Ye Ol' Armor Debate

[TechSY730]

If the armor changes are coming soon, can the current beta be pushed out first? It seems that there are some substantial "under the covers" changes, especially to the graphics engine, that probably need to be tested, before a beta gets held up a week or so by a total game balance pass.

[Diazo]

Erm, I'm pretty sure nothing has been done on armor in terms of actual changes yet.

Keith has been saying that armor changes will be after the next expansion and even if they do move it up as his previous post indicates they may be open to doing, we are still not going to see anything anytime soon I don't think.

D.

[TechSY730]

I don't follow. 1x Mk II and 2x Mk I have the same amount of health.

Yes, this means the Mk II keeps its full DPS for longer then the Mk I which losses half its DPS when the first Mk I dies, but I'm not sure how valuable that is, in my major fleet engagements I have ships dying a lot faster then the reload timers.

Yes, it's an effect but my feeling is that in game it is a lot smaller then it looks on paper.

That is an interesting side effect of what TV tropes likes to call the "Critical existence failure", where a unit or whatever maintains full capabilities up until 1HP. It is a great simplifying assumption, both for the coders and the players, but it does make it impossible to model "consolidation" properly when it is done by adding individual stats.

[Wanderer]

Wanderer: That is not quite how the system works, at least with the formula Keith has posted.

Ship A has 10,000 HP and 50% armor.
Ship B does 2,000 damage/shot and has 75% armor piercing.
Ship C does 2,000 damage/shot and has 25% armor piercing.
Ship D does 2,000 damage/shot and has 0% armor piercing.

First, 50% armor is 1000 armor so:

Ship B takes a shot at ship A and Ship B ignores 75% of Ship A's armor, so Ship A has 250 armor and takes:
2000* 1000/(1000+250) = 1600 damage (80%) taken.

Ship C takes a shot at ship A and ignores 25% of Ship A's armor, so Ship A has 750 armor and takes:
2000* 1000/(1000+750) = 1143 damage (57%) taken.

Ship D takes a shot at ship A and ignores no armor, so Ship A has 1000 armor and takes:
2000* 1000/(1000+1000) = 1000 damage (50%) taken.

Thanks Diazo, I'd missed that somehow.  I blame trying to work while going through the forums and the fact that I and sleep are not well acquainted this morning. 

That system makes this even MORE obtuse, not less.

While I agree it might make for an interesting system, it's not going to be one that will loved and we'll end up in the state of armor we have now, where everything, to some degree, blows everything else to bits.  Given a system like that, I (and I assume, others) will just say FUGGIT! and dump the entire fleet on their heads, assuming SOMETHING can kill it.  As it is now with straight mathmatics I rarely if ever do raw number computations to figure out who should shoot at who... mostly because I'm getting hit with massive mixes of ships so I need to bring a mix to the fight anyway.

I'm re-thinking this from Keith's earlier post as to what the effect he'd like it to have gamewise should be, instead of what it is now.  I haven't tripped on any epiphanies yet, but making the system more obtuse is not going to help, at least not to me.

[Hearteater]

4) Make hull multipliers come after armor is applied.

Oh wow, big change. With this attack multipliers no longer act as effective armor piercing, a ship with armor piercing could now do significantly more damage then a ship with attack multipliers under the right circumstances.

Actually, with Armor becoming a percent multiplier instead of a value subtracted, it doesn't really matter which order it happens in.  If you had 1000 Armor (so 50% reduction) and the enemy did 5000 damage with a x6 hull multplier, you get either 5000 * 6 * 0.5 = 15,000 or 5000 * 0.5 * 6 = 15,000.

In the end, from the 'on the fly' player perspective, I'd like to clarify what we'd see and what effect it would actually have (round numbers).

Ship A has 10,000 HP and 50% armor.
Ship B does 2,000 damage/shot and has 75% armor piercing.
Ship C does 2,000 damage/shot and has 25% armor piercing.
Ship D does 2,000 damage/shot and has 0% armor piercing.

Ship B takes a shot at ship A, Ship A ends up at 8,000 HP because the AP beats the armor.
Ship C takes a shot at ship A (repaired), and Ship A ends up at 8,500 HP because 25% of its armor remained 'unpierced'.
Ship D takes a shot at ship A (repaired), and Ship A ends up at 9,000 HP because its armor fully kicked in against the shot.

I believe Armor Piercing will subtract from the ship's armor value, and the new armor value will be used to calculate the percentage the attack's damage is reduced by.  So:

Ship A has 10,000 HP and 1000 Armor (50% reduction against 0 AP)
Ship B does 2,000 damage/shot and has 3000 armor piercing.
Ship C does 2,000 damage/shot and has 333 Armor Piercing.
Ship D does 2,000 damage/shot and has 0 armor piercing.

Ship B takes a shot at ship A, Ship A ends up at 8,000 HP because the AP reduced the Armor to zero.
Ship C takes a shot at ship A (repaired), and Ship A ends up at 8,800 HP because 667 Armor gives 40% reduction.
Ship D takes a shot at ship A (repaired), and Ship A ends up at 9,000 HP because its Armor remained at 1000 for 50% reduction.

This discounts the reduced armor effectiveness multiplier, which would be the same for Ships B, C and D because they each have the same attack damage.  But it might around 0.90 or so.  So including that, you get:

Ship A has its 1000 armor reduced to 900 by Ship B, C and D due to the armor effectiveness multiplier.
Ship B takes a shot at ship A, Ship A ends up at 8,000 HP because the AP reduced the remaining Armor to zero.
Ship C takes a shot at ship A (repaired), and Ship A ends up at 8,724 HP because 567 Armor (900 - 333) gives 36.18% reduction.
Ship D takes a shot at ship A (repaired), and Ship A ends up at 8,947 HP because its Armor remained at 900 for 47.37% reduction.

An Artillery Golem might end up with an Armor Effectiveness Multiplier of 0.50, while an Autocannon Minipod would get 1.0.  In fact, the system could even be tuned so stuff like the Autocannon Minipod got a multiplier greater than 1, say 1.2, which would mean armor was extra effective against weak rapid-fire attacks.  It might make sense to tune the range from 0.5 to 1.5, rather than 0 to 1 as originally suggested.

WOW, lots of posts while typing this.

[Wingflier]

I would be fine with making their rolesmore obviousand focused (the missile frigate sort ofneeds some sort ofa buff),butI thinkthat the hull type multipliers need to stay, though perhaps in a lesser magnitude, to keep their "triangle"ofcounters withinthemselves. (Standard fighter beats bomber, bomber beats missile frigate, missile frigate beats fighter, though the "order" of the triangle can be adjusted). Also, if the standard fighter is to become the "death by a thousand cuts" style ship, should the AOE immunity be moved from the missile frigatestothe fighters,or have the AOE immunitybe removed all together from the triangle ships? (Personally, I would just remove it. AOE immunity seems to exotic for the standard triangle)

Oh goodness no, I didn't mean remove the special damages completely, I meant implement the new armor system so that the triangle exists by design.

In other words the player should be able to quickly look at any of their three triangle ships and say:
Okay this one moves at medium speed, shoots slowly and does a ton of damage per shot, it's  also called "Bomber", it must be good against heavily armored targets.
Okay this one moves fast, shoots quickly, and has a huge DPS, but is very weak; it is also called Fighter. It must be good at raiding and intercepting high priority targets such as bombers.
Okay this one moves slowly, is heavily armored, and shoots a salvo of weak shots at a long range. This is obviously an escort ship made to counter Fighters.

That kind of intuitive design could really go a long way I think and could easily be accomplished with the new armor system.

[Hearteater]

My understanding/vision of the new armor system is this:

1. Because armor will effectively become a new "hull type" (even if its not labeled as such), the current hull type multipliers can probably be reduced in many or most scenarios to reflect that.

2. Bombers will be the quintessential "anti-armor" unit.  I think this fits their category and role very well, and gives players an instant understanding of their purpose. The ships they were previously designed to be strong against may need to be armored to compensate.

3. Fighters will become the "death by 1,000 papercuts" example role.  They may have a small level of armor piercing to compensate.  While weak and easily destroyed, they should excel against most targets except the most heavily armored ones, which bombers are made for.

4. Frigates become an "escort" ship archetype, with no armor piercing but perhaps medium armor plating (making them vulnerable to bombers and stronger to fighters).  Their role is to take out the weaker Fighter-class ships from a distance before they can come in range and reap havoc.  The firing rate or missiles per salvo may need to be increased to accomplish this new role.

I don't see point 1 as being true.  The new armor system shouldn't force multipliers to change much, if at all.  They may need changing for other balance reasons, but not because the armor system changes.

And I disagree with 2, 3 and 4.  Bombers aren't necessarily anti-armor.  Some Bomber-type ships might be anti-armor and have Armor Piercing.  But that doesn't mean the Bomber needs to, nor do I think it is intuitive to think a bomber would be armor piercing.  In fact, if you ask someone if "armor" would help them against "bombs" they would probably say yes, so I think the reverse is actually true.

Fighter's shouldn't be "death by 1000 paper cuts" at all.  They are part of the core triangle of ships everyone gets.  They aren't Autocannon Minipods.  They are high relative-health, damage sponges that counter Bombers, which is important because Bombers wreck all your defensive structures.

Missile Frigates are fine as well.  In short, I see no need to completely re-design the triangle ships.  They work very well currently and are all solid work-horses for the most part.

[TechSY730]

I'm pretty sure the max armor effectiveness thing will be applied AFTER the computatoin, instead of taking 1000 armor and making it 900. So, if after the computation, the net damage turns out to be less than 10% of base damage (excluding hull type multipliers), the damage is taken to 10%. It would have no effect if a ship could hit for more than 10% of its base damage based on the actual armor.

Also, these mixing up of percentages and raw values, subtracting vs. multiplying, subtracting or multiplying raw values vs subtracting or multiplying percentage values seems to be causing a great deal of confusion, especially because many of the systems proposed in this thread use different choices and different order for all of these.


If I understand Kieth's suggestion correctly, the game will do the math (or possibly, compute a cache based on the math) from the RAW armor and armor piercing values. Any percentage display would just be for convenience in common situations. However, if I also understand correctly, there would be a 1-to-1 correspondence between displayed percentage of armor and armor piercing and their raw values (for ranges 0-900 for armor, 0-1000 for armor piercing).* This would mean that you can multiply the computed armor piercing percentage and computed base armor percentage, and get the effective percentage damage reduction (if that is >10%), because that can be shown to be equivalent to the actual math on the raw values.
The case where armor is between 900-1000 is an interesting one, because when you are taking damage from a ship with no armor peircing, there is no difference in damage reduction between 900 and 1000 armor (maximum damage reduction due to armor rule, assuming it will be changed to .9 from its current .. However, when armor peircing is >0 but <1000, then there may be a difference between 900 and 1000. So, if a ship has >900 but <=1000 armor, what percentage do you display?

[orzelek]

While I don't think I'm qualified to participate here (not enough playtime and no 10/10 insanity) I would second the opinion that doing this as part of expansion would be much better. Do large revolution at start - much more time to clean up the mess later. Main drawback would be the work needed for that that could take a bit out of the expansion.
Looking at the discussion tho I think that having more meaningful armor system could be considered part of expansion work and would be very worthwhile.

[Wingflier]

Bombers aren't necessarily anti-armor. Some Bomber-type ships might be anti-armor and have Armor Piercing. But that doesn't mean the Bomber needs to, nor do I think it is intuitive to think a bomber would be armor piercing. In fact, if you ask someone if "armor" would help them against "bombs" they would probably say yes, so I think the reverse is actually true

Are you kidding me? The whole point of a bomber, especially in a Sci-fi universe, is to destroy heavily armored targets. Of course armor helps against bombs, it helps against ANYTHING. That's the worst point I've ever heard. If bombs weren't created to destroy armor, then what on Earth is?

In short, I see no need to completely re-design the triangle ships. They work very well currently and are all solid work-horses for the most part.

If you want to get technical, there's no reason to redesign anything. Triangle ships and armor could be left as is, if "good enough", is all you're shooting for.

All I'm saying is that with this new armor system we have an opportunity to distinctly define each triangle ship and make their roles so much more intuitive. If every bonus ship was simply a sub type of the redesigned triangle, the entire game would be more balanced and intuitive. Of course bombers wouldn't have as much armor piercing as anti-armor ships, and Fighters wouldn't be as death by papercuts as the auto cannons, but that's the general design philosophy. Realize that many ships would be hybrids of two,  and there would be a ton of variation among the subclasses while still staying true to the intuitive nature of the primary classes.

So yes, if your goal is "leave good enough alone", I digress. My goal is to make 3 distinct classes of ships whose defining attributes comes from their purpose and design, not their freaking special damage values.

[keith.lamothe]

To an earlier question from Wingflier: In general I'm not wanting to displace (or modify at all, really) the various hull-type bonuses at this time.  I would like armor to be orthogonal to that system.  For now, at least.  I may have missed your point, though

@Hearteater: good point about the ordering of applying hull multipliers no longer being important.

@Wanderer: about this making armor more obtuse... yea, I can see that being an issue with the multiplicative-piercing thing.

So I think modifying it to simply subtract the armor_piercing_% from the armor_% (minimum zero) and multiplying damage by (1-that) would achieve basically the same thing while being more intuitive.

So, to restate the proposal (possibly for implementation for a next-Monday beta, we'll see) with modifications :

1) Change armor_piercing calculation from just a type-specific bonus to (some_function(log10(damage_per_shot))) + type_specific_armor_piercing_bonus, with the result being a value between 0 and 1 with 0 meaning no armor piercing and 1 meaning "ignore armor".  This number is precomputed for each type and would be based off the "mark I" damage per shot for that ship type, rather than scaling with mark.  All the player sees for this stat is a % of armor penetration, so they don't need to know how it got that.

2) Make armor and armor-piercing not scale up with mark level.

3) Change damage-done-through-armor calculation from:
- Max((damage_per_shot-(armor-armor_piercing)),damage_per_shot*0.2)
- => Max(
   damage_per_shot * Max(1,(1000/(1000+Armor))+Armor_Piercing_Percent)
   , damage_per_shot*0.1
)
And change the display of the armor stat to the % reduction given when the attacker has no armor piercing (max 90%).

4) Obviously, pick new armor and armor piercing values for... well, everything   The general idea balance wise is that armor is "cheaper" than cap-health in the sense that 10% armor would cost less than 10% more health.  Similarly, a +10% armor piercing type-specific bonus would cost less than simply doing 10% more base damage.

[keith.lamothe]

On the question of bombers being armor piercing:  there's a difference between "your armor was not as effective because that one shot was a massive amount of firepower" and "your armor was not as effective because the shot was specifically designed to drill into, penetrate, and explode within the armor" (or whatever technological explanation you prefer).

The former will indeed reduce armor effectiveness in this model to some degree, but it's more of a general purpose destruction thing and does fine against unarmored targets too.  The latter is a special-purpose thing that gives no real benefit against unarmored targets.

In the case of the bomber's energy bombs, the idea is that they're brute-force things specifically designed to hurt large targets, not specifically designed to counter armor per se.

[Wingflier]

To an earlier question from Wingflier:IngeneralI'mnotwantingto displace (or modify at all, really) the various hull-type bonuses at this time. I would like armor to be orthogonaltothatsystem. For now,atleast. I mayhave missed your point, though

Excuse me, I may have misunderstood the point of this as well. I thought we had decided that hull type distribution was just as much of a problem as armor effectiveness, and that the rebalance was going to address both.

[keith.lamothe]

Excuse me, I may have misunderstood the point of this as well. I thought we had decided that hull type distribution was just as much of a problem as armor effectiveness, and that the rebalance was going to address both.

Oh, no, I think the hull multiplier system could be better (I'd prefer weapon type vs hull type instead of ship type vs hull type, but it's a lot better than the old ship type vs ship type), but I don't think it's even really in need of a significant refactor, let alone as much as armor.

[TechSY730]

Excuse me, I may have misunderstood the point of this as well. I thought we had decided that hull type distribution was just as much of a problem as armor effectiveness, and that the rebalance was going to address both.

Oh, no, I think the hull multiplier system could be better (I'd prefer weapon type vs hull type instead of ship type vs hull type, but it's a lot better than the old ship type vs ship type), but I don't think it's even really in need of a significant refactor, let alone as much as armor.

Hull type and hull type bonus distribution would certainly use some work as well, (see 7867: Balance distribution of hull types (especially Heavy, Ultra Heavy, and Command Grade)) but I don't think the hull type situation is nearly as bad as the current armor situation. However, considering that both armor and hull type are pervasive mechanics that influence net damage, I think people were suggesting it would be sense to rebalance both at the same time, so they can be balanced together instead of separately. This way, we don't have to risk the rebalance of what comes second throwing off the balance of the net damage distribution that we got from the first rebalance.