Arcen Games

General Category => AI War II - Gameplay Ideas => AI War II => AI War II - Resolved Ideas => : Pumpkin August 31, 2016, 04:50:34 AM

: Armor and Armor Piercing
: Pumpkin August 31, 2016, 04:50:34 AM
Armor is fine. I don't want to remove it to "dumb down" the game. I want it to stay, but to have (1) a higher impact on the game, comparable to hull types/bonuses and (2) a much clearer, readable and understandable place in the game.

   Examples of things that are wrong:
* Standard fighters and LASER GATLINGS have a (very) high rate of fire and armor piercing. Armor is supposed to HARD COUNTER high RoF! Why do they have armor piercing?
* Lightning turret has 200 armor (from MkI to MkIV); Needler turret has 200 to 800 armor (from MkI to MkIV); Laser turret has 20 to 80 armor (from MkI to MkIV); Counter-* turrets have 2 armor; tractor turrets have 8 to 26 armor (MkI to MkIII); Gravitational turret has 12 armor (from MkI to MkIII). Comment: armor between 2 and 12 seems ridiculous compared to 200~800.
* Many ships have a small armor rating (2*(Mk+1)), including standard fighter and missile frigate. That seems to have a very light impact on the game and a confusing impact on players.
* Many high-RoF ships seems to have a small armor piercing to balance the wide-spread small armors. It's like a cat running after its tail.

   Suggestions:
* Armor, armor piercing and RoF are like a second layer of hull/hull bonuses. If this armor layer is to stay, it must be much more readable and coherent.
* Armor must mean "counter high RoF". No high RoF units must have armor piercing.
* Low RoF mean "counter armor". Some low RoF units may have armor piercing to reinforce that.
* Armor must be less common and have a bigger impact. Units must either have 0 or a significative amount of armor.
* Some high-impact units also have a high RoF, which is contradictory. (The Heavy Bomber starship is the perfect example: it has no hull bonuses, no armor piercing and is supposed to be effective against high-health units and weak against swarmers, but it has a very low reload time of 2 seconds. Multiplying that reload speed and its impact damage by 4 would be a good thing to better apply the role it is meant to convey.)
* Some units with high reload speed also have many shots per volley, which is highly confusing (for instance, the Missile turret and GP, the Sniper Guardian and GP, etc). Shot per salvo are needed for immense RoF units that are designed to cripple fleets, like guard posts; these must have the lowest reload time. Units with normal and high impact attacks must have 1 shot per salvo.
* Big units must be clearly identified: some have high impact designed to hit other big things, some have insane RoF (and shots per salvo) designed to face fleets.
* Still on big units, some have high armors and are impervious to most fleet's attacks and other high-RoF big units, and some are less armored and fleets can still put a dent in them.

   Case study:
* The Spire and Zenith starships are good examples of that, but they suffer from the game's global inconsistency.
* The Spire starship is designed as a "can opener", not with low-RoF/armor-piercing but with an original method, which is nice. However it is also designed as a slightly more fragile starship with a low armor; IMO, it must have NO armor at all to better convey that.
* The Zenith starship is designed as a fleet tanker: it has high armor, high health and very high RoF. This high RoF makes it poorly suited to attack big armored things like itself; however, with a MkI impact of 116, the armor 10 of the MkI Flagship or armor 14 of the MkI Armor Ship seems to have a very low impact. Let see. It has 25/4 hits per seconds, which makes 25/4*10 = 62,5 damages wasted per second on a 10 armored target, compared to the 25/4*116 = 725 DPS. This is less than 10% of wasted DPS on a "high" armored unit. Compared to the *6 hull multiplier of the triangle ships, this is utterly ridiculous. The calculus is equivalent at higher mark.
* The Zenith starship is also supposed to have a high armor that would theoretically allow it to better tank fleetships, specially ships with high RoF. However, the Standard Fighter MkI has 7 armor piercing, which allows it to ignore 70% of the MkI Zenith starship. At MkV, the Zenith Starship has 50 armor and the Standard Fighter 37 armor piercing, for a similar ignored percentage of armor.
* As a conclusion, the Zenith starship is meant to hard counter fleets of swarmers and high RoF ships, but the armor piercing of Standard Fighters and Laser Gatlings nearly negates its not-so-high armor.

   The origin of the problem (IMO):
* Small armors were widely spread.
* So swarmers and high RoF units like the Std Fighter and the Laser Gatling were underwhelming.
* So they were given some armor piercing.
   The solution (IMO):
* Remove small armors.
* Boost high armors.
* Remove armor piercing on high RoF units.
   Also, to reinforce that Armor/RoF layer:
* Diminish RoF and increase impact on low-Rof/high-impact units (missile turret/GP, sniper GP/Guardian, heavy bomber starship, etc).
* Give some armor piercing to some high-impact units.
* Tell that in unit's descriptions: "powerful against armored units"; "weak against armored units"; "powerful against swarms and fleets"; "better suited against armored starships"; etc. (And a unit being "armored" or not must be made ultra-clear: no 2~3 armor values! Never!)

: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: chemical_art August 31, 2016, 10:33:39 AM
I concur with what is being said here. Armor must be streamlined and made consistent across the board.

The combat triangle of armor ---> swarmers ----> low rotf ----> armor could be pursued. Keep it as simple as possible. I would say  that as a goal "armor piercing" should be eliminated, because that in itself exponentially complicates things. Done right the value would not be needed.
: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: Pumpkin August 31, 2016, 11:13:16 AM
I would say  that as a goal "armor piercing" should be eliminated
+1
Higher "impact" (high damage per bullet at lower low RoF) is the way to counter armor.
: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: kasnavada August 31, 2016, 11:57:15 AM
I would say  that as a goal "armor piercing" should be eliminated

I disagree with that - having armor piercing with low damage overall is a nice design possibilty as far as units are concerned. Else "tanks" would be in danger to high damage units only. It creates a niche where low damage units could kill tanks, but not "regular" weakly armored units.

about armor

The current armor mechanic though... Does anyone know what 800 armor means ? A system that's immediately understandable is needed there.
I'm personally in favor of a system with 2 stats / "damage type": fixed damage reduction + percentage reduction.
: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: Draco18s August 31, 2016, 12:04:29 PM
For the record, high-ROF ships with armor piercing should have a valid niche.

In fact, I think that's where the laser gatlings should be.  Their damage is so abysmally low that it's almost meaningless unless there's a huge blob of them.  Add in the armor piercing and they can harry even the "bomber" high-impact armored types.  But they'd be less good at the no-armor "fighter" types, as the fighters would simply out-DPS them.
: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: Pumpkin August 31, 2016, 04:43:58 PM
For the record, high-ROF ships with armor piercing should have a valid niche.

In fact, I think that's where the laser gatlings should be.  Their damage is so abysmally low that it's almost meaningless unless there's a huge blob of them.  Add in the armor piercing and they can harry even the "bomber" high-impact armored types.  But they'd be less good at the no-armor "fighter" types, as the fighters would simply out-DPS them.
I'd prefer Laser Gatlings to have better-than-average DPS, insane RoF and no armor piercing. If armor is less common (reserved only to actually armored units), they would be (very?) good against all unarmored units and terribad against even slightly armored units. (Making them powerful against unarmored units is just a question of DPS. Making them bad against armored units is a question of RoF.)

Anyway, AIW2 isn't kickstarted yet...
: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: Kahuna September 01, 2016, 01:06:40 AM
The current armor mechanic though... Does anyone know what 800 armor means ?
It means the damage will be reduced by 800 but by 80% at most. Armor can not reduce the incoming damage by more than 80%.

So basically:
If Damage-Armor>=Damage*0,2
DamageTaken=Damage-Armor

If Damage-Armor<Damage*0,2
DamageTaken=Damage*0,2
: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: chemical_art September 01, 2016, 01:11:25 AM
The current armor mechanic though... Does anyone know what 800 armor means ?
It means the damage will be reduced by 800 but by 80% at most. Armor can not reduce the incoming damage by more than 80%.

I will say that the fact there is an 80% cut off is just one many examples of just how arbitrary it the armor system is. I am not discussing balancing or anything like that. I am just saying it is arbitrary, it follows an obscure set of rules that make no sense in a big picture way.
: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: chemical_art September 01, 2016, 01:19:51 AM
Just to add fuel to the fire, how much value does armor have when you consider hull types. when facing 6x multipliers how can armor make a meaningful impact. the whole concept seems shaky.


Is it truly neccesarily? don't hull types accomplish the goal already? can you really make armor a thing with 4x to 10x damage multipliers floating around?

either hull types or armor types need a total revamp. armor seems far easier to just remove.
: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: kasnavada September 01, 2016, 02:02:59 AM
The current armor mechanic though... Does anyone know what 800 armor means ?
It means the damage will be reduced by 800 but by 80% at most. Armor can not reduce the incoming damage by more than 80%.

I will say that the fact there is an 80% cut off is just one many examples of just how arbitrary it the armor system is. I am not discussing balancing or anything like that. I am just saying it is arbitrary, it follows an obscure set of rules that make no sense in a big picture way.

This, and the next post.
: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: Kahuna September 01, 2016, 02:06:53 AM
I thought a lot of people already agreed that attack multipliers (not necessarily hull types) need to be removed.

Attack multiplier system could be replaced with x weapon type is good vs y hull type.

Armor could be reworked.

: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: Pumpkin September 01, 2016, 02:23:37 AM
Is it truly neccesarily? don't hull types accomplish the goal already? can you really make armor a thing with 4x to 10x damage multipliers floating around?
While I agree armor could be removed, I think its problem is it has not enough impact on the game. Technically, -80% precisely counters a x5 multiplier. (Am I wrong?) My "case study" shows that armor, as it is currently distributed, can show stuff like -10% damage on high RoF units. I would like to see situations like "my swarmer/high-RoF unit has no bonus against that enemy unit but I still can send them in the fight." BUT the enemy unit had armor and the swarmer/RoF unit do -50% ~ -80% (or even less if we remove the artificial 80% limit) and the player is punished for bad game lecture. The player is also rewarded for more-than-shallow knowledge of the game (I can't say deep for knowing armor > high RoF) if he uses armored units against swarmers.

I like to see the armor/RoF/impact mechanism as a less obvious hull bonus mechanism, giving a bit more depth to the game. :D

However we can see the two systems as overlapping and make the choice of keeping only one or the other.
I don't want to see one go in favor of the other. :'(
However I understand the reason and I'll bend to the final decision.

I thought a lot of people already agreed that attack multipliers (not necessarily hull types) need to be removed.

Attack multiplier system could be replaced with x weapon type is good vs y hull type.

Armor could be reworked.
If the armor system is kept, sure, it will be reworked. I, if nobody else, would do it.
But if hull bonuses are not removed but instead changed to a more coherent ammo-VS-hull system (basically, still hull bonuses but all the same for a same ammo type), I would be so happy.
Maybe we can also link (more or less) armor to hull type and RoF to ammo. Like all Neutron units have an armor between 5x and 8x their mark level depending on the ship (random numbers for example) and all MLRS weapons shot 5 missiles per second, fixed (the damage of each missile depends on the unit and its mark).
: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: Draco18s September 01, 2016, 01:00:30 PM
The main problem with the armor system as it is right now, as I see it, is that things fall into two categories:

1) Things with no armor
2) Things with so much armor, it may as well be infinite.

Then there are the things with armor piercing that again, fall into two categories:

1) Things with no AP
2) Things with so much AP they reduce all armor to 0.

If I challenged you to find a unit that didn't fall into these categories you'd find like six.  "2 armor" is "effectively zero" due to the numbers on damage-per-shot.  In fact, things with less than 100 armor have their armor pretty much always rounded down to zero (http://what-if.xkcd.com/imgs/a/151/bignumbers.png).  On the other hand, things with more than about 1000 armor fall into the second category: having so much it may as well be infinite.  Virtually no ships fall into the range between 100 and 1000, or if they do its only for a single mark level (e.g. 900*mk--mk1 has 900--or 25*mk--mk5 has 125).

Hilariously the Armor Ship falls into the first category: at Mk 5 it has a whopping 74 armor.
Armor Boosters have the same issue: they cap out at 37 armor, or 74 when boosted by an armor booster.
Space Tanks on the other had, are in the second category (having 1500 armor at Mk1).
: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: Pumpkin September 01, 2016, 01:50:53 PM
The main problem with the armor system as it is right now, as I see it, is that things fall into two categories:

1) Things with no armor
2) Things with so much armor, it may as well be infinite.
Strange. I have an opposite point of view. I think there are only middle ground, there are small values of armor everywhere. I wish to see this stat more rarely and, when I see it, with more impact.
But maybe we disagree on the scale. Maybe when you say "no armor", you mean "less than 30" or something.

   The origin of the problem (IMO):
* Small armors were widely spread.
* (...)

But it's true, some have a ridiculous amount of armor (I suppose there were some values forgotten when all the health and damage stats went down by a factor of several powers of ten), and some units have basically the "ignore armor" perk.

Also, I feel this whole thing is a matter of balance. The true important point for now on which we have to agree (or disagree; at least on which we have to debate) is wether or not the armor mechanism must be brought to AI War 2. The numbers and balance and stuff must be saved for another day. And I'm the first to blame: I posted this here instead of under "ideas for latter". Shame on you, Pumpkin! Yeah, sorry.

Personally, it's yes: keep the armor. I think the armor/armor piercing system is something that we (devz and moders) can play with. I think it's a system with a large design potential (there is also the RoF/Impact system behind that get rather insignificant without armor). But you may disagree... Let's discuss that instead of numbers and balance, shall we?
: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: Draco18s September 01, 2016, 02:04:07 PM
But maybe we disagree on the scale. Maybe when you say "no armor", you mean "less than 30" or something.

We probably disagree on scale. "No armor" is "less than 100" for me.  Yeah, there's a fair few ships that are effected heavily by 75 armor, but in the general case, I don't think its true.

Personally, it's yes: keep the armor. I think the armor/armor piercing system is something that we (devz and moders) can play with. I think it's a system with a large design potential (there is also the RoF/Impact system behind that get rather insignificant without armor). But you may disagree... Let's discuss that instead of numbers and balance, shall we?

I agree with keeping armor as a mechanic.
: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: Pumpkin September 01, 2016, 02:25:49 PM
But maybe we disagree on the scale. Maybe when you say "no armor", you mean "less than 30" or something.

We probably disagree on scale. "No armor" is "less than 100" for me.  Yeah, there's a fair few ships that are effected heavily by 75 armor, but in the general case, I don't think its true.
Dammit! I can't resist! Let's see. We're going to study change in DPS for MkI and MkV fighter and frigate (both ends of RoF for the triangle).

Std Fighter MkI: (attack 40, reload 4s) DPS against armor 0: 10; DPS against armor 100: 2 (because 80%).
MFrigate MkI: (attack 96, reload 10s) DPS against armor 0: 9.6; DPS against armor 100: 1.92 (because 80%).
Std Fighter MkV: (attack 204, reload 4s) DPS against armor 0: 51; DPS against armor 100: 26.
MFrigate MkV: (attack 488, reload 10s) DPS against armor 0: 48.8; DPS against armor 100: 38.8

Conclusion:
At MkI, armor 100 is basically -80% for everybody (I found the Zombard and the ZElec Bomber to have an impact > 100. Among the MkI starships, the Flagship, the Leech and the Zenith are barely ahead). So basically, armor 100 feels like a high mark armor.
At MkV, armor 100 is still big but we can see differences. The MkV Fighter has approximately 50% of its "raw" DPS while the MkV MFrigate has approximately 80% of its "raw" DPS.
I don't fell this is a big difference. (I'm a bit disappointed, I must admit.) However, there are ships in the game with a much higher impact (Zomber, considering their lower cap) and RoF (Laser Gatlings, considering their higher cap). Maybe the armor has a real problem of impact on the gameplay, after all. I mean, mechanically, and not only in its current balance and distribution.

Eh, we'll see. I said no more talking about numbers and balance, didn't I?
: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: Draco18s September 01, 2016, 03:18:07 PM
Thanks for digging up some of the numbers. There's definite a point at which "more armor" doesn't mean anything.  I was just wrong about where that threshold was.  Point still stands that it feels like there are some armor values that are just pointless.
: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: Pumpkin September 02, 2016, 02:38:02 AM
Thanks for digging up some of the numbers. There's definite a point at which "more armor" doesn't mean anything.  I was just wrong about where that threshold was.
My pleasure. But the numbers I dug weren't very precious. I'm sure there is a vein nearby; we'll need to do some probing when the mod season will come. Then we'll start the true excavation and setup the number refinement industry. (Wait, are we playing Dwarf Number Fortress?)

Point still stands that it feels like there are some armor values that are just pointless.
Sure. But I believe there is also a balance, somewhere. We'll see where soon. (I must admit, I'm pretty excited with soon being able to test numbers and stuff by ourself.)
: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: Tridus September 02, 2016, 07:46:59 AM
It seems to me the biggest problem with armor and armor piercing is that they're overused, as people have shown in some examples. What's the point of having 2 armor, really? You could eliminate them from a lot of ships and go with the following:

1. Ships that are meant to counter swarms should have light armor, so they can mitigate damage from the swarm more effectively (but that won't slow down a heavy assault ship with it's much higher damage per shot).
2. Ships that are meant to "tank" and screen other ships should have high armor, so they can do that job effectively by reducing the damage from everything.
3. Ships specifically meant to counter #2 should have armor piercing, wihch lets them be effective against those ships without needing gigantic damage numbers (so they're not crazy against things with light/no armor).
4. Defenses could have light armor piercing, so they don't get slowed down by #1, but are still slowed down by #2.

It's probably possible to do that with hull types/weapon types/damage multipliers, but armor and armor piercing are easier to understand than a giant list of "I get 5x against this hull, but that does this, and this does the other thing..." so for these roles, it makes sense to use armor instead because it's easier to understand.
: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: tadrinth September 02, 2016, 09:14:54 AM
I'm probably in the minority, but I think a simplified, consistent hull bonus system seems like the best way to implement armor and armor piercing. 

Pick an ammo type to be associated with armor pen.  Pick an armor type, or possibly types, to be associated with having lots of armor.  Give that ammo type a consistent multiplier bonus against things with armor.   IE, declare that energy bombs are good at hitting big heavy targets, and give everything with energy bombs a consistent, high bonus against heavy. Make everything that's supposed to have heavy armor use that hull type.  If necessary, add AP missiles as an ammo type and ultraheavy as a hull type, with AP missiles giving some bonus vs heavy but a huge bonus vs ultraheavy. 

Then just get rid of the entire concept of flat damage reduction, aka the current armor system. Stick to ONE representation for armor and armor pen.  If you must have flat damage reduction, give it to ONE unit as their special schtick. 

Currently armor either 1) acts as flat reduction, which interacts in really complicated ways with reload time and shot size, is hard to eyeball, and is prone to having lots of relatively subtle effects, or 2) the target has so much armor that you hit the 80% damage reduction cap, which is exactly equivalent to giving AP units an extra 5x multiplier.  It's also not consistent what has armor; does everything with a heavy hull have armor? does everything with an ultra-heavy hull have MORE armor?  I don't think so... if it was purely hull type based, then that WOULD be consistent.

Or, I guess you could have an 'armored' tag and an 'armor piercing' tag that acts as an extra multiplier, possibly stacking with whatever other tags are around, but I suspect that could rapidly get even more complicated than the hull bonus system if you have a lot of tags. 
: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: x4000 September 02, 2016, 03:33:39 PM
I will mostly crosspost this, which was about hull types:

Since my opinion has been sought out on this particular topic at this particular time: I have no opinion yet. ;)

I am leaning toward not having hull types... kinda-sorta.  I want to get substantially more involved ship designs in a way that is fun, and not in a way that requires memorization.  To some extent what this discussion is about is combat roles, and how to differentiate ships.  The fact that this argument is happening at all is, to me, a sign that ship mechanics themselves are not robust enough to provide interesting variations in battle roles.

In an ideal world, there would be no hull types and no ship to ship bonuses or penalties at all.  Nothing artificial like that.  Or if there are hull types, keeping it very broad and a bit more scientific-seeming (on the surface at least), versus having too many categories of it.  Aka having something like 3-5 types, and leaving it at that.

This is just my current working set of thinking at the moment, since it was solicited via PM. :)  In no way is this the plan yet.

Overall I am working from the bottom-up, and you guys are talking about some mechanics that are much higher-level than I am right now,and there are a lot of good points being made.  However, I'm still focusing on things at the lowest possible level and building up from there.  I want for the ship designs to be a lot more interesting in terms of their mechanics and roles in the game than AI War Classic remotely allowed.

When it comes to armor, I'd rather wrap that into the same sort of system, or else make armor into something like a secondary health amount that can be worn down by ships in general, yet bypassed by armor piercing.

It depends on whether or not that would really provide an interesting game mechanic without being too complex to learn.  I think that it could be, but I'm not quiiite there yet. :)
: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: Draco18s September 02, 2016, 04:27:00 PM
Careful with bypassing armor, I broke a table top system that did that. (http://www.skype-emoticons.com/images/emoticon-00136-giggle.png)

(TL;DR: armor took damage instead of you taking damage, based on its protection rating: the higher the rating, the more the armor took damage and less you did.  Structures, like walls, worked the same way.  Explosives had armor piercing--which lowered the effective protection rating of armor--to the point at which you couldn't actually damage a wall with explosives....because all of the AP of the explosve bypassed all of the armor protection the wall had, resulting in no loss of structure....)
: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: x4000 September 02, 2016, 04:56:14 PM
Haha, yeah, I've played games like that, too.  And designed them and then subsequently had to redesign them. ;)  I can't remember what it was that had that.  Skyward Collapse?  Bionic Dues?  Maybe TLF.  It was a long while ago, and it didn't survive into the 1.0 of the game.
: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: chemical_art September 02, 2016, 05:08:42 PM
Having armor act as a secondary health bar, which armor piercing bypasses, sounds as a far simpler method to use. It really gets down to the core of what armor is. Of course there can be variations on how it is implemented but on the big picture I like that idea best.
: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: PokerChen September 02, 2016, 05:09:29 PM
because all of the AP of the explosve bypassed all of the armor protection the wall had
Kinda like how high powered rifles can fire through thin walls, and you managed to create explosives made of sniper rifles.
: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: Draco18s September 02, 2016, 06:46:15 PM
It came about because we dropped a backpack full of C4 down a fissure and blew it up, and the rules were "what happens to a character behind a wall when a grenade goes off?"

I ended up posting on their forums about it (I'd link, but the game is beyond dead) that had four different resolutions, ranging from "abstract it, get a realistic result" to "patently absurd because numbers."  This was about 2 weeks before we broke the entire magic system and became gods right out of char-gen (char gen being "make a level 1 D&D character" equivalent, and we found a way to make that character be a god due to a single buff spell, which you could pick up during char gen).
: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: Elestan September 02, 2016, 11:43:51 PM
When it comes to armor, I'd rather wrap that into the same sort of system, or else make armor into something like a secondary health amount that can be worn down by ships in general, yet bypassed by armor piercing.

I agree with most of what you said, but this point has a problem:  If damage is just damage, you can't create a ship that is much more durable against many weak attacks than it is against fewer strong ones, and I think that's an important distinguishing characteristic to keep ships distinctive.  You need to have some kind of defense that takes points off from each incoming attack.

I'm actually okay with the current Armor system, but I think AP should be more rare, so it's noteworthy when it's encountered.  It might make sense to have AP have a limited set of options instead of a number.  Attacks could be Normal (No AP), Armor Piercing (Halves the target's armor), or Super Armor Piercing (Ignores the target's armor).
: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: Pumpkin September 03, 2016, 02:29:46 AM
Having armor act as a secondary health bar, which armor piercing bypasses, sounds as a far simpler method to use. It really gets down to the core of what armor is. Of course there can be variations on how it is implemented but on the big picture I like that idea best.
Did you just described Shields?

Beside, I believe there is things to do about flat damage reduction. The maths look promising. As the point is to give more tools for designing different ships, damage reduction and RoF are tools. Also, with no per-projectile damage reduction, the rate of fire becomes completely cosmetic, which is kindda sad.

Or else, "armored" ships would just be ships with higher-than-average total life points at cap. The only thing to play with for ship design would be the hp-per-metal ratio (or hp-per-cap as metal-per-cap isn't constant).

TL;DR:
Damage reduction and RoF are things for ship design. Please don't just scrap them.
: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: Pumpkin September 03, 2016, 03:17:34 PM
I was working on another part of the design and realized something.

Armor (as we now understand it: flat damage reduction) must scale with mark because the damage scale with mark. But what if impact was constant through mark and RoF scaled up? Armor could be completely constant through mark, and we would be able to base our maths on a cross-mark basis. A MkX unit would have the same DPS reduction on an armored MkY unit as on the same MkZ unit.

Also, with the EntitySystem, we would be able to design kinds of weapons/ammo with fixed range, RoF and damage, and a high mark unit would just have more of them, increasing the DPS but not the impact. (A MkI Missile Frigate would be equipped with one "Culverin" missile launcher, firing one "Javelin" every 10s, which has a 70 kiloton yeld and the new-and-improved "adder" propeller able to reach an effective range of...: a MkII Frigate would be equipped with two, launching these two identical missiles every 10s.)

Constant armor and impact through mark: easy to design AND to understand.
Reused identical weapons: easy to design AND to understand.
: Re: Armor and Armor Piercing
: x4000 September 22, 2016, 10:26:56 AM
From a general architecture standpoint, the new mechanics for armor and piercing are now designed.  What specific ships will have is a different matter that is more a discussion for later.