Current Weapon Balance: Shields vs Hull

[Mered4]

First, a few reminders on balance in Starmade right now:
Anti-Missile Systems are still fairly ineffective against missiles due to their inability to lead their target, as well as lag/latency between the client and server. Fixing this is no easy task, which I assume is partly why it hasn't been fixed yet.
Jammers and Cloakers, as with all active modules, are subject to lag/latency problems, and thus cannot be used reliably in combat. It's hit or miss in fights above 1k mass.
Turrets still have a 180 degree FoV and can lock onto jammed targets. They also maintain lock after a vessel cloaks, rendering the cloak useless. Basically, god-level AI. Turrets are the go-to weapon for larger ships right now, especially since they all turn at the same speed.

Shields vs Hull and how that relates to weapon balance

Ask yourself this: what damage does your primary DPS weapon deal per shot? If that number is over 400, you can break the hardest armor Starmade has to offer. If I remember correctly, my small fighters break that limit. Now, move to capital ships. Just as an example, the combat version of the Executor-class that I currently have saved deals greater than 10k damage per cannon shot with punchthrough. This is enough damage to destroy 25 hardened hull blocks in a row with one shot. And it has more than one barrel! You can imagine the devastation it could wreak on a ship without shielding. In fact, I did some testing, and found that the Executor could shoot all the way through the Rex (check the catalog) - the penetration was 500m+.

"But that's a Titan, Ender! It's SUPPOSED to murder things with excessive rapidity!"

Fine. That makes logical sense - let's go with that. How is it that my little fighters can blow through the toughest armor in the game with a single shot? It takes quite a while to take down a similarly sized ship's shields (without using the missiles), but getting through the armor takes almost no time at all.

Some would say this is a good way to give fighters a way to shine - if every ship can kill you when your shields are down, you do have to fear the small fighters. Unfortunately, turrets murder fighters before they get close. In the few instances where a fighter would be able to do significant damage to the enemy, a bigger ship would do more damage faster, without the insane risk of being one-shot by an AI turret.

Here's the core of the issue:

High shield values force people to build bigger weapons to break them.
Proportionally lower Armor and Health values for armor blocks renders those blocks next to useless unless used in excessive quantities.
In addition, weapons can easily be scaled upwards and mounted on smaller vessels due to their compact size. 5-10 million damage per missile volley is not uncommon in the 30-50k weight class.

These disproportionate values continue to ignore the importance of armor in favor of shielding. However, our wonderful cat Schema decided, in a mystical whim (as cats often do), to make shield caps prohibitively expensive in the universe (at least, this is my experience. Rammet-filled asteroids are fairly rare, as are similarly stylized planet plates). And yes, I did search the belts. Multiple times. It's not just the belt -> sun distance. There is also a percentage chance for Rammet-roids to spawn.

Some have hailed this as the developers way of saying YOU SHOULD ARMOR TANK MORE. From an economic perspective, they are trying to force the average shield value of a ship down, so as to promote.....something. I'm just not sure and I have not been informed by someone possessing such information.

However, armor tanking remains a complete joke. Combat in Starmade is like flying a jello cube shelled in cardboard, while each side has flamethrowers. Adding more cardboard will not help - artificial shielding will. For armor tanking to become a viable option for PvP, there needs to be a change to the shield/armor effective health ratios.

 

[Snk]

OR: Make piercing effects give a set bonus. Problem solved

 

[Mered4]

OR: Make piercing effects give a set bonus. Problem solved

How does this solve the discrepancy between the shield and armor numbers?

 

[Lecic]

I think the best solution to make armor viable is to give connected armor blocks a combined HP pool that is repairable with healing beams.

 

[Snk]

How does this solve the discrepancy between the shield and armor numbers?

It would make it so the extent to which your armor is hardened is infinite. So you'd have piercing effect blocks. That would make it so larger ships have better armor than smaller ones, and solve the problem of shields vs armor.

 

[Lecic]

It would make it so the extent to which your armor is hardened is infinite. So you'd have piercing effect blocks. That would make it so larger ships have better armor than smaller ones, and solve the problem of shields vs armor.

Yeah, because combat with ships where the entire surface is made of faction modules would be tons of fun.

 

[Snk]

Yeah, because combat with ships where the entire surface is made of faction modules would be tons of fun.

Use a weapon with piercing effect, to damage the interior and disable it. And it would be fun, would just last longer.

 

[Mered4]

Use a weapon with piercing effect, to damage the interior and disable it. And it would be fun, would just last longer.

I don't agree with this because it forces people to use a specific effect all the time - you'd have to be power stable for the effect, thrust, weapons, etc. The idea is solid, it just breaks the sandbox nature of the game.
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I think the best solution to make armor viable is to give connected armor blocks a combined HP pool that is repairable with healing beams.

Wouldn't that essentially be a second shield if all armor blocks are connected, as most aesthetic builds are?

Oh, I see what you are getting at! That's actually a pretty nifty idea. You would assign each adjacent armor segment to a group, then calculate the health of each block based on the number of blocks in the group. One blocks health would equal the health of the whole thing, making armor incredibly tanky, especially for larger vessels.

I like this. At least, now that I understand it :D

 

[timethatswasted]

There are easier solutions to balancing then heaping on more meta data and calculations.

But it also depends on how you want to play the game.

Weapon DPS really needs a steep diminishing curve, and their power consumption needs a sharp increasing curve. With a relatively small array you have a ship annihilating weapon (5-6k DPS) that cost very little power relative to ship size. Add in an effect the the damage is just rediculious.

The DEV planned HP system will only make ships survive and extra second longer, it will won't fix things.

There really needs to be fundamental changes to the base way things are calculated, however the DEVs will never do that for fear of the Rage Crying from community members. I was SO DISSAPOINTED to see Schema go back on the ratio changes because people cried about it. It would have been a huge step towards balancing this game.

On another note...I still think multiple ship cores would have been fun. Give you something more to shoot at and a way to back up your systems. Shame the DEVs didn't like that idea.

My point: despite my own crying, the game isn't going to be balanced anytime soon. Based on how it's balanced now I doubt it will ever be a common balance everyone likes. We'll just have to wait for the modding API to fix it ourselves

 

[Thalanor]

Considering you can craft basic hull from nothing but alloy/composite, which basically just requires you to mine "anything", and it is almost just as effective in battle as advanced armor, which requires you to get absolute *heaps* of nacht... yes, something has to be done in the long run.

 

[Ozwart]

Well , I don't do pvp right now because it is stupid , easy to make super powerfull weapon meanwhile defense suck.
I mean I can put 300 shield block in a ship and take it out easy with an amc canon of 25-30 , what a joke.
At some point shield were strong , but the wannabe pvper didnt like it because it was no longer possible to one hit everything with a cheap spam of seeking missile( and yes for me people spamming seeking missile are wannabe pvper , true pvp is about real battle , not the spam of one weapon at the touch of one button, like fighter dogfight with amc, that s a true battle and interesting to watch, contrary to the one hit button spam and I win)
So you understand why pvp isn't interesting , 1 useless defence , 2 uninteresting to battle seeking missile spammer , require no talent and no strategy.
If armor or shield were better ...... but honestly they are useless because it is too easy to have very powerfull weapon. Imo everytime I check the shipyard the thing coming to mind is: doesn't matter how nice you build your ship , gonna be destroyrd like a piece of paper , because I don't know why many idiot prefer a game of one hit rather than a game of intense battle.....

 

[Syleiel]

One idea that I have seen floating around is to have hull behave in a similar manner as to how power capacitor blocks behave. What I am referring to is when there is a single power capacitor it provides a very minimal amount of power storage. But, as more power capacitors are added in a filled volumetric fashion, the base power storage generation is greater. Relate that to hull and you have a single hull block with minimal hitpoints and/or armor percentage, but when grouped in larger quantities each hull block's base hitpoints and/or armor percentage benefits and increases as a result.

 

[AtraUnam]

I really think that it should be possible to build a viable ship that has no shields but lots of armor.

Also any massive nerf off large weapons that doesn't effect small weapons will just bring back the old waffle cannon.

 

[lord_farquad]

I think significantly increasing the HP of armor is probably the easiest way to go. Though the weapon return curves do probably need some tweaking.

I really like the idea of having connected hull pieces increase the HP of each individual piece, with higher quality hull/armor increasing at a higher rate.

So if 100 connected pieces of standard armor increase the HP of each individual block by 100%, then 100 connected pieces of advanced armor would increase the HP of each individual block by 200% (example numbers. obviously not balanced).

 

[Mered4]

I think significantly increasing the HP of armor is probably the easiest way to go. Though the weapon return curves do probably need some tweaking.

I really like the idea of having connected hull pieces increase the HP of each individual piece, with higher quality hull/armor increasing at a higher rate.

So if 100 connected pieces of standard armor increase the HP of each individual block by 100%, then 100 connected pieces of advanced armor would increase the HP of each individual block by 200% (example numbers. obviously not balanced).

I tried to increase the HP of armor in the config - it has an upper limit of 200 something. Armor is limited to 100% (invincible), so there is that to consider. Tbh, it would be easier to drop both the shield and weapon numbers to a more reasonable level without redesigning the engine again.

 

[Lecic]

I think significantly increasing the HP of armor is probably the easiest way to go. Though the weapon return curves do probably need some tweaking.

I really like the idea of having connected hull pieces increase the HP of each individual piece, with higher quality hull/armor increasing at a higher rate.

So if 100 connected pieces of standard armor increase the HP of each individual block by 100%, then 100 connected pieces of advanced armor would increase the HP of each individual block by 200% (example numbers. obviously not balanced).

Impossible to go past 256 HP per block, without adding more bytes per block and increasing performance costs greatly.

I think my idea has been misunderstood- I'm not suggesting blocks get an HP increase when connected (though I suppose they could do that, just with the cap in mind), I'm suggesting that connected hull blocks have a combined HP pool, similar to shields.

 

[lord_farquad]

Impossible to go past 256 HP per block, without adding more bytes per block and increasing performance costs greatly.

I think my idea has been misunderstood- I'm not suggesting blocks get an HP increase when connected (though I suppose they could do that, just with the cap in mind), I'm suggesting that connected hull blocks have a combined HP pool, similar to shields.

I actually get what you mean, but regional damage then seems to become a difficulty. I think toying with the resistance instead of actual HP is the better solution if I'm understanding how the engine calculates damage/hp, in order to prevent performance decrease.

 

[Lecic]

I actually get what you mean, but regional damage then seems to become a difficulty. I think toying with the resistance instead of actual HP is the better solution if I'm understanding how the engine calculates damage/hp, in order to prevent performance decrease.

The problem with armor is that it doesn't scale. Even if you give hull a 99% armor rating and 256 HP, eventually, people will build weapons strong enough to one-shot it, and then we're right back to square one. Do you think the kinds of missile people regularly use, dealing a hundred thousand damage with ease, aren't going to rip through those hull blocks just as easily as they do now?

 

[lord_farquad]

The problem with armor is that it doesn't scale. Even if you give hull a 99% armor rating and 256 HP, eventually, people will build weapons strong enough to one-shot it, and then we're right back to square one. Do you think the kinds of missile people regularly use, dealing a hundred thousand damage with ease, aren't going to rip through those hull blocks just as easily as they do now?

I don't think the point is to make it impossible, but to make it more difficult. Doesn't having a 99% resist at 256 HP mean that even with 100k damage you can at max go through 4 blocks instead of like a thousand? or am I misunderstanding how armor mitigates damage?

 

[jayman38]

An HP pool makes sense to me, because in SciFi TV and movies, the hull doesn't generally show damage until a LOT of damage has been done (depending on the needs of the plot), so basically HP pool = shield 2.

With that said, we need particle effects. Why? Before the HP pool is depleted, areas that are hit without shields, and with blocks that haven't been damaged or destroyed yet, due to the HP pool, should show venting "stuff" at the point the weapon hit, whether that be venting atmosphere, venting sparks, venting crewmembers, or venting pixie dust. The particle emitter can be directed to point in the direction the weapon arrived from (pretty easy calculation to simply reverse the vector) for the initial burst, and then realign the particle emitter with the face normal for continued venting for a while (eventually expiring; make up any excuse you like for the particles stopping, such as emergency repair crews or auto-shutoff valves.)

Would need an overall server limit on how many "emitters" can be in operation at the same time, expiring over-the-limit emitters prematurely, based on their relative age.

Freespace reference (notice the particles being ejected from the weapon damage points on the freighter to be protected):