Author Topic: Hull and armor system overhaul  (Read 49724 times)

Offline Terrkas

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Re: Hull and armor system overhaul
« Reply #30 on: October 06, 2014, 01:30:46 pm »

Hflak is no more difficult to use than another long range guns like Mercury field gun.


Now I want to see a video, where you hit 80 % of your Hflak charged shots on sniping range in a real match.

Offline RedRoach

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Re: Hull and armor system overhaul
« Reply #31 on: October 06, 2014, 01:40:23 pm »
Would a junker, with only light guns, have light armor? Or heavy armor because it has so many guns? Or a standard armor because it strikes a medium?

I'm a beginner, and again, it is semi-sort-of misleading when you see those big marks show up on your screen while pounding on someone with mortars. Then again, this is a team game. People will actually, for the sake of success, do one of two things: 1) Complain that you're not doing it right and then do number 2, 2) Tell you that piercing weps come before explosive weps.

The Gatling gun is an easy weapon to use, it's a "Point and watch your enemy's armor die" weapon. Kinda like every other gun in the game should your system be put into place. The question would then be a "should I leave for saftey's sake?" Doesn't the hades cannon  also melt armor? And spread fire stacks as well, making it a more viable weapon than gatling?

Hwachas are like shotguns when it comes to their spread in my experience. Maybe you're talented enough to be able to hit all of them in a single volley of normal ammo, I don't know. I use heavy, always preloading the ammunition on Hwachas so the second a ship is spotted I can unleash a volley, then get close and use other stuff.

And finally... H flak is not easy. I can't snipe. Whatsoever. If it were as easy as you were saying, then lots of people would be using H flak. Besides others complaining of patches long before my time, I don't see a lot of mention about it.

Offline sparklerfish

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Re: Hull and armor system overhaul
« Reply #32 on: October 06, 2014, 02:09:50 pm »
I still don't understand why "these guns are better against armor" is harder to learn than "these guns are better against balloon" or "these guns are better at sniping out components".

Offline Van-Tuz

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Re: Hull and armor system overhaul
« Reply #33 on: October 07, 2014, 02:03:19 pm »
Here comes the "you are noob" arguments again. Both from CAs... *sigh* I won't even try to reply to that because you haven't even read the whole sentence. No use speaking for the deaf.
Next time you want to reply -  start it with something like "The current system is better than suggested here because..."
or "Your system have these flaws: ... "

Would a junker, with only light guns, have light armor? Or heavy armor because it has so many guns? Or a standard armor because it strikes a medium?

I'm a beginner, and again, it is semi-sort-of misleading when you see those big marks show up on your screen while pounding on someone with mortars. Then again, this is a team game. People will actually, for the sake of success, do one of two things: 1) Complain that you're not doing it right and then do number 2, 2) Tell you that piercing weps come before explosive weps.
Whichever armor class Junker would have in my system it's supposed to be shown in the ship description. This information is easy to show and easy to understand.
On the other hand, a newbie captain may be completely misleaded. His learning is completely dependent on the other people. If his mistakes were noticed and were politely explained and he didn't took it as insult then good. But if not? What if he have all AI or other newbies on the crew? They would shoot and white marks would pop up showing that damage is dealt but in fact they would deal no damage at all. The current system is just counter-intuitive in this case.


Offline Alistair MacBain

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Re: Hull and armor system overhaul
« Reply #34 on: October 07, 2014, 02:35:48 pm »
Cant see a anyone saying youre noob.
We ve just got a different opinion.
And besides the argument "this system would" i dont see any reason i can agree with that your system would be better.

Its much easier to realize that a piercing gun is needed against armor than to figure out against which armorclasses i might need a piercing gun.
I agree that the current tutorials are sub optimal but i know that there was a plan to fix that issue. Just dont know how far it is atm.
And youre system would simply be a way bigger benefit for experienced teams than for newer players.
By taking away the ability to deal permanent damage  to the enemy you disallow newer players to benefit from a previous engage. It would lead to singled out engages where no benefit is taken into the next fight if you ve dealt serious damage to the enemy.
It would rather end in the experienced team always repairing up and then starting the engage at 0 and cutting the ability to get a kill or two even against more experienced teams.

And im not talking bout a competetive/highlvl crew vs novice players. Thats a different issue.

Offline SirNotlag

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Re: Hull and armor system overhaul
« Reply #35 on: October 07, 2014, 03:55:22 pm »
I don't like your system because it would make being an engineer a nightmare and a very boring job. In the current system an engineering crew could save the day by keeping components running and managing to get the armour back up in the nick of time allowing the ship to stay afloat.

In your system I don't see that happening if the armour goes down and the engineers get it back up is there really a point? The hull is still taking damage and the massive extra damage they sustained has probably already lost them the fight. You system focuses too much on the aggressive side and takes away from the engineers capabilities and effectiveness.

I feel your system would lead people to just flat out refuse to engineer because they wouldn't feel like they had any control on the outcomes of the fight like the gunners and pilots would.

Offline Milevan Faent

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Re: Hull and armor system overhaul
« Reply #36 on: October 07, 2014, 04:12:32 pm »
I just don't like the system because it means my Squid would be all but useless, no matter what. Either it gets slaughtered, or the damage it deals in the brief hit-and-run attacks I make is repaired between runs. Either way, I lose.

Offline HamsterIV

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Re: Hull and armor system overhaul
« Reply #37 on: October 07, 2014, 04:18:19 pm »
To derail this topic towards something interesting I would like to propose a rhetorical question:

Why aren't action movies all action?

With the budgets some of these movies have it is entirely possible to shoot 90 minute long Friedie Wong Video:
https://www.youtube.com/user/freddiew

Yet even the the most brain dead action movies insist on throwing in dialog and attempts at character development when they could just show more punching and blowing stuff up.

The reason is pacing. The human mind can only take so much intensity before it gets inured to the experience and treats it as white noise. The most interesting movies understand this and have peaks and valleys to the action to allow the human mind to better appreciate the action. The audience may only remember the peaks but without the valleys the whole experience would be lesser. See Graph:


This pacing is the reason for rechargeable shield and heath mechanics becoming so popular in FPS games since it was first introduced in Halo (I think). At the start of the encounter the shield is full and the player is relaxed as the shield drops from enemy fire the encounter becomes more intense due to impending failure state. Eventually some action restores the shield at which the player can relax a bit.

The shield mechanic accounts for an individual spike on the intensity graph but it can not accomplish the gradual rising of intensity. For that you need some way of raising the intensity between engagements. Single player games do this by increasing the enemy difficulty, but that is not an option in multi player games. Multi player games can do this through proximity to end state. Such as the Battle Field ticket system where there is a countdown to end game.

However considering how many GOI games end in 5-0 this isn't always the case. The perma hull mechanic is another way to create the rising intensity since the entering a brawl on 5% perma hull is a much riskier situation than entering a brawl at 100%.

Offline RedRoach

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Re: Hull and armor system overhaul
« Reply #38 on: October 07, 2014, 05:35:32 pm »
I'm not even going to ask about the Heavy Flak thing since you've taken to it harshly.

Whichever armor class Junker would have in my system it's supposed to be shown in the ship description. This information is easy to show and easy to understand.
On the other hand, a newbie captain may be completely misleaded. His learning is completely dependent on the other people. If his mistakes were noticed and were politely explained and he didn't took it as insult then good. But if not? What if he have all AI or other newbies on the crew? They would shoot and white marks would pop up showing that damage is dealt but in fact they would deal no damage at all. The current system is just counter-intuitive in this case.

But what if you have to unlock the ship description? Like the gun descriptions in your (admittedly far back) post?
And for me... I didn't learn from AIs or newbies. Hell, I didn't ask pilots what weapons did what. I actually looked it up first on the website  (you know, the one that links to the forums, the one you're viewing this on) to learn that piercing weps were really effective against armor, and explosions are a hull's worst enemy. Again, that feels like a tutorial issue, but for me, that wasn't a problem.

Unlike everyone else I'm going to just ask about the system and see if your idea could either replace /
combine with GoIO and not jepordize the game.

1.) How will the possibility of repairing the hull change gameplay tactically?

2.) With a armor of mortar-strip-possible, and a squishy hull, would the squid become flat out useless?
Or would it gain an insane speed buff or something?

3.) Utilizing high armor and hull (to my memory) and a bunch of heavy weapons that now become more useful in killing rather than disabling, what would happen to the galleon?

4.) Would repairing the hull be done with a completely different tool? Would people have to hit the current hull area? Or somewhere else? And would it be like the current system of whack and wait, or like the buff hammer, where people can all start smacking away but for low low hp?

5.) How would this add more focus to other weapons? As in change the current metas like gat-mortar? This adds power to all weapons, not just a select underpowered / underused few. Weapons I'm looking at include the artemis, banshee, H flak, carronades (both of them), hades, and flamer.

6.) Would damage taken from components go as a percentage into the hull while dealing some damage to components? Or would it still do full damage to the components before going to the armor / hull? And even then, would damage from broken components go to just the armor, or the hull / armor hybrid? This question is asked with burst rounds in mind, due to AoE capabilities.

7.) What happens to flame stacks? Do they do direct percentage damage to hull because they hit the armor? Or do the stacks do their own small little percentage damage to armor and flaming the armor does no damage to hull?

8.) What sort of tactical moves would be created besides retreat and repair? Please name 2 because I would like to see if these types of mindsets aren't already going through pilots' heads in similar scenarios in the current system. (btw, retreat and repair is already a given mindset, I usually retreat if the armor, guns and an engine or two are down, everything else damaged, and a pyramidion looming.)

9.) Sandstorms. Those things that whittle away everything on the ship. What do those do to the ship? Or is it suddenly possible to now get constant perma-damge from the sandstorm? (which would suck)

10.) What would be the use of piercing weapons if perma-damage can be pushed through armor anyway? (Galleons are a iffy response because piercing weapons would have been needed before this change in the first place)

11.) Would buff hammer add on a reduction on damage taken to the hull too? This is considered due to weapons piercing the armor regardless of it's state.
« Last Edit: October 07, 2014, 05:44:56 pm by RedRoach »

Offline macmacnick

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Re: Hull and armor system overhaul
« Reply #39 on: October 08, 2014, 12:29:43 am »
...Imbalance and all the other horrible crap would happen. The way the current hull armor and permahull system is implemented works quite fine, does not need any changing whatsoever. Period. It allows for suspense, tactics and a change in dynamics if your ship has low permahull, such as squid tanking (The damn things can be near immortal with good engis and pilots, along with teamwork), collaboration with your ally to utilize the damaged ship in the best way possible, or even as a bait and distraction by using the ship as the bait, and the other ship(s) as the trap.


Offline Terrkas

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Re: Hull and armor system overhaul
« Reply #40 on: October 08, 2014, 04:37:59 am »
When I was a novice, I really hadn´t any problem to figure out, how correct builds should look like. Reading the manual, doing the tutorial and checking the informations you get, when you click on a ships name and hover your mouse over the guns you can choose.  The guns even say, what they are supposed to do, when you look at them. The only real problem I had, was, that I haven´t tried all guns in practicemode, so I missed my first 4 volleys with mortars and hades, because I wasn´t used to their bulletdrops.

I even trained maneuvers with the first guys I played regularly in sandbox mode. After that, the novicematches went boring, because winning 5 to 0 or 1 in 90 % of the matches is not really satisfying.

But I am pretty sure, when I had to check additionally the ships for their armoreclasses and had to calculate, if doubleexplosive or explosive+piercing would be better, I wouldn´t really had known what to choose.

Also I am not sure, what will happen to extreme weak armored ships and to extreme tanky ships with your new system. Matches with squids could for example turn into endless hunts. They are the fastest ships out there and when they realise, they are not able to kill the enemy fast, they could just turn around and hide until they are fully repaired. When they deal enough damage to other ships, the fight could last one hour, before the squids get the first kill. They could deal just enough damage with each engagement  to scratch the permahull a bit more, retreat, recover and come back to scratch it a bit more, until their thousands needles tactic gets the first kill.

Also, the Galleon wouldn´t be able to follow up escaping enemies to give them the deathblow. Or the galleon could be the new best choice for each fight. It got enough tankyness to simply don´t care about the hullintegrity and keep shooting. After the enemy has been defeated, they would focuse on repairs and wait for the next engage. As long as a Galleon gets 2 kills for each death, they will win.
« Last Edit: October 08, 2014, 05:01:14 am by Terrkas »

Offline Van-Tuz

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Re: Hull and armor system overhaul
« Reply #41 on: October 09, 2014, 12:36:14 pm »
By taking away the ability to deal permanent damage  to the enemy you disallow newer players to benefit from a previous engage. It would lead to singled out engages where no benefit is taken into the next fight if you ve dealt serious damage to the enemy.
1) If one team weren't able to break armor then absolutely no permanent damage is dealt and no benefit for them in the next engagement.
2) Making hull slowly repairable promotes quick actions in order to exploit it. If you let your enemies too many time to repair (like 2-3 min) - it's your fault.
If you really-really don't like the idea of being able to repair the hull between battles then try to think about my system without this component. It would lose quite a bit of depth but still would have benefits over the current system.

if the armour goes down and the engineers get it back up is there really a point? The hull is still taking damage and the massive extra damage they sustained has probably already lost them the fight.
A knowledge that hull could withstand 2-3 times more damage is not enough? Besides, in my system the "massive damage" you mentioned would only count as "moderate damage"

Unlike everyone else I'm going to just ask about the system and see if your idea could either replace /
combine with GoIO and not jepordize the game.
A set of really good questions. If only more people could do that.

1.) How will the possibility of repairing the hull change gameplay tactically?
-If by "tactically" you mean "in the middle of the battle" then not much. I expect the hull repair speed to be slow enough to not affect the outcome of the battle.

3.) Utilizing high armor and hull (to my memory) and a bunch of heavy weapons that now become more useful in killing rather than disabling, what would happen to the galleon?
-Well... it would become able to use his main guns to actually kill someone. Right now medium guns alone are useless in this role because of absence of piercing damage.

4.) Would repairing the hull be done with a completely different tool? Would people have to hit the current hull area? Or somewhere else? And would it be like the current system of whack and wait, or like the buff hammer, where people can all start smacking away but for low low hp?
-Sitting in one place smacking one thing for minutes is not fun (*glance at carronades*) So it may be usual repair scheme or a passive regeneration. It could be done in a way that's best for the players. As long as repair rate is under control.
I didn't planned to create any new tools for that purpose.
New hardpoint won't be required if hull regeneration would be passive. Otherwise a new point should be made. No other options here.

5.) How would this add more focus to other weapons? As in change the current metas like gat-mortar? This adds power to all weapons, not just a select underpowered / underused few. Weapons I'm looking at include the artemis, banshee, H flak, carronades (both of them), hades, and flamer.
-All explosive (full or partial) weapons would be able to kill lightly armored targets without the help of armor-stripper. Other guns' roles aren't supposed to change.

6.) Would damage taken from components go as a percentage into the hull while dealing some damage to components? Or would it still do full damage to the components before going to the armor / hull? And even then, would damage from broken components go to just the armor, or the hull / armor hybrid?
-My system is not supposed to change any of damage redirection rules. Any damage redirected or delivered via AoE is supposed to affect both hull and armor.

7.) What happens to flame stacks?
-Damage from flame stacks on armor should not damage the hull.

8.) What sort of tactical moves would be created besides retreat and repair? Please name 2
-Hit and Run would be improved because every shot would deal some long-term damage.
-Strategic withdrawal. The difference from tactical is that you need more than 15 seconds and have to break off the chase.
-Engaging in 2 v 1 battle if one of the ships is heavily damaged.

9.) Sandstorms. Those things that whittle away everything on the ship. What do those do to the ship? Or is it suddenly possible to now get constant perma-damge from the sandstorm? (which would suck)
-Not intended. Sandstorms currently affect only guns and engines but not armor.

10.) What would be the use of piercing weapons if perma-damage can be pushed through armor anyway?
-Won't be required against lightly armored targets but stripping armor allows to deal 2-3 times more damage against medium and heavily armored targets.

11.) Would buff hammer add on a reduction on damage taken to the hull too? This is considered due to weapons piercing the armor regardless of it's state.
-The hull is not supposed to be buffed. But i just got the idea to make buff hammer much more useful for that role. Just an idea though.

2.) With a armor of mortar-strip-possible, and a squishy hull, would the squid become flat out useless?
Or would it gain an insane speed buff or something?
such as squid tanking (The damn things can be near immortal with good engis and pilots, along with teamwork),
I just don't like the system because it means my Squid would be all but useless, no matter what. Either it gets slaughtered, or the damage it deals in the brief hit-and-run attacks I make is repaired between runs. Either way, I lose.
Squids...
First of all, let me point out that Squid have third strongest hull. Only surpassed by Galleon and Goldfish. Also, its armor can be rebuilt momentarily making the hull even more difficult target. And don't forget about its evasion capabilities too.
Doesn't matter how much teamwork (not too much BTW) the "squid invulnerability" requires it should be limited. It's just the rule of design.
-In my system Squids would get a substantial boost to its hull HP.
-The best Squid's defence would be as it is now: not get git at all.
-Hit and Run tactics implies that you deal more hull damage than you take. But currently dealing ANY hull damage means you have to break trough armor. In this case Hit and Run would actually be easier to execute in my system.

Also, the Galleon wouldn´t be able to follow up escaping enemies to give them the deathblow. Or the galleon could be the new best choice for each fight. It got enough tankyness to simply don´t care about the hullintegrity and keep shooting. After the enemy has been defeated, they would focuse on repairs and wait for the next engage. As long as a Galleon gets 2 kills for each death, they will win.
I expect harpoons to be more valuable for slow ships. (Assuming devs would make them usable) Also i have suggested to make a separate turrets just for utility guns so they won't use the light turrets.
Galleons won't turn into a "best choice." It still can be outmanoeuvred by other ships and medium guns are still lacking piercing damage making them ineffective against heavily armored ships.

Offline Milevan Faent

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Re: Hull and armor system overhaul
« Reply #42 on: October 09, 2014, 02:43:00 pm »
I really don't get why you just don't understand you are the ONLY person interested in this system. Everyone else has more or less said no to it so far. I haven't seen a single person agreeing with it. As far as the Squid having a large hull, I would like to point out that it doesn't matter in the SLIGHTEST. If the Squid loses it's hull, if the engies don't get it back up fast and keep getting it up, I die. Simple as that. ARMOR is the only thing that keeps any ship alive in this game. Reworking the system in the way you want would screw everything up.

Even assuming numbers were adjusted to take this system into consideration, the simple fact remains ships that are mostly hull with very little armor WILL die far faster with this system than any other ship, to the point where no one would play them because they are too fragile. Your system would require Muse to not only spend months of time working to make it, but also probably twice the length of time they spend making it just to BALANCE it, and in the end it would almost certainly make the game worse. On top of that, no one seems to like the idea. I'm sorry, but there is 0 chance anything like this will ever happen. There are just far too many problems for far too few benefits.

Offline Dementio

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Re: Hull and armor system overhaul
« Reply #43 on: October 09, 2014, 03:29:38 pm »
Chillex man, it was just an idea, a more thought through than others and a rather nice one, even though most people don't like it, wether the current system is better or not.
Mind you that with this change of system the Squid might actually be less fragile than in the current system, because it could repair its hull after it successfully backed off for a little while.


Although Van-Tuz arguments kinda are not too correct, I think:
"Making hull slowly repairable promotes quick actions in order to exploit it. If you let your enemies too many time to repair (like 2-3 min) - it's your fault."
If the enemy manages to kill both of your ships, than it often takes far longer than 2-3min. to get into an engagement that is adventagous to you, which means not a meat grind. It takes even longer when the enemy moves back.

"-Hit and Run would be improved because every shot would deal some long-term damage."
But how is it some long term damage if it is repairable?


I say it would have been a good idea, if the current system hasn't established itself already as much like it did and there are still enough problems to be dealt with, leaving barely to no room for a change like this, for now.

Offline RedRoach

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Re: Hull and armor system overhaul
« Reply #44 on: October 09, 2014, 05:20:53 pm »
Whoaaa Milevan, calms...it is an idea. Opposable idea, yes. However, one does not burn an idea down with fire, he does it with logic. Back to work...

-Well... it would become able to use his main guns to actually kill someone. Right now medium guns alone are useless in this role because of absence of piercing damage.
But the medium weapons... wait.. they're called medium? I call them heavy. You don't say light, and then medium. But that's for an entirely different thing. Anyway, I'm calling them heavy.

I personally consider heavy weapons to be specialized disabiling tools. They aren't the "Okay, now we point the carronade at the enemy and they die", it's the "Okay, now we pop their balloon over and over again with the carronade". (*hopes to finally utilize a light carro like that on a mobile squid*)
I feel like if a gun with high shatter and explosion goes nuts on a ship, not only is the ship now taking considerable hull damage, but now all the guns are broken. From (albiet limited) experience, Hwacha's specailty is saying nope to "Shoot back" tactics, so I can envision all Hwacha galleons unleashing broadside after broadside to not only disable their opponents, but kill them as well.

-Hit and Run tactics implies that you deal more hull damage than you take. But currently dealing ANY hull damage means you have to break trough armor. In this case Hit and Run would actually be easier to execute in my system.
But I like my opinion of Hit and Run tactics more, which is piss off the enemy enough with minor disable and damage, and let your teammate with that weird dual-mort build and gats on the side obliterate them while they're busy trying to repair things like balloon or guns or engines or...

In seriousness, I believe that Hit and Run isn't doing hull damage. I think that ships that proclaim themselves Hit and Run don't outfit themselves with explosive damage only having it as a little side-note-other-team-is-using-non-stop-gat scenario. I use carro and flamer on my squid because I think of it as a hit and run. Why? I pop their balloon with carro, and add flame stacks with squid, and then float away, They have to deal with a popped balloon, and (depending on skill) some flame to extinguish. If this happened as a quick run by with another goldfish at it's side, who the hell cares? Pick it up and fly after the idiot who rushed you. If it happens in a fierce battle however, that's putting your team at a high advantage (no pun intended). With the new hull addition, it wouldn't pull this idea forward, because a passive regeneration has absolutely no affect on components.

I guess if your idea is a charge with a pyramidion and simply flying right by when the gap is closed, I could see that being a way to push Hit and Run tactics. Then again, I feel that's not Hit and Run; That's being offensive and trying to get some heft on your opponent next round. If you do that, then, and not to be rude to the system you're proposing, you've done something wrong. Why drop the chance to attack unless your "hit and run" turned out to be a "got hit and ran"?
« Last Edit: October 09, 2014, 05:24:17 pm by RedRoach »