Bonus Ship Ommission File

[Wingflier]

Here's the type of armor system I was thinking of:

It's still very simplistic, but even with massive amounts of armor, it never technically reduces the incoming damage to 0 (thought it may come close to that). 

Each armor point stands for 5% Effective Health Points or EHP.

So if a unit has 1000 health and 100 armor, it effectively has 6,000 EHP against attacks without any armor penetration.

Say a ship fires a shot doing 100 damage (and no armor piercing) against the same unit with 1,000 health and 100 armor.

1000 x 500% = 6,000.  6,000 - 100 = 5,900.  When you return that to the original value, the ship has 983.333333 health left, and you just round that to the nearest whole number.  So a 100 damage attack against a ship with 1,000 health and 100 armor deals 17 damage.

However, let's say the same attack does 100 damage and 50 armor piercing as well.  The armor piercing is applied before the damage, so 100 armor - 50 armor piercing is equal to 50 armor left before the damage is applied.  Therefore we do the same thing:  1000 x 250% = 3,500 health.  3,500 - 100 = 3,400.  Reduce that back to the regular values and your ship is left with 971.4 health, so round it to 971 health.  The ship with 50 armor piercing dealt 29 damage.

However, let's say the attack does 100 damage and has 75 armor piercing.  1000 x 125% = 2,250 Effective Health.  2,250 - 100 = 2,150.  Reduce that back to the normal values and you get 955.5, which rounds to 956 health remaining.  The attack with 100 damage and 75 armor piercing did 44 damage.

What if the attack does 100 damage and has 90 armor piercing?  1000 x 50% = 1,500 Effective Health.  1,500 - 100 = 1,400.  Reduce that back to the normal value to get 933.3, or rounded to 933 health.  So the attack with 100 damage and 90 armor piercing did 67 damage.

The reason I like this system is that it makes higher levels of armor very effective vs. non-armor piercing shots, but almost never useless.  However, as an attacker's armor piercing approaches the armor value, they become significantly more effective against their targets than those who do not have armor piercing.

This is how a ship can technically have Low DPS and High Armor Piercing and still be an extremely effective unit against opponents with a lot of armor.  On the contrary, a unit can have HIGH DPS and No Armor Piercing, and while it may be extremely strong against units with no Armor, it is equally ineffective against units with a lot of it, even though it still does a minute amount of damage.

With this relatively simple system, we could completely rebalance the game in a way that all the ships get their own unique role, using only simple statistics such as health, damage, armor, and armor piercing.  The most important and defining characteristic of a unit would come from its external attributes such as cloaking, speed, ability to repair, munitions boosting, parasite effect, or whatever other neat things - instead of basically having value solely on what hull type multipliers it possesses.

[Volatar]

But WHY?

[Wingflier]

Uhhh because the current system is inherently flawed?

[KDR_11k]

Starfarer does something like (damage + armor) / (armor + armor). That's current armor, not max armor and the result is the damage done to the armor so as the armor is being worn down the attacks gain effectiveness. That means that even weapons like the plasma cannon (energy type, i.e. no damage modifiers) are beneficial for anti-armor use because they have high damage per shot even though they don't get the 50% damage bonus that HE weapons do.

That being said, again, what would the point be? Do we really need to widen the gap between light and heavy units? As it stands it may be a better idea to just fling the whole armor mechanic out the window. Armor rotters could instead generate "weakness points", these would then increase the damage of other attacks (when a weapon hits a unit with weakness points it converts as many of those points into damage as it does damage itself, i.e. the weapon can do up to double damage if there are enough weakness points on the target, weakness points go away over time if they aren't cashed in). Then there's Resonance of Fate which had scratch damage weapons, those generate only potential damage that isn't applied until a regular weapon hits the target (but they also do waaaaaaaaaaay more damage than regular weapons).

[Draco18s]

Wingflier: your method is essentially:

damage dealt = Math.Ceiling(damage / (1+(armor*0.05)))

The whole point of this kind of method is that armor has diminishing returns.  1 armor point knocks off ~4% of the incoming damage.  10 armor knocks of ~37%.  Almost 10 times as good, but not actually 10 times as good.  100 armor knocks off ~83%.  1000 armor knocks off ~98%.

Even at a thousand armor, the unit still dies to 500 shots going "tink" off its hull.

[Wingflier]

Actually, the system doesn't have diminishing returns, it's linear.  This is basically the armor system that Warcraft 3 uses, and there's been a lot of debate over it, but it isn't diminishing, it just looks that way.

I think this system is the most effective and useful for a space wargame like this because it's realistic.  IF you shoot enough lasers at a Star Destroyer, EVENTUALLY it will die, it's just going to take a damn long time.  If you shoot enough bullets at a Tank, EVENTUALLY you'll pierce it's armor, it'll just take you forever.

Let's take your example of 500 shots going "tink" on the hull.

Let's say we use the same example as I gave above, but instead of 100 armor as before, we have 1,000.

1,000 * 5,000% EHP = 60,000 Health.  If each shot does 100 damage still, then 60,000-100 = 59,900.  Returning that to its original value is 998 health.

So each shot against this 1,000 Health, 1,000 Armor target is dealing TWO damage.  That means it will take 500 shots to kill it.  That's quite a lot of damage for a single ship to take.

But another way we can make this armored ship last longer (if we wanted) is by splitting those shots up in fourths.  Many powerful "anti-light" units in the game split their damage up into several shots right?  This isn't uncommon.  So now instead of 100 damage, we have 25x4.

60,000-25 = 59,975 = 999.58 when you translate it back to the original value.  In effect, the ship doing 100 damage split into 4 shots of 25 damage, did NO damage to the ship with 1,000 armor when you round the damage to the nearest whole number.  Using this system, it is possible for scenarios to occur where a ship is so armored that it will take no damage from ships firing multiple shots without armor penetration.

All of these things could be controlled and managed based on the values we use for damage, armor, and armor penetration to basically make any kind of game we want.  Do we want the heavily armored ships like the Tank and Armor Ship to take no damage from anti-light ships?  Do we want them to still take a significant amount of damage, even though they're technically considered armored?  All of these things can be implemented based on the values we use.

[Volatar]

Using this system, it is possible for scenarios to occur where a ship is so armored that it will take no damage from ships firing multiple shots without armor penetration.

I don't like that. I like anything to be able to kill something given enough volume of units.

In the current system, Frigates may be awesome against fighters, but if you send 50 of them vs 600, you are going to lose all your frigates.

[Wingflier]

I said it's possible, but it all depends on what values you use.

If the armor values are never high enough and/or the damage values are high enough, it would be impossible for that scenario to occur.  It all depends on how the community and/or Keith decides they want the game to be balanced (if the system were used).

I can see arguments on both sides.  In some ways it's cool to have huge ships that are so armored that little bullets don't even make a scratch, but on the other hand, if you don't have an anti-armor ship with you, you're kind of screwed.  Obviously you would have a dedicated anti-armor ship built into the Triangle, but still, people might not want the game to be balanced to that extreme.

[Volatar]

I just really don't like it. I think your proposed system makes everything so... homogenous. And you still have to do too much math to figure out how much damage something will do, something the current system doesn't have.

[TechSY730]

Ugh, now we are starting to retread ground already covered in the last armor discussion. Many (but not all) of these points/proposals about hull types and armor systems have already been established/stated there.

I can dig up a link if anyone wants it.

[Hearteater]

It really comes down to:  What do we want Armor to do, and what do we want Hull Type to do?  Are they doing the same thing or different things?

[keith.lamothe]

what do we want Hull Type to do?

Differentiate ship types.

What do we want Armor to do

Currently, personally: Jump off a bridge

[Draco18s]

Actually, the system doesn't have diminishing returns, it's linear.

Uh.  No it's not.  If it was linear, there would eventually be an armor value above which the ship would take 0 damage.



Note that the red line is NON-LINEAR

The more armor you have, the less each point is worth.  The first 10 points are worth 37 actual health saved.  The second 10 are worth an additional 17.  The next 10 are worth an additional 10.

Every 10 armor you add is worth less than the amount before it.

Diminishing returns.

900 more armor than the top of this chart shows is worth less than the jump from 10 to 20 armor (15 extra to 17 extra).

[keith.lamothe]

Note that the red line is NON-LINEAR

I don't get it.  Maybe if you drew an arrow pointing at the blue line saying "STRAIGHT" and another arrow pointing at the red line saying "NOT STRAIGHT" it might get through for me

[Draco18s]

Note that the red line is NON-LINEAR

I don't get it.  Maybe if you drew an arrow pointing at the blue line saying "STRAIGHT" and another arrow pointing at the red line saying "NOT STRAIGHT" it might get through for me

I'll bite you.