Leaky Armor

Leaky armor is a concept used in some Space Empires games. When leaky armor is enabled, armor is no longer an impenetrable wall of hitpoints that must be destroyed before internal components can be damaged. Rather, there is a chance of internal components taking damage which depends on the number of remaining armor components; the more armor components there are, the better the likelihood of the armor blocking an attack.

Space Empires I
This game does not have components, so leaky armor is not possible here.

Space Empires II
In this game, components always took damage in a predefined order (the order they were installed), so leaky armor is not possible here.

Space Empires III
This is the only game that has leaky armor built in. Components tend to get hit starting with the armor layer, then the outer hull, and finally the inner hull. However as outer components take damage, the damage starts to leak to inner layers, because every time a ship gets hit, a random armor component is rolled, and if that armor component happens to be destroyed, the damage will leak, even if there are other still functional armor components.

Space Empires IV
Stock armor in this game is no longer leaky; as long as there are any remaining armor components, one of them will take damage before any internal components take damage. However you can mod in leaky armor by removing the armor ability from the armor components, which causes them to get hit first. If you do this, you will probably want to increase their hitpoints as stock armor is rather weak!

Space Empires V
This game brings back the distinction between inner and outer hull from SE3. However the layers are not leaky like they were in that game. You can mod in leaky armor in one of two ways:


 * Change the slots that components can be installed in (e.g. make armor go in the outer hull).
 * Modify the damage types to cause damage to partially penetrate armor.