So, this whole armor thing

[Radiant Phoenix]

Likewise.

IMO, armor has little effect, and when combined with large HP ranges and weapon vs hull multipliers (and hull types like, "Heavy"), it just seems unnecessary.

[orzelek]

I think that current way that armor works could be saved IF we would do hull/weapon re-balance.
There are to many things like Heavy and Ultra-Heavy that try to combine what armor should be doing in hp and hull type instead of using armor to define which unit is really armored.

Then you could go with bombers having actual armor piercing... not fighters and other light stuff like now.

I won't object to change into new system much but I agree it reduces possibilities especially in swarmer grounds (which I don't use so I have no real knowledge there).

In my opinion armor changes should be tied to hull and hp changes to remove current Heavy/Ultra-Heavy "balance" and redo it using armor properly.

[Wingflier]

I'm all for a complete armor removal, but in lieu of that mechanic, I would like to see a complete rebalance of all the bonus ships.

It would be nice if we made a thread (I've mentioned this before) where we listed all the trickier bonus ships (like Chameleon, Armor Rotter, Minipod etc.) and each player kind of gave their own opinion on what each one's role should be. We'd take all the most popular ideas for each ship and make polls for them or something.

I think some of the bonus ships are in a good place, some of them need minor tweaks, and the rest (especially the ones which armor is changing) could probably be talked about.

Specifically I think having a low cap or lots of immunities is not given enough worth in a ship's value.  High cap ships are inherently at a disadvantage just because of how easily they die to AoE and how they trigger Eyes, and I think this should be reflected in the ship's cost and stats.

[TechSY730]

I've argued in the past that the ultra-light, light, medium, heavy, and ultra-heavy armor types are somewhat flawed.
In my mind, the hull type should represent the "material", the armor stat should reflect how "quality" that material is (how good it is at doing its job of deflecting damage), and HP should reflect, well, how much damage it could take (this last mechanic is probably in a good state right now ).
Yes, the names themselves are just costmetic, but it would help avoid the "temptation" to lump stuff together based off of stats not related to what hull type is supposed to model, which is what happened with the 5 hull types mentioned above (and to a lesser extent, the "role" hull types like artillery)

Instead of "material", the hull type stat could be tied into the "role" instead (like sat rename polycrystal to bomber, instead of say, renaming artillery to, IDK, magnesium). However, that does seem like it would cause a bit too much "homogenization" in roles (aka, make the whole thing of "role clones" like the "fighter clone" or the "bomber clone" an even worse problem, now that damage bonuses would, more or less, treat all of them the same)


Yea, I know that this thread is about the armor stat, but armor, hull type (and thus damage bonuses), and HP are the three "pillars" of durability both overall and per match-up. All three of them are linked intricately when balancing.

While I don't agree with it, I do see why the "just remove an armor mechanic entirely, hull type and HP are enough" idea has gotten some support. The amount of effort to competitively balance N factors is (asymptotically) exponential over N. Thus, even going from 3 to 2 factors can make balance much more achievable and more stable, especially given the number of ship types in the game. (Anyone know how the "effort" scales over number of entities types to balance, as opposed to the number properties of those types? Is it linear, or polynomial, or NlogN?)

[Jonz0rz]

I like the current armor.

However, I discovered something very interesting while looking through an export spreadsheet:

Fighter:
Base Shot Power: 1020
Armor Piercing: 1500
Armor: 300

Bomber:
Base Shot Power: 2440
Armor Piercing: 0
Armor: 1200

Missile Frigate:
Base Shot Power: 2450
Armor Piercing: 0
Armor: 300

Compare that to these in-game stats from my current game, Normal Caps

Fighter:
Base Shot Power: 4080
Armor Piercing: 750
Armor: 300

Bomber:
Base Shot Power: 9760
Armor Piercing: 0
Armor: 1200

Missile Frigate:
Base Shot Power: 9800
Armor Piercing: 0
Armor: 300

As you can see, damage has been scaled 4x higher than "base", but armor is unaffected, and somehow, armor piercing is cut in half?

It doesn't make a lot of sense. However, if you look at the BASE values, things are pretty well balanced. Bombers are "heavily armored" and reduce a significant amount of damage (about 1/2) from both other bombers and missile frigates. Now, ignoring the fact that fighters have piercing, 300 armor would block a significant amount of damage from them as well (between 1/3 and 1/4).

Just another piece of the puzzle to look at...

[keith.lamothe]

@Jonz0rz: It's possible that the exported spreadsheet you were looking at was on a different combat style (epic, maybe) than the other stats you were seeing.

But as I've said during previous armor discussions there is some very weird ju-ju in the code that I had to put in to make scaled-types (like most fleet ships) work at least kinda-sorta-right with non-scaled-types (like starships) with the subtractive armor mechanic after it was added.  Honestly, mathematically it's a real mess in there.  No one really notices that extra complexity (because the interface uses a practice technically referred to as "lying"), but I couldn't really develop tactical theory from it, so I don't figure any of you could.  It's not as bad for scaled vs scaled, though.

[chemical_art]

@Keith

I remember armor behind the scenes is a mess. It's been why I've never defended it. Some may say it is intuitive, and on paper it is. But in gameplay terms, it is such a mess because of the behind the scenes math with scaling units vs non scaling units that it is barely, if at all, intuitive.

Which is why I support almost any armor rework at this.

[Jonz0rz]

Spreadsheet was generated from the same game I pulled the rest of the stats from.

[Diazo]

However, I discovered something very interesting while looking through an export spreadsheet:

<snip>

The Fighter with attack 4080 is probably from a Normal Caps, Normal Combat Style game while the 1020 attack Fighter is probably from a High Caps, Epic Combat Style game.

Which data sheet are you using? the Reference Window Export or the F3 -> ShftCtrlF8 one?

D.

[Jonz0rz]

Wrong spreadsheet. Oh well..

I'll be back with another false alarm before you know it!

[RCIX]

My current idea, which both fixes the situation and gives a role to (the majority of) armor-related units now:

Remove armor as a general mechanic, then the few units which are armor-dependent still manipulate damage. For instance, armor ships would have armor as their "gimmick" and say "This unit reduces all incoming damage by a flat amount per shot" or something. Armor boosters and inhibitors would increase and decrease damage taken by a % to all enemies/allied units respectively. Armor Rotters would apply a stacking % damage increase on the target, up to some very high cap (yay anti huge units!!). etc.

[Mánagarmr]

My current idea, which both fixes the situation and gives a role to (the majority of) armor-related units now:

Remove armor as a general mechanic, then the few units which are armor-dependent still manipulate damage. For instance, armor ships would have armor as their "gimmick" and say "This unit reduces all incoming damage by a flat amount per shot" or something. Armor boosters and inhibitors would increase and decrease damage taken by a % to all enemies/allied units respectively. Armor Rotters would apply a stacking % damage increase on the target, up to some very high cap (yay anti huge units!!). etc.

That's...not a bad idea, tbh.

[keith.lamothe]

My current idea, which both fixes the situation and gives a role to (the majority of) armor-related units now:

Remove armor as a general mechanic, then the few units which are armor-dependent still manipulate damage. For instance, armor ships would have armor as their "gimmick" and say "This unit reduces all incoming damage by a flat amount per shot" or something. Armor boosters and inhibitors would increase and decrease damage taken by a % to all enemies/allied units respectively. Armor Rotters would apply a stacking % damage increase on the target, up to some very high cap (yay anti huge units!!). etc.

That's...not a bad idea, tbh.

Actually, yea, I think that could work.  There are a few things I would need to do for the durability of certain units but it could be worked out.

But the flat-reduction thing has one major problem (which currently exists, of course) : the effectiveness of, say, zenith starships or mlrs guardposts vs those Armor Ships with the flat-reduction would vary massively depending on whether the lobby setting for unit-cap-scale was set to ultra-low-caps or high-caps.  Right now there's some seriously-bad-ju-ju under-the-hood math that applies to armor when an unscaled unit shoots a scaled one or vice versa to compensate for this (armor was added after unit-cap-scaling, so the latter had to adjust).  I want to get rid of that.

[Mánagarmr]

Could that flat reduction value simply vary with scale then, just as pretty much every other value varies? Or am I misunderstanding how scales work?

[chemical_art]

Could that flat reduction value simply vary with scale then, just as pretty much every other value varies? Or am I misunderstanding how scales work?

I think what was meant was to try to not have it scale at all.

The goal is to have armor be understood without ju ju from under the hood. It's why I consider the current armor system not intuitive at all.