Space Engineers - Sloped Armour, Deflecting Missiles Self Repairing Armour

There has been may rumours circulating about the ability to reflect missiles my angling your armour. I had no other choice but to put the theory to the test and I was rather surprised. I was also told by a subscriber to try to build self repairing armour and had some progress.
It works in real life but does it in space engineers ?
Join my space engineers empire steamcommunity....
Oh and our Facebook page: www.facebook.c...
Main Battle Tank Steam Workshop :steamcommunity....
Video Sage Channel: / sleepartgameeat
Space Engineer is like a mixture between Minecraft and Kerbal Space Program. The game is in pre-alpha and will be released on steam at some point in the future. ore
The main purpose of the game seems to be building a space fleet and fight/ally with the other factions. You build your ships piece by piece and the only know limit for the size of your ship is what you computer can handle.

[@kaosdlanor8091]

If you rotate the welders so they face upwards they repair eachother and the wall in front, using a projector allows them to recreate destroyed armour and welders

[@timothyzheludkov8020]

If I am not wrong, in real life rockets don't make ricoshet, because they blow up on the impact. The only ballistic objects, that can do recoshet, are AP tank ammunition (not the HE one, it blows up into pieces on the impact, and that is why it is mostly used in cases of infantry), AND bullets. There's probably something else, but I am too lazy.

[@timothyzheludkov8020]

Ohh, and also, in WW2 Tank AP ammo (don't know is it still here, in XI century) had a normalization point, and this helped decrese some degrees of the impact, so it is easier to penitrate. For example, the AP flyes into the enemy at 60 degrees, but normalizes to X degrees, which makes it easyer to penitrate. (When X is trajectory of flight (60 degrees) minus amount of normalization the shell has.) Well, of course, I am russian, but I hope that it is called normalization in English...

[@timothyzheludkov8020]

Crimsun Barun You don't need to translate it, I am good at english. And also google translate is not great at translating phrases. Well, probably rockets can ricoshete but only in some random conditions, and on the angle more than 89 degrees. Cuz rockets, are, preety much HE shells, but only on faster speeds.

[@timothyzheludkov8020]

Crimsun Barun That is no problem. I am sometimes hearing words about me using translate. That is just because I am too good for russian :)

[@Porouskilldeathratio]

Тимофей Желудков Crimsun Barun yeah, rockets can ricochet as long as it either does not hit the pin (on the front tip to detonate it) or it is not hit in a certain way making it explode (getting shot by a bullet ect)

[@timothyzheludkov8020]

jayden shadlow And That is what I am talking about. So, the only way to ricoshet is to hit a target at 90 degrees, either it will hit pin on the front.

[@tylerjohns3907]

I think the welders for armor inst quite a feasible idea for survival. However if you take that same idea and apply it to your main engines, reactors, or other vital components by placing welders inside the ship, you can keep your components repaired constantly and never have to worry about being dead in the water so to speak.

[@Ernicification]

Engines maybe. I like that idea. But reactors? Isn't the damage from one rocket enough to cause it to blow?

[@tylerjohns3907]

Ernicification Maybe, but I was thinking more of secondary damage. Normally my engine room is heavily armored, however rockets can distort the armor blocked without breaking them. If another item is in the path of the distortion, it can be damaged. So my idea was if it receives minor to moderate damage, it can be repaired. If it is severe damage, you're probably going to lose it but hopefully have secondary systems in place.

[@callmequaz9052]

In a real battle, the armour may not make too much of a difference as it's actually thinner and more rockets would be hitting it more frequently. Although the hits would be more spread out, if they're anything like me, they would be targeting a single area in order to drill a hole and easily access the inside to invade and sabotage. So whilst it would be great in a battle if the hits were very spread out, consistent fire to a single area would quickly overwhelm the welders. Great idea tho :D

[@Baconlovar]

its not that OP cause if u fire fast enough u get those holes and if u shoot into thos holes there goes the armor :P

[@ColdFusionPower512]

and if you fire at the welder,well,they are the most fragile thing

[@Unknownsoldier740]

not to mention the resource cost of it. It would be very expensive to do and to keep up.

[@bengacris]

Simon WoodburyForget Fucking armor rep Myrmidon

[@ValDominator]

It may be OP but the massive cost balances it. Plus once their is a hole in the wall shoot the weld and then the armor is destroyed from behind.

[@randymotter51]

true, someone cannot go and fill those holes fast enough all the time. Sure, turrets can mess up a ship that stays around to shoot into a hole its made, but some spaced armor on the little ship or a chunky fighter or bomber meant to take damage for a minute or two and leave can create a weak point. You could even fire a large, slow moving torpedo at the target to distract its turrets so you can do your work. Useful, yes under light conditions or when a lot is going on at once, one less thing to worry about. Nasty large vs. large ship brawls or fighter swarms, not really effective. Would rather use it on a station, since it cant try to dodge things anyway, so you may as well put it in a few vital places. not like you're going to go through all that iron if you're good about mining otherwise.

[@goigle]

I'd say repairable armor gives more use for a ramming ship. It rams the heavy armor, destroys it, and then the open space in the armor which can allow friendly ships to be repaired thus using enemy armor repair supplies to repair your ships. Alternatively, you can attach a grinding ship to the armor and siphon resources from the enemy. That said, unlike Henry I believe many fighters have more than one rocket pod. Multiple rockets will easily out-DPS the welders and take out the armor.

[@aaronb.2707]

not to mention that he was not firing at maximum fire rate

[@fylgjafox249]

I like the idea of a leaching ship as a counter to this armor. Especially once we get the ability to make drones that we can send that will automatically attach to a ship and leach off it.

[@MasterGhostf]

but you will be taking fire from turrets so you probally can only shoot one or two rockets if you have one pod, but of course more pods will deal enough damage. but the welders are still useful

[@isosev]

I dont really think the welders are practical. Interesting yes but not too practical. I might use something like it on a landing pad so that if some sort of crash happens while landing it can repair the pad.

[@Ofjkk]

and that's not even taking into account that explosions deal damage to blocks behind heavy armor

[@trinitygod863]

I think why the deflecting isn't working is that the missiles are high explosive only and therefore don't really care about the angle but bullets since they do care about the angle might have better results?

[@Goodtown325]

Couldn't you use a projector and welder combo, like the 3d printers in earlier epesodes, to basically re-print your armor back inplace if one gets destryoed? and i think you can space out the welders so they dont have to be directly side byside, this would make it lest costly to manufactur in survial mode. and can the welders repair armor that is multipul blocks thick so that you have more cution before the hull is breached?

[@周生生-f1f]

The problem is (especially when welder is weaker now) welders have an effective range and will share its repair strength equally to blocks within its range, not only spacing doesn't make the conveyor system any less complex, it also reduces the regen speed of armor.Of course it doesn't block a full-on ram from a 100 ton ship or super powerful kinetic torpedoes, but it's more like an anti-in game weapons setup that will easily nullify the lackluster rocket and turret salvos and even a single warhead trying to breach a single or two layers of heavy armor.

[@falcothegreat5470]

Have the exoskeleton of the ship have a projector and protect its self to be repaired. Also, for some decoys in there to divert fire to certain location. Because the ship has another ship (the armor) around it, the ai turrets will not see you. Edit: It’s a great tactic for regular survival. I meant it is completely overkill but that don’t matter when you big stronk

[@yetanother9127]

The answer to your sloped armor conundrum is that only kinetic weapons are affected by it. Explosive weapons can't bounce, since by the time they've bounced they've already exploded. That is why HEAT warheads are effective against modern tanks compared to APCR.

[@TIiIJokeRIiIT]

Exactly. You can bounce a bullet type of projectile but you cannot bounce explosive shoot because it simply explodes on contact.

[@周生生-f1f]

A lot of people saying you can deal with repair armor with heaps of rockets on the same spot, but 1. Shooting at the same spot is feasible.....only if the enemy doesn't retaliate. Given the fact that there are turrets that can be set such that they target ships and missiles, big ships can easily ease down the pressure of missiles with interior/gatling turrets to shoot down missiles, as well as forcing the enemy to get away from the sight of the turrets (they shoot really accurately even if you move quick), along with just bob-and-weave around to block attacks with other sides of the hull. You can't just take your time and sit at the same spot hoping you can punch down the enemy without resistance. 2. Rockets itself are just as expensive. In creative, sure you can light people up mercilessly, but in survival it's much harder to spam missiles as if they are completely free. 3. You got (non) re-loadable rocket launchers, with the non-version holds little rockets, and the latter being as clumsy as hell to begin with due to their inherently massive size.The former doesn't boast enough power to punch through armor, an the latter will be very heavy and difficult to out-manuever agile fighters (if there are other player piloted ships). The welders are very expensive to maintain en-masse, but that is also applicable to really heavy armoring around the flagship in question (in fact heavy flagships are just super expensive and probably not even feasible on their own in survival). It's also easier to repair self-repairing armor because they weld themselves instead of having to weld every block by yourself. Gravity guns and massive torpedoes aren't blockable by even the thickest shielding so don't bother trying.

[@dim1723]

Rocket deflection might be implemented latter. The wields have a 3 block radius so you don't need so many.

[@Milenos]

But with that many, the armor can be repair much faster. Still, in survival yeah probably less would be used.

[@Nerd_Detective]

Based on the results, sloping armor might work in limited scenarios where firing angles can be predicted (i.e. asteroid bases or attack ships making runs on less agile ships). It's at least something that can be kept in mind when choosing an approach vectors. Only worth considering in those kind of situations though. The regenerative armor setup is pretty impractical in a survival setting except for perhaps the most critical sections of a very important ship. It's going to take up a lot of space and require many thousands of armor plates in reserve as repair material. Behind those welders we need need a conveyor system and since either the armor or the welders are a "ship", internal damage could lead to this large large machine catastrophically bouncing around inside your ship (or alternatively, the entire wall of armor floating off). The welders also "fix" perfect squares when a block is destroyed, whereas the twisted neighboring armor is going to block much more damage than the exposed welder. The combat use of welders might be on a smaller scale, clearing the twisted metal blocking access to areas of the ship and maintaining critical systems such as thrusters and reactors. It could also be used in a carrier's hangar to quickly and automatically repair damaged fighters in pit stops.

[@Nitrus5]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but sloped armor isn't meant to reflect missiles, but solid ballistic bullets/slugs. Certain types of HEAT ammo and stuff like that can go through mass amounts of armor no matter the slope

[@SlyTy98]

Yeah, not irl. Irl it's meant to throw bullets of course or completely off. Missile just blow up on it normally.

[@Nitrus5]

So in theory it shouldn't be any good against missiles but could work against the gatling guns

[@SlyTy98]

YoshiPwns Missles detonate on impact, slanted or not.(Unless it's a specialized missile). Bullets however use simple kinetic impacts so they bounce/slide/glance off the armor. So yes, you're right.

[@GamerBomb57]

Here's the thing; sloped armor is actually incredibly effective, but missiles explode on the surface, making that the slopes do absolutely nothing to deflect it. (Besides occasionally bouncing a missile.) If we had AP rounds for miniguns, I would encourage you to get with that, as that is where we would see results. This is why sloped armor is so common on tanks, most notably the Russian T-34. Against APHE (Armor-Piercing High-Explosive), it was incredibly effective, as the German shell couldn't penetrate.

[@TalesOfWar]

They need to add ERA blocks to the game. ERA = Explosive Reactive Armour. It's literally a shell with an air gap, the idea being the explosion goes off on the outer most armour skin, then the gap acts as a cushion of sorts leaving the hard, solid armour below it in tact. Basically it explodes from the pressure rather than the main hull. It's used on tanks and IFV's etc to protect against RPG's and the like. Slats also achieve a similar result and are more common on IFV's because they don't explode and fragment like ERA does (something you don't want happening around a vehicle working along side soft, squishy infantry units walking along side). It's be interesting just having a number of protection layers for our ships. Maybe have slats, then ERA, then the solid armour, all combined would do a good job at repelling both missiles and bullets.

[@hmmm9658]

Self repairing armour would be even better with a projector block

[@shakesbeer2311]

Cheeky Nandos I think so too. THIS ARMOR could be undisdrucable

[@alenngk]

+Sealand its old video, but i want repairing drones Oo

[@program4215]

All you need to do to pentetrate the self repairing armor is fire so missiles so fast that the welders can't repair it before it is destroyed, or in a more missile-conserving manner, if you are low on missiles in survival, is you could just shoot inside the holes that eventually pop up before they are patched.

[@KeVsPIXEL]

The welder armor isn't even close to being overpowered specially on survival, because you've got to have a lot of steel plates for it, your just basically giving you're ship a sort of health mechanic (sort of, i don't know what else to call it).

[@DaMetaEX]

slopes wont mean crap since its a 4 dimention attack area you can hit so that angle is a rare occorance

[@JacobAvnerPr1mus3]

3d, right?

[@DaMetaEX]

4d up down left right foward back and rotatinal in all those axises

[@JacobAvnerPr1mus3]

Mechasonic9000 Oh. But isn't one of them negated by the armor being attached too a ship? I am not a math person though.

[@WatzUpzPeepz]

Mechasonic9000 Uh no.

[@Martian8]

Mechasonic9000 yeah... that's still 3d

[@GreenGreeny]

it's not really OP armor , if you fire the missiles fast enough you will get through the armor

[@Tailsthehacker01]

I should point out if you plan to do this, there's some thing you should know about. 1. A wall of welders isn't neccesary. Placing a checkerboard will work just as well because big ship welders have a wider range. 2. Welders consume resources, so be sure they can get them or they're useless. 3. Tons of welders working all at once can cause lag and the noise they make can get fairly annoying after a while.

[@clonetrooper730]

Im pretty sure he knows that they cconsume resources...why would you need to tell him 2? He uploads impractical stuff all the time, it's meant to be fun concept not a hard core survival guide...

[@64_Tesseract]

You should have projectors so whenever a hole appears, it repairs fully.

[@TheYugamer13]

64PBRB yes i have done that

[@wgoulding]

On land, incoming projectiles only come from the 180 degrees horizontal to the ground, never below, and rarely from above. In space there is no up, down, left, right, back, front, and anyone can attack you from any angle.

[@Philbrush]

As has been mentioned, the angle of armour is negated through angle of attack. I am sure there are places you can assume you may be hit (straight from behind), but in reality, missiles are gonna be flying from all different angles!

[@nunull6427]

Rather than using it as your primary armor, use it to the effect of Armored car tires. Still letcha drive after an otherwise critical blow. Someone else commented about using the welders to repair critical ship pieces, which would be amazing on drive systems.

[@MegaMawileTheNommer]

45 degree angle transfers the force of the rocket, causing it to bounce, too steep or shallow of a slope means the energy is not being properly redirected. The second one causes the rocket to bounce before exploding, while the others allow the rocket to make contact, connecting 90% or more of its force into the armor.

[@lmaogottem5984]

Wow this game updates so fast now! I remember when all you do is ram stuff, and make bullet trains that penetrates 8 layers of armor.

[@Kalev225]

Unfortunately, for anti-ship combat (rather than anti-fighter) capitol ship bombardments would occur in volleys, and likewise bomber/strike fighters would drop their entire strike package in one run on one point to maximize damage. This would likely serve best as a station defense against long range bombardment (like rail guns, or high speed gravity torpedoes) For example an enemy faction could have a rail gun built on an asteroid 4-5 kilometers away, and use uranium ingots or other ingots as ammunition (travels too fast and is too small to be stopped by turrets, but still causes a crapton of damage) a ring of self repairing "shield" stations or a wall on an asteroid base would be very useful to defend yourself from supersonic artillery.

[@Kalev225]

Trust me, I tested the hell out of the rail guns, chains of multiple gravity generators accelerating uranium ingots to mach stupid, tiny hole, huge internal damage, arguably the biggest threat in the game as you can fire one round from beyond render distance and then fly away, meanwhile the target station/Imobile ship is ripped nearly in half and no one knows what happened because the uranium ingot shell travels too fast to be seen....

[@Deveerox]

The biggest reason the sloped armor isnt really effective with a rocket is, well, because its a rocket. Its essentially like firing an HE at a tank. Its aim isnt to penetrate, so its already out if the question. But another reason is the explosion is the cause of damage, not vital damage by means of getting the munition into the hull. Try using the gatling guns on sloped light armour. Thats the best way to test is sloped armour actually does something.

[@JasonAguirre]

Those sparks are from the second ship separating from the first. Not sure this is really practical for ships but it would be amazing on stations.

[@Nickuncle]

What was your video called where you made the armor with a layer of something. I think it was a layer of just straight gravity generators maybe? And when the guy tried to ram the ship the armor was unaffected and eventually his ship was too broken to go on.

[@21babydew]

the rockets are HE high explosive not HEAT which is just a copper jet and gets bounced easily or AP(including all types of AP)which is also bounced but less easy then heat.HE high explosive just explodes on contact with anything at all.

[@brockgowling-hammond7361]

The healing armour is a VERY good idea, needs a bit of refining though (no pun intended), anyway I hope you keep working on it!

[@seafood1471]

the sparks from the welders in the final bit were from the armour colliding with the welders.

[@Turpis017]

Realistically the self repairing armour wouldn't be too tough to beat as most fighter won't be packing just one rocket launcher. You should've preformed a second test with a fighter equipped with 2-3 launchers and see how well it holds up. Another issue would be power consumption, it is very possible for a battleship to have its power supply overloaded if it was running weapons, engines and armour to fend off a carrier wing, or brawling with other fleet elements.

[@PyroMancer2k]

The large ship rockets fire much faster than the small ship rockets and would chew right threw that. You could tell that even sustained fire from small ship punched holes after a few shots but he was going easy on it. Give that the armor plating has to be part of another ship I'm a bit skeptical on it's effectiveness since landing gear attachments don't tend to be that stable when a ship is moving around a lot, and honestly I think mobility is likely to get you more survivability by the fact that they miss more often. Also once the armor is breached in a single spot it's weakness grows. The hole is made then the welders are destroyed but so are the adjacent one. Which means the armor around the hole can't repair so it goes down exposing even more welders. Plus where is it attached at, because if the attachment is broken your stuck with huge floating heavy armor blades which could rip through your ship if you make a wrong move. And having a guy trying to patch holes during a fire fight is a bit much. Odds are enemy turrets will insta kill him the way they do when trying to capture cargo ships. Or more likely he'll get hit by one of those missiles being shot at the armor. I think 3 layers of armor, which will take up the same space, will get better results in the long run for most real combat situations. The adaptive armor is a nice concept for repelling small hit and run style attacks but in a heavy fire fight it looks like it will just fold.

[@MFM_Gaming]

Printable merger block hull plates with composite air gap armor that is a couple of merged ships built on a skeleton. Making them printable from some kind of welding machine

[@SashaMasonVR]

I want shield generators that act like a very slowly regenerating health bar for you ship. Its like, everytime a missile or some debris, meteors whatever hit your ship, it will lower the shield generators energy until it hits 0, and then it needs to like, "refill" its energy first before it can protect you from collisions. I would love that because I hate it that basicly every little bump I do with space craft results in me using the welder to fix the damage.

[@The_Foreman]

so here's a question, what about rotating armor that gets repaired as it rotates? like have the armor rotating around the ship in a tube like fashion and have welders hitting all the blocks as they go around? it would be less costly (fewer welders) and armor that gets broken will be moved before a shot can get in on the welder.

[@coolude888]

Hey LSG, I was watching your other fleet videos and came up with an idea you might like. Since you said before that your heavy ship is your transport ship but refitted with weapons, why don't you try to disguise your heavy ship as a transport ship with an outer "armor" made out of mini ships/fighters attached to it. My idea goes in a scenario that you need to have a convoy of transport ships but need something to defend it besides fighters. Why not make the heavy ship look like a transport ship, and when enemy ships attack the convoy try to invade, you separate the "armor" which also acts as fighters and surprise the enemy with overwhelming force. The fighter ships surrounding the heavy ship even protect the weapons from incoming fire when not deployed. Though putting it back together might be a problem...

[@backyardscientist1709]

You could add projectors that project your ship so when the armor gets hit the welders will make repairs making it completely automatic

[@JelqSquirmer]

if i was having a war in Space Engineers. I'd have you build our weapons and armour

[@pharaohdevin6884]

From what I can tell, the game engine only records damage towards the middle of the cube. Since you can't damage a cube diagonally the sloped armor won't make your armor any "thicker". Also being in space sloping is heavily negated since an enemy could very esily fly over you to fire at a flat target. Tanks take advantage of sloped armor because most enemy fire is coming at them horizontally. The slope does seem to help the missile bounce the warhead away from the plate prior to exploding which is why it does less damage.

[@karmazynowydrwal1148]

With this idea 2 layers of "specially projected" armor would be really powerfull. One regular second with welders ( with gap between them ) that allows you to have armor that you have to shoot with same angle few times to destroy.

[@klikkolee]

the slopes making a difference is almost certainly purely caused by flaws in the physics engine. My theory of why this effect occurs is that the engine might calculate collision physics and have the missile bounce before it realizes it should have gone off, so it detonates further from the armor than normal. the missiles in this game seem to have symmetric charges in their warhead, so the explosion will be the same regardless of the angle it impacts. angled armor makes a difference only to penetration type weapons. if you use a missile, it just explodes at the impact location and it only needs to penetrate the shortest distance through the armor to be considered "penetrated." with penetration weaponry on the other hand, they can only perform damage along their trajectory, so angled armor would make a difference.

[@austin503]

Sloped armor works with kinetic projectiles, not explosives. For explosive protection, you would need some sort of shock absorber. You might want to try sticking a plate of armor between 2 gravity fields

[@austin503]

+Jinuk Park That was just a minor derp... fixed it

[@theolevison6519]

Get this, make a small big ship with grinders on the front, and space to put armour blocks on the back, almost no armour, looks like junk, but it drifts in space, or hides by an asteroid until a big ship passes, grinds though th hull of said ship, clamps in place, adds, removes and paints blocks on back to blend in with the big ship, and sends out people to steal rescources until they have everything, then steal the urainium, deactivate turrets and run. Just a concept, i have a mac so i dont have SE

[@brendonmilligan1399]

These days welders Do operate on their own grid making self repairing ships much easier. and to get welders with a much larger area of effect eh Industrial XL mods is awesome though it has not been updated to DX11 yet. It comes with the Area welders which i find just amazing for large construction and self repair. Area welders weld 4 blocks tot he side and 8 forward, they weld much slower than the vanilla ship mounted welders and can only be fitted to large ships.

[@dxcorreia9829]

I think I know why some of your heavy armor blocks get destroyed. I belive that the explosions from the rockets might be damaging the welder behind such blocks making it so that your next shot will destroy the block. Its just an idea you might wanna test. Good luck and keep on the good work.

[@hermentenwolde1202]

Erren remember your anti-rammer thruster wall of engines, try making a self repairing version of that

[@benedikthock2195]

With this you can create like an indestructible Escort Ship or transporters carrying important stuff around. Or secret, well protected space stations. So the only way to go through this is to shoot at the same point so the welders can't fix the cubic hole. How do you mount the second outer ship on the inner one? Simple landing gears? I thought welders do repair in a 3 block radius?!

[@SagaraUrz]

Well, im not saying in the game is implemented, but if is the kind of missile that does damage by exploding once it impacts something, it doesn't matter how sloped the armor is.

[@parkerr3244]

with the new projector update you could make this totally invincible, just infinitely place more blocks and have the welders patch them up. for defending an asteroid this would be perfect, as you have all the materials you need to outlast a seige

[@GoldenCrow]

I think that most ships that fire on heavy armour are going to have more then one rocket launcher, so the auto-repair wall is a bit moot. The idea is interesting but I'd rather just use a bit of spaced armour as it is more reliable and don't effect your control of the ship. P.S For those of you who do not know, anything that is docked to a ship or attached by a rotor is not calculated in when your gyros apply a breaking force. This can cause all sorts of issues, especially with small ships that have very little main mass.

[@dharmeshmistry342]

I've got an idea of something to make. Infiltration torpedoes. They would penetrate the hull and drop rocks in. I saw the fact that G force against rocks makes them act like acid.

[@ThePeacemaker848]

I don't hink the welder armour is overpowered because Enemies will fire more than 1 missile so it will make holes in the armour. The welders just give it that little bit extra.

[@spartan6273]

The optimal armor offset is 45°. It's just physics :p And geometry. The first person (recognized by history) that came up with the idea was a Russian General cerca pre-WW2(correct me if I'm wrong on that). I could be wrong on the time, but that's what I recall on the origin of sloped armor. Not myth, just science.

[@dkhawk12]

The repair armour is great against standard machine gun/ minigun fire but against rockets you only need to put 2 down range and the block gets destroyed regardless. But in saying that it reduced the splash effect of the missiles drastically as the damage is quickly repaired. The question is is it worth investing in all those wielders???

[@RENBOWDESH]

Wouldn't this make ramming a viable tactic against these kinds of armor? The welders would also help out once you get a breech, right?

[@Streaky100001]

Yeah, the only issue with your self repair armor on red ship is that the engines would be vulnerable, so a smart enemy would just take out your engines and leave you to float helplessly.

[@KriegsMeister27]

sloped armor is actually extremely useful against block and rock based projectiles (torpedos and gravity cannons)

[@TORazorback]

I think that a large blast-shield with repairing on the front of a ship would be cost effective and strong, as long as you can keep faced forward. (Think the Avatar Titan from Eve)

[@Aidan303]

One problem with this is that some ships use rocket pods (groups of rocket launchers placed close together to max dmg on impact) and they simply tear away layers of armor instantly.

[@Discohydrus]

How about an inertia warheaded torpedoes? Something with "catch" fuses on the rear of it would be able to penetrate and cause damage to the welders underneath, and what effect would sloped and gapped armor have on inertia torpedoes?

[@TYRANIS101]

imagine a ship like a borg cube thats what arron has designed to be honest :D

[@blesyl67]

Is Henry and Henry MK2 available in the workshop

[@Right1994]

Well, this would be a good idea if it were not for the rocket pods on large ships and the fact, that welders are fuckn expensive. A large ship will just punch trough that armor in no time and wreck all the welders behind it. Also, rocket turrets also tend to punch trough. And, of course, you need the material to repair, so your ship needs a lot larger cargo and needs to always have a lot of materials to repair with it, which makes it a great target for pirates, who will target the engines anyways.

[@TESBADWOLF]

Hey Aaron, since your pretty pro, try building that healing armor alongside a ship with pirate ship like missiles blocks along the side

[@TrabberShir]

As with many of my fellow commenters, I am not convinced of the efficacy, even ignoring the cost. At best this would be a useful feature for the innermost layer of a 3 to 5 block thick armor section to increase the endurance of armor around sensitive systems during a long fight. but a single layer is too easily penetrated with what would be called alpha damage in the Eve community. A backing layer that will only have to repair damage that leaks through the damaged outer layers may have its uses though. Even so, the cost to keep the system running is likely impractical.

[@GrasshopperKelly]

I know why the rockets deflect at those angles. If you fire at a perpendicular (straight on) it apps moving and explodes. If you fire at nearly parallel it bonuses very little and explodes close to target. Fire at slightly angled the rocket bounces at for example goes in at a 10deg to perpendicular and comes back out at 10deg to perpendicular. It moves farther away from the armour before exploding. Tank shells hit the armour and try to go through. Missiles do explosions that's you Penetration idea gone put the wide basically :/ but the game understands bullet damage. Shoot at a steap angle it bounces.

[@combativeThinker]

You should name it [DESIGNATION] Adaptive Carapace (AC) armor. Then have some kind of companion weapon system called DC because of how the design centers around the flow of electricity (the Arc Welders).

[@doonglerules]

Self repairing armor can easily be broken by a large force, maybe a kinetic projectile, maybe a giant rocket salvo. Well, if the armor's one layer thick that is

[@MonochromeMasky]

Makes sense that the missiles don't bounce. They have explosive warheads, not kinetic penetrating tips. They'll always just explode on the surface of the armor.

[@seannavarrete854]

tad bit expensive, but very effective. it would be very good to use on vital ships, as long as you can afford to use it. or maybe use it as a final layer of armor. the only weapon that I can see that would trump it would be unconventional weapons ( kinetic weapons, that gravity missile- rock weapon * forgot name*, etc) however, this is useful to the enemy should thy take the ship, as they now have some fairly valuable wielders now

[@CasMullac]

That's awesome. I Don't believe it's OP. You still need the resources to build the armour, welders, transport tubes and have the resources to repair. Plus a few rockets in quick succession could overpower it. Perhaps a well placed TWARG (think that's what you called it) would penetrate and start destroying the welders.

[@TEKNO640]

soo.... ive had this idea for a while and wondered if aron (the testing guy) could try this.... get ship, and attach 'armor plating' to it... this plating would pretty much be a small ship attached ot the large ship. this way you could excrement with allot fo things, 1st: you could have heavy armore on the outside for thruster and bullet resistance at a minimal weight cost, you could also have cross beams to reinforce your armor form impact as well as have compartmentalized armor with gaps in between to make the armor technically thicker with ought actually having added wight. this same idea could be used for cheaper landing pads.

[@TEKNO640]

you could also use this idea to allow you to quickly replace armor 'sheets' at a dock, or carry spare armor slabs inside your ship to be replaced. on top of this, because its attached with small gap, and/or the landing gear has some extra impact resistance, this will help protect your ship from ramming, debris, and kinetic weapons... god idea to experiment with different combinations of plating. (could also used separate sheets/rotors/ landing gear to angle the armor)

[@TheDelta07sev]

why do the missiles have fins, they are in space. if they were "heat seeking" or guided they would use vectored thrust.

[@Birdy_Cloud]

How to weaponize the durable concept: make a thick battering ram.

[@deathnightANIMATED]

Using projector block this could be more useful than before

[@mammyaondiciple3570]

I did notice that while it does repair fast that repairing against heavy armor blocks is slow. the rapid missile fire rate of turrets could potentially break through with very little trouble compounded with the fact that holes do appear a few volleys from a few turrets could drill through the ship with no real problems as it seams that welders have low hp. while this could be very good against fighters who tend to move a lot and not hit the same place as they move past the sustained fire of large ship turrets i can see this as having very little effect

[@satibel]

keep in mind that you'll probably be shooting back, so if their armour doesn't repair, you will win anyways.

[@rubixman7x7]

If you add the projectors, does that mean that you don't need someone going around filling up the holes because the welders will make the frame and the armor?

[@beanny39]

Another thing is you can see the reactors, so all it takes is a good hit or two, and you've crippled that part of the ship.

[@socberttrucker3598]

IDEA! : have your big ship, and have a guy in a small ship with welders inside the big ship, flying around the inside and welding every block just in case,

[@socberttrucker3598]

big ships tend not to be the fastest ships so...not too much of a problem.

[@wallstreetsplooge]

It's hardly overpowered when you tested it purely in a lab scenario, that self-repairing armor wouldn't last very long at all in a real battle. Not to mention that if your ship is destroyed, you suffer an absolutely massive loss compared to regular heavy armor

[@bilboswagz745]

well we are going to see alot of big square borg cubes around now

[@MyHunter9090]

Because the Rocket is a HE Rocket... It's going to explode the second it touches anything. However, AP rounds will be more likely to deflect and ricochet away.

[@MadSpectro7]

Armor angling will probably be more effective against bullets as opposed to explosive ordinance.

[@sharpshooter740]

It probably has more to do with deflecting the round instead of actually having more effective armor. Because: 1. The rockets are high explosives that do a set damage to a set number of blocks, as apposed to a kinetic penetrator, which damages blocks until it loses inertia/energy. 2. The fact that the rocket is deflecting means that the explosion is occurring at a further distance than if it had exploded on contact, and therefore does less damage. 'Better' sloped armor would likely be more effective at blocking armor piercing torpedos/missiles, which are kinetic in nature. These projectiles would either deflect off the armor, or get stuck inside of it. On a less related note, has anyone made Armor Piercing High Explosive torpedoes yet? Those would be rather effective against sloped armor.

[@ipballdtime]

SKYRIM MUSIC IN THE BACKGROUND thought i was going crazy for a second there

[@OrbitPlanetCraft]

Try doing what tanks do.Have some layers of armour that can just fall off if to damged.

[@a_man_of_no_import6399]

is the rocket splashing through to break teh welders behind? perhaps thats why you get hole that pop up when all the welders in an area can no longer function?

[@Chrispins]

I wish they would add reliable armor sloping mechanics like in War Thunder. It would make ship orientation that much more important in combat.

[@willbrack7069]

Hey Arron, can you make a tutorial on how to make a decoy launcher to draw enemy fire? I tested it but I always get negative results, I want to see what you can do

[@cameronmcallister7606]

It's not OP as it is sort of like shields, and you can destroy the hull to bypass the protection, it just upgrades the ship, regenerative health in Space Engineers.

[@gemberkoekje]

My guess is that the missile IS deflected, but due to a bug, the deflected round actually hits the next block, and that hit is considered full-on. This is just a theory though.

[@CashKingD]

Make a ship with that armor! That would be cool :D

[@Ernicification]

A real missile salvo would tear through that self repair armor like it was butter. It's a cool idea, but rockets are just too OP right now. You really need defensive turrets on larger ships in order to counter them.

[@SleepySkull1]

That rocket... and that rocket is HE, HE doesn't care about sloped armor, HEAT Actualy care about sloped.

[@jensverelst2639]

what is the control to put a block in space without making a ship/station (left control+v doesnt work) ? and thats a great idea from you man