Armor is not that important currently

[TechSY730]

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.

If we are going to do that, why not just separate the two?
One stat will be hull type, which would be the typical polycrystal, nuetron, artilerry, etc. type that we got going now (its debatible whether things like light, heavy and ultra heavy should be moved to the size stat, renamed to small, large,and very large or something)
The other stat will be size. This way, you work with two seperate lists, instead of having to work with a "power set" (all possible combinations) of two distinct concepts.

For each ship xor shot type (depending on what we choose) there would be two sets of bonuses, one for material, one for size.

So we would have something like (I can't remember actual bonuses off the top of my head, so I am making some up)

Laser gattling
2x vs nuetron, 2x vs artillery, .5x vs command station armor
1.2x vs medium, .5x vs large, .7x vs very large
(omitted values are implied 1x, so that would mean 1x vs very small and small)

Plasma siege starship (note, no hull type bonuses)
.25x vs very small, .4x vs small, .8x vs medium, 1.2x vs very large

Yea, this wold make a new set of stats to balance, but it would better capture what we are currently sort of trying to use armor to represent, and thus be more intuitive. Those cases where we are trying to use armor to represent a special kind of "extra toughness" (like armor ships or raid starships) rather than just generic size/tier would get the old armor mechanic, renamed to deflectors.

EDIT: To ease the balancing effort, most ship type and shot types logically don't vary in effectiveness depending on target size. So the vast majority of ships would just have 1x for size accross the board. Only for ships or shots specifically designed to counter a few "tiers" of stuff would need these specific size multipliers.

EDIT2: Now that I think about it, this type and size multiplier system is very similar to the one used by Starcraft, except they also have an armor value stat on top of that. 

[Diazo]

edit: Replying to dotjd.

The thing is, at the moment I don't care about armor.  The only note I take of it is "Oh, that's a high armor target, my ships are going to only do 20% damage, throw more ships at it." Or I look to find what ships in my fleet have a damage bonus against it and use those, again ignoring armor.

And because armor is absolute, just throwing more armor onto the ships won't change anything.

Right now, Mk I Fighter does 4,800 damage, Mk V 24,000, Mk I bomber 9,600, MK V 48,000.

The Mk I fighter is at 80% reduction (the armor cap) at 3840 armor, the Mk V bomber would only have a 8% reduction against 3840 armor.

Which has led to this whole conversation. This thread is asking "How should damage mitigation work in AI War?"

I'm not sure there's a point beyond that right now.

The thing is, any change needs to still feel like AI War and right now when I'm doing my combat setup I look at the damage bonuses vs. hull types and pretty much ignore armor. So to still feel like AI War, a system that got rid of armor and reworked the damage bonuses vs. hull types would be my first thought.

I have to disagree with you about reducing it down to only 3 or 4 hull types. Homeworld was a great game I enjoyed but AI War is supposed to be complex with many options for dealing with a problem, not just 'construct the counter ship and win'.

Having said that, right now armor is a wasted mechanic, even on the specialty high armor ships it might as well be a 'reduce damage taken by 80%' tag.

So this thread, how to fix armor, or more generally, how should damage bonuses and defences work?



edit: reply to tech

I kind of like that idea, but I feel it overlaps with deflectors. What about deflectors, which have counters in game, and phased deflectors which don't? That would put the 'size' modification on the ship being shot at rather then the ship doing the firing.
IE: Your size is just a damage reduction of X%, so instead give that ship 'phased deflectors' of X% percent.  That prevents the addition of a whole new 'size' mechanic.

That's assuming the hull type bonuses don't cover it. Assuming the system works how I am imagining it, you are not going to have a hull type 'heavy' fighter-type ship.

So to do you 'size' modifier, just give all the 'light' weapons a default 0.8 damage bonus against the 'large' hull types.

D.

[keith.lamothe]

@techsy730: I've also wanted to have size and armor-type tracked separately because I like size classes, etc.  But from a gameplay perspective you wouldn't really notice if they were tracked separately or not.  "Corvette Polycrystal" would still have (somewhat) different multipliers against it than "Cruiser Polycrystal".


Anyway, I did want to mention the whole hull-types thing because it's been bugging me for a while (it's better than the old bonus-vs-ship-type system, but still not intuitive enough, imo).  But I think it's probably just derailing this discussion into an even bigger rebalance-the-universe discussion which probably won't be fruitful.

So, leaving bonus-mechanics out of it, the idea that seems best to me right now is:

1) Remove Armor Rating from most ships that already have it.  Compensate with extra health if it seems appropriate.
2) Remove Armor Penetration from any ship that doesn't already basically "ignore armor" (possibly promote a few that don't quite ignore it into that status) and just display it as an ignore flag instead of a number. Compensate with extra damage if it seems appropriate.
3) Change "Armor Rotting" to "Volatilizing", and have it be able to put a ship to "negative armor" (even if it starts with zero) so that incoming fire does more damage.  Probably cap "volatility" on the target ship at 1% of its health or something, dunno.
4) Make the Zenith Polarizer do more base damage to compensate for its special being narrower in scope, possibly give it something else besides.
5) Rename "Armor" to "Deflectors".
6) Probably, change the 80% reduction cap to 95% or even all-but-1-damage.
6) For each ship that has deflectors, re-evaluate the strength thereof.


The basic point: make the mechanic far narrower in scope, but have a more obvious impact when it's in play.

[TechSY730]

I just remembered, no matter what the change we agree on (even a "simple" 2x or something multiplier to all current armor values) would have major balance repercussions, and would necessitate at least reviewing the balance of every ship in the game. With like, what, 200 ship types, that will be a major effort.

[Diazo]

K, to make sure I'm thinking the same thing you are:

1) Remove Armor Rating from most ships that already have it.  Compensate with extra health if it seems appropriate.

I can agree to this. I suspect most ships will need an HP buff of some sort, the more armor they had the more of an HP buff they will need. I'll try to crunch some numbers when I get home.

2) Remove Armor Penetration from any ship that doesn't already basically "ignore armor" (possibly promote a few that don't quite ignore it into that status) and just display it as an ignore flag instead of a number. Compensate with extra damage if it seems appropriate.

So most ship will just lose their armor penetration while the specialty ships will gain the 'Ignore Deflectors' tag.

3) Change "Armor Rotting" to "Volatilizing", and have it be able to put a ship to "negative armor" (even if it starts with zero) so that incoming fire does more damage.  Probably cap "volatility" on the target ship at 1% of its health or something, dunno.
4) Make the Zenith Polarizer do more base damage to compensate for its special being narrower in scope, possibly give it something else besides.

Not sure what to do here, each hit from an armor rotter increases damage by 250 from other shots, stacking until bonus damage = max %1 of hp? Or maybe just have it do bonus damage to deflector equipped ships?

5) Rename "Armor" to "Deflectors".

So any ship that was 'armored' now has the deflector ability to ignore 80% of incoming damage.

6) Probably, change the 80% reduction cap to 95% or even all-but-1-damage.

Not sure I agree with this. I'd leave it at 80% for now because that is what we currently have. This number can be tweaked on its own later.

6) For each ship that has deflectors, re-evaluate the strength thereof.

Ya, there will be a lot of rebalancing all around.

My intent here is to make the changes not game-changing at this point. Not entirely possible I know but trying to not break the game is always a good thing.

That's why I'm thinking the changes are to try and keep the game in line with how it is at the moment, why I suggest leaving the 80% cap where it is now.

D.

[chemical_art]

Remember that if armor rotters increase damage taken by a unit it must be able to compete with attack boosts.

A cap of attack boosters can serve at least 300 (more around 500) units on low caps. At 80% on mk I boost, that results in a lot of firepower...

While a cap of armor rotters can only boost the attack of maybe a fifth of that...on high caps

[keith.lamothe]

3) Change "Armor Rotting" to "Volatilizing", and have it be able to put a ship to "negative armor" (even if it starts with zero) so that incoming fire does more damage.  Probably cap "volatility" on the target ship at 1% of its health or something, dunno.
4) Make the Zenith Polarizer do more base damage to compensate for its special being narrower in scope, possibly give it something else besides.

Not sure what to do here, each hit from an armor rotter increases damage by 250 from other shots, stacking until bonus damage = max %1 of hp? Or maybe just have it do bonus damage to deflector equipped ships?

The first thing you said is basically what I was saying; I wouldn't want this to be only-against-deflector-equipped-ships because then it's a niche of a niche, etc.  I like the idea of a mechanic where "this ship makes your high-rof ships do a lot more damage to the targets it hits", whether or not there are deflectors involved.

5) Rename "Armor" to "Deflectors".

So any ship that was 'armored' now has the deflector ability to ignore 80% of incoming damage.

No, I'd keep the current armor values for those ships that kept it at all, and we could balance that accordingly.  Basically the idea is to shut down high-rof attackers rather than to apply a percentage multiplier of any kind; if it becomes a multiplier it entirely loses the point from my perspective; may as well be packed into the hull multiplier somehow.

6) Probably, change the 80% reduction cap to 95% or even all-but-1-damage.

Not sure I agree with this. I'd leave it at 80% for now because that is what we currently have. This number can be tweaked on its own later.

Yea, it may not need changing.  But it may.

My intent here is to make the changes not game-changing at this point. Not entirely possible I know but trying to not break the game is always a good thing.

None of this will be happening before we start work on the next expansion, I imagine.  Just no quick way around it.  The current situation isn't ideal but armor isn't breaking the game.

[Cyborg]

Just chiming in to say that this is not just about percentages during reductions. While doing an actual logarithm on-the-fly is too expensive for this game, the actual concept of what a logarithm is is quite different than having a percentages aligned in a linear fashion. Rephrased, it's not just percentages. It's logarithmic for a reason; is to prevent exceeding values and artificial caps during boosting. 

[MordredofFairy]

Just to chime in on this:

How about a two-fold protection system.

Namely, using armors AND deflectors.

In this scenario, "armor" would flat-out reduce incoming damage by it's value.
Low numbers for armor, not pierceable, maybe medium values for stronger starships.

Effect: High RoF Enemies would do low(down to 1) damage against the targets, other ships deal damage almost normally.

Deflectors, on the other hand, would either CAP damage or reduce it by a percentage.(Percentage would be more in line with whats used now).
Personally, i'd even favor the "capping" as that would make balancing easier, imho, especially if some units(e.g. artillery golem) ignored deflectors.

Effect: High RoF enemies could do full damage(if no armor), but strong single shots would get reduced. On the other hand, these would be
"pierceable", increasing the "damage cap" that can be done to them.

Examples:
A Starship could have "Armor 5000", meaning any attack lower than 5000 only deals 1 damage to it, however stronger attacks manage to "bypass" the armor and deal damage accordingly. Effectively shutting down low-MK as well as low-damage/high ROF units.

A "Tank" unit could have "Deflectors 100", meaning no shot would do more than 100 damage per hit against it. However, a unit with "Piercing 1400" could
do 1500 damage per hit to it, making deflection and piercing meaningful mechanics.

Yet another, (say, flagship line) could have "Armor 3000" and "Deflectors 10000", meaning ships that hit lower than 3000 get reduced to 1, and stuff hitting higher than 10000 would get "capped" to 10000, which would have quite an impact on survivability.

That would create 3 distinct "groups" of units.

Those with deflectors would be vulnerable to piercing mechanics, but strong against high-damage, low RoF units.
Those with armor would be vulnerable to high-damage units, but strong against low damage, high RoF units.
Those with both would need to be carefully balanced, but would fit nicely for a starship role, providing good survivability with vulnerabilities on both ends.

Just throwing that out there...

[keith.lamothe]

Not looking to increase the number of mitigation mechanics, sorry

[MordredofFairy]

understandable, but i think a real problem is that a single mitigation mechanic doesn't scale well between Ultra-Heavy stuff(Golems and the like), Big stuff(Starships/Spirecraft) and Fleet Stuff.

As mentioned, if armor gets too "high" then it merely becomes a "80% less damage" automaton, or whatever the cutoff will be. If it gets too low, then it becomes meaningless, most of the time.

And really, splitting hull into sizes and materials would also just be another mitigation/bonus mechanic...in fact, radar dampening is just another mitigation mechanic(and an annoying one when the AI seems to love high-level Raid Starships).

Still, if there's only one mechanic to be used, i'd still vote for armor to be flipped around, as a "higher cutoff" point, per deflectors in my previous post. If you limit damage to the "armor" value, then it remains a functional mechanic across all fleet ranges.

Normal fleet ships could have low cutoff values to go with low health, meaning armor piercing eats them and other fleet ships will have slight trouble. And that's mainly where i see the problem with armor levels as they are now.
Fleet ships or Golems can be easier balanced via HP buffs/debuffs, or by mechanics like radar dampening, or shields.
Fleet ships however, by having armor that "minimizes-limits" instead of "maximizing-limits" damage input, are hard to properly balance. Any amount not too high to cause potential trouble will be quite meaningless in all but a few specific cases.

And sorry again if this was another issue that has been brought up before ^_^ i'll just freely voice my thoughts, and you can just ignore me if thats the case, but i think it's still more productive than just shutting up completely, maybe sometime i tend to tangent a nuance that was not mentioned or thought about beforehand

[Hearteater]

You suggestion sounds much like this Mordred.  I agree that if the shot reduction is large enough deflectors will just become %-reduction.  And as Dazio pointed out, shot reduction has irregular scaling issues as a result of damage increases in high mark ships.

[Diazo]

Looking back over the thread and thinking on it, my opinion is going to be that the best fix is to remove armor entirely and rework the bonuse damage system for shot type vs. hull type from the ground up, with the deflectors mechanic being used for the specialty ships that are currently 'armored'. (Essentially as posted earlier in the thread.)

Having said that, there is no keeping any existing balance if you do this, you are redoing the balance of all units from square one.

You can certainly input the numbers so that the balance is roughly the same (bombers attack fortifications, fighters attack light ships, etc.) but that would be judgement calls by whoever ended up redoing the system.

And that means this is a lot of work. I don't know the backend at all, but this is an entirely new mechanic being stuck into the game and one that reworks an existing mechanic, not as a new feature.

Would be the developers call if it's worth it, they are the only ones who might have an idea how much time and effort it would take.

D.

[Wingflier]

The basic point: make the mechanic far narrower in scope, but have a more obvious impact when it's in play.

Absolutely, I think this is a great idea.  Heavily "armored" ships will really show.

[TechSY730]

OK, after a week or so of discussion, I think I can start collecting ideas about armor and armor related mechanics (armor piercing, armor rotting, etc)

Keeping armor as a primary damage mitigation mechanic:
1. Keep system as is, but rebalance armor values and armor mechanic related values (net_damage = effective_damage - effective_armor, but buffing what the average effective_armor would be.
2. Adjust system to a ratio based (net_damage = f(effective_damage/effective_armor) for some yet to be determined, non-decreasing function f, possibly adjusting how effective_armor relates to armor piercing, armor rotting, and armor boosts). Rebalance armor, armor related stuff, damage, hull bonuses, and HP accordingly
3. Switch to a logarithmic system, but still using linear calculations as the "innermost" computation (aka, net_damage = f(log(g(effective_damage - effective_armor))), for some yet to be determined, non-decreasing functions f and g, possibly adjusting how effective_armor relates to armor piercing, armor rotting, and armor boosts) Rebalance accordingly
4. Switch to a logarithmic system, using a ratio as the "innermost" computation (aka, net_damage = f(log(g(effective_damage/effective_armor))) for some yet to be determined, non-decreasing functions f and g, possibly adjusting how effective_armor relates to armor piercing, armor rotting, and armor boosts)

With the above ideas, some combination of the following "modifiers" (one, some, all, or even none)
- Adjust the minimum damage due to armor (possibly keep it as a ratio, or change it to a fixed damage)
- Make effective_armor scale based on the attacker's mark level. How this scaling is done is TBD. Two proposed methods:
     * cross-lookup of armor across Mk. (aka, if a Mk. N ship attacks a Mk. M ship, instead of using the armor value of the Mk. M target for computation, use the armor value of he Mk. N target)
     * just linearizing (aka, if a Mk. N ship attacks a Mk. M ship, use the armor value of the Mk. 1 target * N, or possibly armor value of the target Mk. M * (N/M))
- Make attack bonuses apply AFTER armor considerations, instead of before (thus making armor MORE effective in the case of hull type bonuses)


Removing armor as a primary damage mitigation mechanic:
1. Remove armor entirely, repurpose ships whose purpose is to abuse armor or armor related mechanics. Rebalance HP, damage, and hull bonuses accordingly
2. Keep armor, but make it limited in scope (aka, most ships would only have 0 armor), but buff the armor of the few units that keep armor, to make it more obvious in the cases where it does come into play. Possibly rename armor (like to deflectors or something)
    * This does give the question of what to do with armor piercing, armor boosting, and armor rotting. One suggestion is to allow armor rotters to take allow armor to go to "negative effective armor", to some sane cap of course. This way, it has use against even the now majority of ships that have no armor
    * The few ships that have armor may be subject to the changes in the armor mechanic proposed above.
3. Go back to the non-deterministic system of the 3.0 days (almost certainly a bad idea, but included for the sake of completeness)


Sorry I didn't bother crediting ideas. Mods (and up) can feel free to edit this post to include such references (though its not like they needed my permission any-ways though)

Note, what is NOT on the table for this thread is the "standardizing" the logical purpose of hull types. That is a discussion for another thread.