idea how to implement armor in the concept :3
at first: small explanation
the hitpoints of your armor symbolise how much armor material is still there to protect you,
so the less hitpoints you have, the more material of your armor is already lost to damage.
"damage mitigation" is a flat amount of damage that gets subtraced from every hit on your hull.
so for example
your armor provides 5 mitigation
an attack with 5 or less damage rating does no damage, every other attack gets reduced by 5 points.
bigger ships have generally higher mitigation, to symbolise that the weapons are simply too insignificant to damage a metre of armor
your base armor and hitpoints are determined at the point where you design the hull of your ship (like in the ship designer from back then)
you also determine the amount of "ports" in your armor, this ports serve as connectors for the various modificators i'll outline later.
from there we have 2 choices on how to proceed in the implementation
- armor is an un-themed, untyped blank slate that just provides plain hitpoints and receives the same damage from every type of weapon, providing some damage mitigation based on its material
- the material itself already has a type which is determined at the point where you research the material, hitpoints per mass, absorbtion stpectrum, reflection spectrum, damage type vulnerability etc
every armor has a "capillary system" for supplementary fluids which can have multiple effects.
shock absorbing insets to increase general hitpoints
coolants/absorbants to mitigate certain damage types (here a "fuel cell" concept could be used again, dont swap out the whole system, just swap out the fluid)
floods of nanobots providing some regenerating hitpoints (limited by a cell which holds additional bots/repair material)
radar absorbants to increase your "stealthiness"
etc.
this systems dont need any (noticeable) energy to run, so they maybe loose a bit of effectivity when the ship gets powered down/its generator being damaged/the ship becomes a derelict
but in general they continue working.
(besides the nanobot self repair, which needs energy for obvious reasons)
another hardware that can be connected to the "armor ports" are field generators, lets call them in star trek style "structural integrity fields".
those fields are doing similar things to the coolant/bot/material flows, but need much more energy, but are also more effective in doing their job.
so when your ship loses power, your integrity fields go down and stop working, leaving you with "stock" armor.
they can do everything that the material supplements can besides increasing hitpoints or repairing your armor (they may aid in repairing, but on their own they are not capable of doing so)
instead of giving your armor more hitpoints, structural integrity fields can increase your damage mitigation (flat amount, percentage wise, whatever)
(this should be a nonlinear process, low-to-medium energy input gives the most "bang for buck", and ships with very advanced generators or devoting all their power to structural integrity dont get invulnerable.)
this way structural integrity fields dont give you more hitpoints, they let you make better use of that hitpoints you already have, for an energy cost.
with structural integrity fields you may have better armor than one who uses only material flows, but you trade a ton of energy for that, thus making you less capable in other areas.
combinations of material flow and field tech could maybe even produce an "energy armor" effect when powered up
let some nanobots be hardened into armor when you need it
reference :3
(yeah, i like that effect :3 )
the ports in the armor are a combined piping/energy connector, and are limiting how much of either material flow or structural field power can pass.
again, to cap max capability to something balanceable.
you can design multiple armor ports into your ship, but each of those is a structural weakness where everything flows together, and thus need extra material to prevent them being a weakness
in short, the more ports you have, the more mass your armor takes.
so, this makes armor less of an "it is as it is" thing and more of a dynamic system you can affect with your equipment choices without it being literally swappable
because its strange to replace your whole hull at a moments notice when you discover some better armor.
also: maybe a "port" system could also be used for shields, (emitter grid or whatever)
that one can design hulls which are specialised on using shields or using armor.