Tools, Stamina, and Ramming Damage

[Watchmaker]

During the last round of public testing, a few of you asserted something strange: that using pilot stamina and/or moonshine during a ram *reduced* the damage dealt.  This is definitely not intended behavior.

After doing some isolated testing, it's also not something I've been able to reproduce.  My simple test case was flying a pyramidion with AI disabled against another AI-disabled pyramidion, ships starting 500 meters apart and at a dead stop. 

Under these circumstances, damage dealt to both ships' armor is about the same, and rises appropriately with additional acceleration.  After all multipliers are taken into account, the results were:

• Basic ram - ~160
• Moonshine ram - ~240
• Stamina ram - ~210
• Moonshine+stamina ram - ~260

(Moonshine was used only for brief periods towards the end of the charge to ensure it was on during the impact, I wouldn't doubt you could get more damage if you timed your use of it more optimally)

My numbers are taken directly from server logs, which of course you can't see.  But if you're finding situations where you feel that using these thrust-increasing/drag-reducing tools causes you to deal/take LESS ramming damage, something may be bugged and I would like to know exactly what you're doing to get this result.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

I honestly didn't see what they were talking about in regards to stamina rams. Course when they tested I was in a squid and it was hard to tell.

Now that I think about it, what I think was happening is the added speed via stamina would bounce the ship more instead of hitting more like a dead weight. Successful Pyra upper cuts in the past involved the concept of the vessel flying over getting caught on the rising ridge of the pyra. Perhaps just the fact that the vessel was hitting with more force and bouncing it instead of hitting with the force then carrying it a little with the weight.

[Richard LeMoon]

Will test again and record the results. We tested it several times, and there was zero damage to both ships hitting each other while running kero in the mobula, moonshine in the galleon, and both with stamina. With head on collisions, the ships just stopped with no damage at all. AI were turned off. If the target ship was not moving or not running stamina, damage was dealt.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

Ya I'd like to see the screens. I tried stamina rams. Some I'd lose armor or balloon, others weren't as bad. Its very hard to replicate the same ram over and over with a squid.

[Patched Wizard]

Okay Watchmaker I need to know now for my own sake. Are you asking this because you're still considering implementing Stamina into the main game?

[Watchmaker]

This thread is not about the worth of stamina as a feature.  You have multiple threads for those opinions already.

This thread is about the fact that skill modifications to thrust or drag were claimed to reduce ramming damage.  The effects of pilot stamina and moonshine/kerosene (and engine buffing, for that matter) share a great deal of code, so the bug report is relevant regardless of if or when we decide to release stamina.

[Patched Wizard]

The effects of pilot stamina and moonshine/kerosene (and engine buffing, for that matter) share a great deal of code, so the bug report is relevant regardless of if or when we decide to release stamina.

That's what I wanted to know.

This thread is not about the worth of stamina as a feature.  You have multiple threads for those opinions already.

It's good thing then I wasn't discussing the worth of 'Stamina' here. I've expressed my views on that topic, on the appropriate threads, already.

Cheers

[Nietzsche's Mustache]

Well, one of the things I was able to accomplish a few weeks ago when stamina first came out and there was a bunch of us fooling around on Dunes, was to completely negate the galleon's ram-damage on a Spire by reverse-stamina-moonshining RIGHT before the impact. That is to say, I was already moving in reverse, and in the instant before impact I'd throw on the stamina and moonshine and the impact would serve as an acceleration boost more than an impact.

Might have to check that out vs. just sandboxing a non-moving ship.

[Watchmaker]

Okay, if you can reverse hard enough to (almost) match velocities with the ship trying to ram you, I would in fact expect a  lot of ramming damage to be negated (since the impact energy is a function of relative momentum.)  It's not really a bug if that's all that is happening.

This should work roughly proportionately; backpedaling at all from a nose-to-nose ram would be expected to slightly reduce the damage, while two ships charging each other at full speed would *increase* it because their velocity relative to one other is higher.

(The fact that stamina makes it easier to do this is still a legitimate balance concern, but at least the physics is working as expected.)

If this does happen in some other circumstance than backpedaling with the direction of an incoming ram, do still let me know.

[Richard LeMoon]

We just tested it over a course of ten rams, and the damage negating effect seems to be completely gone. Both ships sustained substantial damage from moonshine/kero/stamina head on rams. So, whatever it was that was causing the negated damage has gone away. I am not sure what could have been causing in in the first place, but the rams felt different this time. In the previously mentioned tests, both ships would slow down like they hit a wall of jello right before impact, would hit, and slowly bounce back with no damage and often not a secondary hit. This time, there was no slowing down, the ships would not bounce back much, and often there was a double or triple hit.

So, problem solved, somehow.

[Watchmaker]

Well, that's extremely bizarre, but I guess I'll take it.  I don't believe changes of any sort have gone into ship physics recently.

(It is outwardly possible that one of my earlier deploys failed and one of the Dev App servers was running out-of-date code, that's my best guess as to what happened at this point.)