Tritanium armor idea

[lime dome]

I have a few ideas I'd like to propose, and depending on feedback I may try my hand at modding some.

A specific use for tritanium armor, instead of just "better armor that's more expensive"

Have it be half-blocks. Can be 1 wide, 2 wide, corners, like we have with regular armor, but all of them only half of a block deep.

Have it only attachable on the one main side. Meaning you can't stack them directly or other things directly on them. You can get creative to layer them with bigger structures of other parts, but the balance is the volume of space needed to do that.

Probably start with it being the same hit points as the regular armor. Maybe more pen resistance, but it needs something unique I feel. Better against explosive damage, or possibly laser types? Not sure.

On top of creating a unique building element being an armor block with an effective exclusion zone, aesthetically it would be nice to have a half-depth piece, and I imagine someone can come up with a cool texture

Extra extra idea, have alloy armors that behave this way (the half block, one side attachment thing) but have different metal combinations give it different bonuses.

Maybe like:

Tritanium steel alloy - explosion resistance
Copper steel alloy - emp/disruptor resistance
Uranium steel alloy - pen resistance
Sulphur steel combo - reactive armor that destroys projectiles in a cone when hit as a one off
High carbon steel - HP boost

Hmm okay I really like this one... opens a lot of doors and I don't think it'd be too hard to balance

[lunar moth]

Armour is already emp resistant and has no energy for Eb's to deal energy damage to, destroying projectiles in a cone sounds underwhelming and extra hp from carbon depending on the bonus will be too powerful or weak that regular armour does better

armour is also fairly explosion/ penetation resistant,

[main swan]

I dont like the idea of many different armor pieces that a resistant to different things. Its just really hard to balance and you dont get much out of it

I really like the halve armor with different stats but I think its flawed.
For consistencies sake youd also need to add them with structure attached? That would encourage uncreative designt again.
And even without structure people would still figure out the optimal pattern and just use that.

[lunar moth]

Similar to spaced armour

[lime dome]

Yeah I'm not intimately familiar with all the bonuses... I probably should be...

As for reactive armor, negating the first hit and possibly all projectiles within say 5 meters is pretty powerful. Think of it as a railfan counter, or missile barrages... and that usefulness on small ships in particular. I would have it ignore say nukes (explode before actually hitting the armor in theory, so the initial damage happens but still damages/destroys the other projectiles)

Health boost can be balanced. The likely result is that it would be often used as an "outer layer" - might as well get the extra toughness out of that last line, if you can spare the cash.

I'm just trying to think of ways to expand gameplay beyond the rock-paper-scissors a bit

[teal coyote]

You could also have diamond plated armor, with not only being insanely strong and costly, but could also have an additional effect where ions would reflect off of it

[lime dome]

Or possibly part of the damage at least, that would be cool.

Kind of a "my ship specializes against X attack type" feel. I suppose you could use multiple in different places, explosive resistance for the side where HEs like hit, beam reflection for the front, etc

[lunar moth]

Specialising specifically against X is what makes RGB type fights more prevailant

Because if you aren't against who is weak to what you designed, you will be disadvantaged, and will be at the advantage against whatever is weak against what you brought

The railfan example you used, for example, it's an automatic rock against scissors when against the Railfans for any brick with that armour

If it wasn't underwhelming that is

[lime dome]

sure, but having counters you can use in conjunction for rock, paper, and scissors alleviates that. Rock, paper, and scissors are going to stay, so give everyone several of each - if you show up with all rocks, and someone with all scissors, sure that still applies. But if I show up with 2 of each, what happens?

[lunar moth]

Currently the meta isn't RGB, there's a lot of leeway, and it's mostly decided by design and piloting, some designs may do better against other certain designs, for example railfan against Pd wall, or ion kite against armour deck brick,
If you re-enforce Pre-determinant features against 1 certain design, such as multiple choices of separate armours, that just means you'll have 5 of the exact same design and the difference is the armour when you know what your opponent brings,

[lime dome]

Your opponent then brings some of several things so you can't block out all of them.

Right now if I know you're bringing X in advance I can already bring Y counter. Mixed specializations needs to be more viable to reduce the amplitude of the pattern