I'm assuming that most of the "fast-hitting" ships will have no armor piercing. Some of the slower-firing, heavier damage dealers (such as bombers) probably will.
In that regard, it does promote what you would expect in a Sci-Fi Universe - the more powerful the weapon, the more it dents the enemy's armor.
This is already true.
As of now, armor seems to make no difference at all. It is basically an invisible mechanic. Granted, that doesn't mean it isn't actually working, but if the player can't build strategies around it, or use it to his advantage, then it might as well not be there.
It doesnt matter what system you are going to use. You are still going to be using fleetballs composed of no less than 4 fleet ship types and a whole bunch of other things. Armor is "visible" when you can see individual combat interactions, or when your fleet is very homogenous, with all ships having some trait.
The only other option is to go into the territory of extremely hard counters, like we currently have with fortresses vs bombers. Unless the counter is so hard it makes a huge impact on the battle, the armor will remain difficult to notice.
This new mechanic could become a lot more intuitive. Like Keith said, Armor and Armor Piercing would become much rarer than they were before. It placed in large quantites on only a handful of ships, you would know when you needed it, and how to counter it, which opens up a new game dynamic.
I dont see what it has to do with the new mechanic, this part is more about changing the armor and pierce values of different ships. Yes, such rebalance would improve things, regardless of the armor mechanic we decide to use.
It's true that 80% damage reduction is the same as 5x health, BUT if you have a type of ship that can completely bypass the 80% damage reduction, that's a much more efficient way than just trying to kill than target 5 times in a row.
I dont see how its different from the current system. The only difference is that right now the damage reduction is not a fixed % value, but it depends on the attackers raw attack value.
If in the current system a ship has high enough armor, it will get 80% damage reduction, and if some other ship has 999 999 piercing (like snipers), then it does exactly the same as in your description.
It all depends on the execution. Personally I think armor and armor piercing should be used sparingly, instead of just thrown willy nilly in varying amounts on basically every ship in the game.
Yep. It all depends on how you set up the actual ship stats.
The current mechanic, however, has many layers of complexity by making reduction also depend on RoF and shot count. As result, all kinds of combinations can be created. Like a hard-hitting ship, that has no problem murdering small ships, even if armored, but when facing ships with really high armor, it suddenly loses its capacity. Or ships like autocannon pods, that
are supposed to be dealing massive damage to unarmored targets, but sharply lose effectiveness when enemy has a tiniest amount of armor.
What i would rather see is this hull/shot type rebalance, coupled with armor rebalance. But of course, such thing would need alot of time and work.
Our first challenge is to create an entire economic infrastructure, from top to bottom, out of whole cloth. No gradual evolution from previous economic systems is possible, because there is no previous economic system. Each interdependent piece must be materialized simultaneously and in perfect working order; otherwise the system will crash out before it ever gets off the ground.
bonus points to whoever recognises the quote without googling it.
