Solution to armor : Armor grouping

[zetacross]

Armor is basically tissue in larger scale battles; couple of cannons linked to a piercing can easily cut through shieldless capital ships like hot lightsaber through butter.

Problem is where buffing HP and armor of blocks feels like. . . cheating.

A suggestion is to be able to combine armor blocks via linking to form bigger plates

Example, an ordinary ship:


Step 1 : Select a block, and 'v' key nearby blocks, and . . .


That's it! Grouping armor together increases their HP and Armor value, but at the same time are easier to hit. The entire 9 block breaks once the HP is depleted.

For instance grouping 3x3 advanced armor would group them to have 9% bonus: 2250+225 HP, 900+90 Armor and 75+9% block.

Extending this idea, you have :


This will give players way more customization to their ships, when they are no longer stuck with 1x1 blocks for their giant ships.

To recap:
Linking armor to similar blocks groups them together into a plate or cube. Their collective armor is about 1% stronger per block(with diminishing returns) than one alone.

Advantages:
+ Reduces the problem of "ARMOR too weak devs plz fix =<!!!1"
+ Doesn't add new base blocks
+ Adds functionality to even the most basic of blocks
+ Even more sandbox play for players (Starmade's no.1 feature)
+ Even more variants of ships
+ More interesting ship interiors
+ Actually possible to make ships with weak shields, good armor
+ Better destruction (as 1 plate breaks instead of fugly 9x9 blocks slowly being chipped away)
+ Promotes more thoughtful ship design
+ Increases strength of larger ships
+ Vastly improves survivability of stations
+ Can be eventually extended to light and decoration blocks.
+ Easier to protect ship innards (inner ship lined with plates)
+ Much easier to repair large plates rather than one voxel by one voxel.
+ Reduces ship drilling tactics.

Disadvantages:
- Requires multi-block coding into engine (or well, just fake blocks using cutouts of original texture)
- Requires block group coding (when unlinked, a damaged blocks retain their original HP until a minimum of 1HP)
- Kinda promotes death cubes more (but those guys usually get kicked anyway)
- Lowers strength of smaller ships (due to less space for plates)


+- Takes much longer for those who like to customize EVERYTHING

 

[Blaza612]

Armor is basically tissue in larger scale battles; couple of cannons linked to a piercing can easily cut through shieldless capital ships like hot lightsaber through butter.

Problem is where buffing HP and armor of blocks feels like. . . cheating.

A suggestion is to be able to combine armor blocks via linking to form bigger plates

Example, an ordinary ship:
View attachment 20398

Step 1 : Select a block, and 'v' key nearby blocks, and . . .

View attachment 20396
That's it! Grouping armor together increases their HP and Armor value, but at the same time are easier to hit. The entire 9 block breaks once the HP is depleted.

For instance grouping 3x3 advanced armor would group them to have 9% bonus: 2250+225 HP, 900+90 Armor and 75+9% block.

Extending this idea, you have :
View attachment 20397

This will give players way more customization to their ships, when they are no longer stuck with 1x1 blocks for their giant ships.

To recap:
Linking armor to similar blocks groups them together into a plate or cube. Their collective armor is about 1% stronger per block(with diminishing returns) than one alone.

Advantages:
+ Reduces the problem of "ARMOR too weak devs plz fix =<!!!1"
+ Doesn't add new base blocks
+ Adds functionality to even the most basic of blocks
+ Even more sandbox play for players (Starmade's no.1 feature)
+ Even more variants of ships
+ More interesting ship interiors
+ Actually possible to make ships with weak shields, good armor
+ Better destruction (as 1 plate breaks instead of fugly 9x9 blocks slowly being chipped away)
+ Promotes more thoughtful ship design
+ Increases strength of larger ships
+ Vastly improves survivability of stations
+ Can be eventually extended to light and decoration blocks.
+ Easier to protect ship innards (inner ship lined with plates)
+ Much easier to repair large plates rather than one voxel by one voxel.
+ Reduces ship drilling tactics.

Disadvantages:
- Requires multi-block coding into engine (or well, just fake blocks using cutouts of original texture)
- Requires block group coding (when unlinked, a damaged blocks retain their original HP until a minimum of 1HP)
- Kinda promotes death cubes more (but those guys usually get kicked anyway)
- Lowers strength of smaller ships (due to less space for plates)


+- Takes much longer for those who like to customize EVERYTHING

Yes, simply yes. Being able to remove those pesky lines > life. :p

 

[NeonSturm]

You didn't mention the issue of checker-board building.
I appreciate the idea as itself, but worry about it being a step back in construction tool support.

 

[Valck]

The idea in general has merit, however I think an (essentially free) armour bonus should come with a corresponding tradeoff of equal proportions.

Compensate the armour bonus with additional mass.
That would lessen the impact you mentioned for smaller craft - relatively speaking, they become weaker as they don't have as many options for plate groups, but on the other hand they don't get weighed down as much, resulting in a speed boost in relation to larger ships to make up for that.
On top of that it might help balance among otherwise similar ships for those who don't want to spend all day to plate their ship for that last tenth of a percent of bonus...

 

[kookster]

The idea in general has merit, however I think an (essentially free) armour bonus should come with a corresponding tradeoff of equal proportions.

Compensate the armour bonus with additional mass.
That would lessen the impact you mentioned for smaller craft - relatively speaking, they become weaker as they don't have as many options for plate groups, but on the other hand they don't get weighed down as much, resulting in a speed boost in relation to larger ships to make up for that.
On top of that it might help balance among otherwise similar ships for those who don't want to spend all day to plate their ship for that last tenth of a percent of bonus...

the balance is that if you kill the plate all the blocks in that plate go poof, you now how a bloody huge hole in your hull.

I think if this were to be implemented at least one restriction needs to be added. All the linked armor needs to be directly connected. And maybe a restriction on how many can be linked. Very interesting idea either way.

 

[Valck]

the balance is that if you kill the plate all the blocks in that plate go poof, you now how a bloody huge hole in your hull.

I don't see where this would be balanced, since you have to deplete the total HP of all the blocks in a plate plus the bonus HP before you get even a tiny hole. Yes, once you killed the plate the hole will be big, but with single blocks you would already have several holes by then.

I think if this were to be implemented at least one restriction needs to be added. All the linked armor needs to be directly connected. And maybe a restriction on how many can be linked. Very interesting idea either way.

I was under the impression that having a contiguous volume of blocks is a prerequisite for "plate". Anything else wouldn't make sense.
Limiting plate size should happen via diminishing returns in my opinion.

EDIT:
Actually, that brings up another problem: How would you deal with depth-layering? Say you have five blocks thick armour, and layer them so that every "plate" only has one single block on the outside. You now effectively have a super armour "block" with 505% the HP of a single block, and still only a 1x1 hole, albeit five deep, once the "plate" gets destroyed... nice way to circumvent a soft cap. It would be a nightmare to actually build such a ship, but I bet someone will.

 

[kookster]

I don't see where this would be balanced, since you have to deplete the total HP of all the blocks in a plate plus the bonus HP before you get even a tiny hole. Yes, once you killed the plate the hole will be big, but with single blocks you would already have several holes by then.

Thats the point, to make armor stronger, cause currently its bit of a joke.

I was under the impression that having a contiguous volume of blocks is a prerequisite for "plate". Anything else wouldn't make sense.
Limiting plate size should happen via diminishing returns in my opinion.

Diminishing returns might not be a bad idea, personally I would vote for just a limitation on how big of a plate you can make. But then I could also be persuaded to have no limit on how big a plate is, if we grouped all of our armor together its practically the same as shields. But that doesnt really make a ton of sense that way.

Actually, that brings up another problem: How would you deal with depth-layering? Say you have five blocks thick armour, and layer them so that every "plate" only has one single block on the outside. You now effectively have a super armour "block" with 505% the HP of a single block, and still only a 1x1 hole, albeit five deep, once the "plate" gets destroyed... nice way to circumvent a soft cap. It would be a nightmare to actually build such a ship, but I bet someone will.

Thats why i said that all of a armor plate should be directly connected, to prevent such a thing. But then again we might want to reward people for coming up with creative designs. I could go either way with this.

 

[Valck]

Thats why i said that all of a armor plate should be directly connected, to prevent such a thing.

Then maybe I don't understand how you define "plate". In my example, all of the five blocks of the "plate" would be connected, as would the five blocks of the plate next to that one, and so on. You can either allow different plates on one ship, or you don't. If you allow plates, you need a way to have separate plates next to each other. If that is possible, the exploit is possible too.

 

[kookster]

Then maybe I don't understand how you define "plate". In my example, all of the five blocks of the "plate" would be connected, as would the five blocks of the plate next to that one, and so on. You can either allow different plates on one ship, or you don't. If you allow plates, you need a way to have separate plates next to each other. If that is possible, the exploit is possible too.

Maybe I misread your post.
[DOUBLEPOST=1451415479,1451414841][/DOUBLEPOST]Ok i did misread your message. Yeah that wont be prevented. But honestly i dont know if that should be considered a issue, thats just bloody awesome design.

 

[NeonSturm]

A ship twice as large (in x y and z all) has effectively half the relative block size (relative to it's size).
This means that a 1x-scale ships have 4x4x4-armor plates compared to a 4x-scale ship which has 1x1x1-armor blocks.


Maybe a bit related, https://starmadedock.net/threads/bigger-stuff-better-how-this-can-actually-nerf-big-ships.7218/

Many replies, this thread tells about a volumetric projectile.

 

[lupoCani]

I would argue this is what armor hp should have been, in a way. A system where the collective amount of armor determines the damage any one point can take before exposing the underneath systems, not how much damage can be taken until all hull everywhere has it's ehp halved. That's just... arbitrary.

It could still exist on a ship-wide scale, though. Each armor block would add some global % of damage reduction, probably on some kind of log scale or asymptote. If this % was simply never reduced by block damage, we'd have just what we needed.

The suggested implementation here, while a respectable idea, will sort of inevitably punish round or irregular shapes, not to mention I don't see how it could possibly be implemented with currentblock bytes.