Armor Tech

Armor Tech makes the hulls on your ships and defenses tougher. Every level you research adds 10% of a unit's base hull rating. That is all it does. It will not make your guns hit harder or your ships fly faster.

Effect

Each level adds 10% of the base hull, and the levels do not compound. Level 1 gives you 110% of base hull, level 5 gives 150%, level 10 gives 200%. It is base plus 10% a level, not 10% on top of the last level.

It covers everything you own that has a hull: every ship, every defense, solar satellites, probes and the Hephaestus platform. Attack strength and shields are somebody else's job, see Weapons Tech and Shield Tech.

You can read the boost straight off the Shipyard and Defense pages. The Base column is the plain design number and the green Current column is what you actually field with your tech. An Apollo Class Fighter has 850 base hull. At Armor Tech 9 it flies with 1,615.

Defenses get exactly the same treatment. A Missile Battery goes from 200 hull to 380, a Pulse Cannon from 800 to 1,520.

Why it matters in a fight

A battle runs up to six rounds. Shields recharge to full at the start of every round, but hull damage stays. Hull is the part of a unit that has to last the whole fight, and that is what makes Armor Tech the tech that brings ships home.

There is a second payoff that people miss. Any unit that has lost more than 30% of its maximum hull can blow up on its own at the end of a round, and the more hull it has lost the likelier that is. Raising your maximum hull means the same incoming damage is a smaller slice of the total, so fewer of your ships pop after they have already survived the shooting.

Armor also works against Interplanetary Ballistic Missiles. Missile damage ignores shields completely, so your defenses' armored hull is the only thing standing between the missile and your cannons.

In a group attack the whole combined fleet fights on the best Armor Tech level in the group, not each player's own. Group defend works the same way on the defending side. One well researched member lifts everybody.

Cost

Armor Tech is the cheapest of the three combat techs and it is the only one that costs ore and nothing else. Level 1 is 1,000 ore and every level after that doubles.

You need a Research Lab at level 2 before you can start it. You research it on the Research page. Tech belongs to your account rather than to a planet, so you pay for it once and every planet you own gets it.

Level	Ore	Hull boost
1	1,000	10%
2	2,000	20%
3	4,000	30%
4	8,000	40%
5	16,000	50%
6	32,000	60%
7	64,000	70%
8	128,000	80%
9	256,000	90%
10	512,000	100%
11	1,024,000	110%
12	2,048,000	120%
13	4,096,000	130%
14	8,192,000	140%
15	16,384,000	150%
16	32,768,000	160%
17	65,536,000	170%
18	131,072,000	180%
19	262,144,000	190%
20	524,288,000	200%

There is no cap. The table stops at 20 because nobody is near it. Getting all the way to level 20 costs a bit over a billion ore in total.

Requirements

Research Lab level 2

Things that need Armor Tech

Apollo Class Fighter needs level 2
Hephaestus Class Attack Platform needs level 12

Tips

The early levels are close to free. Levels 1 to 5 together cost 31,000 ore, about what five Apollos cost in ore, and they hand you 50% more hull on every unit you will ever build.
Armor and Shield Tech both look defensive, but they are not the same buy. Shields reset every round and hull does not, so armor is worth more the longer a battle runs and the bigger the fleet coming at you.
Ore only is handy. You can keep armor moving with the ore that piles up while you are waiting on crystal or hydrogen for something else.
Run the numbers in the Calculator before a big hit. Both the attacker and defender tech boxes have an Armor field, so you can see exactly what one more level buys before you spend on it.