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- Jul 6, 2013
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Missile all of a sudden seem fairly dangerous. But if you know how they work you should be able to compensate. I have almost figured it out I think just the shields are throwing me.
Previously missiles had a bug which effectively reduced their blast radius to 1/4. So a 20m radius missile was 5m plus the core block it hit. The reason for this is listed in this linked bug report:.
http://bugs.star-made.org/issues/559
From the bug report you can see how some of the missile explosion calculations are done.
Due to the larger radius coming into play various effects of missile hits have been noticed. Including missiles damaging docked ships behind walls and killing players. This is confirmed as normal from this bug report
http://bugs.star-made.org/issues/577
Between all of this you can figure out mostly how missile damage is allocated. Note there is new a explosion absorption value they can play with on blocks to make blocks soak up more explosion damage.
Hit detection
A missile doesn't always hit the surface block of what it just impacted with. With lag the hit detection calculation might happen when its some blocks into the target. Or misses cause it passed through the entire target before the hit detection happened. It is more likely with the higher general speed of missiles linked to server speed. The faster the server speed the faster the missiles.
Damage Sequence on hit
From this bug report the missile allocates enough damage to each block within the 1/4 total radius. It increases the damage to each block till those blocks are destroyed. Each hull block counts as double the amount from the bug report so hardened hull blocks really soak up the damage.
Side Effect
However this also leads to a wall of hardened hull with destroyed blocks behind it as there wasn't enough damage to destroy the hardened hull but enough to wipe out everything behind it within the 1/4 radius.
It continues to allocate more damage until all blocks are destroyed. It adds up the damage done to all blocks and removes this from the total damage remaining.
The missile then starts allocating the remaining damage like above just to the blocks between the 1/4 and 2/4 radius. And so on to full radius or until all the damage runs out.
Side Effect
This means that a docked entity within the 1/4 radius would also take damage.
How shields effect this - my best guess
The tricky bit is figuring out how shields interact with this and how a main ship with more robust shielding has its hull unscathed while the docked ship with lessor or no shields is wrecked behind it.
My guess for how the shield damage is working to produce these effects is: The number of blocks inside the 1/4 radius is calculated for each entity. Main ship, turret, docked ship etc. Damage is proportion to the volume each takes up till shield failure. So if the main ship is 50% of the volume of total blocks inside 1/4 radius, turret 20% and docked 10%. The damage is allocated in that proportion between entities until the shields fail. The damage to that entity then starts working on the blocks, while the other entities shields continue taking damage.
Assumptions Effects and conclusions
- If this is true, putting your docked ships a certain distance from the outer hull will help. the further away the missile hits the less damage will hit the docked entity and its shields will better able to cope with the damage if any. If far enough away the missile will have no effect. But hit detection might make the missile hit deeper.
- Having a solid block of hull with no gaps between the missile impact and the docked entity means the main ship will take a bigger share of the damage.
-Hardened hull effectiveness. Since each hull and hardened hull block counts as double the damage required by the missile to destroy, a layer of hardened hull may stop missiles explosions from penetrating deeper than 1/4 radius, if the missile doesn't have enough damage to destroy them outright it can't penetrate deeper. If I'm reading the bug report right each hardened hull absorbs 800 damage each before any effects. And there is still that block attributed they can edit to modify that.
Note missile/pulse slave has a radius of 40m or 10m for 1/4 radius.
The hull damage defense effect will also help reduce missile hull damage. However while the current defense effects have to account for the mass of docked entities. The defense effect doesn't seem to defend docked entities yet. I'm hoping that is a bug.
We could also introduce a shock resistant block with high explosion resistance and low hit points like 20HP and 1000% explosion absorption to absorb 2,000HP of missile.
Previously missiles had a bug which effectively reduced their blast radius to 1/4. So a 20m radius missile was 5m plus the core block it hit. The reason for this is listed in this linked bug report:.
http://bugs.star-made.org/issues/559
From the bug report you can see how some of the missile explosion calculations are done.
Due to the larger radius coming into play various effects of missile hits have been noticed. Including missiles damaging docked ships behind walls and killing players. This is confirmed as normal from this bug report
http://bugs.star-made.org/issues/577
Between all of this you can figure out mostly how missile damage is allocated. Note there is new a explosion absorption value they can play with on blocks to make blocks soak up more explosion damage.
Hit detection
A missile doesn't always hit the surface block of what it just impacted with. With lag the hit detection calculation might happen when its some blocks into the target. Or misses cause it passed through the entire target before the hit detection happened. It is more likely with the higher general speed of missiles linked to server speed. The faster the server speed the faster the missiles.
Damage Sequence on hit
From this bug report the missile allocates enough damage to each block within the 1/4 total radius. It increases the damage to each block till those blocks are destroyed. Each hull block counts as double the amount from the bug report so hardened hull blocks really soak up the damage.
Side Effect
However this also leads to a wall of hardened hull with destroyed blocks behind it as there wasn't enough damage to destroy the hardened hull but enough to wipe out everything behind it within the 1/4 radius.
It continues to allocate more damage until all blocks are destroyed. It adds up the damage done to all blocks and removes this from the total damage remaining.
The missile then starts allocating the remaining damage like above just to the blocks between the 1/4 and 2/4 radius. And so on to full radius or until all the damage runs out.
Side Effect
This means that a docked entity within the 1/4 radius would also take damage.
How shields effect this - my best guess
The tricky bit is figuring out how shields interact with this and how a main ship with more robust shielding has its hull unscathed while the docked ship with lessor or no shields is wrecked behind it.
My guess for how the shield damage is working to produce these effects is: The number of blocks inside the 1/4 radius is calculated for each entity. Main ship, turret, docked ship etc. Damage is proportion to the volume each takes up till shield failure. So if the main ship is 50% of the volume of total blocks inside 1/4 radius, turret 20% and docked 10%. The damage is allocated in that proportion between entities until the shields fail. The damage to that entity then starts working on the blocks, while the other entities shields continue taking damage.
Assumptions Effects and conclusions
- If this is true, putting your docked ships a certain distance from the outer hull will help. the further away the missile hits the less damage will hit the docked entity and its shields will better able to cope with the damage if any. If far enough away the missile will have no effect. But hit detection might make the missile hit deeper.
- Having a solid block of hull with no gaps between the missile impact and the docked entity means the main ship will take a bigger share of the damage.
-Hardened hull effectiveness. Since each hull and hardened hull block counts as double the damage required by the missile to destroy, a layer of hardened hull may stop missiles explosions from penetrating deeper than 1/4 radius, if the missile doesn't have enough damage to destroy them outright it can't penetrate deeper. If I'm reading the bug report right each hardened hull absorbs 800 damage each before any effects. And there is still that block attributed they can edit to modify that.
Note missile/pulse slave has a radius of 40m or 10m for 1/4 radius.
The hull damage defense effect will also help reduce missile hull damage. However while the current defense effects have to account for the mass of docked entities. The defense effect doesn't seem to defend docked entities yet. I'm hoping that is a bug.
We could also introduce a shock resistant block with high explosion resistance and low hit points like 20HP and 1000% explosion absorption to absorb 2,000HP of missile.