Ships Resistance vs reinforcement?

[WeComeInPeace]

Can someone explain how resistance and reinforcement differ?

For example, when you add the deep plating experimental effect you get:

HULL REINFORCEMENT+10%
KINETIC RESISTANCE-2%
THERMAL RESISTANCE-2%
EXPLOSIVE RESISTANCE-2%

Intuitively one would think that is like ten steps forward and two steps back, by my gut feeling is that this is not the whole truth?

Thanks in advance
o7

Edit: While we're at it: What is integrity?

 

[Bigmaec]

Reinforcement is the "hit points" of the hull. If the HRP has 200 hp, after deep plating +10% it has 220.
Resistance reduces the damage taken by the according damage category, i.e. 2% less kinetic damage.
Integrity is the "module hit points", the damage a module can take before it is destroyed.

 

[WeComeInPeace]

So the hull of a ship has a number of "hit points", which are subtracted for every "hit"?
I still don't really get it. Those hit points are they thermal, kinetic or explosive. Does the hull have a hit point value for each?
Is there anywhere on the interweb where all this is explained, or are a CMDR supposed to know it before entering the galaxy?

 

[Bigmaec]

So the hull of a ship has a number of "hit points", which are subtracted for every "hit"?
I still don't really get it. Those hit points are they thermal, kinetic or explosive. Does the hull have a hit point value for each?
Is there anywhere on the interweb where all this is explained, or are a CMDR supposed to know it before entering the galaxy?

A ship has say 100 hit points and a resistance of 50% thermal and -50% kinetic.

You shoot the ship with a beam laser which does 10 damage/second (thermal)
Laser against a resistance of 50% thermal does only half the damage, so the laser does 5 hit points/second.
So after 20 seconds you're dead (hull reduced to 0).

After rebuy your ship is new, and gets attacked by a multicannon which does again 10 damage/ second, this time kinetic.
So the multicannon against your negative resistance does 15 damage/second. After 7 seconds you're dead.

The resistances reduce the damage your hull takes, or in case of absolute damage (PA) ignores any resistance.
So only one hit point stat, but different resistances.

 

[WeComeInPeace]

Thanks! this makes a little more sense now.

I must admit that I still feel at a level of understanding where I consider a new ship as having a hull made out of glass and then I buy stuff and have engineers fix stuff to change the glass into steel. It becomes heavy Alternatively I use a similar method with the shield, and then it becomes power hungry.

After googling for hours, I also guess this is related to some of the gaming lingo that I don't know about. I've never played D&D.

 

[baudelier]

For most situations going heavy duty with deep plating is the best choice.

Heavy duty gives you a large boost to your HP (72%) at grade 5 plus, smaller boosts to your resistances (14.6%). So even with trading a reduction of 2% resists for deep plating's 10% boost to HP you'll still see a net increase of your hulls resistances.

 

[WeComeInPeace]

Ok, I think it's dawning. The HP is like the health indicator from any other game where you can die. You can increase the "100% HP" by buying better modules and engineering. The resistance is a factor you multiply the HP with to figure out the balance of how you loose HP when being hit by different types of pewpew.

Reinforcement a factor you multiply your current HP with when you buy an upgrade.

Integrity is like HP for the modules, but not the hull? The shield gen has integrity and gives HP's.

I (normally) ain't stupid, but this seems more complicated than needed? A deliberate challenge in the game?

 

[Morbad]

Shielding is one pool, hull integrity is another, per-module module integrity are yet more discrete pools.

Each weapon has it's damage split into one or more types and resistances mitigate incoming damage, reducing it before it can be subtracted from any of these pools. Resistance is usually multiplicative, with deminishing returns, but there are cases were there are multiple layers of resistance, namely int he case of shields (basic shield resistance a pip resistances are independent) and module damage (hull rating, hull resistances, and resistance provided by the MRP all reduce or redirect damage independently of the others).

In general, shield resistances have seriously diminishing returns past the resistances provided by the shield generator alone, plus 30% (getting 50% across the board is easy with a thermal resist generator, and even 60% is not horribly difficult, if you are willing to focus on kinetic or explosive resistance at the expense of other areas, you can get one of them into the 80s). Hull resistances seem to have deminishing returns right from the get-go, so soft cap much sooner (getting to 40% is easy, 50% moderately difficult, 60% extremely difficult)...this is the prime factor that makes deep plating generally superior to other options, but there are exceptions.

One factor that tends to rapidly equalize hull resistances is that negative base resistances actually increase the effectiveness of resistance augmentations and that the point of deminishing returns doesn't seem to be affected by resistance of the bulkheads. For example, if your ship has -40% thermic resistance on it's hull and you add a D1 G5 thermal resistant reflective HRP (+41.5% thermal resist, your resistance jumps to about ~18% because it's multiplying 1.4x normal damage (hull with -40% reistance) with 0.585% damage recieved (HRP resistance) at that point, all resistances are near equal and all are already at deminishing returns.

 

[WeComeInPeace]

Thanks Morbad!

Final question: Is there a conversion factor between the shield strength and the hull strength? Sort of

MJ = HP * factor

Is there a rule of thumb instead of a factor?

Thanks to all of you. I'm beginning to understand it now, so with a little practice (10.000 hours at Coriolis)...

Edit: I primarily use ED as pure escapism, since I'm working with some very complex and truly horrifying Earth system models Oh the ironi!

 

[Morbad]

There is no conversion. Assuming no resistances, or the same final resistance, one damage is one damage.

Shields tend to have more effective health per MJ because it's resistances can be higher and pips add another layer of resistances, but this situation can be reversed with low armor penetration weapons vs. high hull ratings.

 

[Taskmage]

Simple tip: Play around on coriolis.io

In the top rows you can see the values for shields and hull, as well as the resistance to each type of damage (and speed, jump range, ...).

Two examples:
1) Standard Sidewinder with just a standard shield and some boosters
2) Engineered Sidewinder with a bi-weave shield, several hull boosters, and reactive armor

 

[WeComeInPeace]

I've kind of already spent half my ED life at Coriolis, but with my newly acquired knowledge, I begin to understand that I have to go back and adjust the setup of some of my ships. They are not really bad, but there is definitely room for improvements. Finding the sweet spot will be complicated, since I still also need to figure out exactly what weapons the opponent is using, and what Verity means with "taking heat damage" when my thermometer seems happy etc.

 

[Taskmage]

... Finding the sweet spot will be complicated, since I still also need to figure out exactly what weapons the opponent is using,...

Short Version: Aim for having even resists for all damage types for hull and shield.

Detailed:

For shields (PvE):
Bi-weave shields (in most cases the best solution for PvE anyway) modded for thermal resistance, shield boosters with resistance/super caps. The trick with bi weave is that you don't want high base shield numbers, much more important is the ability to recharge them fast, giving you more or less unlimited shields in PvE.

For shields (PvP): I'm no expert here, from what i heard:
Mostly base value matters, so reinforced shield (standard shield or prismatic), heavy duty boosters, maybe one thermal modded booster. Most in PvP seem to use plasma weapons, these ignore resists.

For hull (PvE against standard NPC):
Go with reacive armor heavy duty+deep plating modded, one hull booster (the one with the lowest class you have) thermal/deep plating modded, any further hull boosters with heavy duty/deep plating.

For hull (PvE against Thargoids - again, i'm no expert here):
Some caustic resistance, other than that just raw hull hitpoints since they ignore resists.

For hull PvP (no expert...you know...):
Basically the same as against Thargoids minus the caustic (again, plasma weapons do absolute damage). You will want some module protection boosters.

... and what Verity means with "taking heat damage" when my thermometer seems happy etc. ...

If your ship gets too hot (over 100% heat) you take heat damage. Nothing you can do about that, except getting too hot... A class A powerplant helps here, as does low emissions modding / thermal spread special effect. For emergencies you might equip a heat sink launcher, but i have never needed that for PvE.

 

[Morbad]

I still also need to figure out exactly what weapons the opponent is using, and what Verity means with "taking heat damage" when my thermometer seems happy etc.

"Taking heat damage" and "thermal attack" are two very distinct warnings.

The former should only occur at or beyond 100% heat and there is essentially nothing you can do to mitigate the damage caused here other than to cool down as quickly as possible and have as much module (and hull past 150% heat) integrity as practical.

The latter simply means that a weapon is dumping thermal load into your ship. Completely stock PAs do this by default (though the magnitude of the thermal load is very low), and thermal shock or thermal cascade effects can be applied to a variety of weapons. The thermal attack Engineer effects have been nerfed so many times that it's usually safe to ignore such weapons unless you have a hot running vessel/loadout to start wiith.

In either case, thermal load is separate from any direct damage type.

 

[Bigmaec]

Short Version: Aim for having even resists for all damage types for hull and shield.

Detailed:

For shields (PvE):
Bi-weave shields (in most cases the best solution for PvE anyway) modded for thermal resistance, shield boosters with resistance/super caps. The trick with bi weave is that you don't want high base shield numbers, much more important is the ability to recharge them fast, giving you more or less unlimited shields in PvE.

For shields (PvP): I'm no expert here, from what i heard:
Mostly base value matters, so reinforced shield (standard shield or prismatic), heavy duty boosters, maybe one thermal modded booster. Most in PvP seem to use plasma weapons, these ignore resists.

For hull (PvE against standard NPC):
Go with reacive armor heavy duty+deep plating modded, one hull booster (the one with the lowest class you have) thermal/deep plating modded, any further hull boosters with heavy duty/deep plating.

For hull (PvE against Thargoids - again, i'm no expert here):
Some caustic resistance, other than that just raw hull hitpoints since they ignore resists.

For hull PvP (no expert...you know...):
Basically the same as against Thargoids minus the caustic (again, plasma weapons do absolute damage). You will want some module protection boosters.



If your ship gets too hot (over 100% heat) you take heat damage. Nothing you can do about that, except getting too hot... A class A powerplant helps here, as does low emissions modding / thermal spread special effect. For emergencies you might equip a heat sink launcher, but i have never needed that for PvE.

Two comments:

- For bi-weave shields a g4 thermal mod equalizes the resistances, a g5 overamplifies thermal. I tend to use g4 only.

- often a reactive light-weight armour with a small thermal resistant HRP is fully sufficient for PvE and is lighter then heavy duty obviously. Lightweight also gives better resistances then heavy duty.

 

[Morbad]

For bi-weave shields a g4 thermal mod equalizes the resistances, a g5 overamplifies thermal. I tend to use g4 only.

G5 still has the best total resistances (~10% more thermic for ~4% less kinetic) and provides slightly more module integrity. G4 makes sense if you are trying to conserve high grade materials or maximize kinetic resistance on a thermal resistance generator, but I normally take the mod all the way to the end.

 

[ECLIP5E]

Reinforcement is the "hit points" of the hull. If the HRP has 200 hp, after deep plating +10% it has 220. Resistance reduces the damage taken by the according damage category, i.e. 2% less kinetic damage. Integrity is the "module hit points", the damage a module can take before it is destroyed.

Everything makes sense when put into “Dungeons & Dragons” terms. Thanks for explaining this!

 

[Ian Skippy]

Ok, I think it's dawning. The HP is like the health indicator from any other game where you can die. You can increase the "100% HP" by buying better modules and engineering. The resistance is a factor you multiply the HP with to figure out the balance of how you loose HP when being hit by different types of pewpew.

Reinforcement a factor you multiply your current HP with when you buy an upgrade.

Integrity is like HP for the modules, but not the hull? The shield gen has integrity and gives HP's.

I (normally) ain't stupid, but this seems more complicated than needed? A deliberate challenge in the game?

Think of it as an RPG: hp is your health, and resistence is your armour protecting in various extends against slashing/piercing/crushing damage, which is kinetic/laser/explosives in ED.