I don't understand why this upgrade is called 'lightweight'. When you see the blueprint, it's like an heavy duty armour, but less efficient. I've tried a lightweight grad 3 (on a ship with no armour, just light alloy) : no weight gained. Maybe you can gain weight on a military armour? Or maybe I just had a bad roll?
Engineers Lightweight armour
- Thread starter Monsieur Pickwick
- Start date
Dude,
Lightweight armor reduces the Mass of the armor, gives damage type resistances and reduces the amount of hull boost provided by the armor...
This stuff only works if you actually have bulkheads that are higher than lightweight armor. You know, Reinforced, Military Grade, Reactive Composite, Mirrored Surface..? That stuff.
If you have one of those bulkheads installed, Lightweight actually gives you MORE resistance than Heavy Duty. Lightweight also reduces your Mass, so that you can move faster and jump longer distances. The advantage of Heavy Duty is it even further increases your Hull Boost, which is effectively your ship health (armor).
That should clarify your mess.
Lightweight armor reduces the Mass of the armor, gives damage type resistances and reduces the amount of hull boost provided by the armor...
This stuff only works if you actually have bulkheads that are higher than lightweight armor. You know, Reinforced, Military Grade, Reactive Composite, Mirrored Surface..? That stuff.
If you have one of those bulkheads installed, Lightweight actually gives you MORE resistance than Heavy Duty. Lightweight also reduces your Mass, so that you can move faster and jump longer distances. The advantage of Heavy Duty is it even further increases your Hull Boost, which is effectively your ship health (armor).
That should clarify your mess.
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OK thx! I will do some tests 
Selene Jean
Heavy duty looks like this on military grade:
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Ouch! +38% weight! So it's not 'mass-free'...
38% is actually a really good roll as the minimum limit is 35%.
Selene Jean is the Engineer who does armor primarily. You unlock her via Tod "The Blaster" McQuinn when moving between grade 3 and 4, assuming you've mined at least 500 tons of stuff. To unlock her, you need to provide 10 tons of Panite.
Remember, guys..
Heavy Duty Armor goes up to grade 5. Lightweight Armor only goes up to grade 3. Despite this, Lightweight actually provides more damage-type resistances. There are no grade 5 Lightweight Armor blueprints that we know of as of this moment.
Just Something to keep in mind.
Selene Jean is the Engineer who does armor primarily. You unlock her via Tod "The Blaster" McQuinn when moving between grade 3 and 4, assuming you've mined at least 500 tons of stuff. To unlock her, you need to provide 10 tons of Panite.
Remember, guys..
Heavy Duty Armor goes up to grade 5. Lightweight Armor only goes up to grade 3. Despite this, Lightweight actually provides more damage-type resistances. There are no grade 5 Lightweight Armor blueprints that we know of as of this moment.
Just Something to keep in mind.
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Strange thing is - i did something like 5-6 armour upgrades, and it seems like they are biased towards maximum values, i always got results very close to maximum. It may be just luck, but it never worked this way with another upgrades, and 5-6 lucky rolls in a row seem unlikely.
Also about mass - it is very ship dependentd. For some ships like FAS on which i used this upgrade additional mass is not that much of an issue. It is well below optimal for thrusters and is so heavy by itself that those +~30T does not change jump range that much.
For other ships which are more sensitive to mass it may be possible to remove military grade alltogether and upgrade lightweight alloys with heavy duty armour. Despite "hull boost" value is not even near to military grade 200-300% one it adds ~40-50% armour (while military grade without upgrades adds ~100%) and has zero penalties:
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So I've totally misunderstood this light weight armour thing!?
I thought with light weight alloys it'd reduce the mass of your ship and reduce the ship's 'hit points' while increasing it's resistances...
Was hoping it's be something like that to augment my upgrades to thrusters/FSD range.
That was a lot of time invested in being wrong! Oh well, never mind.
I thought with light weight alloys it'd reduce the mass of your ship and reduce the ship's 'hit points' while increasing it's resistances...
Was hoping it's be something like that to augment my upgrades to thrusters/FSD range.
That was a lot of time invested in being wrong! Oh well, never mind.
With lightweight alloys you already have zero armour mass, it is really hard to reduce it further
But it is not wasted time, you can get some additional protection basically for free.
What I mean is I spent a lot of time not doing what I thought I was.With lightweight alloys you already have zero armour mass, it is really hard to reduce it further
But it is not wasted time, you can get some additional protection basically for free.
In effect I was hoping it would reduce hull mass.
Maybe that could be a mod for a future engineer:
Honeycombed Vented hull: lighter hull, reduced heat build up at cost of higher thermal signature and weaker hull.
I'm exactly in the same situation as you CMDR Redcrest We learn...
We learn...
you cant add an engineer mod onto another engineer mod. The lightweight armour would replace the heavy duty armour you had applied.
I find the best use is in balancing your ships overall mass, as for example base reactive armour may be a little too heavy. So what you do is instead apply lightweight armour to reactive armour. This reduces the mass of the reactive armour and also the total hit points of the armour, however the resistances go up so you suffer less damage per hit of say laser fire.
In effect the armour mods and HRP's allow you to balance your ships resistances and protections out.
The major benefit of lightweight armour is jump range.
Heady duty armour adds a lot of weight. Lightweight armour is a lot lighter than heavy duty armour.
Lightweight armour is excellent if you stroll around the bubble a lot, doing missions/trade runs/whatever, providing extra security without making your long travels a pain.
Heady duty armour adds a lot of weight. Lightweight armour is a lot lighter than heavy duty armour.
Lightweight armour is excellent if you stroll around the bubble a lot, doing missions/trade runs/whatever, providing extra security without making your long travels a pain.