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Hull and armor system overhaul

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Van-Tuz:
Greetings again. This is a restart of my previous thread about overhauling the armor/hull system. The discussion there went off course. Here i gathered all of my arguments in one place together with a few more points and examples.

First, let me explain the flaws of the current system:

Ridiculously powerful explosive weapons.
Scylla mortar deals 237 raw explosive damage per second. Paired with greased rounds it ups to 425 real DPS against exposed hull.
Typhoon heavy flak deals 330 raw damage per shot. Loaded with charged rounds it can two-shot any ship except for Galleon. ((330*1.3*1.4)=600*2=1200)

The reason for such power is that anti-hull guns need to operate in the very small time window. This window can range from 15 seconds (roaming engineer and Galleon's armor) to as little as 2 seconds (2 engineers camping squid's armor)

Inconsistent Time To Kill.
The time to kill can be calculated only for perfect conditions. But if you ease the pressure for a few seconds (for example your gatling was disabled) then enemy armor would be completely repaired and you'd have to start over because enemy ship isn't taking any long-term damage while its armor is up.
But even if you destroyed its armor and dealed 50% of damage to the hull it doesn't mean that its TTK is halved. TTK for a ship with 50% hull hp left is only a few seconds less than the one with a full hull.
As a proof to that point: Yesturday i have played a very intense match as a Galleon captain. At some point enemy ship destroyed our armor and damaged our hull by 95%. However, he was killed shortly after giving us enough time to fully repair armor before the next attack. And despite the critical hull condition we have survived and won the batlle because the armor has endured all the attacks.


My suggestions:
Hull:

* Always vulnerable.
* Have a large health pool (much larger than now)
* Repairable
Armor:

* Acts as a damage reducer.
* Damage is divided between armor and hull HP with appropriate damage multipliers.
* The percentage of damage absorbed by armor is defined by armor class.
* When armor is destroyed 100% of the damage directed at the hull.
Armor classes:
I suggest making 3 armor classes:

* Light armor absorbs 30% of damage
* Medium - 50%
* Heavy - 70%The armor class is its quality, not thikness (hp).

Weapons:
Damage multipliers against hull increased for every type except explosive by the same factor as hull HP.

Explanations:
Because the time window when the hull is vilnerable is eliminated, it should be able to withstand a lot more damage. Multiplying the hull HP by 2 (for example) would make it two times more resistant to explosive damage but at the same time it would take 2 times more time to repair. I'd like to make repairing hull during combat almost a waste of time and the full repair to take about 1-2 minutes. However other weapons already have a hard time dealing any conciederable damage to the hull. Increasing the damage multipliers for other damage types would compensate for that. I'd like other weapots to maintain their limited usability against hull.


My assumption is that making different armor classes would open 2 possible "kill builds"

* Armor stripping (AS) - gat + mortar goes here
* Brute force (BF) - double explosive weapons.I expect both builds to be equally effective against medium armor. But AS would require more time to kill lightly armored ship than BF. BF on the other hand would be quite ineffective against heavily armored ships.
Do not take it as finalised though. These calculations may change drastically depending on what numbers do you choose for armor DR values.

Why making hull repairable is better than permanent damage:
Current system doesn't make damaged ship an easy target. Taking permanent hull damage is supposed to act as handicap to make you much easier to kill for a losing team. But as shown by Galleon example you could survive just fine even with critically damaged hull.
Current system doesn't force or even allow to change your tactics very much. The state of your hull doesn't change anything. There's no point in waiting.
On the other hand my system is really making badly damaged ships an easy target. But to explot that enemy must act quickly. And defenders may take evasive actions and slowly return to maximum combat capability.


What is this system is supposed to accomplish:
* Stabilise TTK. Ships would always take some long-term damage. So even if you got your guns disabled enemies won't be able to fully recover in a few seconds.
* Allow for more possible builds. More ways to fight = more depth. Gat+mortar as universal solution is deadly boring to me.
* More (possible) customisation options. Changing armor type may open a wide array of possibilities. For example you may equip medium armor on squid to sacrifice some mobility for increased resilience. But you can't equip an armor type that is not supported by ship type.
* More combat situations and tactics. We may even learn the word "tactical retreat". Currently we can't do that because there's not much space between "we're fine" and "o'shi..." And harpoons may become very useful to prevent it.
Constructive criticism is welcomed. If you see a weak point in my system - point it out. But please refrain from being fanatical. Do not post something like "it's fine as it" or "i just don't like it".

SirNotlag:
I feel your system is designed to heavily on time to kill rather than the team orientation which is the primary focus of GOI. In games like COD or mechwarrior you want time to kill to be reliable based on the weapon your using and the amount of hits you land, But the big difference between GOI and those games is that each soldier and giant mech is a single entity under the control of one person. GOI on the other hand is an entity under control of multiple people and the reason your system is not an effective one for this game is because it focuses too much on the gunner and forgets that the engineers play just as an important role when two vessels are trading shots.

with the armour absorbing all the hits it allows the engineers to save a doomed ship from taking one more explosive round that would kill them and possible win them the gunfight, because they had good crew management and both engineers where where they needed to be.

Your system doesnt allow that as far as I can tell, with armour only absorbing some of the damage and the perma hull being repairable it comes down to whoever got the first shot. EX one ship(1) sneaks up behind another ship(2) and gets a full clip of damage into the rear of the ship (2) by the time ship (2) turns to bear guns ship (1) doesnt even have to worry about bothering to repair because they will kill ship (2) before he can kill them and then ship (1) just fully repairs everything before the next engagement.

the battle is already decided as soon as ship (1) spotted ship (2) and started firing. In the current system ship (2) can go on full repair mode with no gunning to keep their armour up and get their engines working so they can turn, after they tanked abit they can focus on fighting back, the fight is still winable by them if they use their cards right.

TL:DR I strongly dislike your system because it detracts too much from the teamwork of the game and focuses too much on turning the airship fights into dull slugfests.

Van-Tuz:
My system doesn't change much in terms of teamplay. I doubt it would change anything noticeable.
Everything that  SirNotlag have said is true for the current system as well. 
If a duel between two identical ships happens then the first who shot is winning.
The ambushed ship would take some hull damage anyway. Probably the same percentage. But it would be much more tolerable in my system because the hull would have much more HP and it is repairable. Ships would be able to survive for some time even with their armor stripped. Currently losing armor = quick explosive death incoming.

Sammy B. T.:
You are right that the current system requires perfect conditions for reliable time to kill. However you incorrectly call this a flaw. This requirement of having to hold the explosive for offensive or avoid/disable the explosive for defense greatly increases the teamwork aspect of the game. Having to create perfect conditions forces teamwork both for offence and defense. Knowing when to maximize the damage window for offence by good timing or minimize the damage window for defense by disables, double repairs, and so on.

You also incorrectly state that the state of the hull doesn't matter. It most certainly does. Armor doesn't last forever and against good enemies you can expect it to go down quickly once engaged in direct combat.

Alistair MacBain:
Pretty much what sammy said.
The current system is totally based on teamplay. It takes alot from a team to know when to focus their fire and when to split fire.
Alot of this is know the correct time, realize it and do it. Thats not a flaw. Thats great. It allows more than one style.

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