Are the Armor values the real thickness or the RHA equivalent.

[TheBestBanana]

I'm confused about the armor system. I think the "sliders" in ship design are actually "normal armor" or RHA equivalent, but I'm not completely sure. the are a few reasons I think this; when choosing higher armor qualities the weight drops dramatically. if the sliders were the actual thickness, then high quality armor is unrealistically light. also, the gun stats seem to only care about armor thickness. I've also seen some people say its RHA equivalence, but I don't know how credible they were. if some one could clear this up that would be great, and if the sliders are for RHA equivalent then it would be cool to have some information on the actual thickness. 

[Anitmata]

I believe the ship designer uses actual thickness, not RHA equivalent.

1) If it was RHA equivalent, then there'd be no point to having both a weight multiplier and an equivalent thickness modifier. One would do for both.
2) The armor thicknesses required to give decent protection look historically plausible to me.
3) In the target tooltip it gives the thickness modified for armor quality (the armor bonus for the ship I'm targeting is +100%): 

 

[Somhairle]

The armor slider value is the thickness of the plate being used. The penetration values listed are vs lowest quality though, and the modifier for higher quality basically increases the effective thickness of whatever your slider choice is. So, 12" of highest quality (w/ best enhancements etc.. 120% modifier) is 26.4" equivalent.

[TheBestBanana]

That makes sense. but if that's the actual thickness, then It seems that armor is too light. I know very little about ships but I would imagine adding an inch onto the main belt of a large battleship would weigh more then a couple hundred tons at the best quality. this is based off no real knowledge, just my intuition, so correct me if I'm wrong.

 

 

PS: after doing some math the game seems pretty accurate. assuming a sq foot of 1 in armor weighs about 40 lbs(a measurement I found on the internet), then  2910 ton main belt could be 18 in thick, 5 yards tall and 179 yards long which makes sense. 

Edited February 7, 2022 by TheBestBanana