Protections [Armor & Shields]

[aPonyWhoLikesToMeow]

tl;dr?

-Shields OP

-Armor UP

-Wreck blocks on destroyed blocks

-Buff astrotechnobeam

-Separate armor & hull

-Armor heavy, attach only to hull

-Nanite auto-repair system for armor & hull

I know, I know! Yet another shields thread. Hear me out, though. I don't want to talk about just shields. I also want to talk about using standard armor and separating armor plates from hull.

Currently, hoping to protect a ship with anything but shields is pointless. The only point of adding "armor" to a ship [read: a single layer of hulls or reinforced hulls] is to protect from errant anti-matter lasers destroying your internal systems without warning once your shield is actually down. The point behind that is that a single missile will obliterate an unshielded ship. Simply put, armor is there so you can run away, shields are there so you can fight. I want that changed because I want armor to be viable.

Instead of simply nerfing shields, or buffing hull HP/armor, a few things need to be done to bring armoring a ship in line with shielding it. The first thing that should be changed is the repair system. Currently, when you ship suffers hull damage, it's generally just a better idea to scrap it and buy it all over again because it's such a hassle to go back through and either repair the damaged hulls or replace the missing hulls. In deep space, it might be viable to repair the ship but all the same it's faster just to replace the blocks in build mode. Since I like building space stations in deep space [away from shops], I don't want to advocate a system in which you can enter build mode only when near a shop.

A really good suggestion I read on the repair system was, instead of just outright removing pieces of hull or internal systems that are destroyed, have it turn into a "Wrecked Block" once its HP reaches 0. You can then repair this wreck block with a repair beam. If the wreck block is behind other wreck blocks, have the repair beam hit the innermost wreck blocks first, or give the repair beam a large AOE depending on the size of the astrotechnobeam series firing the beam. If you want to preserve the economics of the situation, perhaps it would be prudent to be able to repair a wreck block only if you have the proper block to replace it in your inventory when repairing.

My primary suggestion is to split Hull Blocks from Armor Blocks. You would still have normal and reinforced hulls, only that they would not be ideal for armoring a craft. If you wanted armor, you would instead cover the hull with armor blocks. A rule might be that you may only attach armor blocks to hull blocks or other armor blocks. The special properties of armor blocks would be that they have very high hitpoints and damage resistance, but are very heavy. Ideally you would want to armor the front of a ship more than the rear, due in part to the front facing the enemy and that they would be so heavy.

Another suggestion, to go with or seprate from armor blocks, is to introduce a Nanite auto-repair system. The nanite auto-repair system would ideally be split into two separate categories: Hull Nanite Computer & Hull Nanite Canister alongside Armor Nanite Computer and Armor Nanite Canister. These would passively repair hull or armor over time. If the computer is destroyed, the system stops working. The nanite auto-repair can't repair anything but hull or armor, and won't repair wreck blocks. It will repair only damaged blocks. I would also suggest that the nanite canisters require contact with the nanite computers.

The purpose of the nanite auto-repair system is not to repair in combat, but to automatically repair blocks without having to exit the ship and fly a separate ship around it to repair it, or go into build mode and replace the damaged blocks.

And thanks, schema, for making an enjoyable game.

 

[Ludovsky]

Actually, just limiting the spread to which missiles destroy blocks(proper missile launchers can destroy unclaimed stations or planets in less missiles than one has fingers on one hand) would already do a great deal to better balancing their effects on hull blocks.

It always bugged me that missiles destroyed matter such in the game, while in real life the reason some armored vehicles detonate so spectacularly has less to do with the size of the explosive charge carried by the missile(a shaped charge anyway, focusing the blast in a single narrow point) but more due to the ammunition storage or engine catching fire and -then- blowing up taking out the whole vehicle(this is more notable in tanks, but also happened to the british warship, Hood, back in WW2 when a single shelld landed in it\'s ammunition storage).

I will aggree though that I\'d like if mechanics would be changed to add more cost effective means of defeating ship shields than \"build a bigger gun\" as often stands to be the case nowdays, when history proves that armor technology have always proven to be very often easily countered by weapon technologies often more cost effective than the armor they were developped to defeat.

There\'s a reason the advent of aircraft carriers sounded the end of the battleship era. Capital ships in anyway have rarely been about \"brawling\", their armor being more to give them a \"fighting chance\" IF cornered, than they have always been about \"Power projection\" thanks to the strenght and -range- of their weaponry with battleships being able to snipe targets miles away from them and aircraft carriers able to project offensive firepower at even greater range thanks to the fighters they carried.

This said, do I enjoy that a game like this exists?

Hell yeah, there\'s a reason I decided to do what needed to be done to get this small icon at the left, and felt it was so great an idea it was even worth donating even more to support it thanks to the availability of this \"donate\" button.

 

[aPonyWhoLikesToMeow]

Well, I have always held onto this philosophy:

The amount you can defend against depends on the severity of the attack.

An example would be a gun with a rated 100mm penetration against an armor plate that has an effective armor rating of 200mm. The gun will not go through, ever, no matter how many times you shoot it at that plate [within reason, like, say, I guess if you shot it five thousand times it might just wear it down]. However, a gun rated 225mm penetration will always go through that 200mm effective plate, no matter how many times you fire the gun at it [so long as you maintain a 0 degree normal].



So, is this game\'s armor or shield system realistic or even philosophically related? No! But I want to see it improved. And yes I would agree to a missile nerf, but that\'s a whole different issue.

 

[Ludovsky]

I understand your point. But the thing is even if a tiger I\'s 88mm gun\'s was unable to go through 200mm of plating... an infantry panzershrek was able to.

And we\'re comparing one of the biggest tank and gun that saw service during WW2 compared to a weapon that could be carried by any lowly infantry man.

I guess what I\'d like to see is a system where gigantism of weapons would be further scaled back in efficiency where currently everything is better if bigger, even reload rate.

That is, I guess I\'d like to see a system where bigger weapons indeed would see drastic increase in range and damage, but would similarly see a drastic decrease in firing rate. And perhaps add \"some\" area of effect equivalent to some light missiles to the heavier gun to further convey an artillery feel to go with the slower firing rate, but similarly drastically decrease the area of effect of heavy missiles... though they should still keep the high damages to represent the better ability to penetrate heavy armor.

Massive explosions should be possibly, but only by making \"volatile\" equipment like power and shield generators explode upon destruction.

This way, thanks to high damage, missiles(and similar weapons) would still remain armor busting weapon, but their use would come not from annihilating the ship by itself but from being able to bust what armor that could stand between such critical components and the weapon.

This I feel would make the game less of a \"I atomize you to dust once your shields are broken\" deal and lead to a much more tactical combat game as ships would thus try to target out perceived weak points in the enemy ships to take him out, rather than purely annihilating him no matter where they hit him. (recall, armor piercing weapons rarely detonate the vehicles they hit by themselves. More often than not spectacular explosions results from the engine block or ammunition chambers detonating after penetration).

Similarly, I\'d like to see shields modified such that even strong shields are less of an impenetrable barrier, and more simply an additional barrier to give you a chance to survives the first shots to hit you so you can maneuver away rather than be the one and only element allowing one to win a fight sometimes.

 

[aPonyWhoLikesToMeow]

---> \"I understand your point. But the thing is even if a tiger I\'s 88mm gun\'s was unable to go through 200mm of plating... an infantry panzershrek was able to.\"

That\'s a very good point. However, I would like to point out that the Panzershrek was also 88mm, also being a rocket launcher I would suppose it had less rate-of-fire. I would take this point more as a success of designing rocket launchers over guns, but the point stands in that, in 1943, this weapon was better than the Tiger I, and likely the Tiger II, at penetrating armor.



As to your point to changing missiles to be more focused-damage weapons, I would agree. A missile overhaul is overdue. I would like to see them fly much faster but have significantly less AOE damage, also being suited with different ammunition types such as Ion/anti-shield, Shredding/anti-hull, explosive/anti-internals. I don\'t know if the game has different resistance types for that, though.

And as per having a reduction in ROF on the size of the weapon, that would go a long way in making it harder for massive ships with massive guns just mow down smaller ships with their massive ROF. That said I would like more types of weapons than the anti-matter cannon, which would seem to me to be the peak, end-all-be-all of sci-fi weapons. Where\'s the laser-based weapons? The plasma-based weapons? The mass-drivers; railguns, cannons?