Ye Ol' Armor Debate

[Martyn van Buren]

Sorry if I'm repeating others (I have a hard time making sense of the math), but I think I like a lot the idea that armor makes some big ships all-but-immune to being swarmed by a lot of tiny high-rate-of-fire ships.  I'm not too clear on how well the current system achieves this and how well the proposed systems would, tho --- is it all right if I ask about how a few cases play out now?

1. A large group of fighters attacking a group of armored starships at equal tech levels

2. A large group of bombers attacking armored starships several levels up

3. Likewise, Mk. I Fighters v. Mk. III bombers

4. Lastly, a large mixed group of fighters and armor rotters attacking a group of armored starships at equal levels

So if I understand what the current system is supposed to do rightly, the fighters in case one ought to be extremely ineffective, while the attackers in cases two and three should be fairly ineffective but succeed if they have overwhelming numbers.  I'm not really sure what we expect to happen in case four but I think we want that to be favorable for the fighters/armor rotters, no?

[Diazo]

Oh, right, forgot one detail.

To summarize my reasoning for adding the hull types is quite simple, it gives you a reasonable consistent place to start when judging how a battle will go.

Right now everything is kind of all over the place for attack multipliers. with the exception of bombers.

This would rebalance things so ships are good against ships their own size and smaller, with escorts-types being better against smaller ships and bomber-types being better against larger ships.

To avoid large ship dominance, they would have a low rate of fire so they can still get swarmed by small ships. (The bit I forgot about earlier.)

Then you get into escort-type and bomber-type ships and then the specialties of each ship based on hull type.

Again, these are all generalities, each ship will still have its specialty so you will end up with Large escort ships good at killing things smaller then them and Bomber type ships good at killing large things.

As for your specific examples, how I'm thinking it would work out:

1. A large group of fighters attacking a group of armored starships at equal tech levels -> I would give this to the starships. If the starships were unarmored or it was bombers attacking instead it would be pretty close actually.

2. A large group of bombers attacking armored starships several levels up -> Probably to the starships, but just barely and because of the Mark level difference. Bombers are intended to kill heavily armored targets after all.

3. Likewise, Mk. I Fighters v. Mk. III bombers -> Erm, at even numbers? Probably the fighters by a small margin. Keep in mind this is not changing how Mark levels work. A Mk III bomber is roughly equal to 3 Mk I bombers.

4. Lastly, a large mixed group of fighters and armor rotters attacking a group of armored starships at equal levels -> Probably to the fighters/rotters as the armor on the starships is reduced. Assuming there is not an escort-type starship along of course.

Note that under this system, most ships, including many starships would have an armor value of 0, or a pretty low one. The numerical armor would become a tweaking mechanic for Keith/Chris, not something you really need to pay attention to as a player.

Keep in mind everything also has to be balanced back to resource cost and that everything can damage everything. Killing armored starships with bombers is much more effective then with fighters, but a big enough swarm of fighters is supposed to be able to kill armored starships also. (Big enough swarm has yet to be defined in terms of numbers at this point, Keith/Chris are still looking for ideas, nothing is close to being decided yet.)

D.

[Wingflier]

So if I'm understanding your system correctly Diazo, a Fighter, or other ships in the "Brawler" category would do decently against everything, at the cost of their fragility and lack of specialization.

A Bomber would be much more specialized, killing armored ships easily, but being very vulnerable to big groups of smaller ships.

An "Escort" ship would excel and killing smaller, swarmer ships like fighters, but be weak against armored ships.

Personally I'm a huge fan of this system as (in my opinion) it's very intuitive and the most realistic.  Fighters should be the backbone of any force imo, and Bombers should be the more specialized heavy hitters.  Escort ships could often fire multiple shots (MLRS could be the archetype) as an indication of their anti-swarmer role. 

[TechSY730]

This sort of "triangle" of fleet ship roles is sort of what is trying to be accomplished with the triangle ships, with limited success under the current system.

I think that after the, well, entire weapon, damage, and durability model is changed (since this seems to be where this discussion is heading  ), this "triangleness" needs to be much stronger. The three basic fleet ship roles you described would be good for the triangle ships, with the fighter being a basic "general purpose" unit, the bomber being a basic "brawler" unit, and, well, the missile frigate doesn't really fit into the "escort"/good vs. small stuff catagory very well. I wonder if the fighter should be the escort and the frigate be the "general purpose" or possibly reimagine the purpose of the missile frigate (turn it from a slow ROF psuedo-arillery ship into something closer to, say, the MRLS), or possibly even swap out the missile frigate. (make the missile frigate a bonus ship type, and make some other ship the third triangle unit, and balance bonuses, costs, etc. as needed to fit these new roles)

[Diazo]

Wingflier: That sounds right.

I'm trying to make it more intuitive so you can ball park a fight based on the hull sizes and descriptions and not have to look up the stats on each of those 5 guardians coming your way to form a defence.

The existence of Hull Types would then allow the individuality from each ship in their specific roles but in a pinch you can be reasonably effective without having to loop up the full stats on the units in question. (Depending on difficulty of course.)

Right now the attack multipliers system just feels random and thing on your foot-horning "Armored" and "Armor-Piercing" into the armor mechanic just makes things worse.


Tech: That's perhaps farther then I want to go. I still want the ships to feel the same after whatever change is made.

You have made me realize that I use frigates as escorts grouped with my Siege Starships, which is why my example have had them as escorts. If this is actually how they are meant to be used is another question.

D.

edit: I think I need to wait for Keith/Chris to comment at this point, I've got ideas for actual numbers but I want to see what they say about it at this point.

[Wingflier]

well, the missile frigate doesn't really fit into the "escort"/good vs. small stuff catagory very well.

This could be fixed easily by giving the Frigate multiple shots.  You don't even need to change its DPS, just make it more of an anti-swarmer so that it can hit multiple targets at a long range.  Changing it from 1 missile to 3 per shot, then reducing the damage accordingly, would probably fix its role instantly.

Alternatively, the MLRS could replace the frigate in the Triangle role.

[Hearteater]

I don't know that I would want Size categories to have implicit multipliers against other sizes.  I also don't really like having "Armored" as a flag, instead of a number.  Basically an armored flag is what we have now.  You either take 20% damage because you have insane armor and they don't have AP, or you take 100% damage because either they have AP or you don't really have armor.  I don't mind ship sizes being attached to ship types if for no other reason than to easily tell what Bomber Starships can hit .

[Diazo]

I don't know that I would want Size categories to have implicit multipliers against other sizes.  I also don't really like having "Armored" as a flag, instead of a number.  Basically an armored flag is what we have now.  You either take 20% damage because you have insane armor and they don't have AP, or you take 100% damage because either they have AP or you don't really have armor.  I don't mind ship sizes being attached to ship types if for no other reason than to easily tell what Bomber Starships can hit .

Actually that's a good point on the Hull Size.

What about as a first step just add the Hull Size with no other changes and then move "Armored"/"Armor-Piercing" there and if Keith/Chris want to do the full rebalance at a later date the functionality is there.

I disagree with the rest of your post however. Numerical armor is supposed to be able to have varied numbers in it, not be a binary flag which it is currently. Because numerical armor is effectively being used as an "Armored" flag, numerical armor can not be used for its designed purpose of tweaking how survivable ships are. By moving "Armored"/"Armor-Piercing" to the Hull Size/Type where it affects Attack Multipliers that allows numerical armor to be used as a balancing tweaking mechanic once again because "Armored" ships no longer have a crazy-high numerical armor value.


That is really my only complaint about the current system, numerical armor is trying to do two things at once, as long as the "Armored"/"Armor-Piercing" mechanic moved off the numerical armor system somehow I'll be happy.

Adding Hull Types seems to be the cleanest way to do this, as well as adding flexibility for the future, even though it is probably one of the more man-hour intensive solutions.

D.

[Hearteater]

Numerical armor is supposed to be able to have varied numbers in it, not be a binary flag which it is currently. Because numerical armor is effectively being used as an "Armored" flag, numerical armor can not be used for its designed purpose of tweaking how survivable ships are. By moving "Armored"/"Armor-Piercing" to the Hull Size/Type where it affects Attack Multipliers that allows numerical armor to be used as a balancing tweaking mechanic once again because "Armored" ships no longer have a crazy-high numerical armor value.

Maybe it is just me, but that makes no sense at all.

[Diazo]

Okay. For a much simpler fix, here's a totally different idea. Forget about hull types and do this:

Make "Armored" a ship ability, takes 80% reduced damage. Ships with Immunity:Armored do not get damage reduced this way.

Numerical armor then takes the place of what hull types were supposed to do in that bigger ships are better attacked by bomber type ships.

So on average, bigger ships would have more armor and something like the Armored Golem would have the ability Armored and a numerical armor value in line with other golems.

Should be much easier to implement and would hardly affect the feel of the game I think.

To me this works because I see the numerical armor system as working okay, it is the fact it is currently being used as a binary "armored/non-armored" flag that is breaking it.

D.

[Mánagarmr]

"Immunity: Armored" sounds incredibly wrong in my head. Why not simply "Armor Piercing"? That would make a lot more logical sense.

[Hearteater]

Okay. For a much simpler fix, here's a totally different idea. Forget about hull types and do this:

Make "Armored" a ship ability, takes 80% reduced damage. Ships with Immunity:Armored do not get damage reduced this way.

This is what we have now basically.  There are some edge cases that work out differently, but for the most part this is already in the game.

So on average, bigger ships would have more armor and something like the Armored Golem would have the ability Armored and a numerical armor value in line with other golems.

Basically all you are doing is reversing Hull Type and Armor Value, With it becoming Hull Value and Armor Type (and you only have two armor types, Armored and Not Armored).  The big problem here is Hull Types have very meaningful multipliers that are important for players to pay attention to and also easy to understand and access.  When I see x6 Polycrystal, I know that ship is going to wreck Polycrystal targets.  But to produce a meaningful x6 multiplier from a Hull Value of say 1,000, I need to do math and somehow figure out that x6 will be the result.  And I better not get it wrong, because x6 is huge.

Armor Values that have been proposed elsewhere here, (Keith's option #1, the WC3/LoL model) are workable despite the math because the player doesn't need to figure them out completely.  It isn't that important if I'm doing 40% damage or 50% damage.  I know I'm doing reduced damage from Armor, but the Hull Type tells me what basic expectation I should have.

Once I've shown a new player were to find the Hull Type and Damage Multipliers on the tool tips, they've had a very good feel for ship performance.  I'm afraid a Hull Value will break that.

[TechSY730]

Actually, it seems like there are three things that need to be modeled in terms of non-HP damage mitigation and how they play into ship matchups.

1. The material of the armor on the hull (currently the hull type, explicitly given, with explicit multipliers defined per ship)
2. The size of the ship (currently implicit, with implicit lists of "can I fire on things of this size" defined per ship)
3. The amount of the armor on the hull (currently the armor value, explicitly given, with implicit damage adjustment defined by a formula, with two direct counters, armor piercing, and armor rotting)

All three of these things seem like they should factor into the net damage multiplier/modifier of a final damage of a shot.
It would be nice if all three of these could be made explicit, and have similar mechanics for how they are defined, displayed, and adjust damage, even if where each ship/shot/whatever varies where it pulls its relevant damage multipliers/modifiers and their resistances.

I am particular to making them all similar to how hull type is currently handed, an explicit definition of which one it each ship is, an explicit display of the multipliers for it (might or might defined not be per ship for each component , but should be accessible easily from the ship's tooltip), and a small number of possible values, all with nice names.

That way, no fiddly math required. All the information I need to know is right there in the tooltip. And the explicit list of multipliers vs. a smallish set of possible values has proven to be very easy for new players to grasp.
To show the net simplicity of the system for the end player, for example, to calculate net damage modification, all I need to know is that what I am hitting has is large sized, has a medium amount of armor, and has a composite material, I have a .8 penalty vs large sized ships, but a 2x bonus again composite materials, thus my net multiplier is 1.6x. Imagine trying to figure out the net amount of damage adjustment with the current formulas, especially because one of them is not even listed in the UI (size of the ship).

One downside is that because armor amount is now a named enumeration instead of a numeric value, you lose a programattically enforced total ordering in terms of how much in impacts damage adjustment. You would have to make sure that the multipliers make sense (like .8x vs light armor magnitude but a 2x vs heavy armor magnitude wouldn't make much sense for most ships, though something like that would be nifty for polarizers...)
Another downside is that you lose some granularity of the balance, as the number of hull materials * number of ship sizes * number of hull magnitudes << than the maximum value of the integer type, assuming you stick with a sane number of all three of these.

Also, names will need to be adjusted. In particular, using the notation I used in this post, it's too easy to confuse medium armor magnitude with medium ship size.
Also, a better name than armor magnitude should be used.

[Hearteater]

I don't have a direct problem with that setup Tech, but one concern with such a system is no one wants to multiply out two values in play (and three would be right out).  The armor value system gets around this by being a relatively minor factor, a simple percent, which people are good at groking.  If I could get x6 armor Hull and x3 from armor, that's x18 which is a huge swing in damage.  So I think enumerated Armor types would need to end up translating to simple percents (20% reduction, 40% reduction, etc) that are cancelled by the attacker's Armor Piercing.  Think how AP works in Warhammer 40K (basically, Armor Piercing is all or nothing).

[Diazo]

Okay. I have apparently lost everyone and seem to be on an entirely different bookself, not just on a different page then everyone else.

So, in my opinion here is what I see as being broken with armor and what I am trying to fix.

First, right now there is a single armor mechanic in the game, 'Numerical Armor' that many ships have reasonably low values of, usually to give them a bit more survival for balance purposes.

This is countered by the ability armor-piercing usually given to fighter/interceptor types.

The first problem is that the 'Armored/Armor-Piercing' mechanic that was added by giving ships crazy high armor and armor-piercing that turned armor into a binary Yes/No if a ship is armored. All of a sudden ships with lower armor and armor piercing might as well not have had it because there are these ships with 500,000 armor and 500,000 armor piercing flying around, 300 armor is effectively the same as 0 armor now.

My issue with this is I like the numerical armor system as it stands, it gives a fine degree of control over how survivable ships are without making changes to their health or to the attack multipliers of ships attacking them and allows the slower RoF, higher damage bombers to fulfill their role of bombers rather then be just another ship.

It's just the ships with crazy-high armor and armor-piercing break the system so I am trying to separate the two which is where I started getting into Hull Types and all that and then into making Armored an ability.

Look at the Armor Ship, 1,500 armor at Mk. I. That more like what I want to see as a numerical armor value, not the Armored Golems 500,000 armor, that should be a binary flag of some sort. (or ship abilities or etc.)

Thinking on it, I guess it could work, define a "Armored" ship as 500,000 armor and all "Armor-Piercing" ships get 500,000 armor piercing. Then because those values stay static as the binary flags the ships with lower armor and armor-piercing can then be balanced as numerical values.

So something like an Armored Golem has 500,000 armor because it is "Armored" and then maybe an additional 5000 armor because of it's size. Where-as the Armor Ship would just get 500,000 armor for being "Armored" but nothing more then that because it is a fleet ship.

And ships that are "Armor-Piercing" would get 500,000 armor piercing ability to counter them. So attacking the Golem above would still have 5000 effective armor and the Armor Ship would have 0 effective armor.

This allows the armor and armor-piercing relationship of other ships such as the fighter and bomber to still have meaning without moving them into the "Armored" and "Armor-Piercing" binary flags.

The alternative is to get rid of crazy high armor to get rid of the binary "Armored" state. Give something like the Armored Golem high but not crazy-high armor and make sure no ships in the game have crazy-high armor piercing so numerical armor is not simply ignored like it is at the moment. (Giving health boosts in return if needed for balancing purposes.)

Bottom line, numerical values should not be used to define binary states, if you are doing so it can be re-worked to work better.

(That raises the question of if it is good enough as is, but we are throwing ideas out here.)


The other issue I have with armor is Mark levels. The same type of ship should not get a 40% difference in damage for a difference of a single mark level.

I'm not sure what to do about this one. I like the numerical armor system and would rather not see the LoL formula that was being thrown around earlier implemented. The fact that the armor system is in straight numbers is its big advantage to me, which is also why I don't want to see something percentage based implemented.

Having said that, is this an issue that needs changing? A Mk II ship is supposed to be worth roughly 2 Mk I ships after all.


Hmmm.

The more I look at this and actually reference numbers from the Wiki, the more I am starting to ask myself 'does this actually need changing?'.

The way I envision armor working is it is background number you can pay attention to if you want to but it's major purpose is for balancing to give the developers finer control over how survivable a ship is, it is not something I think players should be looking at as a primary stat.

I'm actually starting to think the current system actually works pretty good, there are just a few outliers, such as the raid starship or armored golem that need tweaking.

Let's back off a minute here, in your opinion what is actually broken about the current armor system that needs fixing?

D.