another simple solution for hull mechanics

[lman94]

disclaimer

first, this is not in any way intended to compete with McDili's thread. I made this suggestion on his thread and he said that because he wanted his thread to stay on the original idea, that I should make my own thread. there is no animosity between us over this.

his idea was that AMCs vs hull would work similar to missiles vs shield, namely that AMCs would have a capped amount of damage, say 100, no matter how large the AMC. I said that while I liked the Idea, it might lead to shotgun ships as AMCs that do more than 100 would be wasteful. there are reasons why not to do shotgun ships, and rate of fire means that single large AMCs are still viable. his idea is still a good one and not to be ignored.





now on to my idea.

at this point, hull is useless. it is easy for a ship to have AMCs powerful enough to one-shot even hardened hull. at this point, hull provides no more resistance than any other block, and thus using shields, which, of course, add shield points, is more efficient. and while missiles are weak against shields but effective against hull, AMCs are effective against both. something needs to be done to make AMCs weak against hull to balance this.

my original idea was that hull would have a separate armor value that applied only to AMCs. McDili refined the idea by saying that you could simply make missiles ignore armor, which is way better. his argument was that because servers have a config to change armor values, this would lead to servers always changing the armor values, thus making AMCs overpowered and hull useless again. while I disagree that this would be common, it is a somewhat valid point.

the current armor values for hulls are 25% for regular and 50% for hardened. with missiles ignoring hull this could be changed to say 80% for regular and 95% for hardened. this would mean that AMCs would be ineffective at tunneling through hull as small ships would be unable to do it quickly and large ships would be unable to keep up with a moving target. missiles however would quickly remove large amounts of hull and leave the inner systems exposed, vulnerable to any weapon, as electronics and carefully calibrated systems should be

finally, whatever system is implemented, I think that plex-glass should get the same treatment, so as to avoid the demise of glass domes, viewing decks, and realistic cockpits.

edit: if you do not understand the problem I am trying to solve, McDili's post explains it better.

 

[lazarus78]

This is all based on the assumption that there won\'t be more weapon types and more hull types. The number of ores that are virtually unused leads me to believe there will be several different hull types, and more variations of weaponry.

Given the alpha system of 2 hull types and 2 infinatly scalable weapon types, I don\'t think either your or his ideas will work as the system is vastly unrefined and not nearly complete.

 

[lman94]

this is based on the fact that new weapons are likely to be unique, like the power drain beam. any new weapons that do the same thing are redundant. yes, new additions may require tweaks to the system, this is alpha, but I doubt any will require AMCs to be overpowered. by the way, most people dismiss the \"there are unused ores\" argument for adding hulls, and I personally think that any new hulls are likely to have unique properties. there have already been discussions on McDili\'s thread why new hull types are unlikely to just be better versions of the current ones.

and saying that ideas won\'t work because the game is unrefined doesn\'t make sense, the ideas are there because it is unrefined and needs adjusting.

 

[lazarus78]

Then you completel misread and misunderstood what I said.

The unused ore statement is valid. I don\'t know who these \"most people\" are that supposedly dismiss it.

I never stipulated that new halls will only be \"better\" versions of the current, I simply said there will be more. Probably ones that are good vs energy weapons, others that are good against physical weapons, etc.

I said the idea wont work because the hull-to-weapon relation is unrefined. two hull types that are more like paper armor and thick paper armor, vs two weapon types that are infinatly scaleable. The solution is in adding more tiers of defensive capavility to combat the super massive weapons, and that soution can, and IMHO, should come from improving the hulls.

 

[Comr4de]

I like to think that AMCs are hte middle ground of weapons systems. They do well against shields and hull, whereas missiles only damages hull. I think schema is still planning on adding one last weapon system that specializes in engaging shields.

 

[lman94]

first of all, this is to fix the fact that armor is like paper. like I said, there are reasons why not to add more tiers of hulls that are just better. like you said, the solution is in improving hulls, which is what I am trying to do.

now, as for new types of hull, I agree that specialized hulls are a possibility. but that doesn\'t mean that my idea won\'t fit into that. this is specializing one type of defense, hulls, to work against energy weapons, while another, shields, is already specialized against physical weapons.

the unused ores could easily be for existing items. there are shields, hulls power production, power storage, weapons, engines, docking ports and enhancers, AIs, cockpits, glass, doors, lights of all colors, computers, salvage beams, power supply and drain beams, radar jammers, cloaking devices, and so on. the factory system is such a work in progress that using it as a reference of things to come is useless.

 

[lman94]

why would anyone use anything else? another weapon as relitivly underpowered as missiles are now would see about as much use as missiles do now. whether or not a new weapon is added dosn\'t change the fact that AMCs destroy hull.

 

[McDili]

The idea that AMC\'s are the Universal weapon types, where missiles specialize vs hull and an un-named yet-to-be created weapon is going to be better vs shields, is fine.



But for that to be the case, Missiles need to be better, AMC\'s need to be worse, and whatever the next weapon is should be very useful against shields.



The way it is now, AMC\'s are extremely potent when you compare them to both defensive blocks, because weapons scale upwards in their effectiveness much better than shields do, and hull just has fixed stats.

Actually, I say weapons, but really it\'s just AMC\'s that scale up so much. Missiles get much worse diminishing returns than AMC\'s do when you group up the blocks. It would probably be a lot better if AMC\'s shared a similarly scaled diminishing return as missiles do. Which would further define the gap between having long range high damage spinal cannons and having close range shotgun barrage frontal cannons.



The thing is, if the \"Core Drilling\" tactic remains unchanged, AMC\'s drill through hull much better than Missiles do, and it\'s not just because AMC\'s 1-shot hull, it\'s in combination of that and the fact that they travel at much higher relative velocity to missiles. Missiles destroy a lot of blocks, but disregarding the fact that they are easy to outrun and dodge, even if you hit, you don\'t penetrate as many blocks as you would have if you focus fired AMC\'s.



So it\'s possible that AMC\'s might just be too strong to be a universal weapon in the current stage of the game. And I think most of us agree that missiles, for the most part, are just too slow.

 

[McDili]

We don\'t need hull that\'s good against physical weapons(Missiles, possible kinetic weapons in the future) because that\'s what shields do.

As for energy dampening hull, yes that\'s a good idea.



But I mean, like I said before, just because we have a lot of crafting materials in the game, doesn\'t justify having useless items in the game too. If we have useless items in the game, there\'s no point in them even being in the game to begin with.

It\'s fine to add hull to the game later if they have unique properties, as you\'re suggesting here.

But to leave the current iterations of hull in the game is unjustifiable. It\'s useless. So I would assert that it\'s better to change the current hull to actually have a use, before we add new hull to the game.

 

[lman94]