A simple solution for Hull Mechanics

[McDili]

So starting off, our two types of physical defense in the game are shields, and hull.



They both achieve the same goal, defense. But they are both mechanically different in how they achieve this goal.



Shields have a strength and they have a weakness. Missiles do a fixed amount of damage against shields, and are ineffective against them. AMC's do full damage to shields. So we can determine that shields are strong vs missiles and weak vs AMC's. Neat.



So Hulls. They have a weakness and a... another weakness. Missiles ravage the hull, AMC's ravage the hull too.



Why does this happen?

Simple. Where shields have a mechanic in place for missiles, Hull has Armor Rating. Unfortunately, Armor Rating only goes so far. Hulls have a fixed limit where their armor rating means nothing. That limit is when anything doing more damage than 400(Hardened Hull limit) damage will punch through in one shot. This effectively makes hull useless very quickly in the progression.

So useless in fact, that it becomes an aesthetic choice. If you were to actually place shield dispersers in place of hull on some of your bigger ships, you would actually be better off. If hardened hull gets destroyed in one shot, then in comparison to shields you basically added mass on your ship for nothing. If you had used shields, you would have gained shield strength for that same amount of mass, and the same physical protection that the hardened hull would have given you too, because the shield block also gets destroyed in one shot.



How do we fix it?

Yet again, simple! So simple in fact, the concept already exists in the game!

But before we go into said concept, let's explore a few options we have available to us, and why they don't work.

1. "We could have Mass Related Hull Strength!" While it sounds nice at first, it doesn't make any logical sense. If I have a particular part of my ship that is only 1 block thick of hull, and then a 100x100x100 block on my nose, that 1-block thick portion would have extra hull strength, despite it being a weaker position. So, this quickly falls short.
2. "Add more Hull Blocks with higher HP and Armor Rating into the game" A simple solution! That's what we're looking for, simplicity! Unfortunately, it's also a bad decision. If you have a bunch of different types of hull that all function the same mechanical way, only the best type of hull is worth it and the others are obselete. Not to mention, it doesn't actually solve our problem here. Even though they might have higher HP and Armor, weapons still scale infinitely. At some point or another, the new Hull Blocks will still get treated like paper. Not only that, but missiles also become even less effective than they were before, so it only serves to exaggerate our problem, as players will still only use AMC's because, even with more HP and Armor on Hull, AMC's are still the better choice. So again, this "Solution" doesn't actually solve anything.

So finally, I bring to you a simple concept. Just as Missiles are weak vs Shields, make AMC's weak vs hull.

This could be done by having AMC's function simarly to missiles in which, AMC's do a fixed amount of damage against hull. For example: 100 damage to hull no matter what. It would take out standard hull in 2 shots, and hardened hull in 4 shots each block. That's just an example, the number can be left up to the discretion of the developers, but the concept works.

Think about it, shields would still be weak to AMC's. However, you'd have reason to use Hull. It's the defensive option that gives you the opposite mechanical defense from shields. They would be strong vs AMC's, and weak vs Missiles.

It would also make missiles significantly more viable to use against decently plated hull.



On a side-note, since we already have two types of hull, I would like to see Standard Hull allow you to be maneuverable, in comparison to Hardened hull slowing you down. That way the less defense Standard Hull gives you is justified on a thrust/mass ratio or something of that sort.



Feedback

What do you all think?

 

[Dogdard]

Agreed

 

[CrusaderDeleters]

Just increase the damage reduction it gives. My one ship deals 3300 per shot (about), and only 33 damage to a Faction Module. 99% armor will treat paper as if a steel plate, so then you\'ll have to spend more time attacking hulls. I believe the current shielding on the hulls is about 50%, which, again, does nothing. I would do 1650 to a single hardened hull block, and, as usual, obliterate it.

 

[Mr_Crow9000]

Sounds amazing! A perfect solution that also make missiles useful for once.

And for the post above me... That\'s not a better solution. Its still a viable solution but saying its better doesnt make it so.

 

[lazarus78]

More hull blocks are inevitable. Current harden hulls drop even the most powerful AMCs damage to half, alibet it is still possible for it to be a LOT of damage, adding in high HP and high armor hull blocks will quickly negate most AMC setups. The balance is in the cost it would be to aquire the stronger hulls.

The weapons scale infinatly, given the space, but there is practical limitations imposed if you want that weapon to be manuverable. Since weapons can get stronger, so should the hulls.

 

[CrusaderDeleters]

Provide a reasonable argument that makes it worse.

 

[CrusaderDeleters]

How about this: Hulls, 100 HP, splits damage in half. Requires whatever to make.

Hardened Hulls, 500 HP, negates 80% of the damage. Requires whatever (l3 ore) and the hull of the same color.

Severely Hardened Hulls, 1000 HP, negates 90% of the damage. Required Hardened Hulls and whatever to make. (l4 or l5 ore)

This way, Hardened Hulls requires a damage of 2500 in order to be one-shotted, and SHH will require 10k damage in order to one-shot, which you\'ll probably need a capital-sized AMC gun to one-shot.

 

[McDili]

With this post, you and Lazarus are effectively calling for the same solution. More Hull blocks, that are more powerful.



This throws off the balance of small ships. If I make fairly small fighter/bomber fitted with these hulls, in your own words it would take a capital-sized AMC just to take out one block in one shot...



That goes beyond mentioning that missiles are also affected by such a suggestion.



Lazarus said \"Weapons go up in power, so should hull\" well Lazarus, you also said \"Make Hull stronger by making it thicker\" which is the same way weapons get more powerful. So, hull should get more powerful by the design of a ship and how you thicken it, not by adding newer more powerful hull blocks to the game.



So as you can see, the concept of AMC\'s doing a fixed amount of damage to Hull as I mentioned in the OP, is the best way presented so far to make Hull useful, make missiles useful, and create a more balanced depth on defense without throwing ship-size balance out of whack.

 

[Mr_Crow9000]

What he said lol :D

 

[lazarus78]

You are forgetting that smaller ships won\'t have as thick of a hull and bigger ships will undoubtedly have turrets which could dish out far more DPS and easily take out a fighter. Plus the stronger hulls will be heavier meaning slower movement for the fighter and easier target for turrets. It balances out, you are just not seeing it.

Your proposes solution makes about the same sense as mass based resistance. It does\'t take into consideration that there WILL be more hull blocks.

The only logical way to increase defensive capability is to improve the defence, not gimp or limit the offence.

 

[MrFURB]

I have to say, there\'s been some good ideas coming from you lately. I wholeheartedly agree that simple stat changes will only change the problem, and that mechanical changes are needed in order to resolve mechanical issues.

 

[McDili]

Just because someone starting out with a small ship won\'t have access to the aforementioned \"Super Hardened Hulls\" or what have you, doesn\'t mean somebody can\'t or won\'t build it.



I\'m sorry that the mechanics behind my proposal are lost on you, but I\'m afraid I\'m not sure how to be more clear about it.



But, I\'ll give it one more try! You already understand the problems with mass-based resistance, as you mentioned in another thread. But my proposal makes some very different changes. You said in the other thread that, instead of mass-based resistance, you want people to focus on thickening their hull in places they deem critical for their ship to survive. My proposal here encourages that tactic even more.



It is not good practice to make balance proposals on uncertainties. Whether there will be more hull blocks or not is irrelevant, it isn\'t here now, so I am making suggestions that not only takes into consideration what we have available to us now, but I\'m also trying to keep things simple and as technically possible within the engine as they can be.



The point here is, there is no need for more hull blocks. We don\'t need them. We have all we need right now, and just a couple of mechanical changes will solve the existing problems. Adding more items that achieve the same goal will only exaggerate our problems.



Where a new addition of super strength hull might solve the problem of AMC\'s being too powerful against hull, but I\'m concerned that you haven\'t thought of the impact it will have on missiles. If new more powerful hull blocks are added to the game, it will not change the balance between AMC\'s and missiles, and missiles will still be less-than-ideal to use compared to AMC\'s. There\'s a plethora of other complications that could arrise from the addition of new hull blocks. So as you can see, just throwing in more powerful blocks that share the same mechanics will bring about more problems then they fix.



I will have to disagree with what you said regarding increasing defense capability without touching weapons. It is very clear that there is a gap between AMC\'s and Missiles on viability, and that Shields provide a mechanical defense where as Hull does not. My proposal incorporates some depth and balance with what we have currently.



Finally, please do not take this the wrong way, but I\'m afraid you haven\'t submitted any argument or scenario where my proposal causes any problems. I implore you to try though, if you find any flaws with this proposal of mine then I welcome it, in case I may have overlooked something.

 

[McDili]

I appreciate the gesture Furb. Hopefully my thought train doesn\'t stop here, I\'d like to take every opportunity I can to make a positive impact on the game.

 

[z1967]

Well, I will say that your suggestion, as stated numerous times before, is probably the best yet in relation to hull defense. I have to impose a hypothetical though. If I use a ship, that has multiple guns capable of dealing 100 hull damage, if you suggestion is implemented, will four of these guns take out a hardened hull block in one hit? or would they all do a collective damage of 100? This is important as many ships uses more than one gun.

Regardless, I still like your suggestion as it adds more depth and balance as opposed to a bigger problem that more strong blocks would add.

 

[Stakhanov]

Unfortunately there\'s too few servers trying that , even though it\'s easy to mod and doesn\'t require any clientside downloads afaik.

Note that armor rating can grant invulnerability to weaker projectiles - 96% will block single damage shots , 99% will block up to 100 damage shots. Meaning you can make hardened hull with the same overall durability as standard , but immune to small weapons.

A more needed mechanical change would be lower hull mass , which would also allow fancier stealth ships.

 

[McDili]

First I want to start off by saying that the numbers I used in my proposal was just an example, it isn\'t a \'necessity\' that AMC\'s do 100 damage to all hull, but rather that AMC\'s do a low, fixed amount of damage to hull.

Personally, I feel like 100 is a good medium, but Schema might disagree with that(Server option maybe?)



To answer your question, in your hypothetical, if your AMC\'s are capable of doing 100 damage or more and you have 4 separate AMC\'s, then yes if they all converged on the same block then it would destroy a hardened hull block in, technically 4 shots in very quick succession.

However it is important to note that ships move, so perhaps in an AI battle, and especially in a PvP scenario, hitting the same block 4 times could prove to be challenging against moving targets.

My favorite thing about this though is that if you were to thicken the hull, it it makes it that much harder to punch through with AMC\'s.

For that reason, Missiles would be of viable importance, and if the core is heavily armored with multiple layers of hardened hull, you may want to find a weaker armored part, like possible the engines so you can slow the ship down and get better shots for instance.



I hope that answered your question, and thanks again for posting feedback!

 

[McDili]

So I want to clarify that I am well aware that the stats on hull can be changed.



However, as I tried to highlight before, simple stat changes don\'t really solve the problem here.



The problem with changing the existing stats on hull is that it affects AMC\'s and Missiles together. So if hull is given better stats, AMC\'s will be less effective, but then so will missiles. A change like this will just prolong a fight, and missiles will still be comparitively worse than AMC\'s.



That\'s why I\'ve proposed a change in mechanics rather than stats. Such a simple mechanical change as I have proposed will help to solve issues with AMC vs Missile balance, and also make Hull a more valid and useful defense tool. Ultimately, it could make combat just a bit more interesting.



EDIT: I also agree that standard hull should have less mass than hardened hull, as you said it would make it a better choice for stealth ships, but it would also justify why the standard hull is destroyed quicker than hardened hull, as hardened hull in this scenario provides more defense at the expense of more mass.

 

[z1967]

Thanks for clarifying that for me. You have a point that it would be hard to hit the same area on a ship four times much less all at once. And, once again I say that this is a great way of making hull more effective.

 

[lazarus78]

I never suggested changing hull stats, but adding new hulls. There are many different mineral ore blocks. They will have to be used for something, otherwise they are pointless, and those uses will be the creation of more and better hull blocks, among other things.

 

[omelet]

I accept that you are making this suggestion for an immediate fix, and your idea sounds good, but I think it would add depth to the game to have more hull types and strengths in the game. And more weapon types. It does not seem too far fetched that there will be more than two viable weapon or hull types.

Some discussion topics: So, if more weapons are added, how does this fit into your idea? Make all weapons either a shield or a hull hit, and weak for the opposite? Do missiles even need to be ineffective against shields in the first place? Should any weapons be good against both, or should it be a trade off between the two? Or should the effectiveness against defenses on all weapons just be a percent that you can configure like fire rate and damage is now?

I am not suggesting hull levels is a fix to the problem you mentioned with missiles vs amc. In fact I think it could work well together and be consistent with the current mass vs power tradeoff mechanism.

For instance, what is the balance between shields and AMCs now? Both have trade offs associated with mass vs power. As you add shields or AMCs, you add mass, which is undesireable. The same thing can be done with hull levelling: allow scaling with diminishing returns.

If it is balanced correctly the situation you mentioned about the infinitely scaled weapons and obsolete lower levels of hull does not need to exist. If the game progressively increased the mass significantly for the higher level hulls it would be a trade off and not desireable on small ships, like you said. If the economy is balanced correctly the high level hulls could be limited by availability also.

Another idea to make AMCs less effective against hulls in tandem with the levelling idea, is to make missiles immune to the levelling properties of the hull, so they will do a fixed block count damage based on their power.