Location of armor and shields

Yes. It's just different levels of the same ship.

Shields will be depleted first (by normal weapons).
Armor will be depleted second (by normal weapons).
Then your outer hull components will be depleted
and finally your inner hull components will be depleted.
However; some weapons skip shields, some weapons skip armor and cause damage directly.

Unole!
Directive 721: Cover your own a$$ first. Solo

One thing to note: Shields and armor protect the entire ship. Armor gets damaged in some order I haven't figured out yet.

However, once that's gone, unless the weapon has some special ability, damage is applied in the direction it come in. As such, it is worthwhile to note where components are on your ship, if you want to protect certain components.

The weapons that skip shields and or Armor, are they just the special Racial weapons? Do the non Racial weapons that target things like engines, weapons need to penetrate shields and then armor to get to their special targets?

Caius

I believe first placed in construction is the first hit in combat. Good to keep in mind when mixing some armour types.

Oof. I thought it was based somehow on the location of the square on the ship. That will be something to remember in my designs.

Shield Type 1 Name                              := Normal Shields
Shield Type 1 Penetration Percent               := 100
Shield Type 1 Damage Percent                    := 0
...
Armor Type 1 Name                               := Normal Armor
Armor Type 1 Penetration Percent                := 100
Armor Type 1 Damage Percent                     := 0
...

SpaceEmpires.net | Space Empires Wiki

Note that directional damage is applied to inner and outer hull components, so placement does matter a bit there.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

I have a problem with armor being attached to the outside of a ship taking up space on the inside of the ship. It should add to the mass of the ship but shouldn't take up space. Adding mass to the hull mass, which in Balanced Mod, should slow the ship down a bit just like adding armor to a HumVee makes it heavier but doesn't consume any of the space inside the vehicle.
It seems like it would be easy to mod that effect, where armor slots aren't part of the hull size but are included in the calculated mass of the ship.

Unfortunately, the only way I can see doing this is by giving armor negative move speed. It still needs to be put in a certain spot (so you could only add so much armor pieces to a given ship), but takes up 0kL of space.

Might be worth experimenting with.

We shouldn't have to give armor negative movement if the final mass of the ship is calculated and then divided by the total thrust of the engines to get a final movment rating.

I have always thought that a full cargo ship should be slower than an empty cargo ship.

Mass is not taken into account AFAIK, and giving armour negative movement may mean that it is then technically an engine and would contribute to the engine limit, unless you modded the limit out.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in space, increasing mass should slow your acceleration, decrease your turning speed, but It shouldn't decrease your top speed.

SEV, more than a feeling.

SpaceEmpires.net | Space Empires Wiki

I once added movement penalties to armour in balance mod, but sometimes - and I never found out why - a ship would be given some obscenely high movement (like 65,000 or something ridiculous). I did have to mod the engine limits out in vehiclesizes.txt, replacing them with restrictions on specifically named engine components.

Too many negatives and not enough positives so like Firzen said you'll have gone off the bottom and ended back at the top.

According to the manual, SE V has the 'size' of vehicles rated in tonnage, and the basic term of tonnage is a measure of weight, not volume. (kT = kilo-Tonnage)

Besides, if tonnage in SE V was the 'volume' version (which should have some prefix such as Gross or Net), then SE V would not have/need armor and inner/outer hull slots to measure space, it would only need a more simple setup, like SE IV had.

Sci-fi games like Battletech (and the Mechwarrior video game based on it) had tonnage as a unit of mass, as do other games I have played in the past, and most also had other ways of also tracking the 'size' (not weight) of items.

Basically, IMHO, vehicle size in SE V is based on tonnage as 'weight', while 'internal space' is represented by inner/armor hull slots, and armor slots basically being how much armor the hull can support.

@ glockgemini
You totally lost me.
Armor goes in armor slots.
Armor slots only hold armor.
Armor cannot be placed in inner/outer hull slots, so how does armor take up internal space?

Even ignoring my above opinions of tonnage, consider this.
The ship's internal structure will take up internal space, and the more armor a ship has, the more internal structure it will need to support that armor, due to stresses applied by maneuvering and damage, as the heaviest armor around is pointless if even a basic weapon impact will cause entire intact slabs of armor to slam into a ship due to insufficient structure supporting the armor simply collapsing in on itself.
Basic armor needs nothing special.
Organic armor likely would need systems to help 'support' the armor, to keep it 'alive'.
Crystallne armor will likely need special shock absorbers to prevent ship actions from damaging/cracking the armor and so 'channeled' energy doesn't accidentaly get discharged into the ship itself rather than into the shields.
The other specialized armors with other effects likely include extra layers of insulation and other materials/stuff to help achieve assorted effects, such as stealth armor going to need stuff to help block heat, internal energy emissions, scattering armor needing specialized materials to block focused sensor scans, etc.