Much of the recent discussion and discord over the way that Armor is currently implemented is that it possesses the same impact on damage as simply increasing the hull size does. It occurred to me that the problem here might not be with armor at all, but rather with the way we talk about hulls and their relative size.
Currently, we talk about "hull size" being a small number, between 3 and, oh, I've seen 39 thrown out in a previous thread. What if we were to, instead, talk about the hull size in terms of SUs exclusively. You pick the number of SUs you want to have in your ship, and you calculate a new value, let's call it Structure for the sake of being different, but you could just as easily call it Hull. It's determined by taking the SUs that you decided upon, dividing by 60, and taking the 1.3rd root, and rounding down.
Now, the size of your ship determines your hull strength, and armor comes along and, using some of that space, increases your hull strength directly.
The game impact is identical, but instead of people saying "well, I'll just build a bigger ship" the natural inclination will be to simply say "I'll buy some armor to beef up the structure of the ship." It solves some of the semantic issues, it makes more sense why it has an effect on Marines, and I think generally makes the prior arguments moot.
Now, more is figured from the current Hull Size than simply hull points in combat - things like Thrust Factor and Defense Factor are directly impacted by the size, and if you use the rounded down figure, you're going to encourage people to find the "sweet spot" where they're not quite to the next hull point, to save space on engines and the like.
My solution is to simply use two values: Structure is rounded down, and it's used to determine how many hull points the ship has for damage purposes, as well as to determine how many drones may be launched in a single turn, and Size Factor is determined the same way as Structure, but rounded up, and then used to determine things like Defense and Thrust Factors going forward. It's a "worst of all worlds" situation for a designer who deviates from the standard options that would be provided in a handy chart, but gives flexibility in exchange.
So, am I out of my tree here? I know it's a pretty big departure in naming conventions, but I think it really solves some of the issues that people have with the standard way that hull and armor interact, as well as making the game just a little more flexible in the process.
Your thoughts?
