Is it usefull to "armor" your jets?

[Cookie Monster]

Not sure if this has ever been asked before so here goes.

I've always wondered if putting armor on your interceptors has any affect on combat? Does air to air combat just consider a weapons attack value and not care about any defensive values?

[Maniac]

Interceptors attacking normal aircraft is weapon-to-armour. All the rest is weapon-to-weapon IIRC. So not much of use for the high costs of armour on planes.

[Flubber]

generally not a good idea:

interceptors fight each other weapon to weapon so best weapon and high morale is all that matters

If an interceptor hits a penetrator its weapon versus armour but given that weapons have higher values than armour throughout the game, adding armour only increases the damage an interceptor might take.

If a SAM ground unit attacks any plane, the plane defends with its armour but again, you are really only going to increase the damage an attacker takes with no real chance to win battles


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I'll repeat an opinion I have expressed before . .. Defending any unit in the open in Smax against tech eqivalent opponents is HARD. Weapons are generally at a value 50-100% higher than armour values so without advantages in morale, tech or modifiers ( terrain, AA ability, sensors or an AC), any unit in the open is possible to kill with a single attacker of the right type.

IMHO, armoring a plane is almost never worthwhile. I would only do it if it costs me nothing in terms of build time in the queue. The bottom line is that when a plane is defending with its armor, its pretty much a dead duck. If you have such a tech advantage that your armour value can withstand an opponents best weapon, why the heck would you be defending. Go killing everything they have!!!

[Cookie Monster]

All good explanations. I will now not armor my interceptors however despite the advantages of the weapons I think I'll still armor my penetrators in cities with high production.

Admittadly why would you use planes in a defensive manner meaning adding armor to them however, when your lone penetrator has strafed his target and the enemy counter attacks I want to at least do more damage to my counterattacker. I'm hoping that next turn I'll finish him off then. OTOH let's say my penetrator is armored and has very high morale. Now he does have a chance to survive the counterattack no?

Again I agree, there is no need to armor interceptors but despite the arguements against penetrators I still think there is a use for adding armor to them.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Cookie Monster
Again I agree, there is no need to armor interceptors but despite the arguements against penetrators I still think there is a use for adding armor to them.

The armor does do SOMETHING but not enough to survive since you are usuually facing a weapons to armour ratio in the vicinity of 2-1.


I have never found the damage I may do to an attacker to be worth the additional mineral costs. I acknowledge that armor on a plane has some possible uses. I have crash-upgraded a plane or two to serve as defenders in a base with a perimeter defense for example but thats a rare instance

[sammy1339]

Armor for planes seems to cost next to nothing. IIRC a 13-5-12*2 costs 30 minerals, the same as a 13-1-12*2. I can't ever recall a case where the defense-1 version costs less than an armored version. Have the costs of units changed in the expansion or the patched version? Why would you ever not armor your needlejets and choppers? Even on a Singularity Gravship IIRC synthmetal is free.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Cookie Monster OTOH let's say my penetrator is armored and has very high morale. Now he does have a chance to survive the counterattack no?
.

Well not really. Survivability is possible but very unlikely. Even undamaged a penetrator is a sitting duck if it has no modifiers available to it to add to its defense strength against an interceptor or SAM unit and assuming that you will have elites going against an opponent's very green's isn't a reasonable assumption.

Also your penetrator will likely have taken some damage in its initial attack making survivability even less. If you are going after soft targets like unarmoured formers and crawlers, you could be using a cheaper weapon unit to hit them and save your best weapon units for the hard targets. I often find I have laser or impact penetrators even after I have attained missile, gatling or chaos weapons. As you get better weapons, the possible strength of your cheapest plane ( in terms of mineral cost) gets stronger.

[Lazerus]

Basically NO, flubbers spot on.
Offense is the best form of defense. Rather then wasting time giving something armour, build 2 jets and kill whatever is threatening them since you'll do it alot easier then trying to use armour to save them.

[Blake]

There is exactly one time I armor aircraft, the 1-2t-10 only costs 2 rows and provides near perfect base defense against mindworms, if I found a base smack bang in the middle of the ruins and have D:AP then I'll build one to guarantee the base wont get wiped out by a flood of worms.

It also has obvious applications in defending against worm-happy players, especially if you dont have the neural amplifier. The clean variety could offer very good universal worm protection (especially against locusts) because it's still only 3 rows.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Blake
There is exactly one time I armor aircraft, the 1-2t-10 only costs 2 rows and provides near perfect base defense against mindworms, if I found a base smack bang in the middle of the ruins and have D:AP then I'll build one to guarantee the base wont get wiped out by a flood of worms.

.

Blake

now thats a use I can agree with-- its highly mobile worm defense

although I would prefer to build an empath unit and kill the worms, sometimes defense is the better option (ie running FM)

I don't recall but would a trance scout be cheaper on the defensive side??

[Flubber]

Originally posted by sammy1339
Armor for planes seems to cost next to nothing. IIRC a 13-5-12*2 costs 30 minerals, the same as a 13-1-12*2. I can't ever recall a case where the defense-1 version costs less than an armored version. Have the costs of units changed in the expansion or the patched version? Why would you ever not armor your needlejets and choppers? Even on a Singularity Gravship IIRC synthmetal is free.

If its free you do armor them on the "why not?" theory-- Same goes for skimships, rovers etc, if it costs nothing you do it and really there is nothing to discuss

To me the issue arises when you first get D:AP when armouring will cost you some minerals

[Mongoose]

When SMAC was initially released, armor on needlejets was very inexpensive. In the V2.0 patch (I think it was that one) the cost to armor needlejets was increased substantially.

Have you patched your game, Sammy?

[Blake]

Blake

now thats a use I can agree with-- its highly mobile worm defense

although I would prefer to build an empath unit and kill the worms, sometimes defense is the better option (ie running FM)

I don't recall but would a trance scout be cheaper on the defensive side??

A trance scout is cheaper but it's not as good, psi combat vs an air defender always starts at 1:1. Add trance & sensor bonuses and you have one tough anti-psi defender. The ruins base can be difficult to sensor because worms keep killing formers, and the trance noodle is good for two reasons - high psi defense and can fly in from another base thus avoiding the deadly trek through the fungal plains.

Mid-game ruins base is basically the only time I use them, because under FM you have the slight problem of aircraft drones. Altough if I do get around to making one they come in handy later against unexpected locust pops.

[Lefty Scaevola]

armoring needle jets is a good idea in smac, but way too costly in smac-x.

[johndmuller]

When I was using SMAC-v1, I used to armor my interceptors for 2 reasons:[list=1][*]Because I didn't know any better. I generally was using them for covering attack aircraft against enemy fighters and I guess I assumed that they would defend with their armor. Knowing what I know now, it would have made more sense to armor the attack planes.[*]So that I could tell them apart from attack NJ's by the colors. It really ticks me off when I move a fighter by mistake, thinking it is an attack NJ, and run out of movement before I get back to a base. (Fortunately I play Yang quite a bit and being seriously seething is completely in charaacter.) This is still as valid a reason as ever (although I guess it should be the bombers that are color coded instead of the fighters), except that the much higher cost of armoring aircraft with the patched versions has made that rather a luxury - especially in PBEM; moreover, as the cheapest armor is more or less the same color as unarmored planes, one has to go at least to Synthmetal to get the desired effect. Unfortunately, IMhO, the Neutronium makes for the best looking NJ's.[/list=1]

(aside from the cost question) While armored aircraft may not generally be a match for similar-tech attacks, there are still a couple of benefits. First, the AI at least, and many human players as well, field minimum-morale aircraft, which quite often can be successfully defended against with high-morale equivalent armor. Second, if the enemy is using a choppor, even if you lose an armored aircraft to their chopper, you would probably damage it enough so that it couldn't keep on attacking and take out 3 or 4 of them.

Your choppers (I believe both attack and SAM types) are vulnerable to attack by land units if left in the open between turns;they would defend with their armor values.

I'm not certain whether a scrambling fighter uses its weapon or armor - I think it is the weapon value, but it could be the armor too (they would use the armor if defending against a land-unit's attack.

Blake, wouldn't a SAM version of your 1-2t NJ worm defender address the problem of P-drones (albeit at a price of higher construction costs)?

[timotheus4]

Needlejets? Who needs them? Give me a copter anytime.

[Enigma_Nova]

I'd go noodlejs to cover ground units because until you get Air Superiority you can't attack the bloody things.

After that, Get your best-weapon interceptors and use them to protect your landed copters.

You might want a drop ECM pulse defence for those bloody SAM rovers.

After that, you're good to go!

[The Mad Monk]

I tend to armor planes and choppers (and more than a few rovers) with the probability sheath armor, when I get it.

No real reason -- it just looks cool.

[Blake]

Blake, wouldn't a SAM version of your 1-2t NJ worm defender address the problem of P-drones (albeit at a price of higher construction costs)?

That would require neural grafting and precludes the addition of clean. Technically possible, but the window of usefulness if fairly short and after getting both NG and D:AP there would probably be better solutions (like a more thorough sensor network, and chrildren creches everywhere)

I completely agree that sheath aircraft look very cool.