Do all three layers of the ship model need to have stuff?

The extra layers are present to provide more slots if you need them. They don't have any function in damage mechanics.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

You want to use all the Interior hull positions you can so you want to use all three levels. Putting everything on the first level is the problem we've been complaining about regarding the poor AI ship design because you end up putting good components in the outer hull where they are more easily destroyed. I put armor on all three levels, I just don't fill up all available slots.
Omnius

Serve your Fellow Men and Women, not False gods!

Basically no but as Ominous said thoughtful use of the inner and outer spaces does help as well as giving you more room to place stuff. It’s only really worth the effort of doing this on combat ships though as unarmed ships will either run away successfully or be destroyed regardless if caught. Some Mods also limit what can go where more than stock

Psieye,
If you end up with a ship with only armor and interior hull components then you've got a well designed ship that will last longer in combat than a ship with outer hull components. Designing a ship using only the top deck means you're making the mistake of putting all your eggs in one basket. The meaning of the interior hull is that it is the last place on a ship to get damaged, therefore the more components you can place in interior hull positions the more likely they'll survive as will your ship. Many times I still have to place components in outer hull positions but by spreading them out along three decks makes them safer from damage. I've noticed that some ship styles have more interior hull positions than others so picking a good ship style in making your empire helps designing better ships capable of taking more of a licking while keeping on ticking.
Omnius

That's not right. If you don't have any outer hull slots being used then the damage will just go straight to the inner hull components... and therefore there's no really extra protection and you can likely lose a more vital component earlier by chance. If you place less vital components on the outer hull (engines, cargo, shields) then they'll shield the inner hull ones. Of course, the difference tends to be small since most ships only have enough structure points for outer hull / inner hull components to take a few hits anyway.

Now the order of component placement has a small affect, in that components placed first are usually damaged first - particularly when directional damage is minimized...

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

As Kwonk Said!

Look, how it works is armor gets destroyed first, so really armor could be placed anywere and it wouldn't matter (My designs are actually gonna place armor with that in mind)
Next to be destroyed is outer components, As a result I always put the less critical systems in here (Supply storage, Shields, things that basically are not needed for the operation of the ship) In the inner hull, I place critical components, such as Bridge, Life Support, Crew Quarters, Ordinance Storage, and other things that if are destroyed ruin the ability for my ships to function as long as possible in combat, or keep moving if they are non-combat ships.

As for the last bit, THANKS KWONK! That explains alot, like why it was always my critical stuff blown up first (I always place them first. Time to reverse that trend)

Kwonk is Kwok's evil twin, we don't mention him.

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Watch for my mod - codename: Dimensions - coming by Summer, 2007!

..armor should be directional!

How is rear armor going to affect front hits?

In some games armor helps represent structural integrity,
and if you think of it that way (armor = hull)
you wouldn't WANT to lose all your "armor" first anyway.

Troll? No, Sir, I am a BADGER!

As stated before, the extra decks are to provide more slots only. All the armor needs to be destroyed regardless of what deck it is on, before internals can be damaged.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Yea, it's a scripting simplication. It's not a full 3D system,.... that would be neat like homeworld where tactics were important.....
But it is simplified somewhat so that combat doesn't take up 99% of the program.

Phoenix-D over at Shrapnel posted a possible mod idea where each component contained a weighted negative movement amount that would drop the base speed for a ship hull - so the depending on the components you had, your actual speed would vary. It's easily doable, only a minor problem if your total movement is negative...

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Captain Kwok,
The manual says that the outer hull slots get destroyed before inner hull ones. It did not say anything about the outer hull slots having to be occupied with components. If the slots only get destroyed if there's a component in it then damage application is screwed up.

Still it's pretty difficult to make a ship design that only uses inner hull slots so I do overflow my less valuable components to outer hull slots after I fill up all inner hull slots. Damage application needs to be improved so that outer hull slots get destroyed before inner hull slots regardless of whether there's a component in it or not.
Omnius

If there is nothing in the outer hull, then there is no structure to absorb any of the damage so it will go to the inner hull. Empty slots do not have any structure.

The damage scheme already requires all the outer slots be destroyed first before direction damage is applied.

Damage Allocation:

Shields: All shield points must be down before the Armor is hit - Not directional
Armor: All armor points must be gone before the Outer Hull is hit - Not directional
Outer hull: All hull points must be gone before the Inner Hull is hit - Directional
Inner hull: Directional

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Your also assuming that the fancy engine types rely on straight thrust/mass principles, and not a size/field generation principle. It's Sci-Fi The engines could generate a bubble of certain size and everything inside that bubble can then sideslip through space at a certain rate based on the power of the bubble. Need a big enough bubble to enclose a larger ship so to make the bubble bigger you sacrifice some power, why in BM/IRM bigger ships need more engines. Suddenly Mass isn't an issue if you use something along that theory.

and there is allways the "Lensmen" universe where ships reduce thier mass to 0 to get over lightspeed and only the particle deflection limits the speed...

Einstein said no mass can move faster then light, guess E.E.'Doc' Smith took it by the letter

in case you never heared of those books i recomend reading them...its good sifi for been written in the 50s and 60s.
I was reading them in the early 70s when noone even heared of georg lukas and starwars:D

Captain Kwok,
Just because a hull slot contains no critical components should not mean it doesn't exist. The empty hull slots ought to be damageable as well, those empty hull slots damaged just wouldn't affect components. Not very realistic hull presentation if empty slots are ignored for damage purposes. Damage ought to be applied in a random fashion, damaging some empty slots and damaging some filled slots.
Omnius

Remember the slots are abstract in terms of size, since 1 slot can represent 10kT of space/structure or 100kT of space/structure without visually occupying more space on the layout. For example, think about the armor, it only occupies a few remote slots, but really it is treated as if it composed the entire layer of the ship for damage purposes.

So really what we have is SE:III's armor/inner/outer ship design, but without the max % restrictions for used space in a layer, and a vague graphical layout for directional damage.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod