Vehicle Armor Appendix

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Different kinds of armor play very important roles in the tank battles of the Empires universe. Select the appropriate type of armor and you will come out victorious.

A note regarding guns: There are two types of anti-vehicle weapons: guns and cannons. Cannons are anything that fires a shell that is affected by gravity. Includes rail guns. high explosive cannon. extended range cannon. These shots are affected by the the Speed To Damage Modifier. Guns fire projectiles that are not affected by gravity and have an instantaneous travel time. Includes bioMG. DUMG. HEMG. These shots are not affected by the the Speed To Damage Modifier.

Armor Weapon Table (for version 2.24):

To see which weapon is best against which armor have a look to the table below. But keep in mind, that this table only compares pure damage.

Armor Weapon Table

Armor (for version 2.25b)

Plain armor - Plain armor offers mild protection from damage.

Plain armor is regarded as the worst armor. It has poor health, and weight, but it makes up for this in it's price. Standard armor is fairly useless and has no advantages, as such it shouldn't be used after a better armor is researched.

Research Required: None

• Cost: 5
• Health: 30
• Weight: 15
• Damage reduction : 0%
• Damage reduction due to angle (Angle Modifier): 0.1
• Speed To Damage Modifier: 0.8%
• Damage To Heat Absorbed: 2.5%
• Bioweapon Damage Modifier: 150%

• Strong Against - Nothing
• Weak Against - Biological Weapons
• Other - Takes 50% extra damage from Biological Weapons

Composite armor - Composite armor consists of layers of steel, ceramic, and plastic honeycomb. and it's designed to offer protection from almost all types of projectiles equally well.

Composite is regarded as the best armor in Empires, it has massive health, has no major flaws, weighs very little and is easy to research. Unfortunately, it is incredibly expensive and due to it's lightweight nature, can have twice as many plates as the next most expensive armor, this results in composite being generally a bad research strategy due to the fact it can set a team back 2000 res for a single tank.

Research Required: Mechanical Engineering > Advanced Machining > Composite Armor

• Cost: 25
• Health: 80
• Weight: 10
• Damage reduction : 15%
• Damage reduction due to angle (Angle Modifier): 0
• Speed To Damage Modifier: 0.5%
• Damage To Heat Absorbed: 2.5%
• Bioweapon Damage Modifier: 100%

• Strong Against - Slow projectiles
• Weak Against - High velocity projectiles (rail guns)
• Other - Composite armor has no major disadvantages. Its light weight and high health allows multiple plates to be added to a tank. effectively trading special attributes for high health.

Reactive armor - Electrically charged armor is internally aligned with charged capacitors. When an incoming projectile makes contact. the capacitor discharges its energy into the projectile. disrupting it or possibly even vaporizing it.

Reactive is the counter to most missiles and the slower a projectile is, the more damage is resisted. In particular, Sticky bombs are much less powerful against reactive, however due to the low number of plates a reactive tank can don, this difference results in stickies still do roughly the same percentage of the tanks total health. It also takes full damage against hitscan weapons (HEMG, DU, BioMG) because they have no speed.

Research Required: Electrical Engineering > Reactive Armor

• Cost: 20
• Health: 70
• Weight: 20
• Damage reduction : 10%
• Damage reduction due to angle (Angle Modifier): 0.1
• Speed To Damage Modifier: -0.4%
• Damage To Heat Absorbed: 2.5%
• Bioweapon Damage Modifier: 50%

• Strong Against - Fast projectiles and Biological weapons
• Weak Against - Slow projectiles
• Other - Reactive Armor takes less damage as the speed of the projectile increases. The weight of the armor makes it somewhat less useful for heavy tanks.

Reflective armor - Reflective armor is able to deflect almost all of a projectile's kinetic energy away from the vehicle so long as the projectile does not hit perfectly perpendicular to the armor plating.

Reflective is one of the best armors in the hands of good players, since reflective can take up to 50% of total damage off, it makes it capable of shrugging off even very powerful hits. A common strategy with reflective is to angle ones tank so a corner faces the enemy, this does 2 things, exposes 2 sides to the enemy, and increases the amount of damage will be reflected by angle. Exposing the two sides makes the enemy tank less likely to focus on one side in particular, and can result in the tank taking much less damage to a specific region.

Research Required: Physics > Projectile Physics > Reflective Armor

• Cost: 15
• Health: 60
• Weight: 15
• Damage reduction : 0%
• Damage reduction due to angle (Angle Modifier): 1
• Speed To Damage Modifier: -0.1%
• Damage To Heat Absorbed: 2.5%
• Bioweapon Damage Modifier: 100%

• Strong Against - Missiles
• Weak Against - Direct. non-angled hits
• Other - Damage is reduced depending on angle of impact as well as taking slightly less damage from high velocity projectiles. A hit at 45 degrees will reduce damage taken by half.

Regenerative armor - Regenerative armor is engineered with living tissue designed to grow calcium carbonate as the protective medium. As it is newly formed. it is malleable enough to find its way into damaged areas where it solidifies and reinforces/replaces material that had been damaged/destroyed.

Regenerative is a decent armor but due to it's doubled damage from bio, against the wrong weapons it will get annihilated. Regenerative regains hitpoints at a fairly slow rate, and the slow speed means armor will not be repaired by a large amount in the middle of a fight. However regenerative may be more effective for grenadier tankers, since between skirmishes it will generally regenerate back up to full strength.

Research Required: Biology > Regenerative Armor

• Cost: 15
• Health: 75, Regeneration: 0.045
• Weight: 15
• Damage reduction : 0%
• Damage reduction due to angle (Angle Modifier): 0
• Speed To Damage Modifier: 0.32%
• Damage To Heat Absorbed: 3%
• Bioweapon Damage Modifier: 200%

• Strong Against - Nothing
• Weak Against - High velocity projectiles. biological weapons (takes double damage)
• Other - Armor is self regenerates as long as there is base material. Slightly increased heat absorption from damage. takes double from biological weapons

Absorbant armor - Absorbant armor is engineered with strong materials able to undergo excessive plastic deformation. This allows the armor to reduce damage received as a projectile's speed increases.

Absorbant is pretty poor compared to other armors. For weight reduction composite beats it by miles, and it's increase in defense against fast projectiles (generally cannons) is fairly useless for BE due to NFs less cannon-heavy tech, it also takes full damage against hitscan weapons (HEMG, DU, BioMG) because they have no speed.

Research Required: Chemistry > Absorbant Armor

• Cost: 10
• Health: 55
• Weight: 12.5
• Damage reduction : 0%
• Damage reduction due to angle (Angle Modifier): 0
• Speed To Damage Modifier: -0.75%
• Damage To Heat Absorbed: 1%
• Bioweapon Damage Modifier: 100%

• Strong Against - High velocity projectiles (rail guns)
• Weak Against - Missiles, mines
• Other - None