2.6 Armor - BrettRyland/BDArmory GitHub Wiki
To keep your stuff safe from enemy fire, you'll need armor. Unlike older versions of BDA, BDA+ features multiple options and choices for armoring or otherwise adjusting the durability of parts.
Armor Breakdown
- By default, parts start unarmored, with the 'None" armor type, which does not provide protection nor interacts with armor mechanics. To add armor, each part has a few new sliders for Armor Type and Hull Material. Selecting an Armor Type other than default will add the Armor Thickness Slider, which by default will start at 10mm.
- Armor has mass. The biggest change from legacy BDAc is armor now adds mass to the part, commensurate to the density and thickness of the selected armor type.
- BDA+ offers several default armor types to choose from, that offer a range of costs, masses, and protection from various forms of damage - Bullets, Explosions, or Lasers. Choosing the right armor is a tradeoff between how much armor mass the craft can support, the sort of fire it expects to have to survive, and potentially, cost if playing in career mode or similar.
- Similarly, parts can be selected to be made out of a number of different materials, which affects base part HP, cost, mass, max temperature, and if the part is flammable.. By default, parts use the Aluminium hull material, which carries no part modifiers, and have default KSP performance.
Armor GUI
The Armor tool is accessed in the SPH/VAB via the toolbar icon (BDA shield), and contains a number of useful tools, readouts, and visualizers to aid in protecting and getting to know your craft.
- **Armor/Hull/HP/Lift visualizers **
These are exactly what they sound like; clicking on one of these buttons will give a graphical overlay on your craft showing the relative Health, Armor type and thickness, Hull material, and lift rating of parts on your craft, to see at a glance how your craft is currently kitted out. - Armor Thickness: This is a global slider that will set armor thickness to this value for all parts on the craft that can support armor. parts with no armor aren't affected. If an armor material is selected other than steel or default, a readout will list the material's equivalent thickness compared to steel, to help you gauge how much you'll need. The readouts below this list total armor mass for the craft, cost, and for planes, their lift rating.
- Select Armor Material: This button will open a list of armor types, both default and custom, if any have been added; clicking on an armor button will set all parts on the craft to use that armor type.
- Armor Properties: This opens up an Advanced User display listing various general stats about the selected armor - density, strength, hardness, cost, etc, to allow comparing different armor types. it also features a readout giving a estimation of the material's ability to protect and withstand the three damage types.
- Current Hull Material: like the Select Armor MAterial button, this will let you set the hull material for all parts on the vessel. Please note that some parts, like weapons and engines ,cannot be made out of materials like wood. The partmaterialBlacklist.cfg in /BDArmory/Plugindata/ can be used to add additional parts to BDA's list of parts that should not be affected by material or armor changes.