Armor vs Shields effective protection scaling (with explanations)

[Thalanor]

Hey everyone,
a foreword, please first read the entire post, as this suggestion has a high chance of being misunderstood The actual suggestion is at the bottom, I'll first explain why.

I will start of with two example ships. One ship is a 2x2x2 systems cube, lets call it A. Then we have a ship that is a 4x4x4 systems cube, lets call it B.

Assume the following: A has space for 8 systems, so let's say it does4 damage for the purpose of this example. B has space for 64 systems, so let's say it does 32 damage. This makes sense for this example, as weapon damage scales linearily. Also assume that A has 4 shields, and B has 32 shields. Yes, there are slight diminishing returns on shield capacity, but these are not as significant as it would be needed to change the meaning of this example. The values were picked so that for the purposes of explaining, both ships are half weapons half shields, and both weapon and shield blocks each gave 1 damage or protection, respectively.

We can see that both shielding and weapon power roughly scales in a cubic fashion. But we also want to armor our ships, so here it goes:

A needs to be covered by 6*(2*2) = 24 armor blocks; B needs to be covered by 6*(4*4) = 96 armor blocks. Yet if either A or B are shot at from one specific attack vector, both ships would only profit from the protection one armor block can offer - even though B needed to spend 4 times as many armor blocks to achieve the same.

My suggestion thus is as follows: Make the armor value of armor blocks scale slightly (far far far below cubic like shields, and even far far far below quadratic) with the mass of the ship they are placed on. The following horrendously created chart should give a rough explanation:

Spoiler: Q: But attack vectors change often in times of battle; thus hitting a new armor block next time.

A: Yes, that is true - but rapidly firing and weaker weapons are not supposed to be anti-capital weapons anyways IMO. A single long-reload large doomslug hurled towards the enemy would only have one attack vector that counts (assume punch through, as there is no point in some gigantic cannon without due to the way the system works). This is actually a buff to fighters! A larger ship could no longer rely on just a gigantic rapidfire array to combat other large ships and fighters alike; it would have to implement specific anti-capital weaponry that is useless against fast moving targets, as the rapidfire cannons would have a hard time destroying 1 block per shot when the armor blocks have high armor%.

Spoiler: Q: But there are diminishing returns for power (thus weapons) and shields

A: True; this is reflected by the fact armor scaling is much slower than shield scaling, never catching up to shields even with their dropping grow rate. Right now though, armor technically does not scale at all, even though it's cost still scales in a cubic fashion.

Spoiler: Q: But this is a buff to large ships

A: It is not necessarily a buff. If anything, it makes using armor layers on your sizable ship a usable alternative. It could even be further justified by making the diminishing returns for shields stronger, so unlike when flying a fighter, you'd have to rely more on armor, which must be replaced for a cost (no regen), thus making capital ships require some sort of maintenance from time to time.

Spoiler: Q: This idea is bad

A: Possibly it is bad, but I thought it justifies a suggestion even if the suggestion is bad - maybe you even post an objection that leads to the idea to be improved drastically by the community!

 

[MrFURB]

A lot of suggestions for armor mechanics only work for the suggestion's intended role of armor. A previously popular suggestion was to scale up an armor's protection based on how large a single group of touching armor blocks was; worked fine for making thick plates durable and ship skins hardy, but posed problems for people looking to use armor in a less numerable but more precise manner.
This suggestion seems to avoid that problem while still providing a scaling that increases the per-block usefulness based on ship size. Simple and effective!

 

[Lancake]

Hm, I'm actually liking this idea although I don't know if it will cause a problem in terms of coding (constant updating armor% for every block once a block gets destroyed)
.
Like you said, it has to be a small % increase.
For example, If armor % increased with 15 you could get near invincible blocks if you're using piercing.

• 60% armor on advanced armor + 30% piercing, 90% in total for a 200 hp block = 2000EHP
• 65% armor on advanced armor + 30% piercing, 95% in total for a 200 hp block = 4000EHP

I find the number 10 to be a nice scale, 100000 mass should get near 8 or more. 500 000 mass could get near 9 or even 10.

Then again...with the new HP system planned this might be a bad idea but you can always easily switch back to the old system of course.

 

[Thalanor]

Yup, the number has to be small. It would maybe even be better if defensive block hardening didn't have an additive armor bonus, but rather multiplied damage with a value between, lets say 1.0 (no effect) up to 0.25 (max effect) or something.
Otherwise, because of the +30% from defensive effect, as you pointed out the bonus would have to be VERY small, so it would not be very noticeable on non-advanced armor.

 

[Lancake]

Yup, the number has to be small. It would maybe even be better if defensive block hardening didn't have an additive armor bonus, but rather multiplied damage with a value between, lets say 1.0 (no effect) up to 0.25 (max effect) or something.
Otherwise, because of the +30% from defensive effect, as you pointed out the bonus would have to be VERY small, so it would not be very noticeable on non-advanced armor.

That is true but if you multiply the effect instead of doing it with an additive way than you make the problem even worse.

50% of 50% armor -> in total 75% armor on that block
50% of 25% armor -> in total 32.5% armor on that block
50% of 0% armor ->...0% armor on that block.

This way system blocks, normal hull and standard armor barely or just completely don't get any bonus from piercing.

IF armor indeed scales with a number compared to your mass, let's say with a number of ...30 or so. You would get at the end
50% of 80% armor -> in total 120% armor (invincible)
and so on...

I feel like having the armor + bonus versus mass + additive piercing effect might just be good enough to balance since it does favor armor blocks and still gives non armor blocks a good %.

 

[Thalanor]

Lancake what I mean was: first the armor value of the block is determined, e.g. say advanced armor with 74% armor due to mass. Then, for example, the remaining 26% would profit from block hardening effects. If maximum block hardening was a factor of 0.5, then the 26% would get reduced to 13%, and the total armor would be 87%.

 

[Lancake]

Lancake what I mean was: first the armor value of the block is determined, e.g. say advanced armor with 74% armor due to mass. Then, for example, the remaining 26% would profit from block hardening effects. If maximum block hardening was a factor of 0.5, then the 26% would get reduced to 13%, and the total armor would be 87%.

Ok so in your example:
50 + 24 = 74% for advanced, remaining 26%
0 + 24 = 24% for normal, remaining 76%
0.5 factor that you use
74% + 13% =87% for advanced
24% + 38% = 62% for normal

These are good numbers although it does add a little bit more calculation, again not sure how this would work out in terms of performance for a 1 000 000 block ship. Especially if every block needs to get a new armor value for everyone added or removed.

 

[Keptick]

Lancake how about increasing the HP values instead? Those wouldn't exponentially affect ehp and can infinitely scaled without too many math problems.

 

[Lancake]

Lancake how about increasing the HP values instead? Those wouldn't exponentially affect ehp and can infinitely scaled without too many math problems.

the HP is limited to 256, there is not a lot of room. Increasing armor values would be the easiest way to give, indirectly, more HP to blocks since the armor is basically a factor that increase HP with x times.

 

[MrFURB]

I wonder what would happen if armor % reduced weapon damage by the same number instead of increased block resistance...

 

[questorhank]

I saw a suggestion like this on the old website.
I dont remember it exactly, but it was basically the thicker your hull was (in comparison to the projectile) the less damage the shot would do.

 

[Thalanor]

There are alot of similar suggestions questorhank
This one here keeps it very simple though: all that matters is ship mass.

I wonder if it would be easier computation-wise if additionally to block armor, every entity would have a global "armor bonus" value, that is used together with block armor in block damage calculations. This would not require the block armor to update for every single block, only the global value (which is easy since mass already does update).

 

[Alias72]

I agree that armor needs to be revised, however I am unsure about the scaling factors involved.
First I will outline my assumptions about utility.

I see shielding's role as:
Protection across the entire surface. A useful tool for defending the entire vessel from attack.

I see armor's role as:
Protection across a small region of the surface. A useful tool for defending specific sections of a ship.

I see shield's as:
Providing full coverage but suffering for this by diluting its effect across the surface.

I see Armor as:
Providing targeted coverage but suffering for this by being heavy and bulky.

From this we find a new chart.
If we were to protect the entire ship then shields would be more effective. in terms of power cost, weight cost, and size cost. shields would be more efficient at providing x armor across the entire surface.

Armor, however, would be more cost effective at protecting key areas of a ship from harm. though bulky, expensive, and heavy, armor provides concentrated defense.

The result is that if we were to plot cost effectiveness vs percentage of ship covered armor would scale linearly with an initial advantage. Shields would scale non-linearly and become more effective after attempting to protect 60% of the ship by surface area.


To achieve this would require scaling cost and protection but in essence armor would always absorb more hp then shields on a per block basis. IE 1 block of armor would absorb more than 1 Block of shield at any given point on the ship.

Shields, however, protect all blocks on the ship and therefore protect Shield Damage Absorption * surface area of ship.

 

[refirendum]

how about this.

let's say a ship has blocks that have a base armor of 50%. it has enough mass to achieve hull thickness bonus (per face touching hull block) of multiplying the remaining percentage (50) by a sum that is determined by adding the base armor ratings of the face-touching blocks (1, 5, 10 corresponding to unarmored, standard armor, advanced armor) and taking that percentage of the remaining 50% as bonus? then effects don't add a linear % to the armor but rather a % of the remaining room to increase armor. armor will never increase past 100%.

ex: 50% armor block has 50% room to be boosted. it is touching 1 unarmored block by the face, 2 blocks of standard armor and 2 blocks of advanced armor by the faces. the resulting bonus us 1+5+5+10+10=31% of the remaining 50% (the bonus added is 50% multiplied by 31%, resulting in a real gain of 15.5% armor, finalizing in total of 65.5% armor) the they use an effect computer to boost armor. the remainder of room for growth is (50-15.5))% or 34.5% the effect boosts 30% of the remaining improvement room yielding a real gain of 10.35%, and totaling 75.85% armor.

thus the armor boosting system has diminished gains on already-heavily armored hulls but more significant gains on unarmored hulls. of course percentages can be played with a bit.

for nim-maxers in a universe where max base armor is 50%,
your armor bonus will be 50% of 50% for your armored hull faces touching (strucrural integrity bonus) aka a linear 25%.
then your effect boosts 30% of the remaining growth room.
the final total will be 82.5% with effect boost, and 75% without effect boost.

 

[lupoCani]

I largely agree with this. I've been a proponent of above-linear armor scaling for quite some time now, and made similar suggestions before. However, I believe that while using the entire ship mass for measure would help keep armor for larger ships on par with that of smaller ones, it wouldn't be as effective in countering the underlying weakness that armor suffers from. The best approach, I think, would be to on the hull mass alone, as this would more noticeably reward additional hull layers.

Furthermore, it might be more interesting if it's partially local. If overall hull mass still mattered, but proximity to other armor blocks made it more rewarding, we would probably be seeing more complex designs such as hulls of standard-level armor with support beams of thicker, advanced material.

 

[Alias72]

I disagree. I feel that the size of the ship should be largely irrelevant with respect to the effectiveness of armor and shields. Instead I feel that each should play a role; Armor is ideal for protecting isolated portions of a ship and shields protect the ship as a whole. To adjust the effectiveness they way you suggest would not eliminate the uselessness of armor compared to shields only mitigate it slightly.