SpaceCombat Counters

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

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utilae
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#151 Post by utilae »

Ranos wrote:
utilae wrote:Delay Shield
Identical to Time Dialation shields except this stores the energy and deals it all at once at some point instead of dealing it over X turns/time.
Yes, it's just another variation of an existing shield. I don't know whether we would have slight variations like this, but what the hey.
Ranos wrote:
Late Shield
No offense, but utterly nonsensical and very hard to understand. The ship gets damaged but then most of the damage just magically (or scientifically, depending on your POV) disappears. Your explanation really makes no sense. If the damage is done, where does it go? You mention that it goes back in history maybe, its hard to understand what you are saying, and is actually fixed in the past while in the present, the ship is mostly undamaged. This shield is far too confusing and far too ridiculous, IMO.
Yeah, I intended it to be difficult to understand, as time travel is already. Think of it as an error in the timeline. The damage is rerouted through time. It occurs as an event in time. But this is an error. So moments later, time corrects the error. In the timeline the event occured, but the consequence of the event is erased from time, as a cheap method of correcting the timeline.

I think its an oddly unique scientific explanation. If it gives some scifi people a buzz trying to understand it then cool. You didn't really comment on the shield itself though, just the explanation.
Ranos wrote:
Overload Shield
The math behind this shield would seem to be very complex and may, I know nothing about processor power and how much it takes to actually slow a computer down, bog down the player's computer.
I don't know if that's what will happen, but it may be no more complex than time dialation shields.
Ranos wrote: If I understand correctly, the first weapon hit goes in to storage X or storage Y (I think they should not be called HP because they don't function as hp but merely numbers for the use of calculations) the damage is divided by two and each half is randomly stored in X or Y. X could get half and Y could get half or one of them could get all of the damage. Every shot then looks at how much is in X and Y and if equal, no damage gets through and that damage is added to X and/or Y in the same manner as above. If different damage equal to the difference gets through and the rest is is added to X and/or why in the same manner.
Yes, suprisingly you understood the math behind this. I explained it well then.
Ranos wrote: To make this easier, lets say there is a weapon that does 100 damage. It is fired at the ship. X and Y are both 0 so no damage gets through. Damage is divided into 50 and 50 and then added to X or Y randomly. If X gets one and Y gets the other, both now have 50 stored and the next shot will be comletely blocked and divided. If X get both halves then X is now 100 and Y is 0 and every shot after that will get through because the difference is 100 and the damage is 100, so 0 damage is blocked.

Now, that right there is the problem. First off, I know that there will more than likely be multipe weapons used by each empire so the damage fired at the ship will not always be 100. The problem is, there will always be a weapon that does the most damage and all it takes is one hit from that weapon and the damage getting stored completely to X (or Y) for every shot from every weapon after that to get through.

This shield would not work.
That is true, it would be really easy to make the difference in this way and then the shield is useless. When the difference is big enough, all weapons with damage below the difference will get through. I may attempt to modify it, to remove this weakness.

EDIT: I modified the way Overload shields work:
Shield has the value X (starts at 0). When damage hits the shield 10% gets through, then X is how much of the remaining damage gets through. A random number between 1 and 2 is rolled. If 1 then the rest of the damage is added to X. If 2 then X is halved.

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#152 Post by Ranos »

utilae wrote:Yeah, I intended it to be difficult to understand, as time travel is already. Think of it as an error in the timeline. The damage is rerouted through time. It occurs as an event in time. But this is an error. So moments later, time corrects the error. In the timeline the event occured, but the consequence of the event is erased from time, as a cheap method of correcting the timeline.

I think its an oddly unique scientific explanation. If it gives some scifi people a buzz trying to understand it then cool. You didn't really comment on the shield itself though, just the explanation.
The concept of time travel is not difficult to understand. You get in a machine and go back in time to a point designated by the machine. The concept of your shields is difficult to understand. How is it an error in the timeline? The only two ways I have ever heard about changes affecting time is the fairly known standard way where time is changed and you branch off onto a new timeline than the one that xisted before. The other is in a book called 'To Say Nothing of the Dog' and I can't remember who its by at the moment, but in it, time itself will cause events to occur at various points throughout time that would cause a change to occur that would fix the problem. If you can find the book and read it, you'll see what I mean. It's quite interesting.

My next point is that it really isn't a shield at all since the damage is done. It is a time manipulation device and would better fit into the game as a special.

You said that the damage would get through but an error in time would be caused that would result in time erasing 90% of the damage done to the ship. This would equal a Screen shield that stops 90% of the damage and allows only 10% damage through. This would be very overpowered compaired to everything else and would result in shields being unbalanced in comparison to weapons.

Last, since this would in effect be reducing the ammount of damage done to the ship by a percentage, it falls under the same category with Screen shields and is therefore another redundant shield.
utilae wrote:EDIT: I modified the way Overload shields work:
Shield has the value X (starts at 0). When damage hits the shield 10% gets through, then X is how much of the remaining damage gets through. A random number between 1 and 2 is rolled. If 1 then the rest of the damage is added to X. If 2 then X is halved.
This fixes that problem but now brings another one to mind. This is another of those random by luck shields like Roulette and Flux shields. If you throw random numbers into the system, although there are probabilities and statistics that can find a general outcome, it becomes chaotic. The point of shields is to stop damage not have some freaky far out system of randomly stopping damage that may stop some, all or no damage. I want to be able to know how my shields are going to perform in battle. I want to know that they are going to stop damage when I need them to stop damage. I think we should try to stick with systems that will give gauranteed results instead of maybes.
utilae wrote:Yes, it's just another variation of an existing shield. I don't know whether we would have slight variations like this, but what the hey.
In all honesty, that is the problem we are getting into here. Instead of trying to work on other aspects of the countering system or coming up with entirely new shield types, the only thing being developed now is redundant ones. No working countering system has been come up with, that everyone other than the person who made it liked, and how everything would interact with eachother is still up in the air. Lets try and get back on the countering system instead of trying to think of how many different fluff names we can come up with for shields.
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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utilae
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#153 Post by utilae »

Ranos wrote: You said that the damage would get through but an error in time would be caused that would result in time erasing 90% of the damage done to the ship. This would equal a Screen shield that stops 90% of the damage and allows only 10% damage through. This would be very overpowered compaired to everything else and would result in shields being unbalanced in comparison to weapons.
Remember though that the ship recovers from 90% of the damage next turn. So effectively the ship has to be able to take the full brunt of the damage without being destroyed (in which case it does not recover from the damage). Now only if the ship survives until next turn does the it recover from the damage. I think it is not overpowered at all. See, if many enemies attack the ship with late shields, they could destroy it before its shield even becomes useful. The best ues of this shield may be ona ship that has heaps of hp and armor. The shield would then act to 'heal' the ship.
Ranos wrote: I want to know that they are going to stop damage when I need them to stop damage. I think we should try to stick with systems that will give gauranteed results instead of maybes.
Yes, your right that only redudnant shield types are being thought up. And no one likes depending on luck.
Ranos wrote: In all honesty, that is the problem we are getting into here. Instead of trying to work on other aspects of the countering system or coming up with entirely new shield types, the only thing being developed now is redundant ones. No working countering system has been come up with, that everyone other than the person who made it liked, and how everything would interact with eachother is still up in the air. Lets try and get back on the countering system instead of trying to think of how many different fluff names we can come up with for shields.
Ok, back to the counter systems. We discussed alot about the resistance method of counters. And then moved to shields. I guess we need to figure out how all counters: weapons, armor, shields, etc would work together as one.

discord
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#154 Post by discord »

ranos: once again you are tempting me to get banned by your insistence on not understanding how 'armor' works.

i will TRY to get through this time.

yes, reactive(and ablative) armors takes damage to itself to help stop more incoming damage, HOWEVER! it does not state anywhere that these automaticly stop ALL damage this way and infact it does not, if there is enough damage aimed at it a portion will get through, reactive and ablative(aswell as reflective and refractive) types are just ways of increasing resistance and damage thresholds.

in conclusion, if enough energy(damage) goes at the armor, it will poke through, IF it goes through, internal damage occurs, period. armor aint no magical shield that gets depleted, it's just like a wall, and there CAN become holes in walls, these holes let things through, therefor lowering the odds of it stopping the next, and lowering the amount of damage it can stop(due to lowered structural integrity)

ranos wrote
but consider a shot that is strong enough to pierce armor, but not strong enough to go through the ammount of armor on the vehicle. The armor is now damaged but the shot did not bounce off or go through.
you are contradicting yourself, if something does 'pierce' armor, it goes THROUGH the armor, otherwise it does not 'pierce' it merely dents, wich ofcourse is a real factor, that under enough 'pounding' the armor weakens, get the words straight.

now if you dont understand this, go get some 'how armor works, for dummies' or something, cause i am personaly sick and tired of your ignorance

//discord

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utilae
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#155 Post by utilae »

discord wrote: ranos: once again you are tempting me to get banned by your insistence on not understanding how 'armor' works.
It may be how human armor works, but we are trying to think of armors for all kinds of alien races.
discord wrote: in conclusion, if enough energy(damage) goes at the armor, it will poke through, IF it goes through, internal damage occurs, period. armor aint no magical shield that gets depleted, it's just like a wall, and there CAN become holes in walls, these holes let things through, therefor lowering the odds of it stopping the next, and lowering the amount of damage it can stop(due to lowered structural integrity)
I am pretty sure that in Moo2 armor was decreased and less effective in the future. Armor was the red bar right. And yellow was internals. And the bar to the left of the red bar (grey?) was structural integrity. And then the shields were the blue borders around the ship.
discord wrote: ranos wrote
but consider a shot that is strong enough to pierce armor, but not strong enough to go through the ammount of armor on the vehicle. The armor is now damaged but the shot did not bounce off or go through.
you are contradicting yourself, if something does 'pierce' armor, it goes THROUGH the armor, otherwise it does not 'pierce' it merely dents, wich ofcourse is a real factor, that under enough 'pounding' the armor weakens, get the words straight.
I think you are overeacting on only a misunderstanding of words. Besides, if something pierces its way through armor and does not go all the way, therefore denting the armor, it has still pierced 50% of the way through the armour. 'Pierce' only refers to the way the object goes through something. 'Pierce' tends to be like a 'poking through' way of doing things.
discord wrote: now if you dont understand this, go get some 'how armor works, for dummies' or something, cause i am personaly sick and tired of your ignorance
Why are the armor types you describe even important? How would they act in the game? All it seems like to me is that you are trying to tell us how armor works in real life. It seems that both you and Ranos already understand this, so you guy's are effectively disagreeing even though you two are saying the same thing.

Basically for the math workings of how damage would be stopped etc I'll compare to the shield types already discussed:
Ablative=Wall Shield
Refractive/Reflective=Deflector Shield
Reactive Armor=I forget what that is?

Anyway I imagine that those armor types would use math calulations similar to the shields I have put beside them.

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#156 Post by solartrix »

I'm usually not a peacemaker, but I think there's an easy way thru this armor debate....

Ship armor could have two numbers, 'per hit' and 'total' that could work something like this:

My frigate has a 10-100 armor rating and 50 internal points (structure and/or systems). It gets hit by a mass driver that does 20 damage. The armor absorbs 10 of it and the ship takes 10 internal damage. My frigate now has a 10-90 armor rating and 40 internal points left.

If it gets hit with a nuke missile for 10 damage, the armor takes it all, my frigate takes no internal damage and now has a 10-80 armor rating, still with 40 internal points.

My poor frigate then gets lanced with a heavy fusion beam for 100 points of damage. The armor takes ten, but passes 90 thru, which destroys the ship, even tho it still had 70 armor points left.

Hmmm... I think I wasted my money on that 100 point armor rating.... Or I should've bought better shields...

discord
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#157 Post by discord »

solar: i dont know about 'peace making' but you did manage to paint the system i envisioned pretty nicely, although lacking a few details, like gradualy decreasing efficiency, 'hitting a hole' chances, armor thickness, resistance modifiers, layers of armor, etc....

so solar, thanks for doing what i cant do, be short concise, and understandable.....and somewhat non rude.

//discord

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#158 Post by Ranos »

@ discord

Acutally you are incorrect. If you think about it, weapons today work as I am saying. If the weapon is armor piercing, it will punch through the armor and kill the crew inside, rendering the vehicle useless. If the weapon is not armor piercing, it will only damage the outside, unless it does so little damage that it just pings right off. Then there are the weapons that do so much damage that they just blow up an entire portion of the tank from the outside. The ammount of damage a weapon does only determines how much damage it does, it does not determine whether or not the weapon goes through the armor.

All of these would be represented in the game. Armor piercing by armor piercing weapons. Non-armor piercing by non-armor piercing weapons. Damage being so little that it causes no damage by an armor deflection value or, as Impaler called it, nullification value. The only way to represent weapons doing enough damage to blow up an entire section is to have multiple armor section on ships that each have their own hp instead of a general armor hp. The down side is, it would be more complicated to program since there would have to be multiple hps to account for on every ship and it would need to be known where on the ship the weapon hits instead of just knowing the weapon hit the ship.

I have done nothing to deserve you being so rude and inconsiderate to me. Just because I do not share your point of veiw does not give you the right to call me ignorant, stupid or any of the other things you said or implied in your last post. If you want to have an intelligent conversation and discuss/debate how things should work in the game, based on our opinions of course, then I am perfectly willing to do that. But if you attempt to insult me again, I will ignore you.

@ utilae

Reactive armor is made up of sections that explode outward to stop armor piercing weapons. All armor calulations for recieving damage would be the same. The difference would be in their resistances.

Now, can we please talk about the countering system instead of arguing over how armor would work or how shields would work, please?
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#159 Post by solartrix »

Guys, I think I have a math system that works and should give Utilae plenty of room for creativity. :D (no offense U, but you had some pretty wild ideas...) Right now it allows for:

Shield piercing weapons
Armor piercing weapons
enveloping weapons (both armor and shield)
various shield and armor effectiveness (% of weapon energy absorbed)
various targetting / ECM / ECCM / ship size bonuses
weapon ranges and range sensitivities

And it calculates:

% chance to hit the target ship
weapon energy delivered to target based on range
amount of energy absorbed by shields
amount of energy absorbed by armor
amount of energy passed thru to the target ship

I think it'll work well and give us plenty of options. Only trouble is it's in an excel spreadsheet and I don't have a way of putting it up on a website. I'd show you a jpeg of how it looks, but heck, I can't even figure out how to include a simple image file in a post in here. (help?)

If anyone wants it, please pm me with your email address and I'll send it to you. And if anyone can host it, let me know and I'll get it to you...

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utilae
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#160 Post by utilae »

solartrix wrote:Guys, I think I have a math system that works and should give Utilae plenty of room for creativity. :D (no offense U, but you had some pretty wild ideas...)
The spreadsheet is ok, but is rather simple. First of all there are no counters based on ship type/armor types which we have been discussing.

Armor and shields boil down to the equivelent of 'screen shields with hp' (% of damage absorbed into hp). I would like it more though if armor and shields reduced damage in different ways, eg resistance counter system between armor and weapons and shield types determine math formula for reducing damage.

You also use tohit% and toevade% as well as reducing damage if the target is at maximum range (would probably be better if damage started 'falling off' after a certain range and at a certain rate).

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#161 Post by solartrix »

utilae wrote:
The spreadsheet is ok, but is rather simple. First of all there are no counters based on ship type/armor types which we have been discussing.

Armor and shields boil down to the equivelent of 'screen shields with hp' (% of damage absorbed into hp). I would like it more though if armor and shields reduced damage in different ways, eg resistance counter system between armor and weapons and shield types determine math formula for reducing damage.
I think what you're looking for is in there, try adjusting the shield and armor bonuses and see what happens... You can also adjust the shield and armor absorbtion ratios, allowing for hard or soft shields or armor.

Say you want to explore lasers vs. shield penetrating lasers. Set the shield bonus to 1 for regular lasers, run some numbers, and then set it to 2 or 3 and run the numbers again. See what happens. Then set your shield absorbtion to .5 for very soft shields, then set it to 1 for solid shields. Mix, match and play around with it, then come back.
You also use tohit% and toevade% as well as reducing damage if the target is at maximum range (would probably be better if damage started 'falling off' after a certain range and at a certain rate).
That's in there, too, tho it's a linear progression from 0 range to max range (and beyond max range). You can change the slope of the curve (ie, the falloff rate) by changing the range sensitivity. 0.5 means a weapon does 50% damage at max range. A 1 gives you full damage at max range. A 0 gives you no damage at max range.

But heck, perhaps it still needs a few counters. You've got the spreadsheet, feel free to add 'em...

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Thread

#162 Post by guiguibaah »

I think it should all boil down to what is more fun for the player. Perhaps if players are designing ships, and shields and heavy armor take up space, perhaps have the two perform completely different tasks.

This way, some players may decide to go without heavy armor, other players may decide to go without shields.
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Re: Thread

#163 Post by utilae »

guiguibaah wrote:I think it should all boil down to what is more fun for the player. Perhaps if players are designing ships, and shields and heavy armor take up space, perhaps have the two perform completely different tasks.

This way, some players may decide to go without heavy armor, other players may decide to go without shields.
THE COUNTER SYSTEM REVISITED
Hmmm, this makes me think. IF armor has a built in counter system and shields do not, or vice versa AND you can choose to either have armor and shields or only one of the two, then not having the armor/shield, is not having the counter system, which would be a huge advantage (all damage effectively being normal damage).

This makes me think that a counter system should not be so closely intergrated with armor or shields because armor and shields can be removed from the ship. The counter system needs to be integrated into something that cannot be taken out of the ship, like the hull (counter system and base hp, ie hp=0=death).

This leads me to a new idea. Regardless of how armor and shields stop some of the damage, the remaining damage, which has gotten through armor and shields, should be effected by the counter system (resistance counter system hopefully). So the remaining damage is increased or decreased depending on whether the counter system determines hull A as being weak or strong against weapon B.
Last edited by utilae on Sun Nov 21, 2004 8:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

discord
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#164 Post by discord »

ranos: dude, why dont you EVER look into how things actualy works before saying 'this is how it is!, cause i say so!'...i'll try to make this as simple as possible so even YOU can understand it.

Armor piercing weapons(of today) follow one of two approaches.
#1 lots of kinetic energy on a small cross section, to 'pierce' the armor, or in other words poke a hole through it, primitive, but effective, the effect is created by having high mass, high speed and a hard pointy shape...all thing are relative ofcourse.
#2 shaped explosives, by putting the explosives in a form at the tip, you can direct the explosion in the direction you want, creating high pressure/heat/kinetic energy on a small area, to punch through.

both of these is no more then what i said before, enough energy on a small area will punch though, wether or not it is 'armor piercing' in design or not...example.

if you drop a 15 ton rock, at a velocity of 15000m/s on a tank, what will happen? the asteroid is not armor piercing in design, so the tank should go out unscathed, right?...well that is what you have been saying, if it is not armor piercing, it cant go through armor, right?

although this example does not 'pierce' the armor, just utterly destroys the whole vehicle, but it should point out the error of your previos posts, as this example is about as non armor piercing as it can get...but lots of raw kinetic energy gets the job done....might add that this rock in question would have about 225 MILLION newtons of energy, as compared to a armor piercing tank shell, at about 10-20 thousand...the armor piercing round is just that much more efficient in its use of energy, compared to the 'rock', but energy is energy....might also add that the rock in question would create a not unsignificant dent in the local geoscape, it does have enough energy to destroy the tank, but not to 'penetrate' the planet it was standing on.

i hope you actualy bother to read this, and IF you get the urge to actualy disagree, try talking to someone that actualy knows something about physics, like a teacher of science or something...or a gun nut, my lack of explanation skills should tell you that i am part of the second group.

//discord

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utilae
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#165 Post by utilae »

@Discord
You and Ranos having been going backwards and forwards on an argument that is really unimpotant and is leading no where. Who cares how armor/piercing works today. We are dealing with the future in this game, where todays tech is obsolete.


Now we really should move on, so everyone read below:

guiguibaah wrote:I think it should all boil down to what is more fun for the player. Perhaps if players are designing ships, and shields and heavy armor take up space, perhaps have the two perform completely different tasks.

This way, some players may decide to go without heavy armor, other players may decide to go without shields.
THE COUNTER SYSTEM REVISITED
Hmmm, this makes me think. IF armor has a built in counter system and shields do not, or vice versa AND you can choose to either have armor and shields or only one of the two, then not having the armor/shield, is not having the counter system, which would be a huge advantage (all damage effectively being normal damage).

This makes me think that a counter system should not be so closely intergrated with armor or shields because armor and shields can be removed from the ship. The counter system needs to be integrated into something that cannot be taken out of the ship, like the hull (counter system and base hp, ie hp=0=death).

This leads me to a new idea. Regardless of how armor and shields stop some of the damage, the remaining damage, which has gotten through armor and shields, should be effected by the counter system (resistance counter system hopefully). So the remaining damage is increased or decreased depending on whether the counter system determines hull A as being weak or strong against weapon B.

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