noelte wrote:Why? Why should all energy weapons be lumped into one category?
What is the obvious difference between basic and advanced energy??
utilae wrote:All energy weapons should be lumped in one category because that is how the counter system works, it relies on the counter relationships between weapon types, 'energy' being one weapon type.
Advanced energy just sounds like energy weapons that are higher in the tech tree. If Advanced energy weapons are mean't to be like subspace/exotic etc, then we should name the category something else.
I used Advanced Energy as a category since there was some dispute as to what an advanced energy category should be called. I called it "Subspace," LithiumMongoose called it "Exotic," Impaler called it "Normal" and everybody else said it should be called something else. Whatever the name, there should be at least two categories of energy weapons. To represent all of the different forms of energy used in a single category would be criminal.
utilae wrote:Energy spores are energy type, mines are explosive type.
A mine is an object that sits in a location until activated by some means. It could be explosive, it could be mounted with a laser or it could have acid in it. The point is it should be a delivery system, not an individual weapon.
discord wrote:so take a step beyond what has already been done a few hundred times, and look to the future instead, free the system up, and let the players balance it among themselves instead, as it is supposed to be.
How are players supposed to balance the game themselves? Your explaination doesn't clear that up. Are they supposed to spend a day before playing coming up with a system?
discord wrote:#3 there should be LOTS of different damage types, as there are lots very different ways to create damage, no?
#4 composite armor,
meaning of the word should be looked up...as should ablative, although ablative is abit trickier, as it's original meaning is purely grammatical, and used in a similar manner for armor, basicly it is a passive form of reactive armor, that allows itself to be destroyed partly to decrease the amount of actual damage, as such the resistance of both ablative and reactive armors should decrease as they suffer more enemy fire.
and composite armors should be player designed(with some penalties for using different armor materials, since no creation is perfect...)
Lots of different damage types = lots of complexity which = player confusion. By creating a few damage type categories and then puting weapons into them as best we can, we eliminate lots of confusion.
From
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.c ... e%20armour:
Composite armour is a type of armour consisting of layers of different material such as metals, plastics, ceramics or air.
AND
Reactive armor or explosive reactive armour (ERA), is a type of armour used primarily on tanks to lessen the damage from explosions caused from missile warheads, exploding shell’s, grenades.
Essentially all anti-tank munitions work by piercing the armor and killing the crew inside. Reactive armor's protective mechanism involves producing an explosion or other such reaction when it is impacted by a weapon, actively "pushing back" against it. This is particularly effective against shaped charge warheads, in which the warhead directs a focused jet of molten metal against the armor; reactive armor's reaction disrupts the jet before it reaches the armor's surface.
From
http://www.dictionary.com:
ab•la•tive
adj.
1. Of, relating to, or capable of ablation.
2. Tending to ablate.
ab•la•tion
n.
1. Surgical excision or amputation of a body part or tissue.
2. The erosive processes by which a glacier is reduced.
3. Aerospace. The dissipation of heat generated by atmospheric friction, especially in the atmospheric reentry of a spacecraft or missile, by means of a melting heat shield.
Now hopefully you understood that but my hopes are not high.
Impaler wrote:I dont think we should handle shields in the same manor that armor is handled, their should be some differnt mechanism by which shields work or the Shield/Armor of a ship is realy just a mix of 2 similar things.
How should shields be done then? If they are a part of the countering system, then they need to counter the smae things in a similar way. They can either stop weapons absorbing all damage, they can absorb damage as the weapon passes through but damage is still done to armor or they can deflect all damage and take none themselves. They can recharge as time passes or they can't until after the battle. There aren't very many ways you could make shields function and I don't think any of them could be done different than armor.
I am fully against armor and shields being one unit as I stated before.
Impaler wrote:When the player selects Adamantium as the chossen Armor for their ship they can select how thick they wish the armor to be. They enter this number T. The cost will be A x T x Cost value. The ships mass will incresse by A x T x Mass value. The Ratio of a ships Engines to Mass will determine its speed and acceleration, Hull size is of no importance in speed only the Thrust/Mass ratio.
KISS. Players should select a thickness yes, but it should be Very Light, Light, Medium, Heavy, etc., not a number.
Impaler wrote:Calculating Damage is done quite simply
Raw Damage - ( T x Resistence to this damage type) = Damage delt
So amor would do nothing more than absorb an ammount of damage equal to its thickness? This, IMO makes armor completely useless. If it only absorbs some damage and allows most of it through, then what is the point? Most damage gets done to the internals of a ship and before it's lost 5% of it's armor, it blows up.
Thickness should determine two things at most, the ammount of armor points a ship has, less thickness means less armor points, and maybe the speed of the ship due to mass increase.
PowerCrazy wrote:Ranos, the confusion about your energy advanced energy stuff is why you just need a generic name. Type A weapons, Type B weapons etc.
You do it your way, I'll do it mine. If you don't like mine, make your own.
Impaler wrote:Also note that the player should have the option of making "Torpedo Bombers" aka Small ships that carry one realy Big Bomb/Missle/Torpedo that can do some massive damage to thouse capital ships. Tiny Ship dose not nessarily equal Tiny Gun.
Weapons should have different sizes but they should all be usable on all ships as long as the space on the ship allows for it. The smallest size ship could be able to carry a missile/bomb that takes up all of its available space. That same missile/bomb should be usable on all ships, but of course there would be room for other things on those ships.
Zpock wrote:Damage mitigation could be used to get a delicate balance between rapid fire small guns and weapons like huge battleship batteries and those "proton torpedo" weapons for fighters you talked about. I think it's a good idea following moo1 here. Let the shields get a hp value and damage mitigation. Armor with resistance and hp. Anti-fighter weapons will then have trouble getting through shields but can tear away at armor once the shields are gone. This makes sense to me, shield feels more like it can shrug of minor dmg with no effect at all while armor should fail eventually to constant tear by small guns. We also get the separation of how shields and armor work, isn't that great?
Math:
Shield gets hit:
damage to shield hp = damage - mitigation
Armor gets hit:
damage to armor hp = damage * resistance
Shields should also have resistance. Damage mitigation by shields would be fine instead of them stopping all damage but they would also need hit points of some kind to determine when the shields are depleted. I am personally in favor of having shields and armor work the same, but that is my preferance.
Impaler wrote:Armor Health Points - (Raw Damage * Resistence) = Reminaing armor HP
IF Remining Armor HP is less then zero multiply by -1 and apply that damage directly to internals, resenting Armor HP to zero (the armor was depleted and your naked). In addition Internals also take
Internal Health Points - (Raw Damage * (100 - Resistence)) = Remaing Internal HP
The first part is correct but should be changed to use the correct term. But when the armor reaches zero, there is no resistance for internals and internals would take full damage. I think you try to represent that in your internal damage equation but I think it is wrong. Either that or it is just confusing. Say there is armor on a ship with 100 hp left. The armors takes only 75% or .75x the damage being done. If a weapon that does 400 damage is fired at the ship, this is how the damage calculations would be done:
100-(400*.75)=X
100-300=X
-200=X
2000-((-200*-1)/.75)=X
2000-(200/.75)=X
2000-267=X
1733=X
The calculations are:
Armor HP -(Damage*Modifier)=Remaining Armor HP
If Remaining Armor HP < 0 then: Internal HP-((Remaining Armor HP*-1)/Modifier)=Remaining Internal HP
Normal internal damage is simple: Internal HP-Damage=Remaining Internal HP
Internals don't get resistances.
Impaler wrote:If thats correct then my first request is to switch your Shield and armor Mechanics around, make the Armor a damage nulifier and the Shield and a Damage Mitigator/Absorber. This just seems more intuitive to me, armor being able to deflect small attacks without injury but a shield always being "consumed" a bit with each attack (though it can ofcorse regenerate which is a whole new can of worms). I know most games acuatly feature armor being consumed in the manor you describe but I have never liked that and felt the damage nulifying armor to be far better at making an interesting game.
Shield and armor mechanics should stay as Zpock wrote them or both should be identicle. Shields should be consumed and so should armor. Whether shields only reduce damage done to armor or whether they take the full ammount of damage and preventing any to the armor is something that could go either way. Why didn't you like the way armor was done in other games? It makes more sense to me that it be done the way most games have done it.
Zpock wrote:3. I think armors are better suited for the resistance system. The fluff just fits armor better. I mean, having ablative/reaktive/emissive/etc armor feels more important then having a single armor type but different kinds of shields.
There should be different types of armor and shields. Shields should also have resistance depending on the type of shield. That just seems to make more sense to me. Instead of it being weapon vs. armor in the resistance, its weapon vs. shields and armor. This adds more to strategy since shields and armor would have to be taken into account when using weapons.
Zpock wrote:Damage leaking? Maybe as the shield gets depleted more and more leaks? Armor takes 2dmg in that last example right? Absorbing = Shield soaks up the dmg to it's hp, deflecting = shield takes dmg but not to its hp, same as impalers mitigation?
Shields can work one of two ways. I think I said this earlier but here are the numbers on how it would work:
Damage levels
Shields->Armor->Internals
Shield system 1:
Damage-(Damage*Shield Absorbtion)=Damage that passes through. This then does damage to the armor. A second calculation is needed too though. Shield HP-(Damage*Shield Absorbtion)=Remaining Shield HP. The shield stops some damage but takes that damage, it doen't just disappear.
Shield system 2:
Shield HP-Damage=Remaining Shield HP. It's as simple as that. When all shields HP is gone, damage starts getting done to armor.
An option that can be added to both armor and shields is deflection. Unless damage is greater than X, all weapon damage is deflected. This would make keeping ancient ships with ancient weapons around completely useless. I always hate it in games, esp. Civ3 when you have the most modern weapons and another empire/civ/whatever that has similar tech to your's attacks with a unit that is so far outdated it doesn't stand a chance. Puting defelction on both shields and armor would prevent somebody from using those ancient crappy weapons forcing them to upgrade or scrap.
guiguibaah wrote:What I think would be interesting is that the more weapons fire directed to one target, the more is deflected. This is to prevent the age-old strategy of "Select all your units and focus on 1 guy until he dies in 1 turn, then the next, and the next, and oh-look, that super-elite ship your enemy spent so long training also just got killed instantly, and the next, and the next... etc"
Its the age old strategy because it is what works. Deflection should only work on smaller weapons. If the damage is greater than X, then X damage is deflected while the rest is done to the shields/armor. Making deflection to strong would cause some balancing problems and the need for a highly complex AI would arise. It would have to always make sure all battles were one on one. This would do only one thing, make huge fleets useless. The point of taking a huge fleet somewhere is to overpower the enemy with numbers. With deflection giving diminishing returns, it wouldn't matter how big of a flett you sent in, it would just matter who won the one on one battles.
discord wrote:but this is all wrong in reality, since armor is ONLY the resistance/absorb, it does not have a 'health' and if so, just for seeing if the attack hits a already present 'hole' in the armor, or a partial hole, lowering abs/res.
This is still under discussion. Impaler and now you suggest it only be resistance/absorb, everyone else who has said anything suggests it have health/hit points.
Zpock wrote:Zegacyte Armor: 20 nullification, 50% resistance to energy 10% resistance to kinetic.
Mega Tachyon Laser: 200 energy damage.
Heavy Railgun: 200 kinetic damage.
Light Blaster: 30 energy damage.
Assuming Impalers previous math how nullification-armor would work. They would do the following damage:
Tachyon: 160dmg
Railgun: 184 dmg
Blaster: 0 dmg
The math here doesn't make sense and I think it is due to Impaler's math. Using your numbers Zpock, this is how it would work:
Final Damage = Base Damage*Resistance Modifier-Nullification or F=D*R-N. The resistance modifier is not the actual resistance percentage (.5 and .1) but it is 1 - the resistance so the actual numbers used are .5 and .9.
Tachyon: F=200*.5-20
F=100-20
F=80
Railgun: F=200*.9-20
F=180-20
F=160
Blaster: F=30*.5-20
F=15-20
F=-5 (0)
Nullification could switch places with resistance but that just changes the results to:
Tachyon: 90
Railgun: 162
Blaster: 5
I think the first way is better since resistance should be applied to the base damage not the nullification modifeid damage.