I took the basic idea for this from the Stantigua ship by a friend of mine from Spain named Eladio. Most of the ideas are his--I tweaked them a bit.
Large Necron ships are often equipped with learning armour. This living metal gives several special abilities to the Necron ships. A ship that has learning armour suffers a -3 to its total hits. Therefore, a Cruiser with Learning Armour has 5 hit points, Light Cruisers have 3, Battleships have 9 and Escorts may not be equipped with Learning Armour.
Firstly, it can learn how to absorb damage more efficiently. Each hit sustained by the armour gives the ship a lower save value against that particular kind of energy during the encounter. (A ship must "re-learn" everything in a subsequent battle.)
When rolling for the critical, a 6 indicates a critical hit (per normal rules)--in which case, the ship automatically learns against that form of attack and gains a save. Additionally, if a "1" is rolled, the ship gains a save. These saves are not available until the next player's turn. Saves begin at 6+--each additional save lowers the target number. Saves cannot be reduced below 2+. On subsequent player's turns, the ship may roll a save for each damage point against that particular form of attack.
Learning armour must learn against separate types of weapons--Lances, Pulsar Lances, Weapons batteries/Ork gunz, Heavy Gunz, Torpedos, Bombers, etc. It is totally ineffective against Hit and Run attacks.
Example: A Necron ship is struck with 4 lances. Two slice past the shielding. Therefore, the ship is faced with two damage points. Rolling 2D6 for chance of critical yields a "6" and a "1". It takes a critical hit (and learns against lance attacks) and also learns because of the "1" result.
Beginning on the next player's turn, any further lance hits are saved against on the roll of 5+-BEFORE rolling for critical hits. (If the critical hit had yielded another hit, the Necron ship would NOT be able to learn further against lances, as this is a totally different kind of damage. It is a structural collapse or an internal explosion-either way, different from the incoming fire. Learning armour works ONLY with incoming fire.)
Secondly, Learning Armour allows a Necron ship to perform a unique special order during its movement phase:
Special Order: Repair Hits--movement phase
Firepower: None
Turns: None
Move: Half to Full as Normal
Roll a number of D6 equal to the current number of hits. As long as one die rolled is less
than the number of hits sustained, the ship repairs one point of damage. A maximum of one
point may be repaired in this manner--no matter how many dice indicate a success. Note:
This means a ship with more than six hits (namely, a Battleship) is capable of
automatically repairing one point of damage each time it successfully performs this
special order--as long as it was that damaged to start.
Note: Each point of armour regained in this fashion is "new" armour and has not learned to absorb any attacks. Therefore, raise the save number against *all* forms of attack by +1 for each hit point regained.
Comments and critiques are welcomed.