Armour 101 - Armour Tutorial, From the Depths

[@BorderWise12]

Time Stamps: 0:00 - Ze Beginning 0:45 - Ze Basic Armour Formula 2:12 - Structural Block Overview 3:12 - Intermission: A Very Brief Note on ERA 3:52 - 'True' Structural Material Rundown 15:10 - 'False' Structural Material Rundown 21:57 - Structural Efficiency Formula Explanation 23:00 - Ze Structural Efficiency Formula 24:03 - Intermission: Bonus Beam Health 25:08 - Structural Efficiency Rankings 27:46 - Intermission: The Goshawk and Other Flying Bricks 31:14 - Intermission: Stone & HA Compartments 35:18 - Intermission: A Very Brief Note on Metal/Alloy Plates 36:49 - Full Structural Efficiency Rankings! 38:34 - Air Makes Good Armour! 42:17 - Air Gaps and HEAT Shells 48:40 - A Brief Note On HESH 49:30 - Sloped Armour! 51:27 - Slope Damage Reduction Formula 54:27 - Limits of Slopes

[@VeneficusCubes]

Rubber has two jobs BorderWise, two It has 2/3 of a radar profile of light alloy, which itself has half of radar profile of metal. I have build sub with rubber as outside armor layer, and it had detection radius of 100m Considering that torpedoes easily have range in Kilometers, that was a ghost.

[@DareBearWerner]

@@VeneficusCubes yet the game options forces a 10% detection chance no matter what it doesnt matter anyway unless you change that in the misc settings, because my Submarine can shoot down at 300m depth and 2k range a flying aircraft going +100m/s without much problem, i mean yeah sure only 1 out of 10 shots hit with only a snooper detection. Also the Pequod DW Submarine can shoot at your submarine that is basically invisible at 2km range with maybe 200-50m Error of detection.

[@fallenshaw5659]

I'm watching in `1991 and need lottery numbers :)

[@fallenshaw5659]

Actually metal and Alloy plating do have uses very good uses too. They reduce drag, and thus increase a crafts overall speed and also are very boyant.

[@afox5319]

Hey I was wondering if you forgot about reducing shrapnel damage from hesh by adding wood to the armor stack. If I remember correctly the shrapnel will be weaker if you have a wood on the most inner part of the armor stack. I always add a layer of wood to reduce shrapnel damage

[@Lathland]

2:04 Ah, rail juice, the only juice you should have for a balanced FtD breakfast.

[@beans-boi1714]

Hello lathland

[@beans-boi1714]

How do you make from the depths look so easy lathland

[@Benjamin-du6kr]

I drink it in my Khorneflakes

[@_tyrannus]

Glad to see you here, from what you said in your last video (space station build) I'm sure you'll learn some things, like glass being weirdly decent nowadays. I would love to see the station in your campaign, a literal glass cannon.

[@Cheesecannon25]

@@beans-boi1714 spending lots of time building and studying other craft (even outside FTD)

[@acceptablecasualty5319]

I hate-love this game, because as soon as I get my vehicle done, I learn there's a 10x better way of doing what I engineered it to do.

[@guvyygvuhh298]

I hate-love this game bcz every time I finish a 100h project it gets outdated and obsoleted in the next patch

[@Kingofspades-fc1nt]

I hate-love this game cause I love to make things work but what I make hates to work.

[@ILKOSTFU]

Yess!!!

[@ximumn2738]

I hate-love this game because I have to pick between functional and good-looking builds - can’t have both.

[@xander6872]

my exact problem lol, thats why im here.

[@drunkengibberish1143]

You tubers: Wood and metal are good because they are material efficient. Me: Hehe, Lightweight alloy and Heavy armour go *CLANG*

[@PeterBarnes2]

Heavy Armor is more material efficient if you can make it float. The Health*AC/Mat value is much better.

[@settratheimperishable4093]

@@PeterBarnes2 it really isn't though. Heavy armour is *five times* more expensive than metal and five layers of metal is a hell of a lot sturdier than one layer of heavy armour. I don't really use it as much since the armour changes since its primary use was insane armour stacking (aka making a few layers of metal have as much AC as Heavy Armour)

[@PeterBarnes2]

@@settratheimperishable4093 ​ You say metal is sturdier, but the k-value would disagree. Health*AC (this corresponds to the value Damage*AP for a kinetic shell to destroy the block). Dividing by material cost, as I mentioned before, I think heavy armor is 3000, metal is 2800, and applique is 3400. I will grant that this metric gives a marginal result here, perhaps. You could maybe make an argument that having more blocks is better because you'd need to destroy more individual blocks to remain functional. That relies on their being inefficient at destroying blocks, though, which might not be the case with decent cram. (I think Borderwise's Iowa Insp. vs. Staalslang video indicates this to a degree.) It is marginal though. 2800 and 3000 are reasonably close together. Metal is lighter, and that is important with ships and planes. Tanks, of course, should be Heavy Armor spam: weight is meaningless because wheels are cool like that, volume is important both if you're playing on Ashes and because tanks are best when smaller, and very thick armor is difficult to build a good wheel configuration around. Maybe I've just been working on tanks too long.

[@rickvandam3238]

And then there is me who builds a giant hole between 1 metal block an the middle

[@flazerrazer2992]

@@PeterBarnes2 you can make it float with just an air pump if its large enough

[@blitzkriger2371]

It is so during to hear someone say "f you're not seeing this in 2021 then greetings from the past" Insinuating that we live past this year

[@frankwelling9491]

A small suggestion for your formula: rather than using absolute values, use relative values. What I mean by that is rather then taking for instance just the health value, you take the health of a block and dived it by the health value of heavy armor (biggest number). This way you get a number between 0 and 1 for every category. In your current formula health is weighed a lot heavier than for instance weight because the numbers go higher. This correction gives you the benefit of weighing high health the same as low weight. So you would substitute just the health by: (Health/Health_heavy_armor) and do the same for the other factors in you equation. You could even add a correction factor to every value again for instance you might think EMP drainage is particularly important and multiply it by 1,2 to reflect that. Al together for health that would look like: (Health*Correction_factor/Health_heavy_armor). If you include it in you equation it might allow you to generate a number that better reflects you feelings on the blocks (not perfectly of course). Anyway, can you tell I like numbers?

[@BorderWise12]

I can tell you like numbers more than I do. XD Good point, I'll try my formula with that sometime and see what we get.

[@BorderWise12]

Ok, just tried that formula and it does not work well. It just means that HA gets the highest score, and far more commonly used materials get unrealistically low scores. So good thought, but nope. 😅

[@frankwelling9491]

@@BorderWise12 Was worth a shot

[@BorderWise12]

@@frankwelling9491 Yup yup.

[@williammanning5066]

@@BorderWise12 the trick is to *start* with uniform 0-1 values, then scale each of them based on how important you think they should be, rather than relying on the arbitrary relative scaling of health vs weight. You can also curve things more easily when they're in the 0-1 range, by applying an exponent. For example, raising a score to the 2nd power means that it doesn't have a "good" score until it gets fairly close to 1, instead of a plain linear increase. On the other hand, an exponent of 0.5 means that it will get a pretty good score as soon as it gets out of the low end of the range.

[@Inglonias]

Due to a foul up involving a laptop and a time machine, I am watching this in the year 1892. Please send help.

[@Aereto]

I was expecting a hot tub time machine, but it will have to do.

[@Attaxalotl]

I am watching this in 2019! Judging by how this guy sounds it seems that 2020 will be good!

[@evilbadger34]

Sorry, help can only arrive in at most 129 years from your time. Good luck!

[@saltaiaw]

@@evilbadger34 He'll be dead by now, shame.

[@saltaiaw]

I'm from 2021! I made it! I mean uhh everythings great! Hey, you know what's cool? Washing your hands, yh, it's a fad thing here, the new hip thing on the streets but maybe you get good at it before 2020 just to get ahead of the curve. Oh also masks are super in fashion so maybe shop around or you'll look silly. Good luck! uhh not that you'll need it! no worldwide pandemic or anything here!

[@SephirothRyu]

Borderwise: Sinking is bad for a ship. Lathix: **laughs in Oathbreaker** (for those wondering, its his modified paladin from an adventure run recently. he set it up so that it sinks when he reverses. It has harpoons on it, so he used it to drag a scarlet dawn flier under water while blasting it with a bow-mounted PAC when it tried to resist).

[@BorderWise12]

And that is why there are very few hard and fast rules in FtD, only guidelines. XD

[@brighteyezljusoga3381]

Literally woke up after an intense play-session yesterday. Relizing I had to improve upon my armour designs I began searching the internet. I found an article on the steam workshop. Managed to read half of it before relizing that BorderWise, literally 10 min earlier, posted a video on the exact matter. Great video! Keep up the good work, it means a lot to the community, especially us new players. Thanks!

[@UnderTrack_]

30:00 I say appliqué because I'm french and "appliqué" means "applied" or in this case "slapped on" which makes sense to me but it's up to you ngl

[@_tyrannus]

I don't even learn that much from your tutorials, but setting out to explain the basics with easy to understand examples is a major service to our small community, so I watch and like them all. Maybe it wouldn't have been so small with decent documentation earlier on, I know it almost put me off several times, perhaps worse than the old ugly and dysfunctional UI. It's sad to have most game mechanics largely undocumented apart from your videos and Steam/Reddit, as the wiki is often years out of date and the in-game documentation is lackluster. I really love all the recent changes and I think the game is finally maturing somewhat, but I don't understand how Brilliant Skies intend to convince more people to join who haven't had the chance to familiarize with features as they were introduced. No one should ever need to browse through the entire changelog of a game they purchased in order to understand it. There should perhaps be a way for players to contribute to the in-game tutorials in order to provide much needed real examples to new players, rather than just which part does what on its own, and a clear explanation of scaling effects for various systems, which has been some of the most evasive info to find up-to-date in my experience. I believe they would do right to reach out to the community and organize something to make it so as little alt-tabbing as possible is required. As the game features stabilize, I hope this is what they focus their efforts on.

[@BorderWise12]

Yeah, it's a bummer that so much of what you need to know to get good at this game is not easily contained within the game itself.

[@_tyrannus]

@@BorderWise12 You've nailed it. As a Linux user, I'm afraid this exact same issue plagues the success of a lot of good software.

[@danyael777]

Hear, hear! Very well put, good sir.

[@_tyrannus]

Well, I did learn something so far : I'd been wondering for quite some time where the window panels had gone. ^^'

[@guvyygvuhh298]

Saying the old UI was ugly is a blasphemy Loved the old UI, it was unique and had some character The new UI is just generic, bland and it looks like shit

[@SuwinTzi]

Slopes greatly reduce kinetic dmg cause of the formula, but tend to have less health than equivalent beams. So putting beams on spinblocks and angling them slightly now lets you take advantage of slopes vs kinetic shells while still having the HP to back it up.

[@BrokenLifeCycle]

Doesn't that also tend to cheese the game a bit?

[@SuwinTzi]

@@BrokenLifeCycle more than the other various flavors of cheese currently in game? Not imo.

[@dodobird679]

@@SuwinTzi not a 100% better solution in my experience, as tying it to a single spin block means that large chunks of armor can be knocked off with a single shot, so spinblock armoring makes vehicles substantially better armored from certain directions, but is much weaker when attacked from any other direction. Not too much of an issue for long range craft, but a terrible quality to have for close range brawlers. Don't quote me on this, but pretty sure spinblock armor doesnt get bouses from shield rings either

[@redeemerofthesun]

Your videos are my key to peeling back the layers of this game. Dear, god.

[@Galvin09670]

Tank Nerds! I really think it's amazing how well the Devs have implemented armor similar to its real-life properties, it makes the game really unique for that reason.

[@NUCLEARxREDACTED]

I use truss blocks to hang beams on the side of my ship down into the water. I then use the truss blocks to stick out a few blocks underwater then stick on some thin metal panels. Sense they are mostly empty space it adds little drag to the ship. Then if any torpedoes make it past your anti torpedo measures they hit those panels and explode a few meters away from your hull. Its one time tell repaired again but its can really make the difference even against fairly beefy torpedoes.

[@AlShalPerish]

I just discovered the goshawk a few hours before this was uploaded lol. Kicked my ass in designer

[@BorderWise12]

It's a scary bird, ain't it? XD

[@AlShalPerish]

@@BorderWise12 big rail assisted hollow points are mean. i hear that ducts can block heat/hesh too which is interesting because of their potentially huge health pools

[@BorderWise12]

@@AlShalPerish Interesting... I'll have to test ducts a bit, cheers.

[@livslab]

Thanks, very useful! Little tip: you can set your ACB to "interaction" that way they trigger if you press Q on them, so you dont have to go into the menu and press test. Not a big difference but convenient

[@cupcakeinvasion5674]

Sinking is bad for ships? Wut? That's news.

[@Aereto]

@Jake Cohen So long as it avoids the instant kill flags for having below 80% and sinking.

[@cornpie9755]

You say ERA is useless, and as armor I pretty much agree. I use ERA to negate damage from my own internal explosions on compact designs. Preventing damage from your own exploding HE APS can often help keep you alive.

[@BorderWise12]

Oooh, that's actually a good use for it! Thanks for sharing that. :D

[@zancloufer]

Something I discovered once that you left out about truss blocks: They are as see through as glass. Cameras, retroreflector sensors rangefinder etc can see through truss blocks. Makes for some interesting connections of light crafts or superstructures.

[@BorderWise12]

Oh bugger, that's good to know, thank you!

[@matiastorres1510]

Empty space makes good armor in real life as well. For HEAT it just gives space for the metal stream to dissapate but it also finds use against kinetic munitions. Quite a few tanks will have a sharply angled initial armor plate then an air gap. The air gap is supposed to give room for the kinetic munition to tumble after passing through the first armor plate so it hits the actual armor at a weird angle and shatters

[@sombrerostalin1499]

pog time to update my cruiser again

[@Kate-Tea]

Thamk, was looking for an updated version yesterday, also are you south african? Very familiar accent

[@BorderWise12]

Holy moly, you are like one of five people to ever guess that right first time. Yup, I'm originally from SA. XD

[@Kate-Tea]

@@BorderWise12lol, I was as surprised as you 😹 All the mannerisms were veeery similar to mine too so it got me wondering xD

[@prome3us550]

One of us...... Also, "staalslang" lol

[@arteckjay6537]

@@BorderWise12 i hope that this isn't too personal, but what is your ethnicity? I'm trying to make a mental image

[@BorderWise12]

@@arteckjay6537 Nah, it's fine. Afrikaaner, of Dutch/English descent.

[@zicargo]

Truss blocks, if in an enclosed section, can also count most of their space to helium and air pumps, allowing for your air gap/buoyancy/lift rooms to have hp and armor. I use them on my airships and in the sides of most of my heavier hulls. It is a buoyant block with 30 armor that also gives 80% of its volume^3 to pumps...

[@BorderWise12]

Good point! I'll have to give 'em more of a chance in the future.

[@evilbadger34]

When you mentioned that metal plates were pretty much decoration I had a thought of use for them, Im pretty new but I know you can set depth charges in some projectiles. My idea is that you could have metal plate sheets a few meters from your main hull to be used to trick depth charges in exploding outside of your hull because it will have gone through the paper metal plates and activated early before it hits through your main hull!

[@InsufficientGravitas]

you just invented that mesh cage armour used in the afghanistan war by the us and uk.

[@guvyygvuhh298]

Re-request for an Iowa-like ship #1

[@zoltek6507]

WHO ASKED... but we all need this info either way

[@BorderWise12]

Quite a few people asked, actually. 😅

[@plebao51]

:3 was wondering about this, all the guides on steam are outdated. thx :)

[@toreadum8ass]

Seconding a new steam tutorial.

[@CM-fh7kk]

Hi Borderwise, watching this video actually gave me a video idea for you: I don't know if you have built this before, but how about a very large wooden ship with very strong ring shields and lots of turrets and engines. The idea behind this is that the armor class of wood is it's biggest downfall, so using ring shields which give a flat armor bonus will disproportionately benefit wood (protect it against explosions) and with wood being as cheap as it is, you can spam VERY thick wooden armor.(largely Immune to emp, explosions and heat/hesh will become useless with the armors thickness/many airgaps.) The only weakness is that large kinetic rounds will still poke holes through the ship, so to counter that we will use redundancy, hence the many turrets(APS with ejectors or preferably crams for safety and price efficiency, maybe a bit of heavy armor to protect the most critical areas) and many engines (to power the ring shields) and ring shields spread throughout the ship (to prevent losing most of your armor bonus in one go). For the same reasons multiple AI mainframes. This should yield a ship with very high survivability (can't sink and hard to destroy)and firepower for it's price.

[@CM-fh7kk]

Just to give an idea of how good this is: (of course the added trouble of ring shields isn't accounted for) In your armor formula, if you repeat the same calculation for wood and metal but with both having +12 AC, then wood has a score of over 1200 above metal.

[@humanbeing6565]

Cool I needed a thing like this for lazy so thanks

[@Daemonworks]

So... have I got a weird thought for you. I was doing some airship experimentation and discovered that Truss Blocks are treated as 'air' for some purposes. I created a balloon and replaced the empty space with truss blocks, and it stayed in the air, confirming the game treated it as 'air' for some purposes. And that led me to thinking.... what about using it as an air gap in spaced armour? Initial tests are suggesting that it does consider it "air" for the purposes of heat and hesh. (caveat: i'm very tired and my test setup is very hokey) That said, it's not structural, so the only use-case I can think of using it in armour would be as a lower-weight alternative to applique panels air-gaps...

[@flazerrazer2992]

I use reinforced decking for my decks but I use it upside down because I like the look of it more than the other blocks

[@tenshi7123]

Thanks BorderWise! This answers a lot of the difficulties I was having in terms of armoring my vehicles - simply, I'm building too small, and there's not enough air gaps so the dreadfully common HE damage tears me apart... Knowing the trick with poles is very useful, and I don't think I would have ever thought to test that on my own. I also think that I need to go test HESH and HEAT now so that I can understand my favorite APS better. A question I have: in terms of sloped armor, do applique panel slopes get even more of a damage reduction against kinetic because they have half the height and correspondingly a steeper angle? I've noticed that those can be strangely tanky when I use them to make nice slope transitions on my builds. One last question: for armoring, what orientation of the armor blocks do you think is best? I was doing it in such a fashion that the first layer went one way and every layer after switched orientation so that hull breaches would hopefully be as small as possible, but after finding out that a beam stacks with itself I wonder if having the beam facing straight out would be better.

[@sea_kerman]

beam facing straight out means a shell only needs to kill that beam to penetrate. Beams facing either sideways or vertically mean the shell needs to kill that beam, the beam behind it, the beam behind that beam, etc.

[@whytho2109]

use the q context menu on the vehicle (hold q) and select the repair all function restores the health of every single block

[@utzius8003]

On the topic of plates, alloy plates can be very useful. I recently made a stealth tank and in order to reduce its radar visibility I covered it in alloy plates. It works great.

[@Aereto]

Meanwhile Rubber block has the lowest sonar signature, making it effective against anti-sonar subs that use supercavitation shells instead of torpedoes.

[@_tyrannus]

Since you didn't mention it, I will note that 4m offset pieces are actually 5m long and benefit from a rare +25% HP bonus while being as sloped as a 4m slope and just a good outside hull building block. I think your structural efficiency formula could some tweaking. As low AC (40) extremely costly to achieve through most offensive means, it may be more representative to make the AC variable exponential (²) instead of linear. On the topic of stone, I've been following Menti's last tournament and it seems like the relatively low AC of stone nowadays is really hurting it quite badly as a general shipbuilding material. Still the top choice for AI's EMP-proofing shell, though. You purposefully avoided discussing HESH in this video so that may be something you intend to cover, but as spall-lining is most effective with the lowest last block AC possible followed by the highest possible, ERA (which is structural) could perhaps work counter-intuitively as an internal spall-liner stuck onto HA poles. I've yet to try it out in practice so this is speculation, but it seems like it could make it not entirely pointless despite its weakness to FtD's plentiful explosions? I feel like metal plating still deserves a mention beyond aesthetics, as despite its low AC it can be quite useful to cheaply increase the outer AC of a ship built mostly out of wood. Its weakness makes it ablative at best for sure, but it does somewhat prevent explosions from digging as deep into the armour. Also works wonders as an ugly, cheap, low drag torpedo barrier. "guilty lead" hehehe. It sure has seen better days, but hey I'm glad there's a cheap way to balance my overweight and somewhat HESH/HEAT-proof turret caps. (edit: posted the comment with the notes I took, removed them)

[@BorderWise12]

Cheers! All good points.

[@Inglonias]

Actual question: Does the slope damage formula also apply if you hit flat armor from an angle besides perpendicular?

[@Kate-Tea]

Yea, if it hits at an angle it will use the same formula with the sin and stuff, it's not about the block but more about the shell, high angles also obviously can bounce some shells if the conditions are right which is nice

[@BorderWise12]

What Ocealot said, yes. I completely forgot to mention that. XD

[@ValentineC137]

49:35 Your podcasting *_Tankious Nerdious_* is at your service

[@vilheim9508]

A comment about armored poles as HEAT defense - I've found in my own testing that this is inconsistent - sometimes a HEAT shell will pass right through the pole and generate their frags on the other side. It works most of the time, but it is definitely necessary to have an extra layer of armor behind to catch the frags.

[@BorderWise12]

Yup. I've found that too. It's inconsistent with HESH as well.

[@SuwinTzi]

Also there was an update awhile back that updated hit detection, so HEAT and HESH can sometimes pass through poles because the game decided part of the pole is touching the other structural blocks. But i havent played in awhile so that mightve changed as well too.

[@BorderWise12]

It didn't do that when I tested it, but it might depend on the angle. At least in one test a HESH shell spawned fragments straight through the poles.

[@SuwinTzi]

@@BorderWise12 As far as I could tell, that's when it's more likely to occur; straight 90deg into the pole. I think one of the devs said it was intended, but not 100% sure.

[@BorderWise12]

@@SuwinTzi I think it's intentional, yes. Poles would be ridiculously strong otherwise. 😅

[@SamSchurger]

I use the alloy and metal plates to defend exposed parts on the tripod masts I make for detection and AA. The only other use I can find is for absorbing light explosive damage and, as you said, decoration.

[@SuwinTzi]

I had a quick test and 2k HE dmg stops doing dmg past 3 or 4 meters to say an engine radiator, in empty space. So empty space reduces HE dmg by a tremendous amount. And that basically answers when to use frag or HE in APS shells; frag if theres lots of empty space, HE if theres lots of things tightly packed with each other.

[@revengefullobster4524]

I just wish that all the blocks had all shapes. I really would like to have more options for applique, era, and reinforced wood. The applique esp, since it looks good on aircraft. As it stands we have to mimic blocks to get corners on the applique or era since they are half height. Good vid!

[@catman-hi5cn]

Just what I needed. Didn’t realize I had to get a degree in order the enjoy this game

[@Dubanx]

The problem your calculations are running into with heavy armor is that it has no distance buffer because it's really thin. An explosion takes place directly next to 5 metal blocks. Even by the third or forth block, that damage is highly degraded because of the distance from the explosion. Meanwhile, heavy armor is so condensed that it takes the full force of the explosion. Stone overperforms because it's the opposite of heavy armor. It's cheap and gives very thick buffer that degrades a lot of weapons, rather than taking the full damage.

[@traceakerill]

7:00 there is a famous ship where I live a man just decided to make a concrete ship. Hooked up engines and ran it for around 3 years but it had engine troubles or sprung a leak. So he beached it, and removing fuel tanks and engines. Now its a cool ufo looking think to check put

[@reecejsymons]

Friendly tip for dealing with the hawk is massed emp partical cannons

[@Cheesecannon25]

41:06 You can actually use the 'q' menu in designer to fully repair it instead

[@BorderWise12]

Oh, wow, you can. Thank you, I did not know that. 😁

[@Cheesecannon25]

@@BorderWise12 You can also instantly _refill_ APS ammo I spent way too many hours waiting for beltfeds

[@BorderWise12]

@@Cheesecannon25 Wow, thank you again, that is incredibly helpful. XD

[@Kate-Tea]

@@Cheesecannon25 owo that's amazing

[@bigbybelly6315]

Applique and trusses would make great spaced armor to counter heat and hesh rounds

[@nicklowe2686]

I tend to make my ships entirely out of alloy (barring strategic heavy armor reinforcing here and there), especially since they made it the same cost as metal. Slightly less health and armor than metal, but it makes building lightweight/speedy/buoyant craft very easy. I used to be more sparing with it when it was a pricey material, but it's a no brainer now. Alloy spam is the way.

[@BorderWise12]

Except when you lose buoyancy on one side of your ship as a result of damage, making your ship roll over. Best not to rely on it too much.😅

[@Loooom555]

After watching this I am going to go reconsider all my armour choices

[@PixelKnight93]

I'm watching from 2023! And I just subbed! 🙂

[@hollowidiot5208]

Greetings from the future

[@Attaxalotl]

I am watching this in 2019! Judging by how this guy sounds it seems that 2020 will be good!

[@James-ep2bx]

So would it not be accurate to say: heavy armor while ideally used sparingly gets it's place in third because when used properly it has a very big benefit? Also I feel you're selling the plates a biiit short borderwise, from personal experience they're actually quite functional as regenerative ablative armor, as their lower cost and single block nature does seem to make it easier for repairs bot/tentacles to keep up with the damage in combat

[@BorderWise12]

For HA: yes, that's exactly it. 👍 For the plates: I'm very wary of any armour type that requires fast repairs to be effective. It's the same reason ERA doesn't work very well in practice. Remember that in the campaign, you can only repair near friendly territory, so relying on repairs for survivability is a bit of a gamble.

[@James-ep2bx]

@@BorderWise12 On HA: sempi noticed me🥳😋 On plates : true which is why I only said "a bit short" as they're still useful for builds that shouldn't be operating outside places you control like harvesters, and/or supply builds

[@BorderWise12]

@@James-ep2bx Dat is true, yes. 😄

[@timbo9828]

Great update, needed this.

[@juanordonezgalban2278]

You should put this video in a new playlist for up to date tutorials

[@BorderWise12]

Outdated tutorials have been removed from the guides playlist. It's all good. 👍

[@benlevitt5017]

Borderwise, does applique paneling get armor stacking from armor blocks behind it? I understand that they do not give armor stacking, but are they able to receive it?

[@Aereto]

Last I tested, they don't give armor stacking.

[@Mirkk47]

Question, is kinetic damage reduced if it hits a beam at an angle or is it exlusive only to slopes?

[@BorderWise12]

Not just slopes, it's reduced if it hits any beam at an angle. Really should've mentioned that, sorry.

[@daviddavidson505]

The value of rubber cannot be overstated in low-flying hovercraft. Coating the bottom of a Scarlet Dawn style hovership in rubber can be more valuable than using that space for additional turrets.

[@themajormagers]

you would think that hollow point shells would shatter or deflect on slopes

[@dmanx500]

This is quite good to know thank you, I only wish there was more modded blocks, I want a bronze ship dammit.

[@treyfloyd6003]

Can you do a most wanted for the goshawk

[@BorderWise12]

Yup. I put that on the list shortly after I first tested it. XD

[@chunkblaster]

To be that guy, if you look at naval armor schemes, you'll notice they also use sloped armor. But internally wrather, around the citadel of the vehicle.

[@BorderWise12]

Oh yeah, I remember being told that at some point. They still do that in modern warships?

[@chunkblaster]

@@BorderWise12 That is a great question! *I cant for the life of me find a good youtube channel that covers modern military naval engineering.* Not gona say it ain't out there but god knows I cant find it..

[@chunkblaster]

@@BorderWise12 Also this was a really informative video, thanks homie

[@BorderWise12]

@@chunkblaster Yer welcome. 😁

[@cryptoam177]

I don't quite think so. Modern day ships have missiles(and torpedos) as their primary threat. Missiles tend to do most of their damage in kinetic energy and fires. The first can be somewhat negated(but given the warhead payload size, not efficiently), the second just relies on damage control more than armor. Also note that the majority of the vital systems are easily damaged by incoming fire and can not be adequately protected. For torpedos, your best bet is to try and force the sub out(ASW to clear/sanitize location, else to force the sub to break wire guidance) and run while popping countermeasures (hope you don't get hit and can outrun it). That means that ships tend to have paper thin armor(compared to WW2 standards) and rely more on evasion, countermeasures(including CIWS), and damage control. Larger ships(aircraft carriers) can use their bulk to soak up damage more efficiently. Smaller ships are basically fucked in an impact. In the end, the impact of modern naval weapons place more importance(in order of importance) on shooting the shooter, evasion(avoid detection), active countermeasures, and finally damage control(always true, armor will always fail after a certain point).

[@jeffmeme9721]

spaced armor is a real thing and it is quite good

[@nicopence3148]

Could you go in depth into heat, hesh, and era. I couldn't figure those out. Also to sum up detection for you if you want to add it. Relatively, most blocks are 3, rubber is 1, light alloy is 2, metal is 5, heavy armor is 7 or 8, detection components are ridiculously high.

[@BorderWise12]

Cheers! And yes, HEAT, HESH and ERA probably needs a video all to themselves.

[@nicopence3148]

@@BorderWise12 Just found out through luck (used exactly a 51 block wall randomly) and found that HESH (no matter the gauge) can go through exactly 50 blocks for some reason and will disperse into the 51st block damaging it. Basically HESH is not affected by size unlike HEAT which gets a 2.5 times boost to the penetration metric from the smallest to the largest shell possible (1 18 mm to 20 500 mm (dif only due to shell length)) hope this info may help in your testing

[@BorderWise12]

@@nicopence3148 Oooh, that is helpful! Thanks!

[@nicopence3148]

@@BorderWise12 In that video could you find a reason to use HEAT over HESH because to me it looks like HESH is superior in every way and I feel I'm missing something. (except for penetration heat which seams quite useful)

[@BorderWise12]

@@nicopence3148 Well, the short version is that HEAT scales better with size and the AP of the fragments is always the same. HESH fragments derive their AC from whatever block they spawn from.

[@gabevietor3685]

It's very odd that slopes don't work against HEAT, though in real life it increases the effective thickness of the armor. Another thing to point out is that HEAT in real life is a bit different than the game, so anyone who wants to go in depth with how HEAT works, there are a few simulations on KZbin that accurately display what happens.

[@ARBH587]

what determines if a shell penetrates armor? you covered damage values very well, but I am still a bit confused on when or if a warhead goes through a block without destroying it. Does the AP have to equal or exceed to AC?

[@BorderWise12]

That's simple: shells penetrate armour when they have leftover KD after destroying a block. It's not actually possible to penetrate blocks without destroying them unless you use HEAT.

[@ARBH587]

@@BorderWise12 Thank you so much!

[@BorderWise12]

@@ARBH587 Yer welcome. 😁

[@arpioisme]

Borderwise, how about starting a series of ftd mythbuster videos? Like, "ERA block can stop a huge missile HEAT"

[@EtherToast]

Should there be more armour before or after an air gap? So would metal wood air alloy alloy wood or metal alloy wood air alloy wood work better?

[@guvyygvuhh298]

I think more armor before the air gap is better Idk if that is true or not

[@martindinner3621]

@@guvyygvuhh298 if HESH is properly modeled, you want the low armor block on the exterior side of the air gap and the high armor block on the interior.

[@guvyygvuhh298]

@@martindinner3621 sure but then the external layer can be shredded by the HE in the HESH or small kinetic spam

[@martindinner3621]

@@guvyygvuhh298 okay, I described that poorly. Your outer armor "sandwich" (if anyone has a better term I'll happily use it!) needs to have an innermost layer of low armor material. This is your spall liner. The HESH fragments (this may have changed without me noticing) gain AP based on the Armor of the last block they traveled through.

[@guvyygvuhh298]

@@martindinner3621 lol that was changed ages ago. Now HESH iirc gets the same AP as the average of all blocks AC it passes tru aka 4 layers of stacked metal you take the AC of all blocks, average that, and you get the AP for HESH And don't worry, ik the game pretty well after 1200h lol

[@Nathan-fx3hr]

Could you please do a video on advanced cannon tetris

[@BorderWise12]

Yup, that's another tutorial that I'm going to update.

[@thegamingcat3202]

@@BorderWise12 can you include 4 clip tetris? While being more explosive, it is cheaper, so showing it could help some people that dont know how to do it

[@ILKOSTFU]

Helped a lot, thanks!

[@omnipersistence]

Do hesh shells still spawn fragments in wooden armor?

[@BorderWise12]

Yup. But a layer of wood is a good way of dropping the AP of HESH fragments.

[@Aconspiracyofravens1]

YAY it has arrived

[@TheMarrethiel]

"If you are watching this from a year other than 2021, greetings from the past or future.

[@jakeworsfold3669]

Wait isn't damage calculated as damage × (ap /2 x ac) =true damage unless ap>ac then it equals damage x 1, wouldn't that mean to do full damage to metal you would need to have 80 ap? Or has the formula changed or am I doing something wrong?

[@BorderWise12]

The formula changed, yes. It was simplified. 🙂

[@jakeworsfold3669]

@@BorderWise12 what is the new formula? Is it just ap/ac?

[@ShadowKick32]

Now I really want to try this game. Too bad there is no ceramic or uranium armor, but I guess heavy armor could be uranium armor in disguise.

[@monsterkicker291]

Fun fact: somehow I managed to forget armor stacking for my ships after my first ship and wondered why it was so effective, yeah defence isn't my strongest skill.

[@Kate-Tea]

Recently made a beeg ww1 style tank with roughly 3 deep heavy armor on all sides.. This thing refuses to die, it also has an over the top particle cannon in its core with a steam turbine to charge it lol, was super fun to create

[@darthkarl99]

5:26 the word your looking for is nullified.

[@BorderWise12]

Thank you, that probably is what I was searching for. 😄

[@linch5x5]

Shell deflection what makes them bounce off armour

[@spinnirack3645]

*British people in the background making an aircraft carrier out of ice*

[@sampletext5959]

The only use I can see for ERA is for land vehicles like tanks. Even then, it’s not very applicable because sloped armor exists.

[@CaptainCookie613]

Do poles also have the kinetic damage reduction that slopes have?

[@BorderWise12]

Oh, bugger, I forgot to mention that. Yes, they also have angle damage reduction, though less so than proper slopes.

[@CaptainCookie613]

@@BorderWise12 Thanks for answering!

[@BorderWise12]

@@CaptainCookie613 Yer welcome. 😁

[@Joey5537]

Doesn't stone just reduce EMP damage that goes through it, not make something EMP proof?

[@BorderWise12]

In practice, it takes enormous EMP surges to get through it. Especially since EMP will take the path of least resistance, which often means it often avoids stone completely.

[@cheezebagz729]

I have come from the future to say that rubber now has twice the EMP resistance of wood

[@azvaldenimgram4565]

I use rubber to encase my Ai as it has a higher EMP reduction and lower weight than stone

[@LiveLNXgaming]

really need to build a 1 to 1 USS Atlanta.

[@prome3us550]

There is a secret 3rd use for rubber; as an inside lining against hesh shells....

[@BorderWise12]

That doesn't actually work. The fragments rip right through the rubber and into whatever is behind it. You get better results with a wooden spall liner.

[@dobelong3141]

Strange thing I’ve found about HA: It’s normally impractical but actually really useful for larger broadsiders and frontsiders such as the Aquila, impedance, and the Hypernova The armor stacking it provides as a last line of armor really helps Edit: Can’t forget the HA wood/Ascaridole as well Double edit: I made this comment before getting to 27:55

[@Aereto]

While at that same time wood blocks behind HA are necessary to avoid HESH rounds turning armor into death confetti.

[@darrylmchenryii809]

Hey Borderwise! Just wanted to thank you for these tutorials! Just got back into the game after a LOOOOOONG Hiatus (and I was never good to begin with). Would you be willing to take the time to tell me which of your tutorials are still relevant, and which are not? Treat me like I'm a total FtD moron, because I am!

[@BorderWise12]

You're welcome! The ones which aren't relevant anymore have 'outdated' in the title. 👍

[@darrylmchenryii809]

@@BorderWise12 Awesome, thank you! I'm actually in the process of watching Armor 101 presently, Good stuff! Your information about trusses and Applique panels really have my gears turning

[@CharliMorganMusic]

Spaced armor is a thing. Air makes fantastic armor against HEAT warheads. It only doesn't make sense if one doesn't know how armor actually works irl

[@BorderWise12]

Which, to be fair, is a lot of people. 😁

[@zuminlair92cp]

I don't know why everyone feel Goshawk hard to kill. I kill it with my 800k material thrustercraft and it only lose 1% of block in process... The most dangerous GT craft for me is Aquila.

[@Aereto]

That means your design is a good counter against it. At the cost of being countered by a different design.

[@siassmal6502]

Can you break down Stealth

[@BorderWise12]

Sure!

[@pilot778spartan3]

Yes

[@redeemerofthesun]

The Goshawk looks exactly like the Silvana from Last Exile...

[@beans-boi1714]

Borderwise what is a very good defense from lasers

[@beans-boi1714]

I am facing half of neter at once also

[@scorpion563]

Smoke, laser Absorbing shields, make laser stop shooting

[@SuwinTzi]

Water, smoke, shields and distance

[@beans-boi1714]

Ok

[@ARTEMISXIX]

The ocean

[@doubt3430]

I would like to mention operation mulberry Making a bunch of massive concrete blocks into mobile harbors to make a massive mobile harbor to support the invasion of Normandy

[@_.turtledove6._]

Noice voice crack 00:01

[@cameronscott6717]

Does truss blocks give heat protection?

[@knightworld3019]

Ye cause air space. But Applique is better for that

[@guvyygvuhh298]

Even if it does, applique and every non-beam structural block get the job done better

[@cya6109]

Sloped armour? Pffft, view ports are the ultimate armour, wait, this is war thunder right?