Carbon Laminate / Light Plastic Cladding

[JimmyPlenty]

EDIT: My mistake. I did not see the colors on the card were blue and black on the dice to roll.

Hey all!

Great job on the game! Super impressed. Seen something that could use some clarification.

Carbon Laminate and Plastic Cladding seem almost like the same card. The only difference is that the Laminate is more durable.

Is there a misprint somewhere? I wouldn't see the use of anything else if I can have Carbon Laminate.

Again, great job on the game!

[HeatDeath]

The card text is similar but the dice being referred to are radically different, so the two armors behave quite differently, even before you consider the difference in raw durability.

A blue defense dice, which is what the plastic cladding gives you, has 3 shields. Which means the plastic cladding has 50% odds of completely cancelling a point of incoming damage. But it can only absorb 1 point before it's destroyed.

The carbon laminate, otoh, absorbs 3 points of damage before being destroyed, but uses a black dice, which only has 1 shield, so it only has 1 in 6 odds of cancelling a point of damage outright.

So that's your tradeoff. For the same two build points you can have much higher ablative capacity in exchange for significantly reduced absorption capability. Really very significant differences in armor behavior. They're mathematically balanced, so which you prefer is more down to your driving style and personal taste.

[HeatDeath]

I think the way armor has been revamped in the game is a massive improvement. Instead of just outfitting your desired weaponry, then piling on ablative points until the weight negatively impacts your acceleration, the wide range of wildly varying armors in the expansions mean you now get to make some really interesting and subtle choices about the placement and behavior of your armor that the older system never really allowed you to.

[Yes, the solitary option of steel plate in the core set, by itself, is a bit of a blunt instrument, but I understand that the core set could only have so many cards and most people are gonna want to see more variation in the guns than in the armor, at least to start with. But seriously, check out the entire range of structure cards you get in the DA boxes. This game's armor subsystem is more expressive and flexible than many games' weaponry subsystem!]

[And yes, plastic/metal composite layering got you /close/ to this level of expressiveness, but at the expense of /substantial/ amounts of extra math during both the build phase and on-table gameplay. This is a massive improvement.]

[beetle496]

Agreed @HeatDeath , this is a massive improvement over CCW. (I also agree with the developers’ choice to have more weapons rather than armor in the core set.)

Does plate/laminate/cladding armor retain its defensive die/dice possibility after taking its rated amount of hits?

Also, for armor, Green and Black die are equivalent, yes? Seems a bit of needless complication for Heavy Steel Plate to use a Green die instead of Black, like most of the other cards.

[HeatDeath]

No. Once a piece of structure takes its rated number of hits, it ceases to operate. You turn the card over and it no longer provides any of the bonus defense dice it did while it was intact.

Yes, greens and blacks have the same # of shields, so they are equivalent during defense rolls. I can't think of any situation or accessory offhand where wrenches might do something different during defense rolls.

[beetle496]

Okay, so the plate/laminate/cladding only takes hits after all the armor on that side is gone, correct? That makes sense, since it is just like anything else mounted on that side.

But most of the types provides a chance of extra cover each time that side is attacked? Plastic Cladding is only type with 50% chance one-point damage reduction. Seems like the obviously best one.

[JessicajK]

Originally Posted by beetle496

I do very much appreciate how the game mechanics are all about opportunity costs! In particular, picking between X at n BP versus Y at n+1 BP is very compelling!

I am pretty risk adverse, but I don’t mind using the middle of a bell curve. For two BP, I will always be picking between Light Plastic Cladding or Standard Ceramic Plate. It comes down to how many shots I think I might survive.

Here’s the mean expected DP value by number of attacks. Standard Ceramic Plate is a flat 4 DP. Light Plastic Cladding (1 blue die) is 50% chance of 1 (so .5 on average), plus the 1 DP base. Carbon Laminate and Standard Steel Plate are in between those two. Note that this table is by attacks, not turns. In a four player game, six attacks (the tipping point where Cladding starts out-pacing Ceramic Plate) could just be one round!

.....1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8...9
SCP 4.0 4.0 4.0 4.0 4.0 4.0 4.0 4.0 4.0
.CL 3.2 3.3 3.5 3.7 3.8 4.0 4.2 4.3 4.5
SSP 2.3 2.7 3.0 3.3 3.7 4.0 4.3 4.7 4.7
LPC 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 5.5

Notice that there is not a column where either Carbon Laminate or Standard Steel Plate is better than both Standard Ceramic Plate and Light Plastic Cladding. One of the later two is clearly the better choice. It really is a question about how long you think your armor will last! We ordered one through https://zelta.ca/services/floor-installation/ on a design project.

This is a ready-to-use pultruded carbon fiber laminate, usually bonded to the outside of structures to provide additional load-bearing capacity. It is a lightweight material with a high tensile strength (higher than that of steel reinforcement used in the concrete industry) and is mainly used for additional flexural reinforcement (i.e. plate bonding) of concrete and wood elements within the system.