Author Topic: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?  (Read 20531 times)

Colt Ward

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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #60 on: 15 May 2018, 16:12:25 »
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What I was referring to was the FerroLam armor, HH being Hell's Horses (FerroLam on a Enyo?  Enyo III? it gets put on a diet to get to the proper weight of 50t with the original's weapons) and the Ravens being the ASF interested Clan . . . never looked, speaking of the Ravens can it be put on Protos?

As far as Stealth Armor, I guess it would depend on what type of ECM you are using- Clan, Guardian or Angel . . . hmm, Nova CEWS & Stealth Armor- Society next gen!
Colt Ward
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chaosticket

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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #61 on: 15 May 2018, 16:59:48 »
I think this is tunring into "which armor is best?".

Okay Hardened Armor is there when you want a massive increase in durability, by about 50-100%.
Ferro-lamellor is more like 20%, but uses far less weight.
Stealth Armor is protection for Sniper and Support units.
Ferro-Fibrous is low-weight armor
Standard is Master-or-None or Jack-of-All trades depending on what you are mounting it on.

On Lighter units low-weight armor tends to be more attractive, while the opposite tends to be the case with heavier weight.

Two ends of the spectrum I think of just for Light mechs are "Roaches" and "Snipers". Giving Hardened Armor to a light mech hurts less so than slower mechs as the penalty is fixed, not matching your speed. Its possible to use Hardened Light mechs for various duties, like guaranteeing you get close enough for ECM, TAG, or BAP ranges. Or you can use it to make pint-sized Brawlers.

Ferro-Lamellor is a small increase for a big cost overall in terms of slots and weight. Id prefer to use Ferro-Fibrous to cut weight down for more equipment(and then only on light-mediums), Stealth Armor for long-distance tactical units, or Hardened Armor for sheer durability. I does not "WOW" me.

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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #62 on: 15 May 2018, 17:13:56 »
I believe there was a thread on the rules page that explicitly ruled that Boosted C3 and Bloodhound Active Probes don't work at the same time as Stealth Armor.  The Stealth unit isn't being jammed by anything, it's deactivating anything that actively broadcasts a signal to prevent it from being detected.

Regarding FL Armor's damage reduction, Silver Bullet Gauss Rifles and Light Machine Guns are also affected.
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Colt Ward

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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #63 on: 15 May 2018, 21:37:58 »
And single missile hits from LRMs . . . so you roll for 6, 11, or 16 and its a single 4,two 4s or three 4s that hit locations.
Colt Ward
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Crimson Dawn

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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #64 on: 15 May 2018, 21:42:24 »
I believe there was a thread on the rules page that explicitly ruled that Boosted C3 and Bloodhound Active Probes don't work at the same time as Stealth Armor.  The Stealth unit isn't being jammed by anything, it's deactivating anything that actively broadcasts a signal to prevent it from being detected.

Regarding FL Armor's damage reduction, Silver Bullet Gauss Rifles and Light Machine Guns are also affected.

Probably makes various versions of piranhas feel really sad.  Losing 50% damage of the majority of your weapons really hurts.

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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #65 on: 15 May 2018, 21:53:32 »
Probably makes various versions of piranhas feel really sad.  Losing 50% damage of the majority of your weapons really hurts.
Aye, but a Piranha probably shouldn't be engaging actual Battlemechs anyways.
F-L is extremely useful for anti-infantry 'Mechs since those 2 point clusters don't fare so great against F-L.  It's a shame no canon Piranha variant has it.

Brakiel

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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #66 on: 16 May 2018, 06:24:19 »
Ferro-Lamellor is a small increase for a big cost overall in terms of slots and weight. Id prefer to use Ferro-Fibrous to cut weight down for more equipment(and then only on light-mediums), Stealth Armor for long-distance tactical units, or Hardened Armor for sheer durability. I does not "WOW" me.

FL isn't particularly heavy, especially when compared it to Hardened of all things (14 points per ton vs 8 ). It also really undersells both the universal applicability of its mitigation and the lack of painful or potentially catastrophic downsides. For instance, Hardened's -1 run MP means that it's a harder to hit your maximum possible TMM unless you overbuild your engine (such as a 5/8 dropping to 5/7 with Hardened, or 7/11 dropping to 7/10). Statistically, that's going to result in a few more hits landing and offsetting the armor increase. And Hardened doesn't actually mitigate damage, so taking a AC20 hit is still going to result in a PSR, which has that increased difficulty.

Ferro Lamellor actually negates damage. That AC20 is going to be doing only 16 damage, so no PSR. It also continues to apply its bonus so long as a single point of armor remains. Fire that AC20 at a torso with 1 point of FL is going to result in only 15 points of internal damage.

Given faction availability, yeah, Hardened Armor designs are going to be more prolific than Ferro Lamellor, but that's a case of taking hardened lemons and making lemonade. Long term, I would expect Ferro Lamellor to become much more common over Hardened; and in fact, would expect Hardened to be superseded in favor of Ballistic Reinforced.

iamfanboy

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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #67 on: 16 May 2018, 08:53:26 »
FL isn't particularly heavy, especially when compared it to Hardened of all things (14 points per ton vs 8 ). It also really undersells both the universal applicability of its mitigation and the lack of painful or potentially catastrophic downsides.
Incorrect: Hardened gives 16 points per ton, just like standard - calling it '8' but making each point count twice means it's 16. The only thing that takes that away is re-engineered lasers, which are not exactly common.

F-L is a better armor, I'll give it that. That damage mitigation, despite requiring yet another bookkeeping step in a game rife with them, is worth a lot, and it has the same TAC ignoring properties as Hardened - even if it doesn't have the same dampening effect (with a -2 once you get THROUGH the armor!) without ANY penalties other than 'faction availability'.

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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #68 on: 16 May 2018, 08:55:46 »
Probably makes various versions of piranhas feel really sad.  Losing 50% damage of the majority of your weapons really hurts.

SRM boats too. Trust me, bringing a Juliano to a fight and seeing an Osteon plonked down on the other side of the table pretty much guarantees a sinking feeling in your stomach...
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JadeHellbringer

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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #69 on: 16 May 2018, 08:59:41 »
SRM boats too. Trust me, bringing a Juliano to a fight and seeing an Osteon plonked down on the other side of the table pretty much guarantees a sinking feeling in your stomach...

If we're being fair, seeing an Osteon on the other side of the map is bad news for just about anything.
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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #70 on: 16 May 2018, 09:03:57 »
Yeah, my solution was to not even bother, and focus on killing the other stuff on that side, such as the Rhinos and Alacorns.
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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #71 on: 16 May 2018, 09:11:08 »
Yeah, my solution was to not even bother, and focus on killing the other stuff on that side, such as the Rhinos and Alacorns.

Osteons, Rhinos, and Alacorns?

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Brakiel

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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #72 on: 16 May 2018, 09:19:33 »
Incorrect: Hardened gives 16 points per ton, just like standard - calling it '8' but making each point count twice means it's 16.

TacOps explicitly says Hardened is 8 points per ton. It's just that each point can absorb 2 damage.

Colt Ward

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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #73 on: 16 May 2018, 09:20:41 »
Yeah, I used one and the little Society mech as a networked force for a 5k force in our TT group's test for a tournament.  Across the table it was 2 heavies and a medium all C3i linked from WoB.  He was surprised I just had a single mech that was firing . . . chewed through the armor only to hit the reinforced structure IIRC.  Wrecked the Blakists but the Osteon was not in great shape though it could walk away.  My only time facing or fielding Society equipment, had to look up a lot of the special rules and verify them with the agent.

It would be a trip if the Clan Protectorate was given that tech from the Foxes . . .
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iamfanboy

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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #74 on: 16 May 2018, 09:20:55 »
TacOps explicitly says Hardened is 8 points per ton. It's just that each point can absorb 2 damage.
...Which means each ton gives 16 points of protection, equivalent to standard armor.

EDIT: A refusal to admit how something works always makes see red, whether it's intentional or not. Comment redacted.

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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #75 on: 16 May 2018, 09:23:17 »
Keep it calm.
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MoneyLovinOgre4Hire

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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #76 on: 16 May 2018, 10:25:12 »
Incorrect: Hardened gives 16 points per ton, just like standard - calling it '8' but making each point count twice means it's 16. The only thing that takes that away is re-engineered lasers, which are not exactly common.

And Armor-Piercing autocannon ammo.  Which is one of the main reasons to bother with the stuff.
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chaosticket

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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #77 on: 16 May 2018, 10:49:45 »
Ballistic Reinforced Armor had a wider range of possibilities than Laser Reflective, but its still not 100% effective, uses up about 2/3rds weight as Hardened and uses a large chunk of critical slots. Against Inner Sphere battlemechs is quite good as inferior Inner Sphere Energy Weapons means you are unlikely to fight a strong counter. Ballistic and Missile Weapons are more likely. Against Clan Mechs then that is a severe flaw.

For me I build Energy Heavy units with additional weapons to avoid easy Reflective armor counters. Ballistic Armor is a terrible counter against me.

A large Flaw with more reasonable armors is the Critical slot cost. Its not likely you can just swap any Standard armor for 7-14 slots except on lighter mechs.
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klarg1

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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #78 on: 16 May 2018, 11:22:53 »
Incorrect: Hardened gives 16 points per ton, just like standard - calling it '8' but making each point count twice means it's 16. The only thing that takes that away is re-engineered lasers, which are not exactly common.

*Nothing to see here*
« Last Edit: 16 May 2018, 11:30:04 by klarg1 »

Brakiel

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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #79 on: 16 May 2018, 11:26:18 »
Cluster munitions are considerably more common than re-engineered lasers, and also treat hardened armor (effectively) as 8 points per ton. (A full pip marked off per munition)

Pretty sure those are the old rules. Current rules say each bubble takes two hash marks, one for each point of damage. So LBX doesn't "round up", it's still 1 damage.

klarg1

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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #80 on: 16 May 2018, 11:29:44 »
Pretty sure those are the old rules. Current rules say each bubble takes two hash marks, one for each point of damage. So LBX doesn't "round up", it's still 1 damage.

You're right, and I was corrected earlier in the thread some time ago. I sit corrected.

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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #81 on: 17 May 2018, 10:01:33 »
When we talk about PSRs from taking damage, we mean 20 points of damage coming in, right?  If an Osteon takes a pair of cERllas, you X out 10 armor pips, 5 for each laser and then do your faceplant check, with +2 difficulty,  in the appropriate phase.

I'm guessing its the same for all special armors. 
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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #82 on: 17 May 2018, 10:03:27 »
You know, I never thought about that (and I play tabletop so rarely anymore that I don't have experience enough to say!). But yeah, if I light up a Savage Wolf (with its ferro-lamellor) with an Annihilator and nail it with 20 LBX pellets, it wouldn't mark any damage. But it did get hit with 20 points worth, so... does it make a PSR check? I don't have books here at work, so I have no idea, but... never thought about that before.
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Colt Ward

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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #83 on: 17 May 2018, 10:09:16 »
From the discussion before on . . . IIRC a Malice vs a Savage Wolf . . . no.  For instance, hit it with a LRM20 or AC/20 . . . neither will force a PSR b/c you do 16 points of damage- and PSR is based on damage done from what I understand.
Colt Ward
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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #84 on: 17 May 2018, 10:10:27 »
PSRs are based on damage total before any reduction.

https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=10958.msg319678#msg319678
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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #85 on: 17 May 2018, 10:10:52 »
zero damage is a wonky blindspot in the rules. with FL, mechwarriors don't take pilot hits but vehicles still make motive crit checks

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klarg1

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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #86 on: 17 May 2018, 10:25:14 »
PSRs are based on damage total before any reduction.

https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=10958.msg319678#msg319678

Seems logical. I mean, the weapons hit, even if the armor wasn't damaged by the effect.

Brakiel

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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #87 on: 17 May 2018, 10:40:53 »

Weirdo

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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #88 on: 17 May 2018, 10:54:30 »
On the one hand, yours is more recent, so I'm inclined to believe that one. On the other, mine was actually asked in the proper forum, and I don't believe in rewarding a failure to follow simple instructions. Decisions, decisions...
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Colt Ward

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Re: Hardened Armor: Yes or No?
« Reply #89 on: 17 May 2018, 11:25:17 »
. . . ? its asking in the TW sub-forum about a TW basic rule.
Colt Ward
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