How? As an anecdote, I just asked three people how much more effective 100 armor should be over 20. All three said 5 times as effective. That's intuitive.
It's intuitive because the damage reduction can be displayed right on the unit's information bar, and because it's a fairly simple system, in spite of the fact that it's not linear (we're using a linear system now, it's not working that well).
If the game will compute the damage reduction percentage, and display it for you (instead of the Armor value) then why use an armor value? Especially since hidden equations lead to unexpected behaviors.
You can display both if you like, I don't see the problem with this.
Also, the GUI issues mentioned: how does your Armor Piercing work with this display? Would mousing over a ship show different numbers depending on what you have highlighted? What if you have multiple ship types selected, or none?
Armor piercing is just armor-armor piercing to get the new armor value before the attack. If you want to know how much damage a single ship is doing after armor piercing, you can simply click that ship and mouse over the enemy ship to find out.
As I already mentioned, the more you play the more you get a feel for what armor values mean. Just like right now "Heavy 10, Ultra-Heavy 10, Structural 10", those things don't mean anything to us, because nobody is doing the actual math in their head. It just gives us an idea, based on the ship's damage, how much it will do, and it works well enough.
Some of the people in this thread live in an alternate Universe where each player goes through complex equations in their head before each battle. The proposed EHP system is very consistent across HP values, after only a few days of playing you will have a feel for what armor values mean in terms of damage reduction, even if you have armor piercing ships which is just basic subtraction. There IS NO RTS game that doesn't work like this. Even the most simplistic system like Starcraft's asks the players to earn a feel for the game because of some of the under-the-hood mechanics. Your consistent insistence that it would be oh-so-confusing should imply that our current system is
impossible, since it's many times more confusing than what I'm proposing. Refer to my example:
So you tell me: Which one is more complicated to the player?
A system where, before you can take into account the damage done, you must first calculate:
1. The hull bonuses of the ship firing.
2. The hull type being shot at.
3. The actual hull multipliers of the ship firing.
4. The damage of the ship firing.
5. The armor value of the ship being fired upon.
6. Multiply the damage of the hull multipliers x weapon damage.
7. Run this damage through the current (confusing) armor system.
8. Arrive at result.
In the new system it's:
1. The damage of the ship firing.
2. The damage reduction in percentage of the ship being shot at (shown on its bar).
3. Arrive at result.
The hull types and armor are two completely different, unrelated systems. When I talk about Armor, I'm talking about Armor. I'm not talking about hull types, or ammo types, or to-hit percentages. My argument is still the same: Armor should be a direct, no-hidden variables, no secret equations, damage reduction.
I understand your argument, and I'm saying it's too linear. It has the same problem as our current system. More variables (as you're suggesting) does not automatically equal better. In fact, you should always try to be as elegant as you can, and accomplish all your goals with the least variables possible - that's good game design. Warcraft 3 used this system and it was an extremely successful game. I'm not just talking about in terms of popularity with the customers. According to the critics, and according to its success in the competitive aspect, and the new design elements it added to the RTS genre, completely reinvented the RTS genre. The armor system it used was a big part of that.
When you conflate some of the major differentiators of ship types (Hull type and target multipliers) into your 3 factor armor system, you lose most of your flexibility. Additional variables allow for additional categories.
It's not necessarily true, refer to my U.S. Customary System vs. Metric System example above. More variables does not automatically equal better.
How do you differentiate 100 different bonus ship types, if you only have 3 categories to fit them in?
Because the categories there are so much more complex than before.
Low damage no armor piercing.
Medium damage no armor piericing.
High damage no armor piercing.
Low damage low armor piercing.
Medium damage medium armor piercing.
High damage high armor piercing.
These all mean vastly different things in the new system - much more than they mean now.
Now you have to use all these variables including the armor of the ship in question, creating
18 more variable states.
You also have to include the health of the ship in question, creating many more variable states.
Then you include the extra attributes of the ship in question such as cloaking, speed, camoflauge, teleport, parasite, and hundreds of other things -
And you're left with
literally tens of thousands of combinations of meaningfully different ships. MUCH more meaningfully different I might add, than what we currently have, and in a much simpler and more elegant way.
