Adding Armor to Ships (HELP)

[Caldari Navy]

Hallo there people. I am in need of advice on how to armor ships using structural plates. I used to use wing parts which I was rather good a but these plates are far superior in terms of protection to the old wings parts. However, I struggle quite a bit with creating ships with armor, how do you guys do it, Do you build a structure of I Beams, and then armor the ships or what?

[Capt_Reynolds]

May I ask why you need to amour plate your ships?

[Superfish57]

He might be playing with KMP, or just wants it because it looks cool.

[arq]

Mount them on the ends of cubic struts.

[Caldari Navy]

The reason is because I submit combat ships to the UKSC (United Kerbal Space Command)

[Epthelyn]

1) Start out by putting a panel (symmetrically if necessary) on one side of the craft by using a cubic octagonal strut; they can be placed pretty much anywhere, so this makes it considerably easier to do part 4

2) Attach more panels to the edges of those panels by selecting the part, moving the mouse over the very thin edge of the panel and then rotating it

3) Repeat with the next panel and so on

4) Once you get to a point where you can't fit more panels on, you're either done or you have gaps left. Just fill these up by attaching further panels at different angles to the existing ones or start back from step 1 until that gap is filled

Alternatively you can just make a cubic strut and a panel and duplicate it across the entire craft, but that's a waste of partcount. If you're working with a regular shape (i.e. something that has squares, triangles, hexagons etc. on all sides) then you can cover one side using steps 1-4 and then duplicate the parts and copy them over to the other sides.

In all cases you'll probably need some struts behind the panels to stop them wobbling.

That's probably not the best way to do it, but it works for me

[Caldari Navy]

Ok thanks guys for the advice

[Charlie089]

Personally I tend to mount armor using radial attachment points, as I did on the Lupo class here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/57893-Thunderbolt-Industries-Stock-Hiring-if-you-can-impress-me. But that's just me, and it's not the usual way.

[gtmattz]

Caldari ships with armor? Shouldnt you be more worried about shield tanking?

[Caldari Navy]

HA, I've sen some armor tanked condor PvP fits before

[Millitron]

Protip: Attach the armor via docking port so it can be replaced if damaged

[Odo]

HA, I've sen some armor tanked condor PvP fits before

Eve online reference?

[Solarspaceprobe]

What about for BD Armory?