- Joined
- Jun 23, 2013
- Messages
- 504
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- 127
Edit: In light of the new ratings system, I have bumped this. It is a few months old, but still largely relevant as far as I can tell. I hope this is tolerated.
Well, here I am again, shouting largely unfounded opinions on the game at you for no particular reason. Also again, I'll be shouting mostly about combat mechanics, in particular the topics of shield piercing, armor relevance and system damage.
Shield piercing
As I see it, the issue with hull is not that it's weak. Sure, it's a problem, but the fundamental issue is that it's utility is is limited to shield failure scenarios, which anyone would rather spend their precious on-board space trying to avoid, not prepare for. No matter how strong we make armor, it will always be reactive to shield breaches, whereas shields are preventative. However, if shields would let small percentages of firepower through, any battle would inevitably result in some amount of superficial damage, hopefully encouraging the presence of a hull to soak it up.
Furthermore, this would make some amount of damage an inevitable outcome of battle for both victor and looser. I agree this will be annoying without more efficient repair tools in the game, (And definitely should wait until that's been implemented) but it would also associate an element of maintenance with running a ship, which might in turn give some meaning to the concept of infrastructure. It would also introduce a whole new balancing variable with a number of applications, ranging from making fighters more viable, to making defensive effects work more originally, to making ship-to-turret transfer of shielding and firepower balanced.
Less remaining shield percentage should of course mean more damage leaking through, but I'd say it's important not to make absolute capacity too relevant, or capital ships will have yet another unnecessary advantage over agility-based craft. (If anything, larger ships should have more damage leaks) If we still want it to be viable to to add more shields for better leak protection, one could make the base leak value a function of shielding divided by mass. That way, more shields means less leaking, but simply scaling up the entire does not.
The one downside I can think of is if it works too well. Cosmetically armored ships that you could tear apart with a handgun weren't it for the shields are bad, but fully encased armor cubes aren't much better. The value people do place on the aesthetic appeal of their ship will no doubt mitigate this, but we'll nevertheless be punishing things like exposing cannon barrel ends and thruster exhaust. The only solution to this I can think of might also help make hull more practical in general, namely;
Area-of-effect armor
Currently, the armor properties of blocks are strictly individual. Changing this to allow an armored block to partially extend it's damage-reducing shell to nearby ones would have a number of benefits for design. Firstly, it will reduce the incentive to entirely encase should-be-external systems. While a rather insignificant issue at the time, this will be more noticeable the more relevant we make hull, which I'm fairly certain will happen anyway, one way or another. Of course, making this armor sharing too powerful will destroy the point in properly encasing your ship all together, so some form of middle ground will have to be found.
It would also reduce the rather impractical nature of hull. The amount of hull you need for a single layer is, at best, about three times the square of the ship size, and it only gets worse the less spherical the ship is. If armor is partially shared, the absolute quantity of hull will have some relevance as well, not only the thickness at the point of impact. Again, balancing this properly might be problematic, but if it's done properly, it should make hull an overall more viable means of protecting your ship.
Finally, it might just make hull design a bit more interesting. If hull reinforces other, nearby hull, then how much protection a specific point enjoys depends on a lot more than the blocks directly above it, allowing for more varied ways to encase areas. If nothing else, we'd be able to build our hulls on structural support beams and actually have that be of any use.
System Damage
As a solution to the issue of core drilling, a “ship health” mechanic is apparently being implemented. The basic nature of this would be a collective health pool for the ship that equals only a percentage of the ship’s total health, but takes as much damage as the ship does when attacked. When this health is depleted, which will happen way before the ship is completely eradicated, the vessel ceases to function. I can understand the philosophy behind this, as it provides a middle ground between an achilles-heel on ships, and having to destroy every single block. However, I also think it would a bit too hard-coded. As such, I suggest it’s implemented on a system level instead of a ship-wide one.
Basically, systems would have a secondary health collective to the unit, that decides at what capacity it could operate. It should start out equal to the total the block health, but drain several times faster when the unit takes damage, so that by the time it’s taken some serious damage it’s pretty much non-functional even if the majority of the blocks remain. This way, a system could take some amount of damage and still function, but once you’ve sliced your enemy’s generator in half their ship is pretty much without power. I believe this would be a much more natural-feeling way of defeating ships, not to mention more along the lines of what sci-fi otherwise has us used to.
I'm stepping even more firmly outside the realm of things I can make a proper case for the benefit of, but nevertheless, I feel compelled to point out another potential application for such a mechanic.
I do assume I'm not the only one who'd like phrases like "focus starboard firepower on the frigate's primary reactor" or "damage detected in the forward weapons array, currently operating at 60% capacity" to actually mean something. Sure, they can already, but only after you've dug through shields and hull, at which point your opponent is the definition of dead anyway. Shield penetration fixes half that problem, but hull would still be 100% protection.
(The pierce tertiary does mitigate that somewhat, but is far too small a part of the game.)
As such, I propose the system health also be made vulnerable to nearby impacts- if you do enough damage to piece of hull, it will affect the systems beneath it. Not significantly, but noticeably. The effect from damage taken with shields up an hull intact should be small but noticeable, with one of those gone it should be quite significant, and with neither present, devastating.
To ensure titans are not made exempt from this by virtue of sheer size, (no hull impact reaching far enough to affect inner systems) how far in counts as “beneath” should be determined by the force of the attack itself, not how much damage it ended up doing.
Additional layers of hull should probably dampen the effect of the indirect damage, though that may just be one too many balancing variables.
As usual, you have my apologies for taking your time.
Well, here I am again, shouting largely unfounded opinions on the game at you for no particular reason. Also again, I'll be shouting mostly about combat mechanics, in particular the topics of shield piercing, armor relevance and system damage.
Shield piercing
As I see it, the issue with hull is not that it's weak. Sure, it's a problem, but the fundamental issue is that it's utility is is limited to shield failure scenarios, which anyone would rather spend their precious on-board space trying to avoid, not prepare for. No matter how strong we make armor, it will always be reactive to shield breaches, whereas shields are preventative. However, if shields would let small percentages of firepower through, any battle would inevitably result in some amount of superficial damage, hopefully encouraging the presence of a hull to soak it up.
Furthermore, this would make some amount of damage an inevitable outcome of battle for both victor and looser. I agree this will be annoying without more efficient repair tools in the game, (And definitely should wait until that's been implemented) but it would also associate an element of maintenance with running a ship, which might in turn give some meaning to the concept of infrastructure. It would also introduce a whole new balancing variable with a number of applications, ranging from making fighters more viable, to making defensive effects work more originally, to making ship-to-turret transfer of shielding and firepower balanced.
The shield penetration mechanic, I believe, would be the perfect balance to the defensive ion effect. The 50% cap could possibly be removed entirely if a penalty was installed in the form of the effect also increasing shield penetration. So, you very well could make your shield indestructible, but that would make it more of a damage-reducing screen than an actual damage-blocker. This would actually be the perfect inverse of the offensive ion effect- boost shield interactions in the ship's favour, but has to be complemented by another system to deal with the issue raw damage. A fully ioned gun needs a hull-damaging gun, a fully ioned shield needs a hull.
Less remaining shield percentage should of course mean more damage leaking through, but I'd say it's important not to make absolute capacity too relevant, or capital ships will have yet another unnecessary advantage over agility-based craft. (If anything, larger ships should have more damage leaks) If we still want it to be viable to to add more shields for better leak protection, one could make the base leak value a function of shielding divided by mass. That way, more shields means less leaking, but simply scaling up the entire does not.
The one downside I can think of is if it works too well. Cosmetically armored ships that you could tear apart with a handgun weren't it for the shields are bad, but fully encased armor cubes aren't much better. The value people do place on the aesthetic appeal of their ship will no doubt mitigate this, but we'll nevertheless be punishing things like exposing cannon barrel ends and thruster exhaust. The only solution to this I can think of might also help make hull more practical in general, namely;
Area-of-effect armor
Currently, the armor properties of blocks are strictly individual. Changing this to allow an armored block to partially extend it's damage-reducing shell to nearby ones would have a number of benefits for design. Firstly, it will reduce the incentive to entirely encase should-be-external systems. While a rather insignificant issue at the time, this will be more noticeable the more relevant we make hull, which I'm fairly certain will happen anyway, one way or another. Of course, making this armor sharing too powerful will destroy the point in properly encasing your ship all together, so some form of middle ground will have to be found.
It would also reduce the rather impractical nature of hull. The amount of hull you need for a single layer is, at best, about three times the square of the ship size, and it only gets worse the less spherical the ship is. If armor is partially shared, the absolute quantity of hull will have some relevance as well, not only the thickness at the point of impact. Again, balancing this properly might be problematic, but if it's done properly, it should make hull an overall more viable means of protecting your ship.
Finally, it might just make hull design a bit more interesting. If hull reinforces other, nearby hull, then how much protection a specific point enjoys depends on a lot more than the blocks directly above it, allowing for more varied ways to encase areas. If nothing else, we'd be able to build our hulls on structural support beams and actually have that be of any use.
The area-of-effect armor should be made an effect of the defensive punch-through. Mainly because it already deals with reinforcing hull, and has generally troublesome mechanic that could use an overhaul to fill a more unique function. It also seems like a good inversion of the offensive version, both work with redistributing excess damage points. The function would be rather simple- more effect blocks, more armor-sharing range and percentage. Some amount of armor-sharing should be an innate property of hull blocks, but the defensive effect should be able to increase it by an order of magnitude, if not more.
System Damage
As a solution to the issue of core drilling, a “ship health” mechanic is apparently being implemented. The basic nature of this would be a collective health pool for the ship that equals only a percentage of the ship’s total health, but takes as much damage as the ship does when attacked. When this health is depleted, which will happen way before the ship is completely eradicated, the vessel ceases to function. I can understand the philosophy behind this, as it provides a middle ground between an achilles-heel on ships, and having to destroy every single block. However, I also think it would a bit too hard-coded. As such, I suggest it’s implemented on a system level instead of a ship-wide one.
Basically, systems would have a secondary health collective to the unit, that decides at what capacity it could operate. It should start out equal to the total the block health, but drain several times faster when the unit takes damage, so that by the time it’s taken some serious damage it’s pretty much non-functional even if the majority of the blocks remain. This way, a system could take some amount of damage and still function, but once you’ve sliced your enemy’s generator in half their ship is pretty much without power. I believe this would be a much more natural-feeling way of defeating ships, not to mention more along the lines of what sci-fi otherwise has us used to.
I'm stepping even more firmly outside the realm of things I can make a proper case for the benefit of, but nevertheless, I feel compelled to point out another potential application for such a mechanic.
I do assume I'm not the only one who'd like phrases like "focus starboard firepower on the frigate's primary reactor" or "damage detected in the forward weapons array, currently operating at 60% capacity" to actually mean something. Sure, they can already, but only after you've dug through shields and hull, at which point your opponent is the definition of dead anyway. Shield penetration fixes half that problem, but hull would still be 100% protection.
(The pierce tertiary does mitigate that somewhat, but is far too small a part of the game.)
As such, I propose the system health also be made vulnerable to nearby impacts- if you do enough damage to piece of hull, it will affect the systems beneath it. Not significantly, but noticeably. The effect from damage taken with shields up an hull intact should be small but noticeable, with one of those gone it should be quite significant, and with neither present, devastating.
To ensure titans are not made exempt from this by virtue of sheer size, (no hull impact reaching far enough to affect inner systems) how far in counts as “beneath” should be determined by the force of the attack itself, not how much damage it ended up doing.
Additional layers of hull should probably dampen the effect of the indirect damage, though that may just be one too many balancing variables.
As usual, you have my apologies for taking your time.
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