently. Those front facings are generally impenetrable to anti tank weapons already and it is generally considered to need to find other, vulnerable facings to damage the vehicle.
The core point being that the current methods for determining the zero damage threshold for things like tank armor still apply here and simplified logic could be used to determine those ranges for the different weapons.
Similarly, explosive damage has its own calculations vs. armor (non shaped charge). To calculate the point at which a non-shaped charge explosive (such as a High-Explosive Plastic/Squash Head round or a general blast wave) fails to damage vehicle armor, you calculate the spallation threshold and structural deformation limits rather than penetration. When an explosive detonates on armor, it sends a high-amplitude compressive shockwave through the plate that reflects off the inner wall as a tensile wave. If the net tensile stress does not exceed the material's dynamic tensile spall strength, no damage occurs inside the vehicle.
An explosive charge achieves absolute zero damage against vehicle armor when the scaled distance is high enough that peak pressure cannot initiate plastic flow on the outer surface. The internal reflected wave pressure needs to remain lower than the material's spall strength and the total blast impulse cannot exceed the critical structural threshold required to buckle or flex the hull plates.
</nerd>
If we really want to dive into it, assuming no sloped armor adjustments, there are existing equations that are used to determine this exact point, called the Alekseevskii-Tate (or sometimes the Tate-Alekseevskii) model.
What we're talking about is basically the yield strength barrier. which is the threshold where the physical behavior of an impact shifts from standard mechanical crushing to high-energy ballistic penetration.
<nerd>
If an incoming projectile cannot generate enough localized pressure to overcome the armor material's dynamic yield strength, it enters a state of absolute defeat. Instead of gouging, cracking, or piercing the vehicle, the projectile absorbs 100% of the kinetic energy internally and destroys itself, leaving nothing but a smudge of lead or copper on the vehicle's surface.
When a small weapon hits this structural barrier, the laws of action and reaction dictate what happens next. Because the tank armor refuses to yield or move, the kinetic energy has nowhere to go but backwards into the bullet. The energy of the impact travels into the armor, hits the unyielding atomic structure, and bounces back into the bullet as a massive tensile shockwave. The softer jacket and core of the small-arms bullet immediately exceed their own yield strength. Then the bullet flattens into a pancake (mushrooms) or shatters into tiny fragments. This instantly widens the impact area, dropping the pressure even further and guaranteeing zero damage to the armor.
In this context, real armor already has these calculations performed to determine what the minimum thresholds are. In SE, we're talking about 2.5 meters of 'heavy armor', comparatively equals ~98 inches of armor, which is half again the thickest front facing modern tank armor currently. Those front facings are generally impenetrable to anti tank weapons already and it is generally considered to need to find other, vulnerable facings to damage the vehicle.
The core point being that the current methods for determining the zero damage threshold for things like tank armor still apply here and simplified logic could be used to determine those ranges for the different weapons.
Similarly, explosive damage has its own calculations vs. armor (non shaped charge). To calculate the point at which a non-shaped charge explosive (such as a High-Explosive Plastic/Squash Head round or a general blast wave) fails to damage vehicle armor, you calculate the spallation threshold and structural deformation limits rather than penetration. When an explosive detonates on armor, it sends a high-amplitude compressive shockwave through the plate that reflects off the inner wall as a tensile wave. If the net tensile stress does not exceed the material's dynamic tensile spall strength, no damage occurs inside the vehicle.
An explosive charge achieves absolute zero damage against vehicle armor when the scaled distance is high enough that peak pressure cannot initiate plastic flow on the outer surface. The internal reflected wave pressure needs to remain lower than the material's spall strength and the total blast impulse cannot exceed the critical structural threshold required to buckle or flex the hull plates.
</nerd>
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