Server suggestion: Beefing up armor.

[Panpiper]

As the game stands in native, hull armor isn't good for much. It will take a hit, but it is trivial to create weapons that will destroy even advanced hull on contact. The only reason right now to use hull on one's ship is cosmetic. In terms of combat utility, one is otherwise vastly better off using that mass to create stronger shields, which will protect all the ship, not just take a hit at one spot on your ship. (and that shield block can also take that hit).

What I would propose for an enterprising server host would be to change the stats for hull blocks. I've done this quite successfully in my own sandbox. Up the armor value of a standard armor block to 50%, which will increase the damage absorption capacity from it's current 134 to 200. Up the hit point value of 'advanced' armor to 250 'and' increase it's armor value to 65%. This will give it the ability to absorb slightly over 700 damage. Now we are approaching the point where armor actually starts to become somewhat useful.

Where it really starts to shine however, where armor could make a significant difference for a ship design is if a player combines this with the pierce effect bonus, especially a maxed out bonus of 30%. With the current armor stats in native, having full piercing effect will increase the damage absorbtion capacity of an advanced armor block to 1000 points. While this is nice, the cost of ten percent of one's mass in piercing effect modules is just too high. That amount of mass is again better put into shields and/or better shield regeneration, as while 1000 damage stopped is nice, it's just not enough to make the difference. With the change I propose however, an advanced armor block with maximum pierce effect would stop a full 5000 damage points. At that point, cracking through a ship's armor becomes a non-trivial affair.

Note, this can be played with if one desires an even greater effect for armor. Upping the armor value of advanced armor to 66% instead of 65%, when coupled with the +30% of the pierce effect bonus would bring the armor value to 96% instead of 95%, which increases the absorbtion to 6250 damage. Upping it to 67% results in 8333 damage stopped. Going to 68% brings it to 12500, and topping it all the way to 69% will give advanced armor blocks a whopping 25000 damage absorbtion capacity.

Note, under no circumstances should the armor value be increased beyond this, as with full pierce effect bonus, this will result in armor that is impervious to damage.

Anyone want to give this a go and see what ships result?

 

[aceface]

i would if there was a multplier value for all armour blocks, too tedious for me

 

[Panpiper]

i would if there was a multplier value for all armour blocks, too tedious for me

I would happily do the tedious work myself if there was a way to get it onto a multi-player server. I'd start a server myself if I knew the first thing about how to set one up and run it. (I'd also mod the heck out of the turn rate to make larger ships much more agile.)

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I do believe armor and hp values will get a balance pass over once the HP system is underway/implemented. These numbers do look good though but it may render some weapons useless as lower damage weapons are incapable of even scratching the faction block. If armor were similarly resilient then you could end up with situations where two ships cannot even hurt each other (two small fighters with hardened hull). Of course that problem might be solved by adding a minimal damage of 1. It may take a while to eat through the armor but it would at least be possible.

 

[Panpiper]

I do believe armor and hp values will get a balance pass over once the HP system is underway/implemented. These numbers do look good though but it may render some weapons useless as lower damage weapons are incapable of even scratching the faction block. If armor were similarly resilient then you could end up with situations where two ships cannot even hurt each other (two small fighters with hardened hull). Of course that problem might be solved by adding a minimal damage of 1. It may take a while to eat through the armor but it would at least be possible.

Well, using the suggested numbers, any weapon that could do twenty damage would do one point's worth to an advanced armor block 'if' it had maximum pierce bonus. It would take a lot of work to penetrate at that rate, but there 'would' be damage. That said, I expect fighters would be built knowing of the improved armor ratings and built accordingly. It is not particularly difficult to put a few sniper missiles on a fighter that could crack an armor block. That said, I expect such a modded server would attract more of the capital ship crowd than the fighters.

The planned HP system is something I am much looking forward to, but it is likely still quite a ways off. In the mean time, this might make all that hull cladding on 'roleplaying' ships worth something other than being a handicap.

 

[timethatswasted]

It's been done

http://starmadedock.net/threads/capital-ships-mod-and-test-server.5161/

Additional armor helps a little, but not much. The reall issue is that weapon have linier damage scaling. Damage values get so large so fast it's laughable and stupid. A 300 block missile array does 20,000 damage. That's enough to blow through almost a dozen advanced armor blocks, and a 300 block missile array isn't very hard to get a hold of.

It's just all very frustrating.

I feel there are other solutions to the HP issue then creating a whole system of meta data and calculations to further bog down the game.

 

[Jananton]

Well, I think it's a sound idea to get real armor differentiation between hull types. Additional though there should be a difference in weight that adds to the ship mass as well for the different types to make this concept real interesting and to avoid every build from now on being advanced armor only.

Greets,

Jan

 

[Smoke]

Hey, I am an admin on a few servers, and one of them I have implemented some much needed changes into the game
1. all weapons have been nerfed by 90%, you need 10 modules to do the same damage as a vanilla; weapon energy to damage costs are the exact same ratio as vanilla

I am still tinkering with the overall block health but I think I want all blocks health to be probably 10 to 50 times current

 

[Thalanor]

Smoke, by doing so however the usefulness ratio of shields vs armor remains unchanged. Shields need to scale better compared to weapons, but armor really needs a far greater utility boost than shields do.

 

[Smoke]

I agree that it doesn't really help in the Armour vs shields ratio, but I am not going for a one or the other balanced approach, I want it to bolster your defenses, and be actually worth using hull, or advanced amour for that matter. As you cannot raise block health more than 256 that I know of, damage reduction is where it's at, so, with aforementioned settings, the armour actually works, and shields are made stronger by proxy as well.
I have also changed the way shields regen, I removed the weird shield recharge getting hit nerf, that was lame
Now you always recharge your full amount, as long as you have the energy....
but when shields are broken
they are down for 20 seconds

 

[SunnyMao]

I agree strongly with this notion. Armor gets obliterated in one shot anyway, and astro technicians are useless as a result. And to make matters worse, putting armor on adds a huge amount to your mass which destroys your turning speed (though thankfully at least that can be edited by the server very easily).

But yeah atm, I don't bother armoring my ships. They look like garbage, with 1000's of shield modules sticking out here and there. But it is the most effective way to build a ship right now. Armor atm is really just for aesthetics, and on servers with unedited turning speed modifiers, you need to get rid of it completey just to min / max your ship.

The way I see it, armor needs to simply be stronger. Ideally perhaps it would become stronger when used in groups (i.e gets extra reduction per adjacent armor block perhaps). That would at least encourage a bit of thought when building ships. But I do think scaling is always going to be an issue if you can stack one thing, but not the other. So maybe armor also needs to get stronger based on the number of armor blocks in total on the ship.

 

[Snk]

Why not just make piercing effects give a set bonus?

 

[Panpiper]

Why not just make piercing effects give a set bonus?

Because the essential idea is to reward the use of hull, which most people use to make a ship pretty, not to reward the use of the defensive piercing effect. By increasing armor/hull itself, the bonus goes to all ships, including those built without regard to any such change.

 

[Snk]

You could make it so shields only extend around armor blocks and select few other things.

 

[jayman38]

You could make it so shields only extend around armor blocks and select few other things.

Hello, boarding parties!

 

[Snk]

Hello, boarding parties!

You could always use a warhead battering ram