Mothership VS Armored Golem

[Red.Queen]

Bognor -- I don't have the full chain of beam weapon logic in front of me atm, but most of what I've seen for it while troubleshooting the Assault Transports shows that it's treated like just another multishot weapon.  Each sub-beam is calculated as a separate shot.  So I would expect armor applies to every sub-beam, and as I've seen nothing so far that indicates any mechanic like "after hit, attach a continuing damage effect", I suspect every tick of continued contact with the beam is treated as a new shot impact, reapplying armor.  Unsure currently as to whether it "fires" a shot each frame, but it seems like it's at least close, going off of how fast you can watch a large ship's health drain.  That would also explain the very short gap between an Assault Transport melting and the ships inside getting picked up by a Wrath Lance, as the targeting updates only so quickly.

[Toranth]

Bognor -- I don't have the full chain of beam weapon logic in front of me atm, but most of what I've seen for it while troubleshooting the Assault Transports shows that it's treated like just another multishot weapon.  Each sub-beam is calculated as a separate shot.  So I would expect armor applies to every sub-beam, and as I've seen nothing so far that indicates any mechanic like "after hit, attach a continuing damage effect", I suspect every tick of continued contact with the beam is treated as a new shot impact, reapplying armor.  Unsure currently as to whether it "fires" a shot each frame, but it seems like it's at least close, going off of how fast you can watch a large ship's health drain.  That would also explain the very short gap between an Assault Transport melting and the ships inside getting picked up by a Wrath Lance, as the targeting updates only so quickly.

Ok, then, if the number of shots is determined by frames, does adjusting the Performance Profile adjust the number of shots?  I'm assuming the total damage would be the same, so it would be the damage-per-shot changing... which could be a factor if shooting something with significant armor.

any mechanic like "after hit, attach a continuing damage effect",

Let's me emphasize this - I would love to see DoTs make their way into this game.  Give Acid Sprayers some real teeth!  Totally not relevant to this thread, but whatever

[Red.Queen]

Ok, then, if the number of shots is determined by frames, does adjusting the Performance Profile adjust the number of shots?  I'm assuming the total damage would be the same, so it would be the damage-per-shot changing... which could be a factor if shooting something with significant armor.

Number of shots formula doesn't take into account number of frames per "salvo" in the actual formulas, framerate just (probably) ends up affecting the number of shots the target eats in practice as more or less frames elapse before the player can react and move the ship to safety.  More of an indirect thing.

Let's me emphasize this - I would love to see DoTs make their way into this game.  Give Acid Sprayers some real teeth!  Totally not relevant to this thread, but whatever

That would be pretty cool, and I am stuck with Acid Sprayers in my current game and went  when they were handed to me by an ARS not worth hacking.  Giving them a DoT would change that to a  .  I can imagine the fun you could have kiting a group of enemies with those things then... Too bad it would likely be computationally expensive, if beam weapons are any example of how more exotic damage calcs are... tag 1500 enemy ships and have all those ticking away... It would be worse than some of the stuff I saw in my MMO days playing a DoT-heavy class.

Wonder how the Armor damage stuff is handled though, because that doesn't seem to bring the game to its knees.  Hm.

[Chthon]

Ok, then, if the number of shots is determined by frames, does adjusting the Performance Profile adjust the number of shots?  I'm assuming the total damage would be the same, so it would be the damage-per-shot changing... which could be a factor if shooting something with significant armor.

Number of shots formula doesn't take into account number of frames per "salvo" in the actual formulas, framerate just (probably) ends up affecting the number of shots the target eats in practice as more or less frames elapse before the player can react and move the ship to safety.  More of an indirect thing.

Let's me emphasize this - I would love to see DoTs make their way into this game.  Give Acid Sprayers some real teeth!  Totally not relevant to this thread, but whatever

That would be pretty cool, and I am stuck with Acid Sprayers in my current game and went  when they were handed to me by an ARS not worth hacking.  Giving them a DoT would change that to a  .  I can imagine the fun you could have kiting a group of enemies with those things then... Too bad it would likely be computationally expensive, if beam weapons are any example of how more exotic damage calcs are... tag 1500 enemy ships and have all those ticking away... It would be worse than some of the stuff I saw in my MMO days playing a DoT-heavy class.

Wonder how the Armor damage stuff is handled though, because that doesn't seem to bring the game to its knees.  Hm.

Don't forget engine damage stuff that comes back slowly over time. Likely acid damage over time would process every time the ship is updated for the next tick which happens whether it takes acid damage or not, resulting in virtually no noticeable lag.

[Red.Queen]

Don't forget engine damage stuff that comes back slowly over time. Likely acid damage over time would process every time the ship is updated for the next tick which happens whether it takes acid damage or not, resulting in virtually no noticeable lag.

True, though I suspect the engine damage recovery stuff is just a +<engine health> per tick, and doesn't get treated as a hit, so it would be quite lightweight.  On the other hand, Medic Frigates and Attritioners cause regen/degen on the fly and don't seem to be too bad, so it might not bog the game down.  Will have to check them out when I get the chance and see what makes them tick.

[Chthon]

Don't forget engine damage stuff that comes back slowly over time. Likely acid damage over time would process every time the ship is updated for the next tick which happens whether it takes acid damage or not, resulting in virtually no noticeable lag.

True, though I suspect the engine damage recovery stuff is just a +<engine health> per tick, and doesn't get treated as a hit, so it would be quite lightweight.  On the other hand, Medic Frigates and Attritioners cause regen/degen on the fly and don't seem to be too bad, so it might not bog the game down.  Will have to check them out when I get the chance and see what makes them tick.

Medic Frigates/Engineers repairing units are done differently than damage over time or self repairs.

The first is an external unit causing other units to be repaired, so the ability processes it's turn when the unit with the ability processes their turn. This means that one process has to scan and work on another unit which means finding the all the appropriate units and updating them. This does not mean they do not get their own turn, they get that on top of it.

The second places an effect on the receiving unit. The damage processes when the receiving unit takes it's turn. This means that it takes it's turn and during that time it takes the damage. It does not have to find the unit to affect since it is the unit affected, so the extra processing time is negligible and resolution is faster.

The game already has the former as you said. It can affect a lot of units at once with little performance problem. Because of that, the latter would be an almost trivial task, as a more complex task is already being accomplished without much impact.

Engine Damage repair, Armor damage repair, and the like are also examples of the second case, as well as units who construct their own modules, heal themselves (including vampirism), Damage themselves (including self-attrition), etc. Area attrition, Area speed reduction, area affect attacks, and the like are all examples of the former type and would be more difficult to resolve quickly.

[Pumpkin]

Area attrition

Wow. I imagined a starship or guardian attritionning ships around it; its effect would be much greater than the planetary attritionner but in a much shorter range, a sort of tank that go close combat and make area DoT. Well, maybe not that different than the lightning starship...
But still, the possibilities seems great! Acid sprayer (or another one) with DoT attack, the area attrition... And if it looks not that difficult to implement, I truly hope Arcen will add these mechanisms in their next extension, alongside with a thematic lore addition, maybe a new alien race, maybe a new faction of Z/S/N/AI/Human relying a lot on these mechanisms. (I already had a MF idea I was working on and I was thinking a new thematic mechanism for it would be great. I think I'll go back to it.)

Wake up, Pumpkin. You're dreaming aloud.

[motai]

attrition area effect.... sound like lightning shuttles to me...
attrition generators have no noticable lag because of no range calculation.
if you have to check 26000 ranges for damage every frame you get quite bogged down.
this is part of why most thing find a target and stop looking for better because its a time saving measure.
admittedly there is range optimization limits that can cull the list then test a shorter list.
but lightning shuttles and turrets in practice have always been performance hogs.
once upon a time i saw 5 lightning shuttles and a exowave take a computer from 120 frames per second to 5 then when they died back to 120