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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Ranos
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#166 Post by Ranos »

utilae wrote: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).
You are incorrect on that. If armor or shields have built in countering systems, that is merely strengths and weaknesses. Let me give you examples of with and without countering.

With countering

Countering percentage order: Energy/Kinetic/Explosive/Corrosive. All numbers given are percentages of damage. if the number is less than 100, it recieves less damage from the weapon, if greater, it recieves more damage.

A ship with Zortium armor has 1000 armor hp and 500 internal hp. It's resistances are 80/100/120/100. If an energy weapon that does 100 damage is fired at the ship, it takes 80 damage. A kinetic weapon that does 100 damage would still do 100 damage. An explosive weapon that does 100 damage would do 120 damage.

If you remove the armor, the ship has only 500 internal hp and is destroyed in 5 hits from any of those weapons. With the armor, it would take 17.5 (or 18 ) hits from the energy weapon, 15 hits from the kinetic weapon or 13.333 hits from the explosive weapon to destroy it.

Without countering

A ship with Zortium armor has 1000 armor hp and 500 internal hp. If an energy weapon that does 100 damage is fired at the ship, it takes 100 damage. A kinetic weapon that does 100 damage would do 100 damage. An explosive weapon that does 100 damage would do 100 damage.

If you remove the armor, the ship has only 500 internal hp and is destroyed in 5 hits from any of those weapons. With the armor, it would take 15 hits from any of the weapons to destroy it.

A countering system just means that some weapons will do more damage to the ship than other weapons. If you remove the armor and/or shields from the ship, the ship is destroyed faster even though there is no countering system on it since it has no armor/shields.

Integrating the countering with the internals would be really wierd and make no sense IMO.
Last edited by Ranos on Mon Nov 22, 2004 3:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Bastian-Bux
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#167 Post by Bastian-Bux »

It would make sense on a module level, but thats micro management (kind of). Like EMP would destroy sensores and electronics...

Blade Runner
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#168 Post by Blade Runner »

My proposal for the armour/shield and weapon system:

Weapon: 150 kinetic, 100 heat, 180 radiation,
Shield: 0 kinetic, 150 heat, 50 radiation,
Armour: 120 kinetic, 20 heat, 50 radiation,
Ship: 200 kinetic, 180 heat, 500 radiation

How it will works?

1. step:
The weapon fire and reach the shield. The game system take away from the weapon numbers the shield numbers:
150-0 kinetic = 150 kinetic
100-150 heat = -50 (0) heat (heat effect eliminated)
180-50 radiation = 130 radiation

2. step:
The weapon effect reaches the ship armour. The game system takes away now the armour numbers:
150-120 kinetic = 30 kinetic
0 – 20 heat = 0 heat
130 – 50 radiation = 80 radiation

3. step:
The weapon effect first goes to a semi-random critical hit system, which is working like this:
Weapon effect remainder / ship resistance / a constant number ->
Kinetic: 30 / 200 / 5 = 3%
Heat: 0 / 180 / 5 = 0%
Radiation: 80 / 500 / 5 = 3.2%
So the system generate 3 random events, the first with 3% the second 0% and the third 3.2% chance and check if it is happened. If yes, than the ship got a critical hit and destroyed, if not the ship is intact.

4. step:
The system counts down from the hull integrity 30 kinetic, 0 heat and 80 radiation points. So the ship goes to the next round with the remainder integrity points. In the next round the ship numbers will be:
Ship: 200-30->170 kinetic, 180-0->180 heat, 500-80->420 radiation
And the critical hit system will works with this new hull integrity numbers. (So practically the chance to get a critical hit will be higher.)
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Ranos
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#169 Post by Ranos »

@ Bastion

I don't understand what you are referring to. What would make sense on a module level?

@ Blade Runner

While that is a good system, many people want armor and shields to work differently and most people want armor to stop all damage until the armor runs out. Having a shield that only reduces damage is fine as long as the armor stops all damage until it is out of hp.

I think another agreement by everyone who is participating in this thread is that if damage is only reduced, it should be based on a percentage, not a set number.
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Blade Runner
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#170 Post by Blade Runner »

Ranos wrote:
While that is a good system, many people want armor and shields to work differently and most people want armor to stop all damage until the armor runs out. Having a shield that only reduces damage is fine as long as the armor stops all damage until it is out of hp.
You probably misunderstand my system a bit. 8) The armor and the shield will eliminate some of the force and the hull absorb the rest. So you can think about the shiled AND armor together like shield and the hull play the role of the armor. I hope it is clarify the idea. But if you think it is too complicated, it is OK with only shield and armor. The real advantage is an easy to understand but interesting semi-random attack defence system. ;)
Ranos wrote: I think another agreement by everyone who is participating in this thread is that if damage is only reduced, it should be based on a percentage, not a set number.


Fine by me. :)
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Impaler
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#171 Post by Impaler »

Actualy no, their is no consensus on that point. My view is that their shoud be a wide variety or shield and armor calcultions and the person desiging the ship can pick any combinatin they desire.

Having Critical Hit chances on ships seems like an intersting idea, my thinking would be more along the lines of a random Component/part of the ship taking a critical hit and "die". Some of the components like power cores/Amunition Magazines trigger something special when this happens (aka a Catastrophic explosion).
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Blade Runner
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#172 Post by Blade Runner »

I agree with the critical hit cause (i.e. reactor hit, ammunition, etc.) My idea is an easy to implement and understand way to do it in the game engine. :)
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utilae
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#173 Post by utilae »

Blade Runner wrote: Weapon: 150 kinetic, 100 heat, 180 radiation,
Shield: 0 kinetic, 150 heat, 50 radiation,
Armour: 120 kinetic, 20 heat, 50 radiation,
Ship: 200 kinetic, 180 heat, 500 radiation
I think this is too complex because it is three layers of counters. Sure, they balance out and give an overall set of strengths and weaknesses for the situation, but it becomes too much of a mess to figure out the overall set of strengths and weaknesses in a short amount of time.

Looking at your example it is difficult to tell whether the ship being hit by the weapon is strong or weak against certain counter elements of the weapon.

Ranos
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#174 Post by Ranos »

Blader Runner wrote:You probably misunderstand my system a bit.
I didn't misunderstand, you didn't say that they would be the same. You actually implied that they would be separate by giving armor and shields different numbers.

IMO, Shields should be the first line of defense. Shields would be different in how they stop damage and/or using an RPS system (the RPS system is discussed in the next paragraph). They could stop all damage until its hit points run out, stop a percent of damage for the entire battle or some other means of stopping damage (discussed earlier and further discussion on how shields or armor would work should go in other threads).

Armor should be the second line of defense. Shields would be different using the RPS countering system. Resistances, so far, have been the best suggestion, IMO. All weapons are classified by the type of damage they do. Damage types discussed are Normal Energy, Advanced Energy (to be named something else like Sub-Space or Exotic), Kinetic, Explosive and Corrosive. I think those are all of them. I may have missed one. Each different armor has resistances based on percentages to each of these damage types. All armor, IMO should stop all damage until it runs out. Thi is represented by hit points.

After the Shields and Armor are gone, the internal systems are exposed. These are represented by hit points the same as armor. When the hit points reach zero, the ship blows up. Internals have no resistenaces of any kind.

Another possibility is that internals are represented by two different sets of HP. The first is the system explained in the last paragraph. The second is the electrical systems and engines. Ion Cannons, EMPs and other energy disrupting weapons would effect the internal electrical system. Normal weapons would have a chance of hitting the engines. When this HP reaches zero, the ship is disabled and can be boarded and captured.

I'm getting a little off topic here but I wanted to explain that. All of the above is my opinion on how it should work and is not the way it will work in the game, yet.
Impaler wrote:Actualy no, their is no consensus on that point. My view is that their shoud be a wide variety or shield and armor calcultions and the person desiging the ship can pick any combinatin they desire.
I was reffering only to the percent vs. set number reduction, not the overall workings of shields/armor. Since you hadn't posted anything about that for quite some time, I assumed that you were agreeing that set numbers not good. A misunderstanding. As I said above, I don't want to get into that debate again in this thread.

A critical hit system could work, but only with armor piercing weapons (if the above system is used) or with a system that allows some damage to pass through armor instead of stopping it all. The only other way is with hitting the engines which would be included in the two internal HP system I described above. Once armor is gone, all hits are hitting internal systems and are therefore all criticalt hits.
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Blade Runner
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#175 Post by Blade Runner »

utilae wrote: I think this is too complex because it is three layers of counters.
Nope. Two layers of resistance (shield/armor) and only one layer with counters.
utilae wrote:Sure, they balance out and give an overall set of strengths and weaknesses for the situation, but it becomes too much of a mess to figure out the overall set of strengths and weaknesses in a short amount of time.
You mean when the player fight a battle?
utilae wrote:Looking at your example it is difficult to tell whether the ship being hit by the weapon is strong or weak against certain counter elements of the weapon.
Yup. It is designed to put a little randomness into the strick rules of armor/shield/hull/weapon system.

When I try to imagine this system, I use RPG analogy. When you play i.e. Diablo or similar game, you find a few gear like armor/boots/helmet/etc. and every one has a different resistance points against direct hit, flames, magic and so on. The player needs to find the right balance for different gears, so in the end his/her avatar balanced against any kind of attack. So IMHO we can even drop the traditional 2 slot (armor and shield) to a bit more complex one (like 3, 4 or 5 slot, more layer of shield and armor), so this way the player can design the ship with balanced resistance.
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Blade Runner
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#176 Post by Blade Runner »

I like more the set point reduction, but I can live with the percent too. :)
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Kharagh
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#177 Post by Kharagh »

I like the idea of critical hits, however they should only be possible against components and not against the whole ship (blowing it up with one hit). If that component is the reactor, well that of course would blow up the entire ship :D

Also, only armor piercing weapons should be able to do critical hits (we could implement a very small chance, perhaps 5% or sth. that a weapon will get through the armor athough its not a armor piercing weapon. This will add a little exciting randomness to the battles), and of course only, if they get through the Shield.

Blade Runner
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#178 Post by Blade Runner »

Kharagh wrote:I like the idea of critical hits, however they should only be possible against components and not against the whole ship (blowing it up with one hit). If that component is the reactor, well that of course would blow up the entire ship :D

Also, only armor piercing weapons should be able to do critical hits (we could implement a very small chance, perhaps 5% or sth. that a weapon will get through the armor athough its not a armor piercing weapon. This will add a little exciting randomness to the battles), and of course only, if they get through the Shield.
Yep. The critical hit is something like reaktor, weapon, ammunition, etc. So somthing, which can kill the whole ship instantly. This isnt something unheard in history BTW, you can check how Bismarck kill Hood (a huge battleship) in one lucky shot in WWII.
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skdiw
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#179 Post by skdiw »

Just make criticals deal double damage.
:mrgreen:

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Prokonsul Piotrus
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#180 Post by Prokonsul Piotrus »

The best way to deal with criticals is to base them on probabilty (think board games and die rolls). Few solutions:
- chance for critical damage should proportionaly increase the more hit points given ship loses (or if we go with cc to given components and hp for those component, the same should apply to the component itself)
- if we allow critical damage to affect all components, then dubling damage would be ok (and could result in chain reactions, nifty) BUT
- some compontents should have special effects when dealing with critical damage, like bridge, life support and reactor (based on Full Thrust): for example, reactor can go into shutdown and be repaired, be ejected making ship usless in battle but salvagable later or explode.
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