IronHide OXP

Overview

The Ships Systems Department of the Aquarian Shipbuilding Corporation introduce their latest development - IronHide armour. This is a simple but effective technology which applies a special treatment to the hull of the customer ship which helps to strengthen it against combat and physical damage in collaboration with the ship's shielding.

In practice the armour helps to absorb damage that gets past (or takes down) the shields, although if a truly concentrated attack occurs then localised penetration and energy damage may still occur. This is especially true of missile attacks, which can still cause internal damage and equipment failure due to concussion effects. The current strength of the armour can be viewed on the ship's manifest (F5-F5) screen, and any damage can be repaired at a suitably high-tech station.

The armour itself is available from all good tech 5 locations, for a recommended retail price of just 750 credits. These stations should also be able to quote for repairs to damaged installations. It should also be noted that insurers class armour as a combat consumable, and so its replacement is not included as part of the insurance for equipment such as escape pods and lifeboats.

A special enhanced upgrade for military uses has also been developed, and may be available to customers at tech 10 systems (the upgrade requires an undamaged civilian-grade installation). The upgrade doubles the effectiveness of the regular armour.

Acknowledgements

This OXP came about following a discussion over a beer with ClymAngus, and was one of my fastest-written OXPs (sketch-out concept to beta-test was around 7 hours on a boring day at work with nothing to do).

Thanks also to UK_Eliter and Caracal for beta-testing for me, and their feedback and comments.

Discussion

You can find the IronHide discussion thread on the Oolite Bulletin Boards here.

Version history

31/07/2010 - Version 1.00, initial release.

01/08/2010 - Version 1.01, changed shield strength from this. to mission variables to maintain across save games.

19/02/2011 - Version 2.00, upgrade for 1.75 trunk - and operating properly now after shields are gone!

19/06/2020 - Version 3.00, updated by Milo; IronHide OXP now requires Oolite 1.79+; armour durability increased but energy restoration is now proportional to damage absorbed (previously the ship's energy was fully restored after every hit, which could conflict with other OXPs' attempts to regulate energy levels); damage below 5 (10 for military grade) will not degrade IronHide armour; further improved compatibility with other OXPs by checking damage type instead of energy level to decide which damage the armour can absorb.

20/06/2020 - Version 3.01, updated by Milo; IronHide OXP now requires Oolite 1.82+; introduced a new script_info property in equipment.plist (ironHide_percentArmourLostPerDamagePointTaken), which functionally replaces the ironHide_strength mission variable (now unused by IronHide, but kept and returned to its pre-3.00 values because CombatMFD uses it for its SEE indicator); eliminated the "damage below X will not degrade armour" threshold (any damage that gets through shields now will consume armour); set damage_probability to zero so IronHide cannot be made "inoperable" (appear broken on the F5 screen) before it is fully consumed; introduced price variance for installation and repairs proportional to ship surface area (cobra3-player is the baseline); added installation_time of 12 hours for both civilian and military grades and a proportional time advance when repairing (repairing X percent is 25% faster than installing X percent, a small incentive to repair before the armour is destroyed; note that if military grade armour is fully consumed, you must first reinstall civilian grade [12 hrs] and then upgrade to military grade [12 hrs], so it saves even more time if you repair military grade before it breaks; also, while not a change from previous versions, military grade armour costs less to repair than it costs to install).

21/06/2020 - Version 3.02, updated by Milo; doubled price variance for larger ships and applied proportional adjustment to repair costs (they were still using the baseline price); improved compatibility with ShipVersion OXP by not offering IronHide for purchase on ships that ShipVersion does not allow to use it (when ShipVersion OXP is detected, civilian IronHide is only for ships with mass 30t or higher and military IronHide is only for ships with mass 130t or higher).

21/06/2020 - Version 3.03, updated by Milo; added indication on F5F5 screen showing whether current IronHide armour is civilian or military grade.

21/06/2020 - Version 3.04, updated by Milo; improved handling of invalid ironHide_milFlag missionVariable (not zero or one) from old saved game; modified allowAwardEquipment handler to allow other OXPs to add IronHide to player ships (e.g., Ship Storage Helper).

21/06/2020 - Version 3.05, updated by Milo; re-assess damage-to-armour multiplier each time the ship launches, in case another OXP replaced the player ship, awarded IronHide, or changed the grade of the armour.

Download Location

This OXP requires at least version 1.82 of Oolite.

Download the latest version in OXZ format here (downloaded 0 times).

Links

• Thargoid's OXP page.