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For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

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Impaler
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#61 Post by Impaler »

Oh I get it the Armor itself has a pool of Hit Points independent of the underlying systems that it protects. The Resistence value of armor determines how the Raw damage is divided between Armor and Internals.

So lets say...

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


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.

Another though, perhaps its possible to have more then one type of "Energy field thingy outside your ship that protects it", shields being just one of several types which operate on fundamentaly differnt yet simple math. Their could be the simple damage Nulifier shield, a strait damage absorber lets call that the "force field", a % Absorber called the "Deflector" ect ect. You can only have a sinle type on each ships and all such Energy Barriers are damage type nutral without any bonus/penalties for differnt damage types (it would be too complicated and Armor is already filling that job).
Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

Zpock
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#62 Post by Zpock »

I considered switching them too, but there are some reasons to why I think shields are better as the mitigator:

1. You can not get to the armor with just small guns. You have to go through the shield first with anti-capship weapons. Only then can the small-arms help finish off the capship. This means small guns will only be used rarely for helping to finish of a capship rather then soften them up if the system is switched.
2. If shields regenerate they nicely "lend" their damage mitigation to the armor in a nice way. Big enough guns will be needed to take off the small bit of shield that regenerates.
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.
4. Everything get's eroded by constant tear. I'm thinking about things like rock getting shaped by water etc. I guess you are thinking about the "u can't damage a tank with machine guns", but we are talking stuff like laser beams and other high tech. Realism doesn't matter either so I suggest thinking more about gameplay (1&2) then what "feels right" from a realism point of view. If many games use the hitpoint system for armor, how is using a new one "intuitive" exept from a realism point of veiw?

guiguibaah
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Resistance

#63 Post by guiguibaah »

Myself I like the idea that shields reduce (absorb) damage like a damage shield instead of completely absorbing it. Better shields absorb more power.

Class 1 shield would absorb 1 damage, armor takes 2 (out of 3)

Class 2 shield would absorb 1 damage, armor takes 1 (out of 2)

Class 3 shield would absorbs 3 damage, deflects 1, armor takes 1 (out of 6)

This way your weaker laser weapons don't go obsolete when upgraded to laser 10.
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Zpock
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#64 Post by Zpock »

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?

guiguibaah
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true

#65 Post by guiguibaah »

... In the sense that a shield is a bit like a sponge underneath a running tap.

A sponge under a slow running tap will absorb most of the water, letting a bit trickle down to the bottom of the sink, before it gets full and is useless.

A sponge under a fast running tap will absorb most of the water, but some water will hit the sponge and splash in your face and not go into the sink.

Did that make sense or did I just complicate things more?


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"
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Zpock
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#66 Post by Zpock »

Ah then I get it. Diminishing returns for doing lots of damage in a short period of time to a single target AKA focus fire. Never thought of the existance of that tactic as an evil problem. It does have a drawback, assuming (phased) realtime combat, overkill.

I think this idea could be put to better use as some kind of special device that sucks up the energy from damage done to the ship and uses it in one way or another, like deflecting some of the attacks as described. It would have to use the energy quickly after sucking it up tough as a limitation, so for it to work a lot of shots must be fired at it in a short time. Really interesting special module. Another variant could use the energy to shoot at nearby enemy ships, or even redirect incoming attacks towards the enemy, like starwars lightsabers thus combining the two. Maybe as a high tech version of the device?

discord
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#67 Post by discord »

öfcourse a armors resistance should only count towards the armors health...and the way to do the mathi is without doubt.

absorb1=5(stop damage)
absorb2=15(higher then absorb 1, if below this value it nullfies the attack fully.)
resistance=.5(should be obvious.)


armor/hits= 50/50


actual damage=
if damage<absorb2 then goto end.
else temp=damage-absorb1
actual_damage=temp*resistance
armor=armor-actual_damage
if armor <0 then hits_damage=invert armor(dont know all that much about coding.)
hits=hits-hits_damage
if hits<0 then destroyed.
#end

although a more straightforward system might look less complicated, i dont see any reason to use a such, not like there is any lack of processing power nowadays...and this is in reality pretty simple...adding shields makes it abit more complicated though...since there should be both 'deflectors' that deflect damage(vary between damage types/shield types ofcourse.), and hard shields that absorbs hits like armor....

ofcourse you then come to the 'skip armor/shield' chance, the probability that damage passes armor/shieds fully or in part....but that is outside of this discussion.

all in all, i just want a non static/linear/obvious choices for counters system, that coincidentaly also is more realistic.

//discord

discord
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#68 Post by discord »

bah forgot to do more examples.

in this case it would take 9 hits to take down the armor. 50/((17-5)/2)=8.33333 so nine hits, and that gives a additional 8 points of damage to 'internal.' or whatever you want to call it.

with 12 damage, it would not harm the armor at all, as it cant penetrate it.

at 30 damage it would take 4 hits, and no passing through....as you can see, damage does not scale quite linearly, low amounts of damage is handled much more efficiently by armor, as the damage increases, a higher percentage gets through....although these are just 'on the fly' numbers to show how the system works, not how they should be in the real game.

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.

the only health is insides of the ship, really.

Zpock
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#69 Post by Zpock »

Uhm, that wasn't easy to understand at all. Are you talking about something like impalers system with armor reducing dmg by a set amount as its primary function, like moo1 shields. Or is it a system where the armor has hitpoints and wears down, like moo1 armor?

Impaler
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#70 Post by Impaler »

I dont belive Armor should actualy have its own pool of "Health" points that get depleted, rather Armor should just nulify some or all of an attack and any damage that was not Nulified gets to penatrate into the ship and take points away from the "meat" within your ship.

Health Points for Shields though could be interesting and we should explore that option more.

And I agree with Zpock, I cant understand your example either Discord. I think your trying to say that Armor acts esentialy as a 2 layer Nulifiter + Mitigator. First a small amount of damage is Nulified, then a % the remaineder up to a critical number is Absorbed based on Resistence. Anything above the Critcalal goes strait through. This is a new and interesting twist if I understood you correctly but I think it might be a bit complex.
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Zpock
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#71 Post by Zpock »

Impaler wrote:I dont belive Armor should actualy have its own pool of "Health" points that get depleted, rather Armor should just nulify some or all of an attack and any damage that was not Nulified gets to penatrate into the ship and take points away from the "meat" within your ship.
Could you motivate this better? If armor is all nullification it gets very centered around big gun vs small gun and the whole countering system with resistances will be pretty much redundant. Example:

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

What I would like to point out is that the resitance/countering is marginalized. Tachyon and railgun is pretty much unaffected by both the nullification and the resistance. Most important under this system will be having the biggest gun, since it doesn't really matter what armor he has then. He could have No Armor, and the railgun would do 200dmg instead of 184, big deal. Under the HP pool system, armor will matter a lot since the Tachyon will do only 100 dmg vs 180dmg from the railgun, so you need to consider his armor type even when using big guns.

About these examples, I don't think they are exagaratted or anything, 10times as much dmg as deflection is a pretty good guess for the bigger guns. What exact numbers will be used is of course up in the air. But to balance this system there would have to be a very delicate balance between nullification and dmg of weapons. This is impossible to achieve, as there are too many factors like relative tech level, mounts etc. I guess noone wants a hugely rigid system were all weapons do about the same damage just to have the nullification balanced. To have it balanced weapon damage must be somewhere like 1x to 3x the nullification. Beyond that resistance will not matter much.

Ranos
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#72 Post by Ranos »

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.
Last edited by Ranos on Sun Oct 31, 2004 2:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Zpock
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#73 Post by Zpock »

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:
Yeah, the whole point with that was to show why Impalers system/math is up to no good. The main point was that it would be very hard to balance (since nullification is a little all/nothing in how it works). Also that resistances would not get as much importance as they should when big guns come into play since the resistances would be dependant on nullification keeping up with the weapons damage.

Impaler
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#74 Post by Impaler »

Actualy Zpocks math was mutch closer to correct but the numbers he chosse were incredibly biased, with Deflection values of 10% of the Raw Damage ofcorse their will be little effect thats esentialy Tin Foil which should ofcorse be blasted through by ANY kind of weapon regardless of Resistences.

Ranos calculations are off because he droped the () from my equation and changed order of operation, multiplying damage by Resistence before subtracting nulification. Here is a correct form with some more Realistic Numbers.

Note that a Multiplier of greater then 100% is a Bonus, one of less then 100% is a Penalty. Resitences are expressed as Energy/Kinetic/Explosive/Corsive

Titanum: 125/150/100/75
Zortium: 175/50/125/100

Death Ray: 200 Energy
Rail Gun: 5 Kinetic
Zenon Laser: 15 Energy
Cobalt Warhead: 20 Explosive
Tacyon Beam: 80 Normal Damage

A Small Fighter with 2 Titanium Armor, 4 Health total

Death Ray: 200 - (2 * 1.25) = 197.5 (Massive Overkill)
Rail Gun: 5 - (2 * 1.5) = 2 Damage (dies in 2 shots vs 1 with no armor)
Zenon Laser: 15 - (2 * 1.25) = 12.5 (Modest overkill)
Cobalt Warhead: 20 - (2 * 1.0) = 18 (Modest overkill)
Tacyon Beam: 80 - (2 * 1.0) = 78 (Massive Overkill)

A Medium Frigate with 15 Zortium Armor, 120 Health total

Deaht Ray: 200 - (15 * 1.75) = 173.75 (Modest overkill)
Rail Gun: 5 - (15 * .5) = -2.5 (Involnorable to this weapon)
Zeno Laser: 15 - (15 * 1.75) = -11.25 (Involnorable to this weapon)
Cobalt Warhead: 20 - (15 * 1.25) = 1.25 (Almost Involnorable)
Tacyon Beam: 80 - (15 * 1.0) = 65 (Kills in 2 Hits)

A Dreadnaught Battleship with 25 Titanium Armor, 500 Health total

Death Ray: 200 - (25 * 1.25) = 168.75 (Kills in 3 shots)
Rail Gun: 5 - (25 * 1.5) = -37.5 (Involnorable to this weapon)
Zeno Laser: 15 - (25 * 1.25) = -16.25 (Involnorable to this weapon)
Cobalt Warhead: 20 - (25 * 1.0) = -5 (Involnorable to this weapon)
Tacyon Beam: 80 - (25 * 1.0) = 55 (kills in 10 Hits vs 7 without armor)

As you can see the Nulification/Thickness of the Armor is of the highest consern, Resistence Bonuses are secondary and need to be rather high to have much of an effect. I think Resistences up to 250% might be balancable. Under Ranoses calculation Resistence values will be vastly more important then the thickness of the armor meaning the stystem would revolve mostly around what Resistences you want with only minor consern for how MUCH armor is on the ship. Under my formula the Resistence acts to multiply your Nulification so the more armor on the ship the more your getting out of the Resistence.

Also I must reiterate that Armor and Shields need to work by differnt mechanisms or they will esentialy be 2 layers or Armor which most people are oposed too. What ever we use for Armor we should not use for Shields and visa versa, Ranos's calculations seem far more apropriate for shields in my opinion as they involve Health Points that can be depleted thus coresponding to good old "Shields are colapsing CapIn" ware as armor being completly removed from a ship in one hit from a Death Ray sounds far less belivable.

I think I will create some flow Charts to demonstrate the Various aproatches that have been proposed.
Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

Ranos
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#75 Post by Ranos »

If armor or shields both have nullification and resistance, resistance should be the first modifier to damage then nullification. If you notice, I did the actual problem work and solution with resistance then nullification, but I also game the solution with null then resist.

First off, you are approaching armor in a completely different way than I am. You use the thickness of the armor to detirmine how much damage is nullified. Then you use the resistance to modify the nullification, not the damage. That is your first problem. Resistance modifies the ammount of damage being done, not the ammount of nullification.

Here is how you are approahcing armor, nullification and resistance: Armor does nothing more than stop a dinky ammount of damage and add resistance to that. Nullification is how much damage is stopped by the armor while the rest of the damage goes through to the internals. resistance is a modification of nullification.

Here is how I approach those things: Armor stops all damage until it is gone. Nullification is a modifier to damage that erases X ammount of damage, essentially the same way you are looking at it but nullification is more of a deflection value where the armor is able to deflect X ammount of damage before receiving the damage. Resistance is a modifier to how much damage is done, instead of how effective nullification is.

Your numbers translated into my system:

Resistance works as follows: If the number is less than 100%, damage is reduced, if greater than 100%, damage is increased.
Thickness only increases the ammount of HP, not nullification.

Calculation: Base Damage*Resistance Modifier-Nullification=Final Damage

or in Impaler's terms: Raw Damage*Resistance Modifier-Nullification=Damage delt

Titanum: Resistance: 125/150/100/75 Deflection: 5
Zortium: Resistance: 175/50/125/100 Deflection: 15

Weapons vs. Titanium

Death Ray: 200*1.25-5=245
Rail Gun: 5*1.5-5=2.5
Zenon Laser: 15*1.25-5=13.75
Cobalt Warhead: 20*1-5=15
Tacyon Beam: 80*1-5=75

Weapons vs. Zortium

Death Ray: 200*1.75-15=335
Rail Gun: 5*.5-15=-12.5
Zenon Laser: 15*1.75-15=11.25
Cobalt Warhead: 20*1.25-15=10
Tacyon Beam: 80*1-15=65

The first problem I see with your system after reviewing it is there is no difference, except resistances, between the two armors. The secnod is that the thickness of the armor and the nullification it gives is the only stopping force between a weapon and the internals of a ship. With your system, an unshielded ship with armor thickness of 1 and 50 internal HP wouldn't stand a chance in a battle. With my system, thickness wouldn't matter except for incresing the number of armor HP and a ship with armor thickness of one (50 HP) and 50 internal HP would last twice as long as yours would. With your system, battles would be over in seconds and tactics would be meaningless. With my system, battles would last for minutes and tactics would be the key.
Impaler wrote:Under Ranoses calculation Resistence values will be vastly more important then the thickness of the armor meaning the stystem would revolve mostly around what Resistences you want with only minor consern for how MUCH armor is on the ship.
Armor thickness would be important since it would increase how much HP a ship has, but the thickness would be very limited or maybe thickness would be nonexistant and you are right it wouldn't matter. Having the player select the thickness of armor is just one more, and fairly pointless, IMO, step in building a ship, which makes it take longer and be more painstaking.

In a countering system, resistance should be far more important than deflection. With your system, weapons are far superior and unbalanced compared to armor and internals and the countering system is nonexistant. All that matters in battles with your system is who fires first, which most people seem to be against.
Impaler wrote:Also I must reiterate that Armor and Shields need to work by differnt mechanisms or they will esentialy be 2 layers or Armor which most people are oposed too. What ever we use for Armor we should not use for Shields and visa versa, Ranos's calculations seem far more apropriate for shields in my opinion as they involve Health Points that can be depleted thus coresponding to good old "Shields are colapsing CapIn" ware as armor being completly removed from a ship in one hit from a Death Ray sounds far less belivable.
Armor and shields can work by two different mechanisms but don't have to. People are opposed to having two layers of armor, but shields and armor are different even if they are called the same thing. Both should have HP one could absorb all damage until gone and the other can reduce the ammount of damage by X before allowing it to pass through. It makes more sense for shields to reduce the damage done to the armor while armor stops it until depleted than the shields stopping all damage until gone and then armor reducing the damage to the internals. With my system, shields are beneficial, but not necessary. With your system, shields are necessary or the ship blows up after two hits.

So shields should reduce the damage by absorbing the ammount of damage they take which reduces their HP. Armor stops all damage reducing its HP until gone. Shields would recharge slightly allowing them to absrob more damage.

I also never said armor would be removed in one hit from a Death Ray so I have no idea where that is coming from.

Here are some calculations with both shields and armor.

My system

I'm using simple names here and made up damages. It doesn't matter if they are the names we would use or realistic damages, it is an example of calculations. Resistances Energy/Kinetic/Explosive (just to limit it for the calculations, not saying these should be the only categories). Resistance works by modifying the damage by the percentage.

Shield 1: Resistances: 75/110/115, Deflection: 5, Absorbtion: 15%
Armor 1: Resistances: 125/75/100, Deflection: 10
Energy weapon: 100 damage
Kinetic weapon: 50 damage
Explosive weapon: 200 damage

Damage works as follows, the weapon hits the shields and is reduced by the shields absorbtion. The remainder of the damage passes through and damages the armor.

Shield calculations:
Modified Damage = Base damage * Shield Resistance - Shield Deflection
Damage Recieved = Modified Damage * Absorbtion
Damage Passed Through = (Modified Damage - Damage Recieved) / Resistance

D1=B*R1-N1
D2=D1*A
D3=(D1-D2)/R

Armor Calculation:
Damage Recieved = Damage Passed Through * Armor Resistance - Armor Deflection

D4=D3*R2-N2

Energy Weapon:

D1=100*.75-5
D1=70
D2=70*.15
D2=10.5 (Rounds up to 11)
D3=(70-11)/.75
D3=78.6667 (Rounds up to 79)
D4=79*1.25-10
D4=88.75 (Rounds up to 89)

So the shields recieve 11 damage and the armor recieves 89.

Kinetic Weapon:

D1=50*1.1-5
D1=50
D2=50*.15
D2=7.5 (Rounds up to 8 )
D3=(50-8 )/1.1
D3=38.18 (Rounds down to 38 )
D4=38*.75-10
D4=18.5 (Rounds up to 19)

Explosive Weapon:

D1=200*1.15-5
D1=225
D2=225*.15
D2=33.75 (Rounds up to 34)
D3=(225-34)/1.15
D3=166.09 (Rounds down to 166)
D4=166*1-10
D4=156

With this system, shields would still be a factor (if they still have HP left) after the armor is gone. The calculations for armor are removed and the D3 damage is done directly to the internals.

With Impaler's system, damage would be done to shields with absolutely no modifiers (if I understood you correctly Impaler) and once the shields are gone, the math would be basically the same as mine when the armor is gone.

The difference is, the damage to the armor is modified by the shields, which reduces it causing the armor to last longer. With my system, a ship without shields can still last a while in combat. With Impaler's, it lasts for only a few hits and is gone.

The last option of course is for shields and armor to function the same but with shields having a recharge rate. Calaculations are basically D=B*R-N for both systems. The only system I dislike is Impaler's, although I understand the working of it and how damage would be done, the system doesn't make sense. Why should it be done that way?

I hope all that makes sense. Ask questions if you don't understand.
200 and still a Wyrm!?! I don't want to be a Wyrm anymore. I've been a Wyrm for 100 posts now.

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