Implemented Armor/Hull is Worse than Useless

[MacThule]

I really do appreciate the really cool looking ships with beautiful armor skins, cabins, ornamental bridges, lava engines, etc. My main focus is playing though, and this involves a lot of long-range flight and plenty of combat, so I find the really attractive ships to be huge, overpriced pieces of junk that can be shredded by much smaller, more efficiently designed ships with decent pilots.

Armor is worse than useless. I don't mind my neon-sign vessels; they're effective and funky-looking. But it would be nice if I could build armor-tanks too to mix up my strategies. Or if light armor could be an EFFECTIVE backup to shieldtanks.

A block that absorbs 400 dmg is hardly not armor in a game where the weapons are so hyper-inflated that many players don't even feel like their ship is combat-ready until it sports at leas one missile capable of inflicting 50,000 dmg in a single shot. Even 10 layers of advanced armor can't slow down the kind of super-weapons that are standard fare in this game, and advanced armor isn't exactly cheap. Now I don't know the problem is with weapons being too cheap and easy to mass, or that advanced armor can't even protect you from a rabid gnat, but with the way weapons currently work, it's not armor. A computer has 50 HP and advanced armor only 400? I can destroy a computer with my bare hands, but a sheet 10cm-thick, treated titanium plating? That take far, far more than 8-times the force to destroy.

As is, it's not worth using armor at all because its mass slows flight, slows jumping, interferes substantially with cloaking, causes lag (in large quantities and double/triple layers) and gives you nothing in return except making your ship look like ships look in movies.

I strongly suggest giving standard armor 250HP with 75% armor and increased mass, and giving advanced armor 1,000HP with 90% armor and reduced mass. Perhaps even adding a 3rd and even 4th degree of armor, maybe an armor type that distributes a percentage of damage to adjacent armor blocks. Maybe a higher HP armor with less armor rating but the ability to auto-regenerate slowly over time.

Real armor would make the astrotech repair unit actually useful as well, which it currently isn't since pretty much every attack destroys far more blocks than it damages.

 

[CyberTao]

There is a planned HP system in the works, no idea how it works, but should make armour useful.

The problem with starmade is it tries to make everything viable, so cranking up the armour too much means small weapon fire (like a fighter craft) might have problems. There is also the issue that people will always build bigger weapons to crack through armour, since coring is the quickest and easiest way of killing a player/pirate.

Maximum HP for any blocks is 255 though, due to byte limits. Increasing that would lead to increased memory used per block, which increases Lag.

 

[jstenholt]

Your suggestion makes absolutely zero sense, I am a worse Starmade player for having read it. I seriously hope you are trolling us right now.

First of all, this game is in alpha, the HP system is not implemented yet.
Secondly, armor is absolutely necessary for preventing insta-gibbing via punch-through weapons.
Lastly, if you engage a ship with weaponry that is good enough to vaporize your ship using pulse-missiles or a smaller ship takes out a large chunk of your ship because you didn't react quickly enough, you deserve to have your ship destroyed.

Smart playing is best playing, most battles are won before you fire a single shot, whether or not armor can tank well enough has nothing to do with it.

 

[Ithirahad]

I think a severe diminishing-returns system for weapons damage and shield capacity, along with a buff to armor on hull and systems modules, would be the easiest way to fix this. It would also fix titan superiority without making massive ships pointless (They'd still be giant freakin' flying fortresses, but everything would balance out a little better.)

 

[MacThule]

There is a planned HP system in the works, no idea how it works, but should make armour useful.

The problem with starmade is it tries to make everything viable, so cranking up the armour too much means small weapon fire (like a fighter craft) might have problems. There is also the issue that people will always build bigger weapons to crack through armour, since coring is the quickest and easiest way of killing a player/pirate.

Maximum HP for any blocks is 255 though, due to byte limits. Increasing that would lead to increased memory used per block, which increases Lag.

Good to hear

A block with 255HP and 99% armor rating could soak 25,500 damage before popping, more with a punch-through effect? And that limit shouldn't affect distributed damage effects.

Totally rules out higher HP, regenerative armor though... thanks for the info.

From what I see personally, standard weapons are already hyper-inflated on every server. No one flies light craft with small weapons. The weapons we face on a consistent basis are already super-weapons, and the armor we have doesn't do anything to even small arms.

Effective armor would offer a trade-off: the option for smaller power cores and less shields in exchange for real armor, so it wouldn't necessarily increase weapon inflation. Currently most ships are rocking 100K or more shields, but wouldn't need as much if armor worked. So their gross HP could end up being roughly equivalent because of the need to minimize mass for thrust, warp & cloak purposes.

Someone could totally tank shields AND layer super-armor but their ship would be slow as sin and un-cloakable. Better to choose one for a particular ship design and be able to maneuver, since a sitting duck is just waiting to be mobbed.

Currently shields are the only option for defense, and so people ALREADY build bigger weapons to defeat the mega shields.

 

[starhaiden]

I suggest advance hull reduces the damage of the projectile by 2%

 

[MacThule]

First of all, this game is in alpha

If the game was NOT in alpha, I would NOT be making suggestions.

the HP system is not implemented yet

Blocks do already have different HP.

armor is absolutely necessary for preventing insta-gibbing via punch-through weapons

Punch-through weapons do not bypass shields.
Once your shields are down, punch-through is the ONLY thing your armor will protect you against.

Lastly, if you engage a ship with weaponry that is good enough to vaporize your ship using pulse-missiles or a smaller ship takes out a large chunk of your ship because you didn't react quickly enough, you deserve to have your ship destroyed.

Pulse missiles? Really? So slow... so easy to PD in even the smallest ship. Pulse missiles are really your big reason why armor shouldn't be fixed?

Smart playing is best playing, most battles are won before you fire a single shot

I agree that smart playing is good playing is best playing is FTW playing is leet playing is good is best..... I'm not sure how it's relevant since my suggestion was not whether people should play well or play poorly.

I disagree that battles are won before they're fought. This is not true unless your only weapon is the size of the shield-tank you're bringing and size of your super-weapons. I've shredded plenty of idiots in pretty ships 10x the mass of mine who assumed they'd already won. They have no skill at fighting, they don't know when or where to commit, they don't know how to PD, and because they can't maneuver under the weight of all their decorative armor that protects them from nothing except a single effect type. They depend entirely on having a bigger ship then get all "WTF?!1" when they get popped.

If you disagree with my actual suggestions about armor, then thank you for saying so.

If you want to make this personal and insult me, then you should probably take your beef to the forum set aside for verbal abuse of other forum members and start your own thread about how much I suck instead of hijacking mine.

 

[Criss]

I think a severe diminishing-returns system for weapons damage and shield capacity, along with a buff to armor on hull and systems modules, would be the easiest way to fix this. It would also fix titan superiority without making massive ships pointless (They'd still be giant freakin' flying fortresses, but everything would balance out a little better.)

That is exactly what I was going to say and now I will link a video that has yet to be posted explaining my similar proposal to the devs.


Now we see one of these armor threads pop up about once a week or so. But the issue IS NOT the armor. It is weapons. Players need to realize that filling any ship, and I mean ANY ship, with more than 25% of its mass dedicated to weapons is what is causing the problem. It is the equivalent of attaching thrusters to a railgun and calling it a frigate. It's not. Its a mobile weapon. A superweapon if it's anything over 200 - 300 meters long. Just to get us grounded again, here's a few pictures.

This is the proportions I personally want to see on ships. I have no problem with players going beyond this, but they should be penalized for making ships into superweapons. Perhaps their shields cannot function at 100% due to the constant and massive weapon discharge. There are plenty of ways to make this work.

We know a few things too.
- Turrets will eventually cost power to rotate. I am also hoping their turn rates are based on mass as well, we will see.
- The new rail system could come with major turret changes and that could result in turret changes soon.
- The new health system will take the focus off coring. It is apparently why they are making the health system.

Having done the tests in the above video, I can tell you that the health system alone would not stop the very quick destruction of hull. It will hardly slow anyone down if they have big enough weapons. They just won't be able to core-kill the player. The weapons will need an adjustment if we want hull to matter.

Keep in mind that I do not think we should limit how many weapons a player places. There should be a sweet spot for efficiency. Best power usage, best turning speed on turrets, etc... Turrets should be taken into account btw. Going over this soft cap gives you a glass cannon. Placing less weapons means you have more of a tank, in either hull or shielding.

I'm also thinking that systems should impact the performance of one another if enough of them are placed on a ship. Then we can have ships that have legitimate roles. I hear plenty of players talk about how they already can achieve role-based combat with their ships. One player focuses on ion weapons, another has missiles, but they both have the same two weapon systems on their ships along with tons of shields. They think they have role-based ships, but it doesn't make a difference what weapon or effect is used so long as it wipes the enemy out seconds after their shield is gone.

I also don't see things like shield drain or power drain or the stop effects being used often. They should be. Combat should be at the point where the unused tactics/tools are needed, not just ignored. We won't get that just by making ships harder to kill. They need to be harder to use. Implementing changes like this would impact every other system in the game and they will be do for a rebalance no doubt. It wouldn't hurt to make the hull types weight different amounts either.

This isn't a perfect solution. With the way things are currently I can't give the best representation of the changes I would like to see. Implementing this change to weapons essentially buffs all other systems by granting them more space on ships. Feel free to tell me what you think.

 

[jstenholt]

If you want to make this personal and insult me, then you should probably take your beef to the forum set aside for verbal abuse of other forum members and start your own thread about how much I suck instead of hijacking mine.

No thanks, I am perfectly capable of both "abusing" you and refuting your inane arguments at the same time.

Thankfully, you're so good at missing the point of other peoples' arguments, I don't really have anything to respond to, as coincidentally, you seem to have missed the entire point of my arguments.

• The HP system is something you are obviously unaware of; do a little forum searching so as to avoid appearing ignorant.
• Your thoughts on punch-through being the only threat that armor counters is laughable, I can't tell you how many times I have been saved by a missile striking armor-plating.
• You seem to think that pulse missiles being powerful weapons was the whole basis of my last point, once again, very nice job missing the point.

I strongly suggest giving standard armor 250HP with 75% armor and increased mass, and giving advanced armor 1,000HP with 90% armor and reduced mass. Perhaps even adding a 3rd and even 4th degree of armor, maybe an armor type that distributes a percentage of damage to adjacent armor blocks. Maybe a higher HP armor with less armor rating but the ability to auto-regenerate slowly over time.

And holy mother of Schema, I didn't see this part of you post the first time I read it. You have got to be kidding me.



As for Van/Criss's points, hopefully Schema takes all of that into account, but I do want to point out that there is plenty of scifi where ships implement weapons that take up much larger percentages of a ship's mass, such as Halo, where most human ships are built around MAC cannons which span the entire length of most ships.

 

[CyberTao]

I have no problem with players going beyond this, but they should be penalized for making ships into superweapons

I highly doubt this will happen sadly. Devs (or at least Cal) seems determined to make the current config style stay, which is to say, linear scaling to allow anyone to make whatever ship they want, since it is the only way to really account for all sizes of ships.

If you put a sweet spot on weapons, people will invest in turrets. Making turrets cost power to rotate seems like a good counter, but I heard that they are gonna buff/fix docked reactors to be viable again in the next big update, so even that loses value as an argument in a way.

Configs will probably continue in the same style, but we were also given the ability to modify the configs ourself. Once servers are more stable with high player counts, and players get over not being able to haul around the same ships server to server, we can get more dedicated servers with the config set a certain way. If the values feel good, and the combat feels great, people will come, even if they can't bring their own vanilla ships. They just have to release a proper guide for changing the configs, and some server owners with enough backbone to try it.

 

[Criss]

I highly doubt this will happen sadly. Devs (or at least Cal) seems determined to make the current config style stay, which is to say, linear scaling to allow anyone to make whatever ship they want, since it is the only way to really account for all sizes of ships.

If you put a sweet spot on weapons, people will invest in turrets. Making turrets cost power to rotate seems like a good counter, but I heard that they are gonna buff/fix docked reactors to be viable again in the next big update, so even that loses value as an argument in a way.

Configs will probably continue in the same style, but we were also given the ability to modify the configs ourself. Once servers are more stable with high player counts, and players get over not being able to haul around the same ships server to server, we can get more dedicated servers with the config set a certain way. If the values feel good, and the combat feels great, people will come, even if they can't bring their own vanilla ships. They just have to release a proper guide for changing the configs, and some server owners with enough backbone to try it.

Yeah except turrets would be under the same jurisdiction. Turrets are their own entity right? Why wouldn't these rules apply to them directly? A turret is mainly comprised of weapon blocks is it not? Therefore they get a massive hit to their efficiency as well. Having a massive turret would be just as ineffective as having massive static weapon systems. It might be even more ineffective considering turrets have a higher percentage of weapon blocks than the ship carrying them. I actually like this. I would rather have turrets be influenced by this more so than a ship. Think of it. A turret has to track an enemy while it's own platform is moving around.

I also don't see why this couldn't be an option in the configs. Schema decided to do that with buying ships with credits, which is against what he wanted for the economical aspect. I don't see why he wouldn't give players the option to opt in or out of a this system. It really isn't a big change. It just tells the game to give diminishing returns on any entities weapons over that go over a percentage of the ships mass. That value could be another configurable option. If players wanted to they could just turn that value to 100% and essentially revert back to how it was before.
[DOUBLEPOST=1424820381,1424819938][/DOUBLEPOST]

As for Van/Criss's points, hopefully Schema takes all of that into account, but I do want to point out that there is plenty of scifi where ships implement weapons that take up much larger percentages of a ship's mass, such as Halo, where most human ships are built around MAC cannons which span the entire length of most ships.

Well I can understand that. And like I said this would't limit the number of blocks a player could use, just how effective the systems become as a player goes in one direction or another. This is for the sake of gamplay. We wouldn't want everyone using indestructible MAC cannons. I've been playing a game called fractured space recently. One ship is a sniper, with turrets that span almost the entire length of the ship. But it's made of paper. It isn't meant to fight point-blank and win. It has no defensive. There do need to be penalties for ships with massive weapon systems. That level of balance has to be reached or we will never get combat out of the simple and predictable process that it currently is.

 

[CyberTao]

Yeah except turrets would be under the same jurisdiction. Turrets are their own entity right? Why wouldn't these rules apply to them directly? A turret is mainly comprised of weapon blocks is it not? Therefore they get a massive hit to their efficiency as well. Having a massive turret would be just as ineffective as having massive static weapon systems. It might be even more ineffective considering turrets have a higher percentage of weapon blocks than the ship carrying them. I actually like this. I would rather have turrets be influenced by this more so than a ship. Think of it. A turret has to track an enemy while it's own platform is moving around.

I also don't see why this couldn't be an option in the configs. Schema decided to do that with buying ships with credits, which is against what he wanted for the economical aspect. I don't see why he wouldn't give players the option to opt in or out of a this system. It really isn't a big change. It just tells the game to give diminishing returns on any entities weapons over that go over a percentage of the ships mass. That value could be another configurable option. If players wanted to they could just turn that value to 100% and essentially revert back to how it was before.

1 big turret may not be effective, but 4 small ones would be. People like their alpha damage, enough to throw away shields and whine about turrets needing shields from the mothership. People will warp their designs to accommodate for what is most effective.

How would you set a optimal weapon size though? Similar to power groups with a softcap? Non-linear power costs are actually an option in the configs believe it or not, so just adding a group bonus + power scaling would create a sweet spot. (If we had more modding options, it would be easy to take the power formula, tweak it, and add it to other systems methinks).

But it would be 'disabled' by default no doubt, which means it probably wouldn't be common on servers (Some of them even removed the power penalty for waffleguns). But it would be nice as an option, and according to a thread I made not so long ago, there are a few people who wouldn't mind a bonus like power has applied to weapons and such, so who knows.

 

[Lecic]

Combine passive punch, pierce, and advanced hull, and you've got a surprisingly strong armor shell. You just need to COMMIT to hull armoring. A handful of blocks thick isn't going to do anything. Ships are supposed to be between 1/3 and 1/2 shield modules- replace a lot of it with lots of hull.

Hull becomes less and less effective with LARGER ship designs. For lighter weight craft combat, hull is extremely useful in multiple layers.

 

[HerrColonel]

I think PVP ship is good the way it is
The hull resistance is not very useful, but the HP system will make you want lot of hull to survivre shield break in my opinion

 

[Lecic]

1 big turret may not be effective, but 4 small ones would be. People like their alpha damage, enough to throw away shields and whine about turrets needing shields from the mothership. People will warp their designs to accommodate for what is most effective.

How would you set a optimal weapon size though? Similar to power groups with a softcap? Non-linear power costs are actually an option in the configs believe it or not, so just adding a group bonus + power scaling would create a sweet spot. (If we had more modding options, it would be easy to take the power formula, tweak it, and add it to other systems methinks).

But it would be 'disabled' by default no doubt, which means it probably wouldn't be common on servers (Some of them even removed the power penalty for waffleguns). But it would be nice as an option, and according to a thread I made not so long ago, there are a few people who wouldn't mind a bonus like power has applied to weapons and such, so who knows.

I believe Vanhelzing is saying that weapons start having diminishing returns once the overall weapon block mass of a ship reaches a certain point. So, regardless of ship size, at, say, 20% of ship mass, you'd start losing efficiency in your DPS per block (currently linear at 5 per block).

 

[Ithirahad]

That is exactly what I was going to say and now I will link a video that has yet to be posted explaining my similar proposal to the devs.


Now we see one of these armor threads pop up about once a week or so. But the issue IS NOT the armor. It is weapons. Players need to realize that filling any ship, and I mean ANY ship, with more than 25% of its mass dedicated to weapons is what is causing the problem. It is the equivalent of attaching thrusters to a railgun and calling it a frigate. It's not. Its a mobile weapon. A superweapon if it's anything over 200 - 300 meters long.

When I read this, I thought for a moment that this would be another one of your old "It's not the game's fault, players just need to stop making such big weapons because I say so" posts and nearly stopped reading. I was pleasantly surprised that this was not the case.

Just to get us grounded again, here's a few pictures.
<IMAGE SNIP BY ITHIRAHAD>

This is the proportions I personally want to see on ships. I have no problem with players going beyond this, but they should be penalized for making ships into superweapons. Perhaps their shields cannot function at 100% due to the constant and massive weapon discharge. There are plenty of ways to make this work.

Agreed fully.

We know a few things too.
- Turrets will eventually cost power to rotate. I am also hoping their turn rates are based on mass as well, we will see.
- The new rail system could come with major turret changes and that could result in turret changes soon.
- The new health system will take the focus off coring. It is apparently why they are making the health system.

Having done the tests in the above video, I can tell you that the health system alone would not stop the very quick destruction of hull. It will hardly slow anyone down if they have big enough weapons. They just won't be able to core-kill the player. The weapons will need an adjustment if we want hull to matter.

Yeah, this is my main issue with the HP system... It removes coring, but if hull is just another system then who cares where it goes?

Keep in mind that I do not think we should limit how many weapons a player places. There should be a sweet spot for efficiency. Best power usage, best turning speed on turrets, etc... Turrets should be taken into account btw. Going over this soft cap gives you a glass cannon. Placing less weapons means you have more of a tank, in either hull or shielding.

I'm also thinking that systems should impact the performance of one another if enough of them are placed on a ship. Then we can have ships that have legitimate roles. I hear plenty of players talk about how they already can achieve role-based combat with their ships. One player focuses on ion weapons, another has missiles, but they both have the same two weapon systems on their ships along with tons of shields. They think they have role-based ships, but it doesn't make a difference what weapon or effect is used so long as it wipes the enemy out seconds after their shield is gone.

I also don't see things like shield drain or power drain or the stop effects being used often. They should be. Combat should be at the point where the unused tactics/tools are needed, not just ignored. We won't get that just by making ships harder to kill. They need to be harder to use. Implementing changes like this would impact every other system in the game and they will be do for a rebalance no doubt. It wouldn't hurt to make the hull types weight different amounts either.

This isn't a perfect solution. With the way things are currently I can't give the best representation of the changes I would like to see. Implementing this change to weapons essentially buffs all other systems by granting them more space on ships. Feel free to tell me what you think.

I fully agree, Vanhelzing. Weapon sizes and optimal ship designs are a bit ridiculous, currently, and it really needs fixing somehow. Furthermore, true role-based ship construction needs to start being a thing, and I think your suggestion would do it pretty well.

 

[Criss]

I think PVP ship is good the way it is
The hull resistance is not very useful, but the HP system will make you want lot of hull to survivre shield break in my opinion

Not if weapons can still wipe out massive chunks of a ship, which they can. The recent tournament on the Starside server proved that once shields go down, an entire ship can be destroyed by an similarly sized ship in one shot. You will probably see videos of that posted soon.

When I read this, I thought for a moment that this would be another one of your old "It's not the game's fault, players just need to stop making such big weapons because I say so" posts and nearly stopped reading. I was pleasantly surprised that this was not the case.

That was before I really figured out how it could be applied in starmade. I never expected players to change. The game has to do it for them. I just didn't know how until I did my tests.

 

[CyberTao]

I believe Vanhelzing is saying that weapons start having diminishing returns once the overall weapon block mass of a ship reaches a certain point. So, regardless of ship size, at, say, 20% of ship mass, you'd start losing efficiency in your DPS per block (currently linear at 5 per block).

I'm well aware of what he is after, but that becomes a pain to modify in the configs, you would more or less just get on or off, unless you have excellent math skills and can modify the curve.

By adding a curve on power costs (non-linear), and a grouping bonus (more dps) for weapons with a soft cap, you could create a pseudo ideal weapon size, where power per dps increases beyond what could be considered efficient (plus a nice little bonus to small ships/weapons, maybe).

If weapon inefficiency is tied to a % of mass, you still reach the point where weapons can easily wreck hull, and each computer is independent anyways, so with a cap of 10%, people will just use 8 computers to make 80% of their ship an effective weapon. You need to create an ideal weapon group size, and larger ships can just mount more of them. You still have the same problem, but there groups become plentiful enough that they can't put them all on the hotbar.

 

[Criss]

I'm well aware of what he is after, but that becomes a pain to modify in the configs, you would more or less just get on or off, unless you have excellent math skills and can modify the curve.

By adding a curve on power costs (non-linear), and a grouping bonus (more dps) for weapons with a soft cap, you could create a pseudo ideal weapon size, where power per dps increases beyond what could be considered efficient (plus a nice little bonus to small ships/weapons, maybe).

If weapon inefficiency is tied to a % of mass, you still reach the point where weapons can easily wreck hull, and each computer is independent anyways, so with a cap of 10%, people will just use 8 computers to make 80% of their ship an effective weapon. You need to create an ideal weapon group size, and larger ships can just mount more of them. You still have the same problem, but there groups become plentiful enough that they can't put them all on the hotbar.

Larger ships can't turn as fast as smaller ships can maneuver. That's easily solvable. That's how it works in many games. If my dreadnought can hit the tiny frigate that isn't moving, it deserves to get completely wasted. Against another dreadnought it will only damage a portion of it's hull.

 

[Lecic]

Not if weapons can still wipe out massive chunks of a ship, which they can. The recent tournament on the Starside server proved that once shields go down, an entire ship can be destroyed by an similarly sized ship in one shot. You will probably see videos of that posted soon.

That was before I really figured out how it could be applied in starmade. I never expected players to change. The game has to do it for them. I just didn't know how until I did my tests.

Yes, most ships were wrecked quite horribly after shields dropped, but I noticed one particular design, which had a large glass shield at the front, survived almost as long as it did without shields as it did with them. Said ship still died in the first round, but its hull defenses held up very well.

I think most of the ships in B&S would have lasted a bit longer without shields if they'd had more layers of hull. That ship size is actually great for hull being useful provided you have multiple layers, but most people tried to just minmaxed their other stats as much as possible (my own team included. Lots of exposed weapon blocks and thruster striped along the hull.)

If weapon inefficiency is tied to a % of mass, you still reach the point where weapons can easily wreck hull, and each computer is independent anyways, so with a cap of 10%, people will just use 8 computers to make 80% of their ship an effective weapon. You need to create an ideal weapon group size, and larger ships can just mount more of them. You still have the same problem, but there groups become plentiful enough that they can't put them all on the hotbar.

Unless it's total weapon mass on the ship, not per-computer.