I still don't understand why you want another vehicle shield when we have a great one though, that's never really been properly answered because I keep getting hit on "We should never use infantry anyway?"

"Defensive Onion" only goes so far, it's the same logic behind wrapping a tank around a tank to protect that tank, it feels redundant.

EDIT: @Mechanis , question when you get a chance, how much is that "LIght, Semi-Powered Armor with Autotargeters?" And is it just a straight upgrade to our Wraithweave Brigantines or is it inferior in some sense? Because it looks like the math shakes out that it costs the same, but we paid the premium on Brigantine to get the maximum armor value we could, so does it have superior protection at least?
 
Last edited:
I still don't understand why you want another vehicle shield when we have a great one though, that's never really been properly answered because I keep getting hit on "We should never use infantry anyway?"
But it has been properly answered? If made compact it'd be better on power armor where gravs don't fit, and on slots-starved light vehicles and starships. It's like third time I'm writing this in thread.
And we don't know how good synergy with grav field would be, and we are already doing shield onions everywhere it fits. Our troop transport to be default has three shields.
 
I still don't understand why you want another vehicle shield when we have a great one though, that's never really been properly answered because I keep getting hit on "We should never use infantry anyway?"

"Defensive Onion" only goes so far, it's the same logic behind wrapping a tank around a tank to protect that tank, it feels redundant.

Although I could be wrong, I think we can stack Grav and Conversion fields, because of this:

Shields: shielding in this quest is split between two overarching types: Passive shields are things like Conversion fields or Atomantic Shielding: they're on and blocking everything that they're effective against until they reach their fail state and turn off. As a result, passive defenses are normally (but not always) "have them or don't" type systems, because usually more than one doesn't actually increase their effectiveness.

Active defenses involve actually targeting enemy attacks specifically, like Grav-shields or, yes, Void Sheilds. This means that they always have the weakness of only being able to affect so many discreet attacks at the same time, because each system has limited throughput. There can be additional limits---for example most vehicles are limited to only two Grav-shields simply because the things eat a great deal of energy and there's only so much space it's practical to devote to bigger power supplies, combined with the relative limits of how far away they have to be to avoid destructive interference (which you definitely don't want in your protective system!) When operating.

Grav is active. Conversion is passive. We use Conversion as the first layer, and anything that leaks through the conversion shield can then be actively targeted by the Grav shield.

That way the strengths of one can over the weakness of the other. They seem like they genuinely would be stronger together.

This helps prevents the grav shield being swamped with attacks and means that if the conversion shield goes down the grav shield can take up the slack while it reboots, if it can.
 
Last edited:
But it has been properly answered? If made compact it'd be better on power armor where gravs don't fit, and on slots-starved light vehicles and starships. It's like third time I'm writing this in thread.
And we don't know how good synergy with grav field would be, and we are already doing shield onions everywhere it fits. Our troop transport to be default has three shields.

I am getting hammered by four different people right now, and already adjusted the Conversion Field to fit criticism last night. I'm not sure if it won't cause people to balk for some reason if I adjust further.
 
I still don't understand why you want another vehicle shield when we have a great one though, that's never really been properly answered because I keep getting hit on "We should never use infantry anyway?"

"Defensive Onion" only goes so far, it's the same logic behind wrapping a tank around a tank to protect that tank, it feels redundant.

Because they defend from different things and have great synergy.
Edit. Defense onion is also kind of important on high price units (more so when you field a lot of them).

Grav-Shield: Exotic stuff and heavy hits has problems with lots of small hits, no defense from AOE
[ ] Grav-shields (-3 points)
Grav-shields use gravitational lensing to bend beams and slap projectiles away from whatever they are protecting. While there are few weapons they cannot effect, a grav-shield can only handle so many discrete attacks in a set period before it cannot intercept all incoming attacks.

Conversion Field: Catches AOE, can't get overhelmed by number of shot only total energy so problems with strong single hits.

[ ] Conversion Fields (-2 points)
Conversion Fields absorb energy from incoming attacks, stopping most energy weapons and kinetic projectiles cold. Depending on their precise settings they can even provide significant protection against area effect weaponry. The principle limit is that a Conversion Field can only handle a certain maximum amount of energy over a set period, and if this threshold is exceeded the field generator suffers a destructive overload.

Holo-Fields: Reduce overall hits that the other two have to take care of. Also offers advanced stealth.

For the infantry I also plan on getting it on them, but over the armor integration instead of standalone gear.
This I think goes into me planning on doing the slow army redesign pretty soon, with that including the armor redesigns.

The question then is how fast do you want to get new detachments to raise / how much time do we have to do the design before having to get going on raising them.
 
Last edited:
It fucking changed? Ah crap. Which one goes for engine's. I'll have to look when I have a chance.

[x] Plan: The Aeldmoot, industry edition v3
[X] Plan: Distributions

First one is my preferred main plan currently. VGA is what I prefer to standardize on, even if it's going to be pricy.
Approval voting distributions because it hits engines.

Honestly okay with any plan winning. Because everything except or not to moot has my priority one issue, which is well. Spreading the info far and wide.
 
Last edited:
It fucking changed? Ah crap. Which one goes for engine's. I'll have to look when I have a chance.

None of them do because Mechanis told us it wasn't really necessary yet, since the timeframe expected is "Decades" for that. The main fight right now is over what the Conversion Field setup is, and whether we want baseline infantry gear or our specialist armor forges online.
 
I am getting hammered by four different people right now, and already adjusted the Conversion Field to fit criticism last night. I'm not sure if it won't cause people to balk for some reason if I adjust further.
I'm not asking you to change your plan, just replying to "there's no arguments". Making a good cheap portable shield is not a decision I think is best but it's certainly a good one and I can see people preferring it.
 
So, we could come up with a design of conversion shield optimised to be combined with a grav shield. For example, something like:

[ ] Flaw: High Power Draw
[ ] Flaw: Low Threshold
[ ] Flaw: Slow on Attack
[ ] Advantage: Rugged
[ ] Advantage: Fast Recycle
[ ] Advantage: Compact

This is a design intended to be installed alongside a grav shield, so it's designed not to take up space, to draw power from the armour or vehicle it's installed in. It's also designed with the knowledge that it will leak attacks through, both slow attacks and repeated ones.

However, this isn't a problem, as the grav shield will then actively deflect those attacks that leak through until it recycles.

Essentially this shield is designed to cut down the volume of attacks a grav shield has to handle, magnifying how effective it is.
 
You know I think this has been the most argumentative quest thread I've ever been on and I agree with BigFungus26 that all these declarations every turn that we've done something or everything wrong really take away from the fun.
Hopefully things will cool down when we have a better understanding of what is and isn't a good idea IC. Both leading plans have a lot invested in getting us to that point, so fingers crossed that said point arrives sooner rather than later.
I mostly have to ask why should we spend eldar lives on non-maiden worlds that we pretty much don't care about.
Orbital bombardment makes very much sense to us.
Fair point. Orbital bombardment will likely be an important option in our toolkit for quite some time. However, we can't afford for it to be our only option. Situations exist where we will need to cleanse these worlds the old fashioned way. You already mentioned one, (Maiden Worlds), but there are others. If a world happens to be inhabited by a non-Ork sapient species, I will be ridiculously reluctant to turn the world into a lifeless rock.

Likewise, if another polity has a claim on that world, they will likely be miffed if we annihilate it without their permission. Right now that's not a major issue given how most polities are probably too busy trying to survive to care, but that will change as things stabilize.
 
This is a design intended to be installed alongside a grav shield, so it's designed not to take up space, to draw power from the armour or vehicle it's installed in. It's also designed with the knowledge that it will leak attacks through, both slow attacks and repeated ones.

The problem here is that the shield now has the same problem as the grav shield.
Can only handle a few attacks (one to be precise) before going down.

Low Threshold is sadly just anti-synergistic to a huge degree.

Edit.
We kind of want to have the Conversion field be the second line after the Grav shield starts to leak shoots.
Instead of taking all the fire first and then letting the Gravy Shield block things.

In part because the grav shield never goes "down" they just can't catch all the hits.

Edit2.
So general defense onion is:
Holo-Field (if there) - Grav Shield(s) (if there) - Conversion Field (If there)

So Holo-Field causes misses
Grav shield redirect shot to miss, AOE just go through
Conversion Field catches shots that Grav Shield missed and should be mostly full health most of the time to block AOE from doing damage and should be able to cycle in between most hits.
Does this make sense?

Edit. Full defense onion is likely on in effect on our gen 2 heavy power armor, most infantry will likely get the Holo-Field or Holo-Field+Conversion Field.

For vehicles/ships that otherwise can't afford the Gravy shield, but have 1 slot that could be used this would also atleast add some shielding.
 
Last edited:
Fair point. Orbital bombardment will likely be an important option in our toolkit for quite some time. However, we can't afford for it to be our only option. Situations exist where we will need to cleanse these worlds the old fashioned way. You already mentioned one, (Maiden Worlds), but there are others. If a world happens to be inhabited by a non-Ork sapient species, I will be ridiculously reluctant to turn the world into a lifeless rock.

Likewise, if another polity has a claim on that world, they will likely be miffed if we annihilate it without their permission. Right now that's not a major issue given how most polities are probably too busy trying to survive to care, but that will change as things stabilize.

Then we ask our allies to help, as they also have a vested interest in Maiden Worlds as well, while we do something we're better at.

For the second factor is, that's probably several centuries away. And if another polity has a claim on the world, why are we even there?

The problem here is that the shield now has the same problem as the grav shield.
Can only handle a few attacks (one to be precise) before going down.

Low Threshold is sadly just anti-synergistic to a huge degree.

Edit.
We kind of want to have the Conversion field be the second line after the Grav shield starts to leak shoots.
Instead of taking all the fire first and then letting the Gravy Shield block things.

In part because the grav shield never goes "down" they just can't catch all the hits.

Fair point. Thinking that way around, we could try designs like:

[ ] Flaw: High Power Draw
[ ] Flaw: Slow on Attack
[ ] Flaw: Poor Refraction
[ ] Advantage: Compact
[ ] Advantage: Fast Recycle
[ ] Advantage: Pressure Resistance

The idea would be that the Grav shield can be set to preferentially target energy weapons or slow moving attacks if there's a risk of being overwhelmed, and if overwhelmed choose to let kinetic weapons or blast waves through.

We then don't need the Rugged option as much in this setup, as the reduced volume of attacks leaking through make it much less likely for it to get overwhelmed as it's the innermost of three layers of the onion, as the regeneration system is much more likely to be able to drop the shield in time with the Grav shield filtering out attacks.

This is a design optimised to kill orks (or space marines), as they tend to much prefer dakka over zappa. It's weaker against energy weapon focused enemies like necrons.
 
Last edited:
EDIT: @Mechanis , question when you get a chance, how much is that "LIght, Semi-Powered Armor with Autotargeters?" And is it just a straight upgrade to our Wraithweave Brigantines or is it inferior in some sense? Because it looks like the math shakes out that it costs the same, but we paid the premium on Brigantine to get the maximum armor value we could, so does it have superior protection at least?
I'm not sure Forgeguard shakes up to being the same cost. We saw with our Brigantines that in order to have what would be considered "Light" levels of protection you need "Medium" armor rather than "Light" armor.

Assuming Medium weight armor plus "Semi-powered" (AKA "power-assist") that's already 1.875EP (1.5*1.25). Toss in aim-assist (0.5EP) and you're past the 2EP mark (2.375EP) which would round up to 3EP.

That's a 50% cost increase compared to our Brigantine and it's lacking a "Sensor Package" or "Voidsealing". You could argue that Aim-Assist is better but you're still paying a 50% premium for that and you can't equip your marines with them since it doesn't have Voidsealing.


Edit: Forgot Semi-Powered improves your level of protection, nevermind.
 
Last edited:
I'm not sure Forgeguard shakes up to being the same cost. We saw with our Brigantines that in order to have what would be considered "Light" levels of protection you need "Medium" armor rather than "Light" armor.

Assuming Medium weight armor plus "Semi-powered" (AKA "power-assist") that's already 1.875EP (1.5*1.25). Toss in aim-assist (0.5EP) and you're past the 2EP mark (2.375EP) which would round up to 3EP.

That's a 50% cost increase compared to our Brigantine and it's lacking a "Sensor Package" or "Voidsealing". You could argue that Aim-Assist is better but you're still paying a 50% premium for that and you can't equip your marines with them since it doesn't have Voidsealing.

The "full" armors we design i think are all void sealed, in part because there was no option to take it.

Something to keep in mind that the Brigantine was this stuff goes on our militia if we need to raise all the infantry and give them something.

The other two armors were more of a this goes on our Troops when we don't need to raise 10k militia per year
That said the Brigantine had several options that outright say the integrated systems are less effective compared to the two "warsuit".
[ ] Autotargeters
Like a Warsuit, these armors can be equipped with Autotargeters which project a heads-up display that helps the user aim. While less effective than the version in a warsuit, these versions are also less expensive.
+0.2 EP

Now, for more information mech would have to say something about the armor value on unpowered medium vs light semi or full power armor. Something for the medium armor is that they have a pretty large number of integrated slots so you also pay partially for that.
 
I actually expected the jump in costs between the base versions of Light, Medium and Heavy to be much bigger than it is, tbh.

The Heavy powered armor however has so many slots that the cost just shoots up much higher.
 
The "full" armors we design i think are all void sealed, in part because there was no option to take it.

Something to keep in mind that the Brigantine was this stuff goes on our militia if we need to raise all the infantry and give them something.

The other two armors were more of a this goes on our Troops when we don't need to raise 10k militia per year

Yeah, these were designed back when we were afraid that Biel Tan was going to turn up the next turn and kick the crap out of us, and we thought we might need gear for an emergency draft, I think.

Now we have fifty allied war hosts guarding us that's no longer such a relevant concern. We should have time to build a more effectice standing army with better gear.

I actually expected the jump in costs between the base versions of Light, Medium and Heavy to be much bigger than it is, tbh.

The Heavy powered armor however has so many slots that the cost just shoots up much higher.

There are trade offs as you go up in weight unless you invest in extra power assistance, which I think is where the cost comes from.
 
As far as I know, the only advantage brigandine has over light power-assist armor - especially if you voidseal the brigandine, as we did - is that even light power armor needs batteries, and brigandine doesn't - which means if, say, a haywire grenade takes down your armor systems, brigandine is fine, and light power-assist armor is slowed.

Also, since our needlers spawn ammo out of nowhere, our life support systems might be able to do the same - brigandine might have much higher battlefield endurance if that's true.
 
I actually expected the jump in costs between the base versions of Light, Medium and Heavy to be much bigger than it is, tbh.

The Heavy powered armor however has so many slots that the cost just shoots up much higher.

Yeah, if you don't go for stuff like the Holo-Field due to expense you could stay at 4 EP cost for a medium full power armor that has max sensor + autotargeter.

That said if willing to eat some cost you could do some really potent by using support equipment that will likely cost more in exchange for getting something you can't get with support gear.


Edit:
As far as I know, the only advantage brigandine has over light power-assist armor - especially if you voidseal the brigandine, as we did - is that even light power armor needs batteries, and brigandine doesn't - which means if, say, a haywire grenade takes down your armor systems, brigandine is fine, and light power-assist armor is slowed.

Also, since our needlers spawn ammo out of nowhere, our life support systems might be able to do the same - brigandine might have much higher battlefield endurance if that's true.
Brigantine only had the option for voidsealing that could be seen as doing the same job as Extended Operations.
That said the cost differences between these two (and that the warsuit version can be stacked 4 times).
[ ] Extended Operations Modification
Extended Operations Modifications increase the overall operating time of the suit in battle conditions. This includes additional life-support, power supplies, and in extremis integrated waste-recycling systems for nearly indefinite operations time.
+0.3 EP | 1 Slot | Max 4

[ ] Voidsealing
including full vacuum rated sealing systems and the necessary support systems would allow these suits to be used more safely in hostile conditions, such as the Void or the side of a chemical weapons strike.
+0.1 EP

Makes me pretty disinclined to thinking the Brigantine somehow has magical life support that the warsuits don't have.
 
Last edited:
... That feels like a bug to me, "Light, Unpowered Armor" should absolutely not cost as much or more than "Light, Powered Armor with special computers"
 
... That feels like a bug to me, "Light, Unpowered Armor" should absolutely not cost as much or more than "Light, Powered Armor with special computers"
It's a rounding thing... and I really don't want to start tracking decimals.

1x1 + 0.3 = 1.3, rounded up to 2 for our Wraithweave Brigandine.
1x1.25 + 0.5 = 1.75, rounded up to 2 for Forgeguard.
 
Back
Top