This is a big rework that would change the game significantly.
Definitely, and I'm not sure it's necessary... Partly because I'm just piling on my long-held desire to make bonuses into a coherent and intuitive "weapon type vs armor type" system. That part can basically be detached from the idea I posted. Indeed, an even simpler approach (as techsy730 basically advocated a while ago) is simply to remove armor entirely and be done with it, but that leaves a few ship types with pretty much nothing to make them
at all special. So high-armor ships could be given more health, high-armor-pen ships could be given more damage, and armor-rotting ships could be given that new "volatility" thing I was talking about because it would reuse the armor-damage field (no additional ram cost) and I think it's a cool synergy with high-rof stuff.
But even there, I think the basic idea of armor could be used for a few ships, though the term "deflectors" feels more thematically appropriate.
Anyway, to respond to the rest:
To make sure I understand:
1) Armor is gone.
Not actually; renamed and removed from most ships, and re-valued for most of the ones that keep it and potentially a change from the 80% cap, but otherwise would keep working as-is. But gameplay wise it'd be a different thing: only a few ships would use it, and they'd be great defensively against high-rof types but that would be the extent.
2) The 'hull type' of all ships would be looked at to make them more consistent. IE: All bombers polycrystal, all melee ships close combat, etc.
Depending on what you mean by "Bomber" not all of them would be polycrystal, and certainly not all melee types would be one type. But all of the hull types would be something like "{size} {material}" rather than some of them being "{size}" and some being "{material}", and hull types of a particular material would have pretty similar bonuses against them, etc.
This would make a list of hull types that all future ships would pick from to keep the system from breaking.
We'd probably still add new hull types from time to time, unless there was no point in doing so. But yea, if a new ship picked an existing hull type and an existing weapon type that would cut down on the potential balance-breaking-ness of it.
3) Ship would now get a shot type based on their role. IE: All bombers energy bomb
Not necessarily, there could be energy bombs, (the much maligned) antimatter bombs, plasma bombs, etc. But they wouldn't be
wildly different from one another in terms of multipliers.
all melee ships fusion cutters, etc.
No, no. Some having blades and some having fusion cutters and maybe even more variety is fine with me, I just want "fusion cutters" to
mean something in terms of what sorts of ships it will be good against (aside from the endemic immunity to them), and you don't have to learn "what does fusion cutters mean for
this ship?", etc.
Again, making a list all future types would pick from based on role.
We'd certainly add more weapon types over time, just because new ways of making things go boom is very important
But yea, not every ship would
have to be a distinct type of weapon, which in a lot of ways is the current situation.
4) Damage bonuses would now be based on shot type, not per ship. So the 'energy bomb' would have bonuses against structures/fortifications at different levels. Small/med/large energy bombs allowing for more, yet similar shot types.
Yep.
5) 'Deflectors' would replace armor for niche ships, these would change to a %reduction against certain shot types? Flat reduction would not work for these I don't think.
I think flat reduction would work fine for the purpose: to make them inherently better defensively against high-rof ships, but not much different at all against high-individual-shot-damage ships. The problem isn't with the basic idea of the mechanic, the problem is that it doesn't work well if like half the ships in the game have it.
And Armor-pen could just go away, with those ships that really need to ignore deflectors (lightning turrets, electric shuttles, etc) just do exactly that.
My only concern would be that this means that a fighter is doing the same dps against a mk I fighter as it is against a Mk V bomber ship. (Before bonuses).
Before bonuses. We've got bonuses, why do we need an extra modifier there so often? Also, a mkI fighter may do the same absolute damage vs a mkI fighter and a mkV fighter, but it's still 1/5th the "progress towards my-target-is-dead", so it's not really all that same-y. In my opinion, at least
You guys play the game more, of course, so you tell me.
To counteract that, each shot type would have to have many bonuses, both positive and negative. For this system to really work a shot type only having 3 or 4 bonues would not be enough, it would need bonuses against half (or more) of the hull types in the game.
Otherwise all the different ships would sink into a generic pile with no real difference beyond range.
Right, the weapon type vs hull type "matrix" wouldn't be as sparsely populated as the current ship type vs hull type one, but there would be way fewer rows (or columns, depending on how you orient it).
Overall I think I like it, I'm just a little leery of how much work and how big a change this would be.
That's kind of my opinion as well, just thought I'd stir the pot and see what people thought
