Shields -> Damage Reduction

[yandonman]

The problem is: Massive hulls like the titan hull could be equipped with a lot of shield parts, giving them such a high "damage reduction per weapon hit" that it's effectively invulnerable to small, light combat vessels like fighters or combat ships based on small hulls, rendering such small combat vessels useless.

Might I challenge that that is a problem? How many TIE fighters should it take to kill a DeathStar? (assuming no plot protection and no conveniently exposed exhaust pipes)


I think that damaged reduction tech should probably have a diminishing returns when adding additional damage reducing items. OR Damage reduction doesn't stack.

FracShielded.jpg (30.46 KiB) Viewed 909 times

[em3]

There could be several damage reduction stacking groups for technologies based on different principles. This would be problematic, as a ship would not have a single shield meter any more.

I like the idea, that multiple energy shields do not stack and offer redundancy instead (should one shield generator be destroyed, the second goes on line).

[eleazar]

(should one shield generator be destroyed, the second goes on line).

FO does not, and is unlikely to provide individual part destruction. It was part of the 0.4 discussion. IIRC that kind of detail is great for a battle between a few ships, but just makes controlling a whole lot of ships confusing, when each ship has a lot of information to convey about it's status.

[em3]

FO does not, and is unlikely to provide individual part destruction. It was part of the 0.4 discussion. IIRC that kind of detail is great for a battle between a few ships, but just makes controlling a whole lot of ships confusing, when each ship has a lot of information to convey about it's status.

Acknowledged.

[unjashfan]

Here's my idea for changing shield effects:

• Shields will reduce damage done based on shield strength
• If a shield activates during battle (i.e: ship gets hit), shield strength will be reduced to 0 after battle
• For simplicity, shield strength remains constant throughout a battle
• Shields regen by 1 every turn outside of battle; techs may be added to increase this effect
• Since mass driver 1 only does 1 damage, defense grid cannot be a pre-unlocked ship part and will need to be moved down the tech tree as appropriate (same with deflector shield). This also requires some tweaking of premade ship designs.
• Shield parts will not be stackable, similar to detection parts. This is to prevent large hulls from shield stacking until they are practically immune to damage.
• Additional new shield parts can be added if more variability is required

Thoughts?

[eleazar]

Here's my idea for changing shield effects:

• If a shield activates during battle (i.e: ship gets hit), shield strength will be reduced to 0 after battle
• For simplicity, shield strength remains constant throughout a battle
• Shields regen by 1 every turn outside of battle; techs may be added to increase this effect
• ...

Why?

[Vezzra]

Here's my idea for changing shield effects:

• If a shield activates during battle (i.e: ship gets hit), shield strength will be reduced to 0 after battle
• For simplicity, shield strength remains constant throughout a battle
• Shields regen by 1 every turn outside of battle; techs may be added to increase this effect
• ...

Why?

Seconded. Like the speed penalty thing for armor, this kind of mechanic makes things more complex and are (at least for me) rather annoying than fun. Shield strength determines the amount of damage done by weapon hits is reduced, simple and straightforward. Balance by sufficiently high PP and RP costs, and by keeping the shield strength to sane levels, instead of adding mechanics like that.

• Since mass driver 1 only does 1 damage, defense grid cannot be a pre-unlocked ship part and will need to be moved down the tech tree as appropriate (same with deflector shield).

When shields are changed to this new mechanic, hull, armor, shield and weapon strengths need to be rebalanced anyway. The weakest shield could start at strength 1, the weakest weapon at strength 2 or 3. Based on this numbers rebalance the rest accordingly.

• Shield parts will not be stackable, similar to detection parts. This is to prevent large hulls from shield stacking until they are practically immune to damage.

Seconded. The problem that you could stack shields to achieve invulnerability was my main concern, and this is probably the simplest and most straightforward way to avoid that.

[unjashfan]

Balance by sufficiently high PP and RP costs, and by keeping the shield strength to sane levels, instead of adding mechanics like that.

Simple solutions are best. Seconded .

When shields are changed to this new mechanic, hull, armor, shield and weapon strengths need to be rebalanced anyway. The weakest shield could start at strength 1, the weakest weapon at strength 2 or 3. Based on this numbers rebalance the rest accordingly.

Would adding more shield parts be plausible? I feel that there are many weapons but not too many shields. To compare, we currently have 5 (possibly 6) kinds of armour. Assuming defense grid is reserved for early game use, it's difficult to have deflector shield balanced enough for the rest of the game where weapon damage range increases from around 12 to 50, using current values.

[eleazar]

Why?

Seconded...

When I ask "why?", it doesn't mean I disagree with an idea. It means the advantages or purpose of an idea has not be described, and they are not obvious to me.

• Shield parts will not be stackable, similar to detection parts. This is to prevent large hulls from shield stacking until they are practically immune to damage.

Seconded. The problem that you could stack shields to achieve invulnerability was my main concern, and this is probably the simplest and most straightforward way to avoid that.

I'm not against non-stacking but the simpler way to prevent invulnerability, is to simply make shield strength numbers go up more slowly and or not as far as weapon strength numbers. Either proposal doesn't eliminate the practical invulnerability that occurs when a lower tech or smaller ship simply doesn't have enough weapons.

Unless there is some mechanic to damage shields, to keep armor viable shield numbers must be much lower than similarly costing armor numbers.

Yes, more shield parts are fine.

[Vezzra]

Would adding more shield parts be plausible? I feel that there are many weapons but not too many shields. To compare, we currently have 5 (possibly 6) kinds of armour. Assuming defense grid is reserved for early game use, it's difficult to have deflector shield balanced enough for the rest of the game where weapon damage range increases from around 12 to 50, using current values.

I feel exactly the same way, and was already considering suggesting to introduce more shield parts. So, idea seconded

I'm not against non-stacking but the simpler way to prevent invulnerability, is to simply make shield strength numbers go up more slowly and or not as far as weapon strength numbers. Either proposal doesn't eliminate the practical invulnerability that occurs when a lower tech or smaller ship simply doesn't have enough weapons.

The problem that arises when shield parts stack is our current implementation of combat resolution. Every gun a ship has is fired independently, you don't get several guns firing simultaneously, so their firepower doesn't stack. Shields however do. So each shot ship A fires against ship B is reduced by the combined shield strength of ship B's shield parts.

This will make balancing shields, armor and weapons extremely difficult, if not impossible. If, OTOH, shield parts don't stack, you can balance weapon and shield strength fairly easy, because you can do it "one-on-one", so to speak, and don't have to take into account that multiple shield parts will stack against single weapon shots.

This will change of course once we get a combat system where a ship can fire several of it's weapons against another ship simultaneously, so their strength can be added. Then the strength of the shield parts can, even should be added also. It just should be the same on both sides: single weapon shot against single shield part, or multiple shots that can be added against multiple shield parts that can be added.

[eleazar]

The problem that arises when shield parts stack is our current implementation of combat resolution. Every gun a ship has is fired independently, you don't get several guns firing simultaneously, so their firepower doesn't stack. Shields however do. So each shot ship A fires against ship B is reduced by the combined shield strength of ship B's shield parts.

Gotcha

[unjashfan]

• If a shield activates during battle (i.e: ship gets hit), shield strength will be reduced to 0 after battle
• For simplicity, shield strength remains constant throughout a battle
• Shields regen by 1 every turn outside of battle; techs may be added to increase this effect

The main idea behind this concept was that it would become possible to weaken the shields. If shields had to regenerate slowly outside of battle, there would be strategic value to attack a given fleet repeatedly, since subsequent attacks would deal more damage. This can help keep shields from becoming too OP, especially against ships with weaker weapons, since they would be now able to at least whittle down the shields.

I was also considering whether current scripting could support more complex mechanics. For example, shields get weakened by 1 every time it gets hit, so it would provide fewer protection over the course of a battle. I figured it would be better to go with more simple ideas, so I came up with point 1, supported by point 2. Those two points still look kinda weird, so when Vezzra came up with this:

Shield strength determines the amount of damage done by weapon hits is reduced, simple and straightforward. Balance by sufficiently high PP and RP costs, and by keeping the shield strength to sane levels, instead of adding mechanics like that.

I felt that this was a good solution.

[Geoff the Medio]

I think it's sufficient to start with shields reducing damage by the same amount for every hit, with no more complex mechanics. If that's found to be problematic, something more complicated can be considered.

[Dilvish]

It looks like everyone put in some initial thoughts but then held off on progressing to anything near balanced for play. This changed mecahnic has been put in the game now (without significant content revision as yet), so we need a whole lotta balancing goin' on. The approach that Vezzra mentioned in broad strokes seems reasonable, but there's a fair bit of work going from that to reasonable content files.

[Dilvish]

OK, well, here's my take on this, to at least get something we can start playing with and testing. Currently shield DR (Damage Reduction) is stackable, and so the numbers I discuss are with that in mind. Nonstackable DR could be fine instead, but then would probably call for notably different numbers.

As has been suggested above, I think the shield DR should start at 1 for Grids. It seems we'd want to expand the number of researchable shield tiers to five, being DR1, DR2, DR3, DR4 and DR5. After DR2 they should start getting pretty expensive to quite expensive RP-wise (and perhaps PP-wise for the part). In this scheme I think MultiSpectral shields would fit in around 3 or 4 (perhaps 3.5, they don't need to be integer, do they?). To take into account the possibility of some of the many-slotted-hulls being equipped with a lot of high end shields for huge DR, I think Death Ray damage needs to ramp up more (and probably get even more expensive than currently). Since a Solar Hull potentially housing 26 (or even 27) DR5 shields would have a total DR of 130 (or 135), I think Death Ray needs to get at least a tad higher than that. Instead of the current Death Ray progression of 31, 35, 40, 45, 50, I would propose 31, 50, 70, 100, 150.

My first pass, very quick adjustment to get something that seems testable, is to make the current Grid part be DR 1 (Damage Reduction 1), the current Shield part be DR 3, and the current MultiSpectral Shield part be DR 4, with no other changes. I'm going to go ahead and commit that as a stopgap change, since the game is pretty much unplayable/untestable with the current unmodified shield values.