[power 2.0] Docked Armor (not shields) solutions and ideas

[JinM]

So I am just currious if you guys (pvpers) have any ideas on how to approach this problem. It seemed to be an critique worthy point on the new system, and I am very interested on how other players think about this problem and possible solutions.


So here is my first idea on how to solve it: If a docked entity overheats, it creates an explosion and emp plus power drain effect on its mother. This damage is proportional to it's last received damage over 10 seconds, and to it's initial mass. I allready know, that this solution does not work, as I would just undock the docked armor right before it overheats. =)

But hey - why not apply this effect also in it's proportion, if the docked entity isn't overheating? This also solves the issue, that a docked armor entity (call it A), that is docked to a docked entity (B) before the actual mother ship (M), would just soak up the damage and not apply it to the actual mother: If you save the damage for the last 10 seconds and apply it to the parent entity (B), the damage gets chained down from the parent (B) to the actual mothership (M), as the middle entity (B) would just immediatelly overheat and just hand over the undock/overheat damage from (A) to the actual ship (M).


other suggestions:

Remove AHP, make armor actually matter. Make shields and armor work together instead of one or the other (after shields run out) - it's the whole reason docked armor is so effective, because it makes shields and armor supplement each other.

Additional info:

For clarification and definition of docked armor: Docked armor is, when you have a ship setup, where you exactly know where you are going to get hit. For example the front. At this point you place a huge amount of armor blocks on a docked entity. Another way is to have a docked hull, so the ship is completely covered with a docked exterior.

This armor-entity will get destroyed, but the lost armor hitpoints will not influence your overall armor hitpoints of the parent entity (the actual ship). Compared to a ship, that doesn't use this setup, the docked armor one has advantages:
-Different Armor HP behavior.
-Protection from Ion and Power Effect modules, as they can't damage the actual ship before the docked armor is gone.
-(not an advantage, but problem) if undocked the hull just lags the game to death

Attention: New power, new shields. Please take into account, that we are allready talking about the new systems, as of the information of Schema's latest post. The update, when it comes out as planned, will involve shield spheres, that have certain propperties on their shielding behavior. The docked shields are a lesser issue with the new system, and if you like to discuss the shields mainly, please make a seperate thread. Shields will only cover a certain sphere, this should make docked shields ineffective. Also, the new shield mechanic isn't known to it's full spectrum jet, so discussing solutions to speculations will be very stressfull. This thread exists solely on brainstorming, and foremost to solutions to the docked armor issue.

A quick outline of those features besides the power system, and the chambers is:

~ Local shields: rewritten shield system to cover a radius rather than global to balance shield coverage between multiple docked entities

 

[GnomeKing]

some idea is needed > docked armor is clever and fun, but breaks the game > even if some 'ban' is made on docked armor, the solution needs to cover things like a 'super-carrier' whose surface is covered in docked drones, or even turrets , as these all function as ah hoc docked armor as well....

 

[Zoolimar]

Remove AHP, make armor actually matter. Make shields and armor work together instead of one or the other (after shields run out) - it's the whole reason docked armor is so effective, because it makes shields and armor supplement each other.

Also as some PvP inclined people noted local shields will make docked hull unneeded.

 

[JinM]

but like, do you use docked armor or fight people who do?

So docked armor is not an important balance issue?

 

[kulbolen]

So docked armor is not an important balance issue?

im not sure how you gathered that from anything i said.

 

[Scypio]

So docked armor is not an important balance issue?

What is a balance issue ? Let's assume the fact that everyone use the same technology to fight each others... Is that really a balance issue ? It is known by everyone playing online that docked hull exists and is strong. A lot don't know and understand why but that is still well known.
Well, i don't say that docked hull is super strong and shouldn't be removed from the game. It is just that if everyone build the same way, what's there is no real balance issue.

The main problem with docked hull is when it gets shot off and undock... Lagfest.

Well, it's not like the "fix" was easy to find since the beginning of docked hull. The shield share at 100 %.

 

[GnomeKing]

I agree - lag-fest on undocking is a game breaker for docked-hull, atm > also it seems to stretch fundamental concepts of the game a bit to far, but each to their own

The balance issue is not so much docked-hull per se, but (imo) disconnected and free-floating parts of ships...(including spaghetti-issues and free-floating turrets, as well as 'floating-at-distance' armor)

disconnected entities and maybe 'hull-free' systems are maybe real issue to consider if undocking is solved.
also free floating unpowered system-HP free 'force-field door' shields could be considered, eh adjusting block behaviors of force-field doors, adding power requirements, or additional rules (eg has to have 'ring' of other blocks to 'generate', like a warpgate or ship-yard ... that might deal with some of the 'balance' issues raised

 

[kulbolen]

The balance issue is not so much docked-hull per se, but (imo) disconnected and free-floating parts of ships...(including spaghetti-issues and free-floating turrets, as well as 'floating-at-distance' armor)

separated base systems (spaghetti) is unbalanced, and really doesnt make much sense design wise. other than that most of this stuff is fine. real life tanks and shit use spaced armor...

you still havent explained why a free floating turret is op compared to one with a few blocks making it touch its structure. the modern "op pvp ships" would also like a word with you, as most of them seem to be using traditional turrets.

(its ok, i know its cause you think theyre ugly and want to enforce your design opinions lol)

unpowered system-HP free 'force-field door' shields could be considered, eh adjusting block behaviors of force-field doors, adding power requirements, or additional rules

the additional rule youre looking for is mass, and its already done its job at making forcefield doors inferior to other options... but you wouldnt know that cause...

 

[klawxx]

Guys I believe the solution to docking lag is to greatly simplify the physics calculations. Maybe calculate entity or chunks collision instead of block by block. It would vastly improve things.
Just my 2 cents, or whatever you guys says around there.

 

[JinM]

Guys I believe the solution to docking lag is to greatly simplify the physics calculations. Maybe calculate entity or chunks collision instead of block by block. It would vastly improve things.
Just my 2 cents, or whatever you guys says around there.

But then small ships in small hangars and all the cool stuff that only has 1 block wide gaps doesn't work anymore. You then would not be able to fly a small scooter through a floor of a space station.

 

[Mork2]

Docked armour/shields is not overpowered, unless your opponent is using 100% ion slave or hull damage weapons with 0% shield damage. Its a countermeasure to use against people using those types of weapons. Its your choice to use optimised weapons in which case your going to have some difficultly against docked armour/shields. If you use normal weapon damage the docked armour/shields don't really do much. Its a rock paper scissors thing.

With the new shield system its possible to setup a similar effect without docked modules its just a bit trickier to setup.

 

[Scypio]

disconnected entities and maybe 'hull-free' systems are maybe real issue to consider if undocking is solved.
also free floating unpowered system-HP free 'force-field door' shields could be considered, eh adjusting block behaviors of force-field doors, adding power requirements, or additional rules (eg has to have 'ring' of other blocks to 'generate', like a warpgate or ship-yard ... that might deal with some of the 'balance' issues raised

Then we'll replace force fields with actual hull blocks or whatever that we can use. People use force fields because they're cool and make your ship look like it's shielded by some cool looking shields. Aside from that you can use real opaque hull, that change nothing in term of stats on your ship. It doesn't change anything from the core problem. Problem that have been pointed numerous times as well as the most simple of the solutions for it.

 

[GnomeKing]

ok - what is the fundamental issue we should be talking about?

(last time i checked, door blocks contribute nothing to ship-HP just armor-HP, so destruction of a sacrificial 'force field' slab still leaves ship-HP intact....did that change? )

 

[JinM]

I for my part, was currious on the docked armor thoughts of the people.

I think docked armor is bad, any ship part besides moving stuff or turrets, should not raise the overall efficiency of the ship. It leads to unneccessarily complicated build metas, where I have to add an extra docked armor hull to my ship, just to be as efficient as all the other ships that come with docked armor.

I thought all the other people think about docked hull the same way. And had allready some solutions in their minds, and through that existing knowledge can come up with a good new idea, after the new shield systems got announced from Schema yesterday.

Or just agree on not using docked hull, and shaming those who come with that stuff anyway in pvp.

 

[Mork2]

You use docked armour to counter 100% ion weapons... If people can use 100% ion weapons to drop shields fast you can use docked armour to negate that somewhat.... Which is probably a must for PVP which is to gain a design advantage over your opponent.

If you want to get rid of docked armour that's easy. Just get rid of ion weapons completely. At that point there is no reason to have docked armour.

 

[kulbolen]

if ion weapons didnt exist id still use docked armor.

 

[Scypio]

You use docked armour to counter 100% ion weapons... If people can use 100% ion weapons to drop shields fast you can use docked armour to negate that somewhat.... Which is probably a must for PVP which is to gain a design advantage over your opponent.

If you want to get rid of docked armour that's easy. Just get rid of ion weapons completely. At that point there is no reason to have docked armour.

No.

Like i said, everybody knows about docked hull but doesn't even understand their basic function.

Yes they negate ions but this is not the problem. You can still shoot at the enemy with ion weapons, it'll drop the shield to 25%. With isn't that bad.
Now you should start to understand, docked hull allow to your ship to oscillate at 25% of shield for a huge amount of time, until the hull has been depleted enough to be inexistant.

 

[Dire Venom]

Some good discusion here.
Docked armour certiantly works, and is effective in the current game.
It does have it's issues, namingly negating certian effects, lag etc.
Redesigning the concept to work better with it'self and the game certaitnly would be nice, but is a difficult problem to solve.

Regarding de-attached turrets, I feel something needs to be done there as well. Not nessacerily removing them, just better balancing (e.g power in-effciencey if too far away from conduits for example).
Their advantedges over intergrated turrets:

• Near full direction of fire, no firing arcs.
• Design is not limited by ship shape or design.
• Difficult to hit, especialy when long and thin.
• High powered shots will overpen instead of digging into your ship
• Can operate inddpendently of the ship.
• Loss of turret does not affect the rest of the ship, cause much lag/colisions.
• Ship occupies a larger area of space, shots aimied are more likely to miss.

Intergrated turrets only real advantedge is that they look good, and can be somewhat protected by the mothership. However this is far outweighed by not being hit in the first place (which floating turrets are quite good at).
A bunch of floating turrets are timeconsuming to take out, where as if they are all clumped together you can just shred them and suffer less overpen waste.

You might think swarm missiles might be the solution, however you can easily mount pds turrets on the floating turrets as well.

I personaly REALLY hate that to make missiles effective you have to spam a bunch of no cost 1/1 outputs all over yourship, where as to defend against them you have to spend hours attachting 50-100 no cost pds all over your ship.
Just an endless spam race that cause more, and more lag :/ Absolutly misrable. I hope this gets changed in the weapons updates.

 

[kulbolen]

Some good discusion here.
Docked armour certiantly works, and is effective in the current game.
It does have it's issues, namingly negating certian effects, lag etc.
Redesigning the concept to work better with it'self and the game certaitnly would be nice, but is a difficult problem to solve.

Regarding de-attached turrets, I feel something needs to be done there as well. Not nessacerily removing them, just better balancing (e.g power in-effciencey if too far away from conduits for example).
Their advantedges over intergrated turrets:

• Near full direction of fire, no firing arcs.
• Design is not limited by ship shape or design.
• Difficult to hit, especialy when long and thin.
• High powered shots will overpen instead of digging into your ship
• Can operate inddpendently of the ship.
• Loss of turret does not affect the rest of the ship, cause much lag/colisions.
• Ship occupies a larger area of space, shots aimied are more likely to miss.

Intergrated turrets only real advantedge is that they look good, and can be somewhat protected by the mothership. However this is far outweighed by not being hit in the first place (which floating turrets are quite good at).
A bunch of floating turrets are timeconsuming to take out, where as if they are all clumped together you can just shred them and suffer less overpen waste.

You might think swarm missiles might be the solution, however you can easily mount pds turrets on the floating turrets as well.

I personaly REALLY hate that to make missiles effective you have to spam a bunch of no cost 1/1 outputs all over yourship, where as to defend against them you have to spend hours attachting 50-100 no cost pds all over your ship.
Just an endless spam race that cause more, and more lag :/ Absolutly misrable. I hope this gets changed in the weapons updates.

nothing you wrote here, except possibly "Design is not limited by ship shape or design." is exclusive to detached turrets. i can do every single one of those things with an attached one as well. you also listed them being less laggy in a post where youre pointing out how you think theyre overpowered... isnt this a good thing...

 

[Mork2]

You can do better than negating ion hits at 25% main ship shields though with docked armour.

Have your main ship with minimal shields. Connected a shield entity that will have your largest shields and all shield protected turrets etc attached to it and not the main ship. Those will be protected until the shield entity drops to 25%. Make sure the shield entity completely surrounds the main ship. Next attached your docked external armour to the main ship. Ion hits will hit the docked armour wiping out the main ships shields, but not the shield entity. The shield entity shields will be mostly protected from ion hits until there are gaps in the docked external armour or their hitting the turrets. This is far more effective against ion hits. This will also absolutely result in massive collision lag if either of those 2 docks are destroyed though.

With the heavy use of ion weapons in a pvp situations where you want to win, using docked armour is a big advantage. When ever there is advantage in a fight people will use it.

Some people might be under the assumption that since the docked plate is a different entity the cannon shot will only punch through it and not effect what is behind it. I did test this at one point, as far as I'm aware unless its changed, if a million point damage cannon hits a docked armour plate it actually also punches into all the other entities up and down the docking chain in that line, thus not protecting anything behind it.

Assuming the above it true, get rid of ion weapons and there is absolutely no advantage in using docked armour. At which point is only a source of collision lag only.

Also docked shields end up being docked armour once the shields on it are down. If your going to use docked armour to negate ion hits you might as well have some shield regen to negate the 0% shield damage hits as well and vice versa. I think 0% shield damage hits those are pierce and explosive at 100%, not completely sure.

On a side note with the 1% armour regen chamber with the new power system, it might have some interesting effects. If you have a bunch of basic doors turned off so shots pass through them you will have quite a bit of armour that can't be hit contributing to the armour hp, allowing the armour regen to work faster. Even the regen alone would possibly make docked armour even more useful not less.