Emissive Armor does not stack. So you only need 1 to get the effect. However, one or two extra on a large ship is not a bad idea to provide a backup.

You only need 1 of Scattering and Stealth Armors to receive their effect.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

This make me consider something else. Is damage to armor directional? That way it might be best to add your backup on the other end of the ship.

Darren

It's called Scattering Armor because it scatters enemy sensors.

Damage is non-directional with armor and is applied in the order of armor placement.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

I know that for the outer and inner areas the damage it is directional, but ive never checked for the armor.

Darren

Geeze man, be a little more liberal with the enter key in the future...

SpaceEmpires.net | Space Empires Wiki

I've seen worse...

I think Emissive Armor does stack. I am using BM 1.09. If I send 30 fighters with one anti-proton beam against my PD Juggernaut with 7 Emissive Armors and 5 Flak Cannons, the Juggernaut wins with almost 700 armor left. If I replace all seven Level 2 Emissive Armor with seven Level 6 Armor, the ship will have all 770 armor destroyed by the time it wins. If I use just 1 Emissive Armor, I'll lose between 350 and 700 armor.

Emissive Armor does not stack. What you are seeing is the extended effectiveness of the Emissive Armor. With fewer panels, they are destroyed faster and the emissive effect is lost quickly, while with more panels the emissive effect is applied longer etc.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

I was checking to see if the Emissive armor was destroyed first, but it was intact. With all emissive armor I was not even losing one armor. Maybe what happens is Emissive armor only works against the shots that are striking that specific armor panel? So if you have one of 7 being Emissive the first three armors will take regular damage, then the Emissive will slow things down until it's destroyed, then the next three will be destroyed.

Captain Kwok said earlier that the order you put the armour in mattered, but I guess that doesn't really matter in the case your talking about. You're saying that the damage was spread over all the amour? I can't really investigate because I'm at work, on my lunch break, but how exactly does the armour 'absorb' the damage? If I can remember I though that one component got destroyed at a time, then the next one started getting damaged. So if no armour was destroyed on the totally emissive ship, then if the emissive armour is hit first on the 'cheaper' version shouldn't it not get destroyed either?

I'm sure I'm missing something, sorry about the messy post, I was trying to figure it out as I went along. Looking back at Noumenon's last post, maybe the Emissive armour was last in line of the Armour list and the normal armour got destroyed first?

I don't know anymore, I'm tired and want to go home and play SEV, if work didn't pay so well I wouldn't do it.

Best of luck figuring it out Noumenon, if you haven't posted again by the time I get home I might do some testing.

To reexplain my post clearer -- I thought Emissive Armor was a "use only one" component. If you used one, it protected your whole ship five points worth, but if you used ten, you didn't get ten times the damage reduction.

The way I think it works now is that Emissive Armor is a "saves only itself" component. If you use one, that one will take less damage when it is its turn to be destroyed. But the rest of your armor will take normal damage. So you should use all Emissive Armor if you want to be less vulnerable to beams through the entire lifecycle of your armor.

That was clearly put, Noumenon, and if you are right, what CK says about it "not stacking" is still true, because 5 emissive armor componants still save only 5 damage points when hit, not 25.

You should run thge sim a few times just to be sure, but this is all very interesting nonetheless.

The only effect adding more Emissive Armor has is extending the time frame in which the emissive ability is applied. Second, by placing the Emissive Armors last on a design, they will be last armor to be damaged and you'll get more damage reduction overall.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

How do you set a particular armor "last"? Does it know which one you clicked and placed on "first"? Is there anyway to see which is "first" and "last" on a design?

Overall, the Emissive armor seems to block very, very, very little, at least in stock and according to the description, so I've never used it.

For example, at the max level of weapons they are doing 500 - 4000 points of damage with one hit, where Emissive armor only blocks 50 points per hit. Seems pretty meaningless, so what am I missing?

Fighter swarms, or the "nibbled to death by ducks" problem. If your armor is entirely emissive at X points blocked per hit, and the fighter weapons can't do more than X, you should be immune to them, even if you get swarmed by hundreds that could otherwise chew you up. This is one reason why skips-armor weapons on fighters are more dangerous than they may seem.

From a slightly more metagaming viewpoint, even if your opponent has access to fighter weapons that can do more than X, they may well be less effective overall (use supply, slow firing for less total Damage/Time, etc.), forcing your opponent into sub-optimal designs to counteract your armor.

SpaceEmpires.net | Space Empires Wiki

It's typically a 10% damage reduction against every weapons hit - so I wouldn't call it meaningless. Anything that helps survivability can be useful.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

tarancalimon -- I'll try to repeat your test on Friday. I noticed this behavior against fighters and I tested it against fighters. Of course the effect will look larger against fighter weapons, but it might be that there's actually some kind of bug regarding fighters and emissive armor that makes it stack against them.

Now all we need is the Bread crumb Launcher to keep the fighters away. . .

But still fighters do seem over powered and any thing that keeps them from pounding my ships in to scrap is a good thing. Unless its my fighters that are being swatted.
Now how dose the game track item placement?

If you go to the screen that displays all your current ship designs and click on a design, you'll see how it works.

Look at the order the components are displayed. The armor is first and the internals are last. "Outsides" are in between. Within each group, the components are arranged from left to right in the order they were installed in the original design. This is the same order non-directional damage will be applied.

I generally pull off at least some of my engines and re-install them so they'll be last in line to be damaged. This is my "poor man's emergency propulsion".

When one upgrades to a larger size ship in a class and new components are added, the newcomers show up at the end of the list.

"Directional damage" if/when it's functioning works differently. It damages components in the order they're encountered by a shot coming from whatever direction the enemy ship is at. Location on the design grid is the key factor - perhaps after the armor/outer/inner division.

If you pause tactical combat and click on a ship's details, you can see which individual components are taking damage.

It definitely matters to have more than one Emissive Armor. I think tarancalimon's test was too short (20 seconds) to make the difference clear. Here are my test conditions:

V1.44 BM 1.09
All tech available
Target ships (all armor, no weapons or engines):
Dreadnought 1: All Emissive Armor, 4800 kT.
Dreadnought 2: One Emissive Armor and the rest regular, 5950 kT. Emissive Armor placed last and destroyed last.

Results versus 13 fighters with 1 Anti-Proton Beam:
"One Emissive" ship: Lost 5950 kT of armor in 3 minutes (destroyed)
All Emissive Ship: Lost 800 kT of armor in 8 minutes (projected time to being destroyed: 48 minutes)

Results versus 1 frigate with 1 Anti-Proton Beam:
"One Emissive Ship": Lost 5950 kT of armor in 3 minutes (all armor gone)
All Emissive Ship: Lost 3800 kT of armor in 3 minutes (1000 armor left)

My explanation is still that Emissive Armor only works when that armor slot is taking the damage. That's not the expected behavior, but I don't think it's a bug. I think it ought to work that way because it makes sense. No way can one piece of armor on the tailgate prevent the whole ship from beam damage. If they want to "fix" it and make it a one-per-ship componenent, they should change the name to "Emissive Coating" or something that you flavorfully only need one of.

Fighters are why I like to use beam heavy ships. Good sensors on a ship armed with beam weapons can clear fighters easily.

Thanks for doing the test Noumenon, sorry I didn't get around to doing it myself. I think that the armour is working the way that it should by your tests, and agree with what you say about one piece not being able to protect the whole ship. I don't really mind if I need to have all emmissive armor, as long as I know that I do.

So we still haven't figured out exactly how it does work.

I tested ir in BM on relatively begining of game (when i got first EA).
I made frigate (lvl2) with 2 DU and (normal armor/normal armor + 1 EA placed last/EA only).
In BM EA has same weight and structure as normal, only costs more and has damage reduction.

noramal vs 1EA was random (more important were random factors, usualy team 1 won regardles of ship type)

1EA vs full EA - full EA always closely won.

I made similar test with fighters.
in BM fighter EA weights 2 and normal aromor only 1 (and IIRC, they heve different structure to make it more complicated).
Fighters with normal armor slearly beat fighters with EA

Ship with EA beat easily same cost in fighters (using only 2xDU2, no PD), normal armor ship beat fighters too, but lost much more armor.

so:
in BM (et least at low tech level)
1) use ships with full EA (if not cost optimizing)
2) use fighters with normal armor

3) something should be done so fighter/ship EA is more consistent. I'm for making EA weight double and have 1.5 times more structure (so it is not bad aginst ships, but worse than normal, but strong aginst fighters)