Suggestions: armor and penetrating

[taisong]

Tweaked the formula so the block hit will take the most damage;
Damage taken = 100% - (6.6% + (ArmorHP ÷ ArmorHPCap) x 10%) x (number of adjacent armor blocks)

second variation of the formula. This time, the calculation is based on how much damage is absorbed by adjacent blocks.
Damage absorbed = (28 - number of adjacent armor blocks x 2.5 )% x (number of adjacent armor blocks)

Also, I did some color-coding. If anyone want these colors removed, tell me so.
Just thought about what effects can do against a ship;

Weapons
Cannon
Main System: More effective against armor than system blocks, good DPS, very easy to use
Slave System: Decreases damage, increases fire-rate. Just DPS.
Suggestion: Keep it just as it is, this thing is so good to use.

Beam
Main System: Hitscan, effective against system blocks, EVEN BETTER DPS, A bit short range makes it harder to use (in some situations).
Slave System: Makes the bullet faster, increases damage, decreases fire-rate.
Suggestion: Lets increase the DPS of this stuff and decrease the damage efficiency against armor.

Missile
Main System: Massive splash damage, Massive burst damage potential, One-shot, one cripple. AMS turrets shut them down a bit.
Slave System: Shotgun. The f*ck? It does more bad than good, actually. Friendly fire!

Pulse
No data. Please bring a proper gun to a gunfight. No swords allowed.
OOOOOOOrrrr....
Causes an explosion centered around the output point. much like missiles exploding on that specific place. I watched startrek beyond and felt, this VHF disruption attack is SOOOO GOOD.

Effect systems that are affected by this rework
Pierce
Offensive Usage: Peircing through armor, to cripple enemy systems by destroying crucial blocks. Aka shooting enemy computers.

Offensive effect : Decreases the armor damage spread value (red), which lets you pierce things more
Damage taken = 100% - (6.6% + (ArmorHP ÷ ArmorHPCap) x 10%) x (number of adjacent armor blocks)
Also include the old effects for even more penetration

Defensive effect: Same as the old one. Maybe buff it a little. 30%

Punch-through
Offensive Usage: Shredding armor, to give more structural stress to the ship.

Offensive effect : I think the old effects are fine.

Defensive effect: More damage spread. Otherwise, keep the old effect.

 

[MacThule]

Good thread. From a practical compromise perspective with an eye towards codability I have to agree with Lancake.

In a perfect world, I would love to see a fusion between the taisong and StarWars1981 proposals - stacked armor not being penetratated or seeing block destruction at all unless completely overcome, but with damage from any attacks that fail to penetrate being distributed vertically and laterally to adjacent blocks, like denting or material stress, so that smaller impacts in an area will increase the chance of successive attacks in that area actually overcoming the armor stack and ripping a hole in the armor plating, exposing the tasty systems beneath. I think this would be complex to code and potentially lag-inducing during combat though, whereas the Lancake proposal seems to accomplish the same general spirit with simpler implementation.

 

[jijiji]

Tweaked the formula so the block hit will take the most damage;
Damage taken = 100% - (6.6% + (ArmorHP ÷ ArmorHPCap) x 10%) x (number of adjacent armor blocks)

second variation of the formula. This time, the calculation is based on how much damage is absorbed by adjacent blocks.
Damage absorbed = (28 - number of adjacent armor blocks x 2.5 )% x (number of adjacent armor blocks)

Also, I did some color-coding. If anyone want these colors removed, tell me so.
Just thought about what effects can do against a ship;

Weapons
Cannon
Main System: More effective against armor than system blocks, good DPS, very easy to use
Slave System: Decreases damage, increases fire-rate. Just DPS.
Suggestion: Keep it just as it is, this thing is so good to use.

Beam
Main System: Hitscan, effective against system blocks, EVEN BETTER DPS, A bit short range makes it harder to use (in some situations).
Slave System: Makes the bullet faster, increases damage, decreases fire-rate.
Suggestion: Lets increase the DPS of this stuff and decrease the damage efficiency against armor.

Missile
Main System: Massive splash damage, Massive burst damage potential, One-shot, one cripple. AMS turrets shut them down a bit.
Slave System: Shotgun. The f*ck? It does more bad than good, actually. Friendly fire!

Pulse
No data. Please bring a proper gun to a gunfight. No swords allowed.
OOOOOOOrrrr....
Causes an explosion centered around the output point. much like missiles exploding on that specific place. I watched startrek beyond and felt, this VHF disruption attack is SOOOO GOOD.

Effect systems that are affected by this rework
Pierce
Offensive Usage: Peircing through armor, to cripple enemy systems by destroying crucial blocks. Aka shooting enemy computers.

Offensive effect : Decreases the armor damage spread value (red), which lets you pierce things more
Damage taken = 100% - (6.6% + (ArmorHP ÷ ArmorHPCap) x 10%) x (number of adjacent armor blocks)
Also include the old effects for even more penetration

Defensive effect: Same as the old one. Maybe buff it a little. 30%

Punch-through
Offensive Usage: Shredding armor, to give more structural stress to the ship.

Offensive effect : I think the old effects are fine.

Defensive effect: More damage spread. Otherwise, keep the old effect.

Agreed with most, but beam should to be as it is. Cause beam already have big dps.

 

[Panpiper]

Beam
Suggestion: Lets increase the DPS of this stuff and decrease the damage efficiency against armor.

Er... Beams are already literally FIVE TIMES 'less' effective versus armor than cannons. You literally need a weapon five times bigger if it is a beam in order to destroy an armor block than if you are using a cannon. You want to decrease beam effectiveness versus armor even more?!

I've long believed this to be a bug, but this bug has been reported and in the game for over a year. At this point I am half way convinced that this is deliberately intended by the developers.

 

[taisong]

LOL

I don't know. If the bug? will remain, then the beam will be just fine. I thought schine is looking for a fix though. I wonder what they will do.

 

[jijiji]

Example of real armor:

As you see, bullets cracks "nearby blocks". And radius of spreaded damage depends on bullet's power and size. So I think that 5th suggestion should be implemented.

 

[Lancake]

Er... Beams are already literally FIVE TIMES 'less' effective versus armor than cannons. You literally need a weapon five times bigger if it is a beam in order to destroy an armor block than if you are using a cannon. You want to decrease beam effectiveness versus armor even more?!

I've long believed this to be a bug, but this bug has been reported and in the game for over a year. At this point I am half way convinced that this is deliberately intended by the developers.

It's a bug and yeah, hasn't been fixed by now. The beams damage should all add up to the 1st armor block it hits but some of that gets lost. I suspected it was the remaining ticks not adding up correctly but it may be something else related to the amount of blocks it would penetrate otherwise.
[doublepost=1482855075,1482854910][/doublepost]I want to point out that most of these suggestions can only be implemented partially or not at all without also affecting performance. The more detail or complexity you add to the damage model, the more calculating power it will require to apply it.

 

[jijiji]

It's a bug and yeah, hasn't been fixed by now. The beams damage should all add up to the 1st armor block it hits but some of that gets lost. I suspected it was the remaining ticks not adding up correctly but it may be something else related to the amount of blocks it would penetrate otherwise.
[doublepost=1482855075,1482854910][/doublepost]I want to point out that most of these suggestions can only be implemented partially or not at all without also affecting performance. The more detail or complexity you add to the damage model, the more calculating power it will require to apply it.

I want suggest a way to implement 5th suggestion:
When projectile makes first hit, it does damage to nearby blocks (I think range should to depend on bullet power). Server calculate damage for hitted and nearby blocks. It will act like explosive damage. But it should spread damage only once! Another blocks should be damaged in an old way. This algorithm will consume much less load than explosive effect, because explosive effect requires to calculate spreading of damage every time projectile hits new block.

Also, this is a way to fix cannon/explosive effect (may be).

I can suggest you a way how to implement things with less CPU load, because I have experience and knowledges in this work.
[doublepost=1482859624][/doublepost]In addition, "weak" projectiles (with damage less than 3 * block hp) should not spread damage to nearby blocks. It will allow server to avoid some calculations, because "weak" projectiles won't do damage to nearby blocks anyway.

 

[Kimiro]

Mind if I thrown in two cents?
I really hope you don't mind because I put a lot of effort into that post. T_T

 

[Raisinbat]

• akimzav's suggestion: Armor would have a penetration resistance that would increase the more blocks of armor a shot would line up against. If a shot is insufficient to penetrate the armor, it would do zero damage. It it exceeds the penetration value, it deals some block damage to the armor, but possibly not enough to destroy it, and continues to do damage beyond it.

• Edymnion's suggestion: The armor hit point pool would act instead as a form of second shield, such that armor blocks would not be destroyed at all until the AHP runs out. After that, armor blocks would be destroyed as normal, as they would without AHP.

• jijiji's suggestion linear: To penetrate armor, bullet wlll loose X amount of penetration.

• jijiji's suggestion nonlinear: To penetrate armor, bullet will loose X^[WIDTH] penetration.

• taisong's suggestion: Armor should spread much of the damage it sustains to any armor blocks surrounding it, making it necessary to do a lot more damage to actually break through that particular area of armor.

• StarWars1981's suggestion: Armor should have a resistance value that increases depending upon the quantity of armor that is in line with the shot. Great depths of armor (IE: 30 blocks deep) could become exceedingly difficult to penetrate. The difference with Akimzav's seems to be that Akimzav's resistance would be lower and permit penetration without total armor block destruction.

• kaemcedlra's suggestion: Both armor and shields should have penetration resistance percentages versus weapons, but that resistance would be effective versus only either kinetic or energy damage, so a ship wanting equal levels of defense versus all types of damage would be required to have both shields and armor.

• aRottenKomquat's suggestion: is essentially the same as StarWars1981's suggestion.

• [NEW]Lancake's suggestion: Armor resistance should scale depending upon how much armor hit points are in the armor pool. So a small ship without a lot of armor would have rather low block armor percentage, whereas an armored battleship would have maximum resistance, while it's AHP pool was high.

None of these suggestions are going to fix armor:

The problem is that as a ship increases in mass, the penetration depth of its weapons, assuming they are designed properly and not as a single output, increases linearly, but the amount of armor needed for the ship to be able to absorb the shot increases exponentially (armor depth scales linearly, but must be applied on all sides of ship = massive exponential requirement for armor amount to prevent shots from going into system blocks.

Plus armor that can't keep your turrets protected means you lose all your AMS and defensive ability vs smaller ships. Big ships too if ship is a turret boat. This means any attempt at an armor tanker is unable to protect itself, on top of being much slower and less agile because of all the armor slapped onto it. Anyone who has tried taking on much larger ships knows that as soon as their shields drop its an easy victory; you just focus down their turrets, make yourself a nice blind spot, and wait for their HP to wear out while they are completely defenseless.

These problems stem from the fact that we can stack as many small weapons as we want on a single block to gain whatever level of penetration we want; making armor 90% more resistant like in lancake's suggestion will aleviate this, but it can't fix it because it's just moving the apex.

Finally armor is just too god damn heavy. For no discernable reason. It's so much worse than shielding, but has virtually no advantages, standard and advanced armor in particular drag your ship down so much i can't remember the last time i saw a good combat ship with it. It's not just making your ship slower; it's also drastically increasing the amount of support modules you need to keep passive effects maxed. Instead of raising the power of armor how about lowering it's mass so we can have 3-8 layers of armor on the outside of ships for the mass it currently takes? This would also greatly diminish the handicap on RP/cosmetic ships that are caked in heavy armor.

I propose two changes instead:

1. Change the ballistic model to allow 100% damage utilization, but give bigger weapons wider impacts and lower penetration.
   
   This adds the armor locality that's been sugested here in a different way; more armor blocks will be factored in per shot since the impact area is much larger, same way armor is much better at deflecting missiles because of the area. Because the impact isn't on a single block, you no longer need exponential armor for linear mass, and it becomes possible to have enough armor to stop weapons from going straight through the ship.
   
   
2. Change passive effects to a linear scale and let punch-through and explosive effect mitigate fixed damage amounts; punch through reduces all incoming damage by 2 per module while explosive effect increases the amount of damage that goes to armor by 50 (Rework armor HP to absorb X amount of damage from incoming shots before any damage is applied to the block).
   
   For example; a ship with 100 module defensive punch-through effect and 2000 module explosive effect will reduce all incoming hits by 200 damage, and will take 100.000 damage to destroy each armor block. Those 100.000 damage instead goes to armor HP and both effects are lost once armor HP is gone. Multiple successive hits each have to get through 100k damage barrier to destroy the armor block.
   
   This will end the option of stacking multiple weak weapons on the same spot; they'll do zero damage to larger ships with enough punch-through and stand no chance of getting into systems against ships with enough explosive modules.
   
   And of course this effect also applies to docked entities like turrets, so armoring your turrets will actually make them immune to small weapons, as long as the ship has armor.

As an added bonus, you can now give a big DPS bonus to small weapons, like 1/1 weapons starting at 500 DPS instead of 20, since fighter combat isn't very accurate and most of your DPS ends up flying into space, and it won't even make anything overpowered because these weapons are completely useless against larger ships.

 

[Jojomo]

The problem is that as a ship increases in mass, the penetration depth of its weapons, assuming they are designed properly and not as a single output, increases linearly, but the amount of armor needed for the ship to be able to absorb the shot increases exponentially (armor depth scales linearly, but must be applied on all sides of ship = massive exponential requirement for armor amount to prevent shots from going into system blocks.

Not saying you're wrong, just asking a question I don't know the answer to:

Because ship volume also increases exponentially, not linearly, won't this mean that weapons size, and penetration depth, can also increase exponentially?

 

[Raisinbat]

Not saying you're wrong, just asking a question I don't know the answer to:

Because ship volume also increases exponentially, not linearly, won't this mean that weapons size, and penetration depth, can also increase exponentially?

Its a function of the volume; as volume expands, weapons expand linearly ( a ship with 5x more mass can support 5x more DPS (linear), but if you're keeping mass ratios for weapons/thrust/armor/shield the same, your ships armor thickness does not increase linearly, so your ability to mitigate damage through armor decreases relative to the amount of armor your ship can penetrate. )

eg. If you have a 100/100/100 cube ship (1.000.000 blocks) with 10% of the ship is a can/can weapon (100.000 blocks = 10.000 damage per shot) you need 10 blocks of advanced armor all around the ship to mitigate that shot. thats 110^3 - 100^3 in armor blocks (total space occupied - space for system blocks) = 331,000 advanced armor blocks. (33% increase)

A 200/200/200 cube ship (8.000.000 blocks) with 10% dedicated to can/can can do 80.000 damage, so 80 armor blocks.
This means we need 280^3 - 200^3 armor blocks : 13.952.000 armor blocks =174% increase. That's the problem; linear damage but less than linear mitigation means armor cannot keep up with weapon growth, and can/can is the best case scenario for armor; it only gets worse.

 

[Jojomo]

Its a function of the volume; as volume expands, weapons expand linearly ( a ship with 5x more mass can support 5x more DPS (linear), but if you're keeping mass ratios for weapons/thrust/armor/shield the same, your ships armor thickness does not increase linearly, so your ability to mitigate damage through armor decreases relative to the amount of armor your ship can penetrate. )

eg. If you have a 100/100/100 cube ship (1.000.000 blocks) with 10% of the ship is a can/can weapon (100.000 blocks = 10.000 damage per shot) you need 10 blocks of advanced armor all around the ship to mitigate that shot. thats 110^3 - 100^3 in armor blocks (total space occupied - space for system blocks) = 331,000 advanced armor blocks. (33% increase)

A 200/200/200 cube ship (8.000.000 blocks) with 10% dedicated to can/can can do 80.000 damage, so 80 armor blocks.
This means we need 280^3 - 200^3 armor blocks : 13.952.000 armor blocks =174% increase. That's the problem; linear damage but less than linear mitigation means armor cannot keep up with weapon growth, and can/can is the best case scenario for armor; it only gets worse.

I see, thanks for the explanation.
You meant compared to a linear increase in the number of weapon blocks, the armour required to resist it increases exponentially - I was thinking that compared to a linear increase in ship size in one dimension that both the number of weapons blocks and the armour required increase exponentially (admittedly not at the same rate).
But I fully get your point now, and tend to agree - it sounds like it should be rebalanced.

 

[Lecic]

This poll has some serious problems. Most of these suggestions are just variants of "thicker armor is harder to penetrate," so that makes the handful of ones that aren't seem much more popular than they really are. I'm going to specifically attack the suggestion here that I REALLY dislike, which is getting a bonus from this effect.

Edymnion's suggestion: The armor hit point pool would act instead as a form of second shield, such that armor blocks would not be destroyed at all until the AHP runs out. After that, armor blocks would be destroyed as normal, as they would without AHP.

This is a TERRIBLE suggestion. Making armor into a second shield layer is boring and removes diversity in defensive options. At that point, you might as well just make armor into a heavier, higher capacity shield capacitor.

 

[akimzav]

but the amount of armor needed for the ship to be able to absorb the shot increases exponentially

Both jijiji's (non-linear) and mine suggestions assumed that the resistance of armor increases at least faster than linearly. Also, it was at least in my suggestion that there may be a threshold which allows armor to completely absorb incoming damage. As i (probably) explained in my own post, this will encourage players to build 'main gun' in their ships, which will play the main role in dealing with ships of comparable mass.
Also, in this model as i (most likely) mentioned in my post, the only (and the only one that makes sense) reason not to shoot down small fighters with the 'main gun' (cannon is implied here) is that it must be rather slow, and possibly even increasingly inaccurate with its damage increase, and even possibly having the projectile speed decrease. In other words, being a guaranteed overkill against every fighter, the 'main gun' would be very unlikely to hit a skilled pilot. (oh, look, an actually skill-demanding combat gameplay here)
As i (most likely) mentioned earlier (who am i fooling, even schema himself said that), beams must have their damage fall with distance (like, diffraction and stuff). To introduce some skill-demanding difficulty to those, i also suggest the firing mechanic of beams to be as follows: to fire, one shall first hold down firing button for the time that beam now has to reload; then, the beam instantly fires. (the player will have to "lead" his target for some time to not miss the shot)
What does all that random stuff with accuracy do, you may ask? Simple -- it introduces more non-linear, engineering/piloting/turret-operating skill-based factors to the game. And those factors, as i think, are very important for gameplay to be more fun, more involving and more balanced.

 

[Raisinbat]

Both jijiji's (non-linear) and mine suggestions assumed that the resistance of armor increases at least faster than linearly. Also, it was at least in my suggestion that there may be a threshold which allows armor to completely absorb incoming damage. As i explained in my own post, this will encourage players to build 'main gun' in their ships, which will play the main role in dealing with ships of comparable mass.

Yes but both suggestions allow heavily armored fighters to completely ignore fighter grade weapons, which is really bad. Fighters can't be allowed this because fast firing weapons are necessary to hit them; you can't lead slow firing guns against targets that are rapidly changing direction.

These changes make armor reduction uniform across ALL ship sizes; it eliminates the variety, and adding a single layer of armor changes ship from highly vulnerable to completely immune to damage.

It also does NOTHING to protect turrets, which is currently the biggest issue for armor. A turretless ship is defenseless.

Also, in this model as i mentioned in my post, the only reason not to shoot down small fighters with the 'main gun' is that it must be rather slow, and possibly even increasingly inaccurate with its damage increase, and even possibly having the projectile speed decrease. In other words, being a guaranteed overkill against every fighter, the 'main gun' would be very unlikely to hit a skilled pilot

What's the point of this? We can build whatever guns we want; huge guns are already terrible, why do they need to be worse? The reason not to shoot fighters with capital is that it's a colossal waste of damage, and multiple smaller guns are more efficient at it. There's no need to nerf their tracking speed, or reduce projectile speed, as if that needed to be any lower.

Why does heavier guns need nerfing???

 

[akimzav]

Why does heavier guns need nerfing???

As of now, there is no need of nerfing large guns at all. I agree with you when you say that it would be a bad decision, but it is only true in the scope of current game state.

You certainly know that any more-or-less gameplay-affecting problem is usually hard to be covered within a single step. It is mainly because most solutions to an old problem also introduce new problems.
This is why most of the time i, in my suggestions, try to cover not only the main topic, but also topics connected with it.

The reasoning behind my words about accuracy, skill-to-use, damage falloff, etc. is simple -- considering my suggestion, and the idea, the model behind it, assuming those mechanics related to armor are implemented, it can be seen, that the following effect appear:
1. hull is now (at least) non-linearly strong; it can even ignore some damage values, from smaller guns
Isn't it what we wanted, eh? Stronger hull, direction-dependent armoring, many more design options.. But, there is also
2. as a consequence of 1, spreading firepower between many points (turrets, fighters, waffleguns) is now way less effective than merging in into one 'main gun'.
This may seem as a problem, a problem that can take a long time to fix by fine-tuning the coefficients and formulas in penetration and damage calculation formulas, but there is a much better way. As i said, this way includes introducing at least not-100% accuracy, decreasing with enlargement of gun, damage falloffs, projectile flight speed etc. Why do i like said factors so much? Well, because they seem to do their job:
1. Fighters still can't quicly damage thick hull on their own, they need to target weak spots, systems, and use specialized weaponry against larger ships. They are now much less likely to be shot down instantly by a heavy turret; they are now more-or-less in fair conditions against arrays of small turrets. The best weapon against a fighter will now be another, more skilled fighter.
2. Manning turrets will now have more advantages, as the AI is not as good in leading target and predicting its maneuvers.
3. Battles will now be at smaller distances, because of the cannon's accuracy and beam's damage falloff. It will increase the importance of piloting skill and tactical planning
4. Considering 3 and 1, ship designing will be more skill-demanding.

Another reason why i like said factors is because they correlate with real life, and, because of that, allow us to intuitively seek the best way to play, instead of relying on, i don't know, some wiki guide, which makes you feel confused like "why the heaven is it balanced in such way??".

The final reason is that, as you couldn't help but notice, i present you a way that is filled with skill-demanding points. Such mechanics allow you, as a player, to be a specialist in some branch of the gameplay, and, more importantly, such mechanics make it possible for you to have advantage of those less skilled than you.
Isn't that what all of us wanted? Isn't it fun to be a pro fighter pilot, or an expert gunner, or a best engineer? Isn't it the gameplay we want, where a skilled crew, working as a team, using tactics, can take an uneven fight and win?
If you disagree with me that StarMade should not have such general rules of gameplay and such relations between skill and block count, then, well, feel free to throw rocks at me.

 

[akimzav]

Got little carried away while typing previous reply, so here i go again.

Yes but both suggestions allow heavily armored fighters to completely ignore fighter grade weapons

It's difficult to transfer my own vision directly to your brain, so i will try my best to explain main idea.
Take a look at this pseudo-algorithm, which devs would have to go through if they were to implement my suggestion exactly as it is. The game is considered to be in it's current state at the start of this algorithm.

1. Introduce effective armor thickness measuring mechanic & non-linear damage absorption with armor & add a mechanic related to a full damage ignore threshold. As of this step, all coefficients related to these mechanics (let's name them Coefficient Set A, or csA for short) are random.
2. Pick any single (or even a set) 'reference Fighter' (or rF for short). This is an important step, as we pretty much want to be sure, what shall 'average fighter' term refer to.
3. Same as 2, with 'reference Battleship' (or rB for short).
4. Pick any time value as 'reference average even battle Time for Fighter class' (or rTF for short), that stands for the characteristic time that a battle 1*rF-vs-1*rF should take, in dev's opinion.
5. Same as 4, with 'reference average even battle Time for Battleship class' (or rTB for short).
6. Adjust csA in a such way, that battles 1*rF-vs-1*rF and 1*rB-vs-1*rB take, in average, rTF and rTB time respectively, and that battles 1*rF-vs-1*rB take much less (like, 1%) time than the smallest value in pair rTF, rTB. Let's name the resulting characteristic time 'actual average battle Time for Fighter Battleship', or aTFB for short. (Note, that, unlike any our previously named values, this one isn't constant)
7. Introduce the skill-dependent mechanics like (possibly random) delay in beam shots, accuracy for cannons, need to laser-lead homing missiles from missile-beam weapons, lower projectile travel speed, etc. Lets name the set of coefficients that define these mechanics Coefficient Set B, or csB for short.
8. Adjust csB in such way, that aTFB equals.. what we want it to be. To increase the role of F-F battles, i suggest 2 times the largest of values rTF and rTB. The devs may have other opinion on it.
9. ???
10. profit.

Isn't it obvious that before we talk about actual suggestions, it is better first to acquire those rTF, rTB, or, at least, rF and rB?.. To me -- yes.

"But akimzav,"-- you may ask, -- "what 'reference ships' are you talking about? StarMade is about free building, it doesn't need any target times, or any samples to be considered!"
This may seem like a fair question/comment, but consider this.
When a community plays on a server, given enough time and skill of players, enough depth in their knowledge of game mechanics, and also given a complete absence of any RP-elements in server's rules, this community creates ships in the most efficient way. Somehow, this community came to a simple realization: currently, Borg cubes are best.
Some of the players, and, more importantly, the devs, are not quite happy with this simple and mathematically beautiful result. This is why now we are gathering here on the suggestion forum, and post our ideas which, as we think, can change the situation to some 'better' state.
But what is this 'better'? This is where said 'reference ships' and 'reference times' appear. Simply because our time is limited, and we can't try every mechanic there is possible, to one day stop and say "yeah, you know, this.. this is pretty gud", we need to:
1) have some more-or-less solid criteria of what is "gud" and what isn't;
2) find some hints related to how exactly the "gud" mechanic shall look like, what are the formulas and the laws of such a mechanic.
And while 1) can be fairly easy be defined in a random way, 2) needs serious work to do. It is 2) that the suggestion forum is for.
Me? I prefer irl physical laws to be our hint if to talk about 2).
[doublepost=1486151640,1486151506][/doublepost]such wall of text. wow. much useful information (sarcasm).

 

[jijiji]

Yes but both suggestions allow heavily armored fighters to completely ignore fighter grade weapons, which is really bad. Fighters can't be allowed this because fast firing weapons are necessary to hit them; you can't lead slow firing guns against targets that are rapidly changing direction.

These changes make armor reduction uniform across ALL ship sizes; it eliminates the variety, and adding a single layer of armor changes ship from highly vulnerable to completely immune to damage.

It also does NOTHING to protect turrets, which is currently the biggest issue for armor. A turretless ship is defenseless.

Fast firing weapons are not needed really to hit them. Missiles and beam are best way to destroy fast ships.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

the amount of armor needed for the ship to be able to absorb the shot increases exponentially

This is main armor problem. It should be exactly the opposite. So the amount of weapons to be able to destroy armor should increase exponentially. Some of our solutions are able to do it.

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I will write some ideas to exmplain armor problem a bit more.

Spoiler: Explanation

The subject of shields is:

1. It can regenerate (regards as advantage).
2. It guarantees blocks won't be destroyed while shields are fine (regards as advantage).
3. It is easy to build (regards as advantage).
4. It's expensive (regards as disadvantage).
5. It requires power consumption (regards as disadvantage).
6. It is light.

So if you have a lot of resources you can decide to build ships with shields. It's easy to use cause small ships can't destroy your shields.

The subject of armor is:

1. It is cheap (regards as advantage).
2. It is hard to build (regards as disadvantage).
3. It can be penetrated (regards as disadvantage).
4. It is relatively fragile (regards as disadvantage).
5. It is heavy (regards as disadvantage).
6. It don't regenerate. Have to be repaired after every fight (regards as disadvantage).

This is facts. These armor disadvantages will be fine if 3 and 4 points will be fixed (or at least 4 cause i get used to make 30 meters of armor). 4th point can be fixed by server config, but the problem is that max block HP is 255!

Just few another examples of fixing it:

Spoiler: Example

Here is 2 armor types: soft and hard. (in real life)

The idea of soft armor is that it is hard to destroy, but easy to penetrate. It is able to stop a lot of bullets if they're not enough to penetrate it. Soft armor is most used for tanks, ships, air. It works well against anti armor weapons, but not against penetrating weapons.

The idea of hard armor is that requires less thickness to stop penetration, becase the damage is shared throughout the armor. But disadvantage of this armor is that it is easy to destroy. Hard armor is used in some bulletproof vests and strengthening (ceramic armor). It works well against penetrating weapons, but not against anti armor weapons.

So the suggestion is to make 2 types of armor: soft and hard:
Soft armor should give less AHP, but have more HP then hard armor. Just add HP to standard and advanced armor blocks, add AHP and AHP consumption level to crystal armor. (i am suggestion it to do on a server, it needs about 1 hour of work)


Another suggestion. Allow blocks to have more then 255 HP. If damage resistant thing would be removed, it will cause less lags. In this case advanced armor's HP can be set to 16 000, and standard armor's HP to 4 000. (for example) (also in coup with previous suggestion crystal armor may have 8000 and 2000 HP but more AHP).

Tell me if you think i am wrong.

P.S.
If you want me to add a suggestion to suggestions list, just ask me.

 

[Lecic]

Fast firing weapons are not needed really to hit them. Missiles and beam are best way to destroy fast ships.

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This is main armor problem. It should be exactly the opposite. So the amount of weapons to be able to destroy armor should increase exponentially. Some of our solutions are able to do it.

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I will write some ideas to exmplain armor problem a bit more.

Spoiler: Explanation

The subject of shields is:

1. It can regenerate (regards as advantage).
2. It guarantees blocks won't be destroyed while shields are fine (regards as advantage).
3. It is easy to build (regards as advantage).
4. It's expensive (regards as disadvantage).
5. It requires power consumption (regards as disadvantage).
6. It is light.

So if you have a lot of resources you can decide to build ships with shields. It's easy to use cause small ships can't destroy your shields.

The subject of armor is:

1. It is cheap (regards as advantage).
2. It is hard to build (regards as disadvantage).
3. It can be penetrated (regards as disadvantage).
4. It is relatively fragile (regards as disadvantage).
5. It is heavy (regards as disadvantage).
6. It don't regenerate. Have to be repaired after every fight (regards as disadvantage).

This is facts. These armor disadvantages will be fine if 3 and 4 points will be fixed (or at least 4 cause i get used to make 30 meters of armor). 4th point can be fixed by server config, but the problem is that max block HP is 255!

Just few another examples of fixing it:

Spoiler: Example

Here is 2 armor types: soft and hard. (in real life)

The idea of soft armor is that it is hard to destroy, but easy to penetrate. It is able to stop a lot of bullets if they're not enough to penetrate it. Soft armor is most used for tanks, ships, air. It works well against anti armor weapons, but not against penetrating weapons.

The idea of hard armor is that requires less thickness to stop penetration, becase the damage is shared throughout the armor. But disadvantage of this armor is that it is easy to destroy. Hard armor is used in some bulletproof vests and strengthening (ceramic armor). It works well against penetrating weapons, but not against anti armor weapons.

So the suggestion is to make 2 types of armor: soft and hard:
Soft armor should give less AHP, but have more HP then hard armor. Just add HP to standard and advanced armor blocks, add AHP and AHP consumption level to crystal armor. (i am suggestion it to do on a server, it needs about 1 hour of work)


Another suggestion. Allow blocks to have more then 255 HP. If damage resistant thing would be removed, it will cause less lags. In this case advanced armor's HP can be set to 16 000, and standard armor's HP to 4 000. (for example) (also in coup with previous suggestion crystal armor may have 8000 and 2000 HP but more AHP).

Tell me if you think i am wrong.

P.S.
If you want me to add a suggestion to suggestions list, just ask me.

Increasing the max block HP is impossible without sacrificing a bit from something else or increasing the number of bytes per block from 3 to 4, which would greatly increase the size of ship and world files and increase overall in game lag.

Also, I don't understand what you mean by "damage resistance thing," or how removing it would decrease lag? Do you mean armor values? Those don't increase lag, at least not in any amount that actually matters.