An idea for Hulls.

[LordChicken]

Am I the only one exited for the new Weapons System coming out? I thought so.

The only concern, however minor it may be is that when we get out new weapons, core drilling is solved and turn rates are adjusted. That hulls will still be the paper covering to our gun boats. Like a 1 block thick paint job if anything else. I got in a argument with my brother about having hull at all, after all it has about the same amount of health, and shields would be more effective then a paint job. So that got me thinking...

Now, I know no one wants hulls to be pointless. Look in any thread were they are mentioned and people will complain up and down about 'butter hulls' and how once your shield is down they will be poking holes not into your ship, but threw it. But we also don't want tiers of hulls(at least I don't) because by having something that is the same, but better exist in the universe means that everything below it doesn't exist.

For the purpose of this article, a block will have 1 HP. I know they have more then that, but I am counting blocks that need to be cut threw to reach vital systems, and frankly on fighters that tends to be just 1 block.

Here is my proposal: Specialized Hulls.
Now, I know what your thinking-

So like, freighter hull and fighter hull? Isn't that way too complex and frankly, wasteful?​

No, actually I was thinking of specializing hulls based off were on your ship they were supposed to be, rather then what kind of ship they would go on. I propose 3 kinds of hull:

Light Hull
Health 2(Effectively 4 with Damage Reduction)
Mass .1(Same as a regular block, if my number is wrong, change it to the right one.)
50% Damage Reduction

Light hull is effectively what butter hull 'butter hull', but with twice the amount of health. This is the hull you use to make the hallways inside your ship, or your stealth/scout fighters. This would be the hull you start out with when you fist spawn. This hull would be the cheapest and essayist to get/make.

Heavy Hull
Health 8(Effectively 16 with Damage Reduction)
Mass .4(four times the mass of a lesser block)
50% Damage Reduction

The Skin of a ship, this hull is heavy, with four times the mass and four times the health as light hull it too heavy to fill a ship with without making your ship move. Due to its high mass placing 1 block of heavy hull is like placing 4 regular blocks. The mass quickly adds up. This is the stuff heavy fighters are made of, and the stuff that covers larger ships. With its massive amount of health, taking out the outer hull becomes a important part of combat, being as the inner systems are far, far squishier then this heavy layer of armor.

The goal of Heavy Hull is simple: To be the first line of defense when a shield goes down, but be heavy enough that ship builders will shy away from filling a ship with the stuff, unless they want a slow as a turtle ship with no thrust(but man would that ship be tanky). It would be more expensive then light hull, but still fairly easy to get.With a large amount of health one would want to repair it, rather the replace it once it got damaged.

Core Hull
Health 32
Mass 1.6
50% Damage Reduction(75% with Shield on)
Requires Power Constantly(A fairly large amount) if power gos out then then the Shield effect turns off.
Shield: +25% Damage Reduction. Repairs 1 Health a second, requires more power, the longer its activated.


Core Hull. Fore the days that we get Pilot chairs and our core needs to be protected from all the problems of the world. This hull has high energy costs, financial costs, and raw material costs. It has an insane mass, making 'covering' a ship with this stuff the death nail to your thrust and power supply(not to mention your wallet). Core Hull is hard to kill, its the point of the hull, and it dos it the best, at massive costs. Used to make a 'safe' spot on a ship, were as long as the power holds out, those inside are effectively invincible. Will probably see more use on making Stations tougher then making battle ships unbeatable. Even if it doesn't get used a lot, its nice to know that if you really want to build a safe room, you can.

Why Mass?​

The balancing aspect I chose for everything(but core, and thats the most optional of the three) was mass. The reason for this is simple, mass is used to calculate thrust, witch in turn is the measurement of a ships agility, or how fast it can get up and go. My logic being that a more heavily armored ship should have less get up and go then a less armored one.

Wrap Up​

So there you have it, three hulls, each with a purpose, each with a down side that prevents you from simply trying to make all your ships out of the best hull. If my numbers don't add up. The purpose of this long, over drawn out suggestion was to draw up a non linear progression for hulls, so that new players and old can still hold value for the same resources, and not have 1 type of hull go extinct because its just as valuable as dirt. Also, if only light hull spawns naturally and is also a component to making the heavier hulls, it guarantee's that all tiers of hulls hold value, and won't simply fall into worthlessness the moment a server gets big.

I used a count of blocks instead of actual health just to illustrate a point, the point being this is how many normal blocks, lets say shields. You would need to use if you wanted to make a wall just as strong as this one block. With light hull you might be able to reason you don't need any in your ship, but with Heavy hull you would need to coat your ship in a 16 block thick skin if you wanted the same protective qualities.

Note: Core hull would probably be the most optional of all these hulls, being how its a bit complex.

Thank you for your time.

 

[Syzygy]

Hull simply cannot be made viable by making it stronger, except for small craft. Large ships will get their large multi-million damage rapid-fire cannons and break through hull in one shot anyway like it always had, unless you make it insanely strong to block multi-million damage shots, in which case you can use it to make tiny fighters invulnerable to other tiny fighters, so you'd want tiny fighters to be super-hull and large ships to be butter hull.

If you want to make hull viable, you don't want to increase it's health. You want it to be able to withstand X shots of any damage. That or specializing hulls to be strong against one type of weapon, which I'm not at all in favor of.

 

[marcus87]

The health of hardened hull should simply rise the more hull there is on a ship. That way a fighter may have 10hp per block and a titan 100.000 per block. I know people will complain that fighter then cannot harm capital ships, but that is when bombers come into play. There could be a special weapon that does additional damage to hull and is ineffective in large numbers and very short range, as to prevent big ships using them.

And before the fighter jockeys now complain that even then a bomber cannot beat a capital. Well they should not. And with the upcoming update there will come a better economy system. So when you fight with a fighter against a Titan you are simply out of your league since that thing must have cost more than 1000000 fighter.

 

[CyberTao]

As for the OP, I dont think it will help cause Large ships are deisgned to Break shields and then chew through hull :u even if you buff the Hull strenght, it will still break through it with ease compared to the shields. Also, I believe there is a upcoming HP system, but there is no written info on it anywhere :u maybe in the Q&A but I dunno. Dont even think this will help balance anymore, since it seems like it will be just like a second layer under shields - 3-

My personal favourite idea is that grouped hull (Touching and of same type) combines their HP (Linear increase for Normal hull, but maybe Exponential for HH so armour plates?) It then Breaks ships into 3 or maybe 4 tiers of health;

Shields with HP and no resistance (maybe make them tweak-able to give bonus/weakness to certain weapon types)
Armour Plating with High HP and high %resistance
Hull plating with HP and low %resistance
The Sheer Block number :u

Would add more to the Design of a Ship, and Fighters could possibly Aim for the weakness between the plates as Larger ships keep the shields down.

 

[ltmauve]

Er, no to OP and marcus87 as well.
No to OP, and CyberTao put a good reason up there.

As to Marcus87, that kind of suggestion wouldn't work. There is not reason for me not to have a bunch of those anti-capital weapons on the front of a capital, and then shoot the other capital with it. Such mechanisms aren't a good idea.

I personally prefer that adjacent hull (up to 7 or so in each direction in a cross) increases the armor a bit.

 

[LordChicken]

Hull simply cannot be made viable by making it stronger, except for small craft. Large ships will get their large multi-million damage rapid-fire cannons and break through hull in one shot anyway like it always had, unless you make it insanely strong to block multi-million damage shots, in which case you can use it to make tiny fighters invulnerable to other tiny fighters, so you'd want tiny fighters to be super-hull and large ships to be butter hull.

If you want to make hull viable, you don't want to increase it's health. You want it to be able to withstand X shots of any damage. That or specializing hulls to be strong against one type of weapon, which I'm not at all in favor of.

I agree with the specialization to damage types, all it dose is make your ship into a circus of damage. Jumping around to find the attack that dos the most with the least cost. The problem with making Hull immune to the first X number of shots that hit it is you have just made anything that isn't a machine gun obsolete.

The only concern, however minor it may be is that when we get out new weapons, core drilling is solved and turn rates are adjusted. That hulls will still be the paper covering to our gun boats. Like a 1 block thick paint job if anything else.

The base assumption of the article is that combat received better balance before any change to hull is made. In a better world were mammoth ships can't aim like snipers, agility would be more important. If turrets no longer core drill then combat will take longer when a shield gos down. In a more balanced Starmade you would survive more then an instant when your shields fall off(Unless you stood in front of a mammoth ship and let them shoot you with their main gun. Then your dead).

I am a strong believer that in the future, Starmade will have better combat, that eventually big ships wont just chug threw everything and people will find reasons to use smaller craft. In that future the agility of a ship will be more important(Turn rates will help more then most people know). If turrets have turn rates and so do ships then you will see combat turn on its head. Large bulky turrets turning slower(but probably hitting harder, unless its all armor) while small unarmored turrets spinning around faster alone would change the relationship of large ship and small ship, especially if small ship doesn't vanish in a puff of dust the moment combat starts. With core drilling gone(or at least impractical) people will look to find new ways to take ships down as quickly and cheaply as possible, and with that new tactics will appear in Starmade more present then before.

I don't think the hull issues of today will be exactly the same as the hull issues of tomorrow, especially if things change as much as I believe it will after the next couple of updates.

Thank you for your time.

 

[rece ktore leczo]

1) Small fighters and bombers can't damage titan, because of its shields.

2) Once the shields are down it's fine to deal damage, for small ship to drill into the core of titan would take a lot of time

3) I think more durable hull blocks were suggested few times before, but i'm not sure if these ideas are on this or the old site

4) Weapons update with effect blocks changing the effect of hit, can be used both as offensive and defensive systems (if i'm right), but we need to wait for the next update to be sure how would it work (or play dev version)

5) Probably there would be a HP system for the ships preventing core-drilling

 

[Lecic]

There is going to be an HP system for ships in the future...

 

[CyberTao]

There is going to be an HP system for ships in the future...

It can be hard to keep track of what is planned and what is not :u You kinda have to spent alot of time in chat to even keep ontop of things it seems. But its interesting to see what ideas people have, and what opinions and ideas it brings * ^* It also may give ideas for Future mods.

 

[NeonSturm]

Thrust per block scales with ship/array size.
It makes a small ship with few thrust and a large ship with medium thrust more even in terms of evasion, though the server speed limit limits extremely large ships in evasion.

I like the approach with mass, but mass has to increase more than effective hp as the evasion ability increases with a lower size.

You can get more hp and fewer blocks, thus have more hp -for example at front- without making your ship look ugly. But the game has a max hp value of 8 bit, thus 0..255. You have to balance effective hp with armour, not hp.

But if you want that players use it for hull and not the heavy version to surround the core, you have to make vitals more vulnerable.
Give them a radius-explosion on death killing adjacent non-hull blocks when they are killed by a weapon (not another radius-explosion from another block) for example like it is suggested elsewhere in this forum.

Hull simply cannot be made viable by making it stronger, except for small craft. Large ships will get their large multi-million damage rapid-fire cannons and break through hull in one shot anyway like it always had, unless you make it insanely strong to block multi-million damage shots, in which case you can use it to make tiny fighters invulnerable to other tiny fighters, so you'd want tiny fighters to be super-hull and large ships to be butter hull.

If you want to make hull viable, you don't want to increase it's health. You want it to be able to withstand X shots of any damage. That or specializing hulls to be strong against one type of weapon, which I'm not at all in favor of.

But one problem is, that it would create even more blocks - and that is what I don't like, as hull is used for decoration too.

 

[LordChicken]

Ive been stewing on the replies to this thread and have been working on a new idea for hulls, that ill post some time later today, in its own thread with its own poll.

Thank you all for your time and energy.

 

[aceface]

Hull armour should not be increased, but when a shot hits hull it should spread the damage as if it had "absorbed it" so if i shoot a 100 dmg cannon at hull it will maybe spread 10 dmg to the 10 closest hulls etc. But when you don't have hull you will have your systems wiped out like they would now.

 

[[email protected]]

The health of hardened hull should simply rise the more hull there is on a ship. That way a fighter may have 10hp per block and a titan 100.000 per block. I know people will complain that fighter then cannot harm capital ships, but that is when bombers come into play. There could be a special weapon that does additional damage to hull and is ineffective in large numbers and very short range, as to prevent big ships using them.

And before the fighter jockeys now complain that even then a bomber cannot beat a capital. Well they should not. And with the upcoming update there will come a better economy system. So when you fight with a fighter against a Titan you are simply out of your league since that thing must have cost more than 1000000 fighter.

Your right big ships should be hard to kill big ships should be hard to kill since how long and how many resoucres it takes to build it

 

[Ithirahad]

The health of hardened hull should simply rise the more hull there is on a ship. That way a fighter may have 10hp per block and a titan 100.000 per block. I know people will complain that fighter then cannot harm capital ships, but that is when bombers come into play. There could be a special weapon that does additional damage to hull and is ineffective in large numbers and very short range, as to prevent big ships using them.

And before the fighter jockeys now complain that even then a bomber cannot beat a capital. Well they should not. And with the upcoming update there will come a better economy system. So when you fight with a fighter against a Titan you are simply out of your league since that thing must have cost more than 1000000 fighter.

Agreed. Unless of course you have a few million fighters, in which case you can disable the Titan's turrets, fly behind it, burn the shields, and start munching on the ship slowly with missiles.

 

[lio_oVo_oil]

I agree that there should be different types of armor plating, rather than tiers. It seems fair to have smaller fighters able to chew through larger ships' armor somewhat easily (if their shields are eliminated, and the same small area is being fired upon) as well as making smaller ships not necessarily be invisible to massive supercollider-strength cannons, while being able to endure lighter fire, such as other fighters/bombers/etc. The core is most certainly the component of a ship that must, at all costs, be protected. Having core armor use energy for an energized, self-shielding last defense before the ship in its entirety is doomed to fall is not such a bad idea. How would it be unfair to the purchaser of the massive flagship, if smaller fighters could kill its secondary line of defense like cutting through hard bread with a butter knife? The heaviest armor should be saved for the carriers, flagships, and over-sized mega cannons, who aren't suppose to be the fastest things out there, only the most hard-hitting, or be carriers of the fighters and bombers that bores through the enemy's fleets like termites through your houses' pine/poplar/spruce supports. In war, no one person is "god", only the force that sustains the fewest losses, and who plows through the enemy like they really are butter. Therefore, you can't say that it would be a bad idea for multiple types of hull, rather than tiers of weak, strong, and god-like hulls, which seem, to me, to ruin the multiplayer (and even singleplayer) experience by destroying the very thing we call an "economy". (Though, to be fair, these don't kill the economy, they simply devalue certain items which are used for most, if not all, ships.)

 

[lio_oVo_oil]

Oh, and to add on, in response to Ithirahad, I'm sorry to tell you that it makes absolutely no sense for missiles to be the best weaponry against armor, maybe shields, but I believe that plasma, being thousands of degrees in heat, would surely melt through outer plating, as well as anything inside of that shell you call a "titan". I think the current weapon systems that are in place are fine (obviously they need tweaking as far as the stat balancing), and having the increments at which health is increased increase in some formula, such as hull_health=default_health*(number_of_hull_blocks*1.5), would make these monstrous ships that you speak of, "gods", and I do mean having impermeable shells, which eat plasma, missiles, and smaller ships for a late night snack. Not to mention, turrets would become pretty much invincible as well, considering they could be as large as almost half the size of the rest of the ship. I don't mean to say that your idea(s) are terrible, I'm simply explaining my point of view, in terms of having server-friendly ships, instead of every ship being a behemoth, just for the sake of having 8000 times the amount of health a ship half the size would have. I don't want to come across as some jerk, trying to impose his ideas on others, I simply approve of an idea that you don't seem to enjoy as much.