Effects: Large Cannons Favor Punch Through (Balance Concerns)

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Okay in my testing I have found that the punch through effect seems like the only viable option on large cannons (besides shield breakers). Explosive and pierce have a very specific and limited range of damage. Pierce will divide the damage as the projectile passes through, 50% 25% 12.5% 6% 3% 1.5% and then stop. It is only capable of damaging 6 blocks at any given time. Explosive as well damages the target block and any adjacent block, again doing damage to 6 blocks. Punch through on the other hand has no limits, it will keep going until it's damage is spent.

On the Surface you cannot see the difference between peirce and punchthrough with a high damage cannon.

The interior tells a far different story. The Punch through effect ripped through 75 layers of hardened hull like it was butter.

I filled the hole with effect blocks so it would count the missing hull.

This is what the impact of a cannon looks like. 75 blocks destroyed in an instant.

This is only a controlled test with static unshielded targets, so real world applications will varry. Both effect system and cannon are 1000 blocks which is a real possibility on a large enough ship. As far as I know the reduction in shield damage is similar between these three effects. I'm Really curious to see what this can do to actual ships without 100 layers of hardened hull to stop slugs. That punch shot is just going to rip through system blocks.

So the question is, how do you balance this system? Both peirce and explosive can only kill 6 blocks at any given moment and feel very underwhelming when compared to what punch can do. Peirce seems like it should be able to dig further than it does and the radius on huge explosive cannons seems so small. The only thing I see stopping this punch monster is that 100% armor dreadnaught ( Calbiri ) which is only a theory at this point.

 

[psteiner]

Wow, thats just unfair, I think that I'll go sulk in a corner with god mode turned on. One way that punch through could be greatly limited is by making it weaker against sheilds, you have a hull ripper (punch through), and a sheild destroyer (ion).

 

[NuclearFun]

Very interesting, the easy (but boring) solution would be just to limit the block count it can affect.

I have to say it is just awesome how dedicated you seem to be with testing all the new stuff and everything, Kudos to you!

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

A 1:1:1 Artillery Piercing weapon that size would probably need 1/2 the peirce modules to blast right through those 100 meters of hardened hull and keep on going.

Wow, thats just unfair, I think that I'll go sulk in a corner with god mode turned on. One way that punch through could be greatly limited is by making it weaker against sheilds, you have a hull ripper (punch through), and a sheild destroyer (ion).

All the "damage spread" effects are weaker against shields, but I don't think it's substantial.

Very interesting, the easy (but boring) solution would be just to limit the block count it can affect.

I was thinking of that too. The problems I came up with would be that there would be functionally no difference between pierce and punch at those damages.

The solution I came up with in my head was to give pierce a new mechanic. Have it impact a set number of blocks and spread the damage out equally or with a slight decrease per block to simulate the projectile slowing down.

Now you give the old peirce mechanic to punch through, you can even modify it to not pass damage until the previous block is destroyed then pass a % of the remaining damage.

 

[psteiner]

The solution I came up with in my head was to give pierce a new mechanic. Have it impact a set number of blocks and spread the damage out equally or with a slight decrease per block to simulate the projectile slowing down.

Well, wouldn't that have a large drain of FPS?

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Well, wouldn't that have a large drain of FPS?

I don't see why it would, I didn't notice any performance issues when I was destroying 75 blocks in a single millisecond.

 

[Calbiri]

Hmmm, it seems that pierce needs a slight mechanic adjustment, I'll talk with schema about this, I think I know a solution.

Pierce should do its damage as %'s of the total blocks health, not the % of the shots damage. This is a slight oversight with a noticeably bad result, sorry I didn't catch it previously.

(excess damage should carry over)

 

[psteiner]

Ahhhhhhh, I thought that it would take alot to calculate how thick the hull was in a certain vector. Then damaging it by an equal amount

 

[Calbiri]

Ahhhhhhh, I thought that it would take alot to calculate how thick the hull was in a certain vector. Then damaging it by an equal amount

Cant do that with a moving ship vs a moving bullet as the ship can move as the bullet passes though it, changing impact points

 

[Calbiri]

How does this sound, when a block is hit by a peirce shot, it is dealt 50% of the blocks MaxHP (not its current) that damage is then deducted from the total remaining damage on the shot. This prevents the high burnout on intitial block damage of high damage systems.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Hmmm, it seems that pierce needs a slight mechanic adjustment, I'll talk with schema about this, I think I know a solution.

Pierce should do its damage as %'s of the total blocks health, not the % of the shots damage. This is a slight oversight with a noticeably bad result, sorry I didn't catch it previously.

(excess damage should carry over)

So pierce will also be able to keep going until it's damage runs out like punchthrough does? As long as it's also percentage of total and not remaining. So if you do 50% damage you can kill a block in two hits instead of 50% the first hit, 25% the second. I would much rather a buff of the other systems instead of gimping the potential of punchthrough, because the effect is absolutely amazing.

Now then if peirce gets adjusted so that it passes through more blocks, it seems like explosive is now lacking compared to the other two.

I've also noticed that despite trying to hit the target as dead on as possible the shot always deviates down and right. I actually kind of like this, some of my other tests had the projectile enter the target, shoot out the side, enter the larger base, and then out the back. It more or less simulates how bullets tend to act in real situations

How does this sound, when a block is hit by a peirce shot, it is dealt 50% of the blocks MaxHP (not its current) that damage is then deducted from the total remaining damage on the shot. This prevents the high burnout on intitial block damage of high damage systems.

I type too slow...

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Would the same scaling method the punch through has work for explosive? The initial impact should spread to the first 5 blocks, if those blocks are destroyed the damage should propagate to the next sets of adjacent blocks.

 

[Calbiri]

Would the same scaling method the punch through has work for explosive? The initial impact should spread to the first 5 blocks, if those blocks are destroyed the damage should propagate to the next sets of adjacent blocks.

We can look at that again,
the issue is that calculating damage spheres is far more exspensive than singular ray traces (imagine a dozen machine-cannons firing at 10 rounds a second and having 20radius blasts...)

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

We can look at that again,
the issue is that calculating damage spheres is far more exspensive than singular ray traces (imagine a dozen machine-cannons firing at 10 rounds a second and having 20radius blasts...)

Is there any way that you can actually make explosive effect act like a missile explosion instead of just mimicking it? Or does that have the same performance issues when you are able to fully rapid fire them?

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Calbiri Has there been any further development towards balancing explosive effect VS pierce/punch. I've also noticed peirce effect is yet to be updated and I was wondering if I should submit an official bug report for this.

 

[Commodore]

IMO punch through is fine (as long as it is only doing the projectile's damage, before it stops). but the other systems need to be brought up to speed.

For explosive, I think a system similar to the current one, but with the explosive radius determined based on damage, but not calculated every time. It could just give 100 damage to N blocks (in a rough sphere) where N = Damage / 100.

Piercing could go all the way through an unshielded target, and count all the blocks it passes through (N), then do Weapon Damage/ N to every block.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

IMO punch through is fine (as long as it is only doing the projectile's damage, before it stops). but the other systems need to be brought up to speed.

For explosive, I think a system similar to the current one, but with the explosive radius determined based on damage, but not calculated every time. It could just give 100 damage to N blocks (in a rough sphere) where N = Damage / 100.

Piercing could go all the way through an unshielded target, and count all the blocks it passes through (N), then do Weapon Damage/ N to every block.

Yeah I would much rather the other two effects be brought up to match punch throughs level of effectiveness than punch get nerfed. I know there is performance concerns with adding large explosive effects to potentially high damage rapid firing cannons but I'm sure Schema and the crew can find a solution. As for pierce I think there was a reason they didn't want the shot to cut all the way through a ship and distribute it's damage evenly but I don't remember what it was. Pierce should act much like punch but only applying 50% of a blocks max health to each block it hits as opposed to the 50,25, 12.5, 6.25, 3.125 it does now

 

[Calbiri]

Yeah I would much rather the other two effects be brought up to match punch throughs level of effectiveness than punch get nerfed. I know there is performance concerns with adding large explosive effects to potentially high damage rapid firing cannons but I'm sure Schema and the crew can find a solution. As for pierce I think there was a reason they didn't want the shot to cut all the way through a ship and distribute it's damage evenly but I don't remember what it was. Pierce should act much like punch but only applying 50% of a blocks max health to each block it hits as opposed to the 50,25, 12.5, 6.25, 3.125 it does now

I agree that they need improvement. I've talked with schema about changes that need to be made to bring peirce in line with punch. The issue with the solution proposed of "run the line, then distribute damage" is that that does not work with how the ray trace, the bullet velocity, and the ship movement are interacting, the bullet of an AMC isnt hitscan, it takes time to travel through a ship, and the ship can be moving during this time, this ruins any precalculations of its trajectory lines. I've asked schema to put in a a change to base the damage done on 50% of the blocks max health, instead of the 50% of the projectiles total damage, this comes with other, although lesser side effects and puts pierce further into its own tactical niche.

Missiles might be placed on the same propogation setup as punch, but spheres get exspensive exponentially as they get larger, we can try changing this to improve the feel of the explosions (ive already increased sizes once) but we will need to be careful about impacting performance (trolls will troll you know)

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I agree that they need improvement. I've talked with schema about changes that need to be made to bring peirce in line with punch. The issue with the solution proposed of "run the line, then distribute damage" is that that does not work with how the ray trace, the bullet velocity, and the ship movement are interacting, the bullet of an AMC isnt hitscan, it takes time to travel through a ship, and the ship can be moving during this time, this ruins any precalculations of its trajectory lines. I've asked schema to put in a a change to base the damage done on 50% of the blocks max health, instead of the 50% of the projectiles total damage, this comes with other, although lesser side effects and puts pierce further into its own tactical niche.

Missiles might be placed on the same propogation setup as punch, but spheres get exspensive exponentially as they get larger, we can try changing this to improve the feel of the explosions (ive already increased sizes once) but we will need to be careful about impacting performance (trolls will troll you know)

I did want to discuss the ideas I had regarding punch and peirce effects with missiles. I thought that punch could be like a "shaped charge" and instead of dealing damage in a sphere it does so more in a cylinder shape so the damage is applied deeper into a ship. Peirce could turn missiles into "bunker busters" so that they detonate slightly inside of the impact zone instead of directly on the surface. Of course it's up to you and schema to figure out those logistics.

As for peirce on cannons if the shot deals 50% of the blocks HP in damage to a block, subtracts that from the power of the shot and moves onto the next block. This would allow peirce to always dig deeper into a ship than punch which will spend it's power on 100% of a blocks health before moving on. Explosive effects on cannons would still need some love to make them as capable though.

 

[NeonSturm]

I think explosive cannon shells are only a bit up (not much)

If you hit a deep space sci-fi space ship with -for example- an atomic bonb, it is not as worse as if you attack a city with it.
Firstly the ships are protected vs cosmic gamma rays and secondly an explosion in vacuum deals much less damage.

If the missile is able to go out of phase and move technomagically through some layers of armour blocks, an explosion would do the same damage as inside an atmosphere.

Ofcourse a missile could use it's engine's mass and it's inertia to create it's own pressure for the explosion - opposite to the ship.

Let's face it: spherical explosions are unrealistic!