Armor Coatings (WIP)

Ablative armor is armor designed to negate damage by itself being damaged or destroyed through the process of ablation. In contemporary spacecraft, ablative plating is most frequently seen as an ablative heat shield for a vehicle that must enter atmosphere from orbit. In a military application, ablative armor would undergo a state change on weapon impact, perhaps vaporising, or disintegrating to a fine powder. This state change would carry energy away from the armored vehicle and into the vaporized armor material. In addition, the expanding layer of ablated vapor would physically push additional hot gas away from the shield in a process known as blowing.

Ablative armor is distinct from the concept of reactive armor, which uses a sandwich layer of explosives to disrupt the thrust of armor piercing ammunition, and is actually in common use in modern armored vehicles.

Stealth Ablative Coating is a material found on some Stealth ships. Black in color, Stealth Ablative coating serves to refract both radar and sensors, making the ship invisible to radar, similar to the way Active Camouflage cloaks something from eyesight.

Stealth Ablative Coating must be maintained perfectly or it will return radar signals. This necessitates constant maintenance on the entire coating. Therefore, virtually all stealth ships have relatively small surface areas, so that less has to be maintained.

Strictly speaking, Ablative armor is designed to prevent damage to a ship it covers by being damaged itself through the process of ablation. A stealth ablative coating would therefore mean that once damage has been taken, its stealth features would be useless.

Anti-Beam Coating
Anti-Beam Coating is a material that can be applied to the surface of objects to make them resistant to beam weaponry. However anti-beam coating wears down over time because of constant attacks of beam and physical attacks, so you have to re-apply new layers of anti-beam coatings after every battle.

Mirror Coating
Mirror Coating is a highly improved version of anti-beam coating. While ordinary anti-beam coating merely disperses energy beams, mirror coating actually reflects them. As a result, if hit at the proper angle, it can cause an attacker can be destroyed by its own beam. Mirror coating also gives any surface it is applied to a highly reflective sheen. This coating is strong enough to disperse even a powerful positron blast.

Laminated Armor
Laminated Armor is an outer armor layer consisting of a single piece, rather than connected plates. It provides protection against beam weaponry by dispersing them across the entire surface of the armor. This provides superior protection against beam weapons, but eventually laminated armor will begin to melt from the accumulated heat.