What comes to mind when you think Pierce?

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Stable Release .18999 has seen changes to pierce and punch effects. The Pierce effect remains mostly unchanged from the previous version but now punch-through deals damage to the first block it hits and then 1/2 the damage to the next block and so on regardless if the blocks are destroyed. This is the exact opposite of how these effects functioned when they were first introduced.

I was wondering how many people think of this? Should pierce be like it was originally or like it is now.

I personally think the original config had it right when pierce was able to bypass armor and capable of dealing damage to systems directly.

 

[Crashmaster]

Honeycutt.


I don't know...

 

[Keptick]

I honestly think that only the cannon/cannon/punch combo should have been changed. As of right now the change barely affects the rapid fire cannon combo but renders railgun type weapons (cannon/beam/punch and cannon/pulse/punch) somewhat obsolete... Just to put it in perspective a 1 million damage projectile will go through about 10 blocks...

 

[aceface]

I think its good the way it is now. I dont' see any reason to switch back now. Now I will probably actually use piercing.

 

[CyberTao]

I honestly believe that was a mistake on Schema's part.
The first part makes it seems like punch is pierce and vice versa, but when you look at the summery, it's reversed.

• Piercing damage system: Damage applied on a block gets halved and goes to the next block. This will automatically lead to a softcap at around 7 blocks deep. This also makes it able to destroy/damage blocks below armor plates without destroying that first.
  
  
• Punchthrough damage system: Damage applied on a block gets deducted with that block’s EHP, then it is halved and passes to the next block. This also has a softcap at around 7 blocks.

Notice how only punch takes into account the damage dealt to the block there.

I think it was just a wording issue, Schema is German afterall.

 

[Master_Artificer]

It looks like they both do the same thing. What is the difference between the two?

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

It looks like they both do the same thing. What is the difference between the two?

Currently punch can pass damage to the next block without fully destroying the block that gets hit. Peirce only passes damage to the next block if the block that is hit is destroyed, it also reduces the blocks armor and deals 2x damage to hull.

All in all their damage profiles are very similar in every test I have done.
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I honestly believe that was a mistake on Schema's part.
The first part makes it seems like punch is pierce and vice versa, but when you look at the summery, it's reversed.

Notice how only punch takes into account the damage dealt to the block there.

I think it was just a wording issue, Schema is German afterall.

Exactly, the Peirce Effect now uses the "Punch-through damage system" and Punch effect uses the "Pierce damage system"

 

[zigyzigy]

It looks like they both do the same thing. What is the difference between the two?

I agree, from the wording it seems that they are identical with one exception: punch-through has its damage to the first block reduced by the EHP of the block it hits before being halved and then passed on to the block behind it.

what I think schema meant to write is that punch through will have the first block absorb the damage (amount is determined by EHP) until the first block is destroyed and then the remaining energy will be halved and dealt to the block behind.

In that case punch through is for dealing damage to a hull but makes sure that any excess damage dealt is not wasted but used on blocks behind the initial impact

Whereas Piercing is primarily for 'skipping' past the hull and then hitting systems behind it.

So :

piercing will almost always damage 7 blocks deep, though it will not necessarily do much damage to each block

Punch through will expend all available damage on the first block it hits before moving on to damage the next block for much less damage and will have to be very powerful to get any damage on something 7 blocks deep.


In this case I think the naming makes sense in that piercing will basically always pierce irrelevant of the blocks it is shooting at whereas punch-through has to 'punch its way through' each block in turn. Maybe they could rename punch-through to something like 'Impact' to give the impression that the focus is really on the first block it hits?

... I think that is right

 

[CyberTao]

Exactly, the Peirce Effect now uses the "Punch-through damage system" and Punch effect uses the "Pierce damage system"
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Exactly, the Peirce Effect now uses the "Punch-through damage system" and Punch effect uses the "Pierce damage system"

No... according to what I just quoted
Punch is (Total damage-Estimate block health)/2 applied to the next block.
So if you didn't have enough damage to break the block, you could not harm the next block, because the damage would be less than 0 ( a negative)

Pierce is (Total Damage)/2 is applied to the next block (It said damage is half and applied to the next block). It does not matter if the block is broken or not.

The /2 is the softcap applied to both. Pierce ignores the HP of the block it just broke, whereas Punch takes it into account.
Punch is Punch and Pierce is Pierce. Don't say "Exactly" and then make the assumption that is exactly opposite of what I said, it just confuses me

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

No... according to what I just quoted
Punch is (Total damage-Estimate block health)/2 applied to the next block.
So if you didn't have enough damage to break the block, you could not harm the next block, because the damage would be less than 0 ( a negative)

Pierce is (Total Damage)/2 is applied to the next block (It said damage is half and applied to the next block). It does not matter if the block is broken or not.

The /2 is the softcap applied to both. Pierce ignores the HP of the block it just broke, whereas Punch takes it into account.
Punch is Punch and Pierce is Pierce. Don't say "Exactly" and then make the assumption that is exactly opposite of what I said, it just confuses me

Yes, I understand. That is NOT what is happening in game. Currently in game the punch effect modules use pierce damage, and pierce effect uses punch. Look at the configs if you don't believe me. Punch has punch-through set to false and piercing set to true while pierce has punch-through set true and piercing set false.


There are some bugs limiting the amount of damage punch-through has.

 

[CyberTao]

Then mayhaps we should poke Calbiri and ask why their roles are basically reversed. It is more than a little confusing.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Then mayhaps we should poke Calbiri and ask why their roles are basically reversed. It is more than a little confusing.

That was the point of this thread, I wanted to see who might be confused by the change. I've been in discussion with other testers on this matter already and I wanted a broader opinion from the community.

 

[Xavori]

My thotz:

Pierce sucks because of the shield damage debuff. If it could damage shields the same as punch, it'd be useful. It should also be buffed so it can wreck more blocks if it gets through the shields.

Punch was definitely OP previously. Being the only effect that could destroy thousands of blocks per shot made it the only effect worth having on non-missiles. The fix went way too far the other way tho. System blocks should be soft and squishy and dead meat if a strong punch gets through the armor, but the armor should be better able to resist punch effect.

For both effects, I'd allow armor to 'bind' with neighboring blocks. Basically, the armor's hit points = that block + all immediately adjacent blocks. This would dramatically improve the value of multiple layers of blocks because you'd be adding another full blocks worth of hitpoints to all blocks in BOTH layers. At that point, punch has less damage getting through because it has to fully destroy a block to carry on. Pierce, on the other hand, always gets some of its damage through even though it might not being doing as much damage to the actual blocks it hits.

 

[Sha3es]

I would venture to say that a piercing shot should, in fact be able to pass through a block dealing full damage to the block directly impacted. Then it should perhaps lose 1/4 or 1/3 of its total damage, which means it would deal 3/4 of total damage to the block behind it or 2/3 of damage... Just a suggestion however.

 

[Viridis00]

I wanted to see who might be confused by the change.

I'm in that boat. Hell, I've always been confused to a degree about these two between them being unclear when they first came out, and now this. Despite the somewhat confusing changes though, I'm pretty bummed at the softcap regardless of what does what.

 

[CaptainTaz]

I'm in that boat. Hell, I've always been confused to a degree about these two between them being unclear when they first came out, and now this. Despite the somewhat confusing changes though, I'm pretty bummed at the softcap regardless of what does what.

I was also confused. the way it was worded, it seemed like it did the same thing...

 

[jayman38]

My thoughts on what the effects should do, according to the name:

1. Pierce: 50% damage of the max HP to every block along the path. Remove that damage plus 20% from the projectile's damage pool. 50% damage against shields or 50% current shields, whichever is less. Powerful against internal systems, but leaves them operational after the first shot.
Example: 1000 damage piercing bullet hits:
First block: 100 hp, 25% armor is reduced to 50 hp. projectile's damage pool is reduced by 75 (50*1.25*1.2, rounded up).
Two more blocks, same hp and same armor rating. projectile's damage pool is reduced by 150 more. (now at 775)
155 soft blocks in a row, 10 hp, 0% armor. All those blocks are reduced to 5 hp.

2. Punch-through: 100% damage to every block along the path. Remove that damage plus 100 pts from the projectile's damage pool. Full shield damage.
Example: 1000 damage punch-through bullet hits:
First block: 100hp, 25% armor is completely destroyed. projectile's damage pool is reduced by 225 (100*1.25 + 100).
Two more blocks, same hp and armor rating. projectile's damage pool is reduced by 450 more. (now at 325)
3 soft blocks in a row, 10 hp, 0% armor. All blocks cleanly vaporized.

Explanation: pierce should simulate a tiny high-speed projectile that can reach deep, more easily deflected by shields, taking damage reduction from the material directly (10% loss) without destroying everything, while punch-through should bull-doze everything in its path, spending a set amount of damage (the 100 extra points per destroyed block) to make sure it's good and gone.

 

[EtherEel]

My opinion is that these 2 different effects need to just be the same -- ie. eliminate one of them, AND (as I stealthily suggested in another thread) give Beams and Cannons an innate "blast-radius."

I think we're all confused as to what exactly the distinction really is between Pierce and Punch-Through. 1 of them should go....

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

My opinion is that these 2 different effects need to just be the same -- ie. eliminate one of them, AND (as I stealthily suggested in another thread) give Beams and Cannons an innate "blast-radius."

I think we're all confused as to what exactly the distinction really is between Pierce and Punch-Through. 1 of them should go....

One of them is supposed to be an all around weapon and the other is supposed to be essentially the opposite of the ION where instead of extra shield damage you deal extra hull damage. Unfortunately the current Pierce doesn't do much more damage than punch-through despite its 2x hull damage and armor reduction.

 

[Khantron]

I think of Mass Effect 3 where piercing reduces the flat damage reduction of armor. It was generally useful, and downright essential for low damage, high rate of fire weapons.