Armor Systems, Hull Adjacency Bonus

[petlahk]

There is a large problem with ships hulls in that they can easily be one-shot in battles between large ships.

Hulls should receive an adjacency bonus to armor, that is possibly affected by ship mass. The armor % for each block would go up based upon some percentage increase for each block. The armor % would cap out at 99%, but that would still increase the effective HP of standard hull to 10,000, and advanced to 20,000.

Although the above system may go a long way to helping the armor on large ships be effective, it may not be enough to protect large ships to a point where it may make sense.

Another solution, which would be incredibly effective when combined with armor adjacency bonuses, is to have each armor group have it's own HP based upon the blocks inside. This HP would decrease for each hit on the armor group (dur), and the individual blocks within this group would not take normal damage until the over all HP of the group was gone.
The armor % bonus would only be applied when the individual blocks are taking damage, or else it may be entirely too hard for fighters to be any sort of help.

Perhaps the second system without the first would be best, though when combined they go a long way to increasing the effectiveness of hull.

A similar system for armor, as stated in the second system, may already be planned with the HP update, though if it isn't, this system would only apply to armor, and would not be a system for the entirety of the ship.

Second system courtesy of Lecic with some modification.

 

[ToyotaSupra]

For me it isn't so much that hulls are bad, it's the fact that you have to replace them one by one. Someone suggested that repair lasers did that for you or something?

 

[Criss]

While it is unconfirmed, I think a more simple system will come in place, at least at first.It could be something that simply involved giving all ship system a health value that pools together. Armor would give the biggest benefit and when that health pool was depleted enough, core ejection/overheat would occur.

The issue with this suggestion is that it favors certain designs over others. I do not want to be forced into building hull a certain way. If it needs to be an extensive system, I would rather just use shielding to take up that place. This is what most players do regardless. I also think calculating an adjacency bonus for sections of armor could also get resource intensive. Calculating a change in armor bonuses as a ship took damage is unnecessary imo.

I would rather have a system that used an overall health armor pool. The armor health is determined once a ship is saved. It could be based on total armor count or the percentage of the ship that is made of armor, I think I prefer the later. At 100% armor the ship takes minimal system damage. As the armor is destroyed, systems inside the ship will take more damage per hit. Once a certain percentage of armor has been destroyed, (60% for example) then systems inside take full damage. Once a certain percentage of systems on the ship are destroyed, then the core overheats or ejects the player.

This leads us to having three values tied to a ship that determines its health status:
Shielding - It is the first line of defense, but in a way it is also protected by armor. When it comes down to damaging the actual shield blocks, they can be taken out fairly easily. The machines that run the shields are systems, and the less armor remaining on a ship, the easier it is to take out shields along with other internal systems.

Armor - It provides an actual layer of protection, not only in a literal sense, but in the sense that a certain amount of armor needs to be removed before EASILY killing the ship. One can shoot straight through a ship all day, but that hole does not encompass all that a ship is or is capable of. Forcing us to clear out some of the protection of a ship first is good gameplay I think. One has to strip armor away in order to do full damage to the internal structures of the ship.

Systems - This of course encompasses all the modules of the ship. Perhaps things like effects, weapons and computers are not really needed for this part of the health system. Things like power, and engines could contribute to a "system health" pool. Once the actual system of the ship are brought down, the ship cannot maintain its stability, at which point the core overheats and ejects/kills the player. Non- essential modules should not contribute to the system health pool but they should still receive the benefit of any armor that is on the ship. This way, it will still be hard to take out scanner systems if the armor is intact without making it necessary to kill them all in order to kill the ship. Scanners for example are not the systems that keep a ship afloat so to speak. Once these primary systems (power, thrust, life support if its added) are brought down to a percentage, then the core overheats!

I can't say my way is perfect. This is something I have thought about for a while. It may be more complicated than what the devs currently have going on. I just think that having adjacency bonuses and other forms of the Op's suggestion could take ship design in the wrong direction. I am not sure how this would play out entirely, but I think my idea gives armor and systems a significant boost in value and allows for freedom of ship design.

 

[petlahk]

While it is unconfirmed, I think a more simple system will come in place, at least at first.It could be something that simply involved giving all ship system a health value that pools together. Armor would give the biggest benefit and when that health pool was depleted enough, core ejection/overheat would occur.

The issue with this suggestion is that it favors certain designs over others. I do not want to be forced into building hull a certain way. If it needs to be an extensive system, I would rather just use shielding to take up that place. This is what most players do regardless. I also think calculating an adjacency bonus for sections of armor could also get resource intensive. Calculating a change in armor bonuses as a ship took damage is unnecessary imo.

I would rather have a system that used an overall health armor pool. The armor health is determined once a ship is saved. It could be based on total armor count or the percentage of the ship that is made of armor, I think I prefer the later. At 100% armor the ship takes minimal system damage. As the armor is destroyed, systems inside the ship will take more damage per hit. Once a certain percentage of armor has been destroyed, (60% for example) then systems inside take full damage. Once a certain percentage of systems on the ship are destroyed, then the core overheats or ejects the player.

This leads us to having three values tied to a ship that determines its health status:
Shielding - It is the first line of defense, but in a way it is also protected by armor. When it comes down to damaging the actual shield blocks, they can be taken out fairly easily. The machines that run the shields are systems, and the less armor remaining on a ship, the easier it is to take out shields along with other internal systems.

Armor - It provides an actual layer of protection, not only in a literal sense, but in the sense that a certain amount of armor needs to be removed before EASILY killing the ship. One can shoot straight through a ship all day, but that hole does not encompass all that a ship is or is capable of. Forcing us to clear out some of the protection of a ship first is good gameplay I think. One has to strip armor away in order to do full damage to the internal structures of the ship.

Systems - This of course encompasses all the modules of the ship. Perhaps things like effects, weapons and computers are not really needed for this part of the health system. Things like power, and engines could contribute to a "system health" pool. Once the actual system of the ship are brought down, the ship cannot maintain its stability, at which point the core overheats and ejects/kills the player. Non- essential modules should not contribute to the system health pool but they should still receive the benefit of any armor that is on the ship. This way, it will still be hard to take out scanner systems if the armor is intact without making it necessary to kill them all in order to kill the ship. Scanners for example are not the systems that keep a ship afloat so to speak. Once these primary systems (power, thrust, life support if its added) are brought down to a percentage, then the core overheats!

I can't say my way is perfect. This is something I have thought about for a while. It may be more complicated than what the devs currently have going on. I just think that having adjacency bonuses and other forms of the Op's suggestion could take ship design in the wrong direction. I am not sure how this would play out entirely, but I think my idea gives armor and systems a significant boost in value and allows for freedom of ship design.

The second idea I wrote about is similar to what you're suggesting for the armor, however instead of having the entirety of a ships health/armor be determined by the ships armor alone (I'm not quite sure if that's what you're saying or not), the armor system would have it's own health, which when depleted, the armor would then take damage the normal way. In your system it certainly does go a long way to contributing to the over-all health of the ship, and giving a point to armor, though I don't think armor should be put in random clumps inside the ship, only to be sought out. It should play a role in keeping people out of the inside of the ship. The system you propose also includes armor calculations based on the % of hull left. It just seems wrong to have a system where hull doesn't have to be on the outside of the ship to protect it, your system is even more similar to shields than mine. Though, I may have missed your point.
[DOUBLEPOST=1419371567,1419371478][/DOUBLEPOST]

For me it isn't so much that hulls are bad, it's the fact that you have to replace them one by one. Someone suggested that repair lasers did that for you or something?

I agree that it is a pain to replace the hulls one by one, but as far as I can think there is no one easy way to solve that. :/

 

[NoK0mm3nt]

I agree that it is a pain to replace the hulls one by one, but as far as I can think there is no one easy way to solve that. :/

Have your ship already saved as a blueprint. Using building build mode, deconstruct your ship, add everything back into a fresh blue print, plus the blocks you lost. Voila. A handy side-effect is that all partially damaged blocks are fresh again.

This is easier to execute on smaller ships, but can be quicker than manually doing it.

 

[petlahk]

Have your ship already saved as a blueprint. Using building build mode, deconstruct your ship, add everything back into a fresh blue print, plus the blocks you lost. Voila. A handy side-effect is that all partially damaged blocks are fresh again.

This is easier to execute on smaller ships, but can be quicker than manually doing it.

I know that's how it would work, i'm just not sure how hard it would be for the coders.

 

[Criss]

The second idea I wrote about is similar to what you're suggesting for the armor, however instead of having the entirety of a ships health/armor be determined by the ships armor alone (I'm not quite sure if that's what you're saying or not), the armor system would have it's own health, which when depleted, the armor would then take damage the normal way. In your system it certainly does go a long way to contributing to the over-all health of the ship, and giving a point to armor, though I don't think armor should be put in random clumps inside the ship, only to be sought out. It should play a role in keeping people out of the inside of the ship. The system you propose also includes armor calculations based on the % of hull left. It just seems wrong to have a system where hull doesn't have to be on the outside of the ship to protect it, your system is even more similar to shields than mine. Though, I may have missed your point.
[DOUBLEPOST=1419371567,1419371478][/DOUBLEPOST]

I agree that it is a pain to replace the hulls one by one, but as far as I can think there is no one easy way to solve that. :/

More similar to shields? Noway hosay. You suggested a system that keeps any hull block from being destroyed until the armor value is depleted. Surely that is more akin to shields. With my system, hull blocks being destroyed = armor health being destroyed. Aside from that, I understand the desire to keep armor purely on the outside for this system but I think its crazy to think that even moderate sized ships wouldn't have internal structures holding it together. Even if you consider it a flaw, I still think it is easier to implement a total armor value based on a one-time calculated static value instead of a set of values that change during combat.

As for internal armor groupings, here's a solution. On blueprint creation, determine whether a ship receives the armor bonuses. There are a few options I thought of. Obviously armor should mostly compose the exterior of the ship, and therefore give it the final value for its box dimensions. If there are large percentages of that armor that are not anywhere near the edges of the ship, then they would not count towards the armor pool or possibly the armor effect would not be applied to the ship. Another solution would be to check if a large number of system blocks are blocked by armor in the closest of the six dimensions. The value for the total health only needs to be calculated once and changing a ship outside of combat and near a shipyard would be the only way to update it. This is to prevent on the fly blueprint saving that would result in a reset of the armor health.

Hell if that is not fixable then why not remove that armor buff to internal systems and just make them all based on % remaining. A health pool for armor, a health pool for systems. Bring both of them down to a certain percentage and the ship goes dead. I just figured having armor actually protect the systems would give them value.

This is why I dislike these suggestions though. None of them are perfect and I feel like it has gotten us nowhere in a long time. How long has the health system been a concept for? Its been far too long without any word on it and I feel like it's either really complicated and taking a long time or the devs cannot get it right either. Making it more complicated than "total block health pools" seems to be getting us nowhere since everyone has a problem with everything.

 

[NoK0mm3nt]

I know that's how it would work, i'm just not sure how hard it would be for the coders.

What I meant was you can already do this. It works today. It's just a 2 step process. Reclaim all blocks in build mode, add em all back into a new blueprint in your inventory and spawn.