Change Log for 6.30 Discussion

[Conscript Gary]

And against an opponent known to have stiff shields a preliminary wave or two of lighter missiles meant to bring those down before the heavy hitters arrive could also be an interesting tactic

[Bremen]

At a glance, I'd say this sounds like a boost for shields (since they are immune to shock) and missiles (since heavy armor was an effective anti-missile tactic before), while of course being a nerf to heavy armor. Also, assuming I'm using this fancy calculator right it looks like a 35 point hit would be a 100% chance of shock. I wonder if we'll start seeing 35 damage torpedoes at medium-high tech levels; they'd be big and clumsy but even a single hit could potentially be crippling (0-11 internal damage).

I wonder if this will incentivize more varied fleets (large and small ships, combination of shields/armor/PD, etc).

[Rastaman]

Shield generators should suffer shock damage too when the shield is hit. Otherwise I fear it'll be all about shields in the future. There is a certain romanticism to the armoured cruiser, armour has a certain quality of its own.

I've never used such large missiles, what are your experiences? Does a large armoured torpedo come through?

[kks]

It would also make close-combat with big missiles more useful, as they could be fired at ranges the OPFORs AMM-launchers couldn't get more than one salvo off.

[Kruniac]

Shield generators should suffer shock damage too when the shield is hit.  Otherwise I fear it'll be all about shields in the future.  There is a certain romanticism to the armoured cruiser, armour has a certain quality of its own.

I've never used such large missiles, what are your experiences? Does a large armoured torpedo come through?

Which is why shields should still suffer shock, just a much smaller chance or something.

Also, I'm not sure how this really "Fixes" AMMs.  You'll still have excessive AMM wave sandblasting/accuracy/etc, they just won't be able to cause shock.  I'm not entirely sure why I care about shock damage when I can toss ~400 missiles at something and then leave the area.  With one ship.

Don't get me wrong, I love the implementation of it - I'm gonna have a lot of fun with my multi-start games (They get close and personal really quick , I just don't see how this changes AMMs.  If anything, it just makes ASMs better.

[Bremen]

Shields already have the weakness of only having a quarter the hp of armor. I don't think this change alone will make shields dominant.

Though I could see more designs with armor and a light shield in the future; the armor gives the ship staying power in a fight, and a light shield stops one or two leakers from inflicting shock damage.

[ardem]

On Sandpapering

A counter measure system that can explode incoming missiles prior to actual ready (chaff),would be a nice option. The object here is the depth of the explosion is reduced by one. Meaning level 3 and below warheads would be useless, level 4-9 missiles become more like a level 3. Or something perhaps like Reactive Armour.

But I think Shock is still a good system that means sandpapering is not always the best tactic.

I believe if there is ever a successful tactic it should be countered by a successful defence in time, as military strategist and designers would think of a way, first came the club next came the shield. It been that way ever since the beginning of time.

[Mel Vixen]

Hmmm i think that is an big upgrade for Caronades and Particlebeams (high DMG energy weapons) while its just a minor for Lasers since they are anyway armor-piercing. It would also mean a little nerv for messons and Microwave since they do already internal damage. The P-beam in particular would get the boost to become a even better sniping weapon.

Only "balistic"-weapons seem somehow excluded. Gaus and Railguns do multiple shots and those arent strong enough to cause shock on a regular basis. To illustrate that lets take a look at railguns: 4 strength 4 shots will dish out the same damage as a Laser or P-beam. The chance to hit for the ballistic solution is bigger but each shot has only a 1.25% chance to cause shock while the Laser/P-beam has 28.4% !

[alex_brunius]

Shields already have the weakness of only having a quarter the hp of armor. I don't think this change alone will make shields dominant.

You are ignoring the three biggest strength of shields however.

* Quick Regeneration
* Free Regeneration
* No penalty for adding lots of it

So shields tend to favor big ships a lot. When you put a few hundred hitpoints of shield strength onto a big ship you are free to ignore most incoming enemy fire.

In my current game my strength 500 shield flagship was regaining 6.25 every 5 sec which turns out to be 4500 over the course of a single hour, and the enemy was keeping the shields working for almost that long. Since I had a speed advantage I could also decide myself when to enter and exit their AAM range and effectively tank them in a situation that quickly would have sent any armored warship of same size home for repairs in best case and into oblivion in worst case.

Many of their long range salvos (70 sec reload in between) could be easily laughed off as the shield could regenerate close to 90 hitpoints until the next one hit.

When the dust settled my 5 smaller supporting ships relying on armor were lost, and the flagship had on it's own hunted down and destroyed 15 or so enemy missile ships half it's size.

I now have a deep respect for what you can accomplish with star-trek style ships in this games (relying heavily on beams and shields).

[skeolan]

Alex's points make a pretty strong case for balance (and interestingness!) being served by adding some sort of mechanic for shields to eventually fail or degrade under constant attrition, as well as potentially causing catastrophic problems within the ship when they take a heavy-but-not-fully-depleting hit.

Shock damage might make a good model for this, but with only certain subsystems within a ship being susceptible (and with rather less frequency or intensity than actual impact-on-armor shock): Say, shield generators, reactors, and electronic systems - I'm envisioning wild power fluctuations from heavy shield depletion, with ensuing damage to any systems heavily invested in the ship's "grid" as the shield generators redline to keep a field in place.

Thinking about the same effect another way, it could instead make sense to embody such an effect as an acceleration of the maintenance clock proportional to damage absorbed by the shields, either applied just to the shield generator or similarly smeared out over the power subsystems like reactors etc. Stressing the power and shield-gen systems more in a few hours of sustained hits on the shields (or a handful of more solid blows) than weeks or months of normal wear and tear on those systems might lead to faster failures of those systems, and thus more need for backup systems, damage control and fast repair capability to maintain battleworthiness.

[alex_brunius]

One interesting thing to look at in the shield vs armor balance debate is to find the answer to the question, how long do you need to fight for armor and shields to be of equal values (ignoring the fact that armor cost scales with ship size).

According to the wiki (which might not be updated) the break-even is 800 seconds of battle or around 13min, but I don't agree that this "almost never happens". Against NPRs there are often multiple fleets attacking my force spread apart with enough time for shields to fully regain strength.

This is somewhat an AI weakness (failure to coordinate attacks), but not a huge one since I often find myself in the same boat, coordinating all attacks to hit within a few min (the time it takes to regenerate shields) is no easy task even for a player.

Shields can also allow a whole new momentum/pressure in the assaults and save you from alot of micromanagement and fuel involved in sending back ships for repairs for every fight or few fights. To take advantage of that I either equip ships with beam weapons or make sure to bring lot's of spare missile ammo.

We can also make another comparison. Lets say that we instead of that 500 strength shield put 2000 armor on our ship (10 layers times 200 for example). That armor is only guaranteed to hold back 10 damage before our internal components can start taking damage (if we are really unlucky). With a shield I know for sure that the entire strength will be used for protection no matter where I am hit.

So the change that allows internal components to take additional damage from large hit's that don't penetrate armor might actually not be that much a change in armor vs shield balance. Armor will still just like before provide more overall protection per ton but rely on luck to do so.

For me the optimal defense will always be some armor and some shields, it's just a question of at what ratio?

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I feel shields should still suffer some shock damage, even if it's just to shield modules.

I think the reason armor generally wins out over shields is that often ships face total destruction in a single wave and armor is just generally better for that.  There's also the problem with shield spinup time and fuel consumption, especially in a multi-earth start or for jump point defense.

For me the optimal defense will always be some armor and some shields, it's just a question of at what ratio?

I feel if you're going to mount shields at all it should be on a large hull and with as much as you can plausibly fit. Armor should be purely secondary.  The idea is to maximize per-tick regeneration to provide optimal capability to soak damage.

[Polestar]

In general, I'm liking the addition of shock damage.

However, three things are worth pointing out.

1. It's going to make accepting a higher chance for an engine or reactor to explode even harder to justify. Boosting these components, because it also costs additional fuel, Gallicite, and ship build cost, ought to be a legitimate design tool. However, it's not hard to set up a chain-reaction, where the loss of a single 1 HS component may trigger the loss of the ship due to explosions causing explosions causing ...

There's a simple fix that keeps the exploding penalty serious, but prevents it from getting out of control. If damage occasioned by the explosion of any internal component were to not cause additional explosions, this would restore both balance and variety to this aspect of ship design.


2. Component Hit To Kill (HTK) per Hull Size (HS) varies greatly with component type. This is fine. What is already causing balance issues and will now cause bigger ones is that HTK/HS varies with the size of a component. Consider fuel storage, sensors, engines, and empty armored 1 HS missile magazines as examples.

I don't want to game ship design to improve ship durability. Let's even out HTK/HS as a function of component size, please. Let's also introduce fractional HTK. 0.5 HTK would mean that the component has a 50% chance of reducing remaining damage by one on destruction; 1.5 HTK would mean that the component reduces remaining damage by one, plus a 50% chance of another, on destruction.


3. Railguns are already somewhat inferior to lasers in beam combat (this statement does depend on how much we value the superior armor penetration power of lasers). They're currently a solid overall choice because of their superior ability to stop missiles targeting other ships, but a relative combat nerf to railguns would nevertheless be unhelpful.

[UnLimiTeD]

With these changed, I think a change in the HTK is indeed in order.
Instead of making 5+ HTK size 1 magazines (maybe limit armor to size?) a requirement for a tough ship, maybe add "Structural support" as an internal component?
As for Shock damage, I could see a chance at electronic damage when the shields are sufficiently damaged and shock damage is rolled.
Finally it would make more sense to add shielding to components; The costs are way prohibitive.
The Engines are a valid point, too; Maybe allow to shut them off the prevent explosions? I always wanted the option to add an overclocked combat maneuvering drive to a fuel efficient ship. 

[alex_brunius]

With these changed, I think a change in the HTK is indeed in order.
Instead of making 5+ HTK size 1 magazines (maybe limit armor to size?) a requirement for a tough ship, maybe add "Structural support" as an internal component?
As for Shock damage, I could see a chance at electronic damage when the shields are sufficiently damaged and shock damage is rolled.
Finally it would make more sense to add shielding to components; The costs are way prohibitive.
The Engines are a valid point, too; Maybe allow to shut them off the prevent explosions? I always wanted the option to add an overclocked combat maneuvering drive to a fuel efficient ship. 

Actually the entire internal Damage/Damage control system could use some improvements. Primary how the internal HTK works that I agree with you all.

But it would also be really cool to have things like internal fires, radiation leaks, fuel leaks, decompression able to spread throughout the ship and cause additional damage to nearby components and crew long after the initial hit if you don't have sufficient damage control or crew ready.

Like in the game FTL where the crew races around trying to contain the situation.

And who wouldn't love having to making hard calls like - DO we went decks 4 & 5 into space to put out the fire and save the ship or gamble that the 32 crewmen stuck inside can combat the raging fires without it reaching the reactor?