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Author Topic: Fragmentation Damage Scaling  (Read 3906 times)

Ranakastrasz

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Fragmentation Damage Scaling
« on: June 26, 2017, 10:12:43 AM »

Energy: 100% damage to all
High Explosive: 200% to armor, 50% to shield
Kinetic: 50% to armor, 200% to shield.
Fragmentation damage: 25% to armor, 25% to shield

I think changing fragmentation damage to the following would make sense.

50% to armor, 50% to shield, 200% to hull

Damage is cut in half for weapon stats.

In effect, it would have no change to functionality, but would follow the same apperent pattern as Kinetic and High Explosive, with half vs weakness and double vs strength.
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FooF

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Re: Fragmentation Damage Scaling
« Reply #1 on: June 26, 2017, 10:57:37 AM »

Then it would break "all damage types do 100% damage to hull" logic. It's one step forward in clarity and then one step back.

There's also a bit of psychology here: it's more effective communication to make the damage modifier 25% than 50% with reduced damage stats. 25% carries over to everything and internally you say, "Ouch, that damage type is terrible." With 50% damage modifier, it's the same as the "off" type of Kinetic/HE so, relatively speaking, it isn't as hard of a sell. Keeping it at 25% reinforces the intent of "don't use this against anything but hull" better than 50/50/200. The latter skews "positive" in that you're rewarded for using it against hull but it doesn't seem downright terrible against other things (when it is). It's better to skew negative than positive in this instance.

Then there's the simple fact that I don't see a need to change anything in the first place.  :D

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ANGRYABOUTELVES

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Re: Fragmentation Damage Scaling
« Reply #2 on: June 26, 2017, 05:24:38 PM »

This change would require altering all damage values for all fragmentation weapons both in vanilla and in the many, many mods. That's a decent amount of tedious busywork for a cosmetic change, and also introduces the potential for one or two weapons to be missed and become overpowered for a patch or two. This isn't going to happen because it would be an appreciable amount of work that, in the ideal case, results in nothing changing.
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Ghoti

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Re: Fragmentation Damage Scaling
« Reply #3 on: June 26, 2017, 05:32:56 PM »

Personally I'm on Ranakastrasz side on this one. 50% armor 50% shields 200% hull is a more consistent application of the games logic.

BTW, there's a sneaky way to migrate everything immediately. If you create a second damagetype: FRAGMENTATION_2. Anything that declares their damage type as FRAGMENTATION will be divided by 2, new mods and updates just declare as FRAGMENTATION_2 and proceed with the new numbers.

That should cover all cases. Including scripted bonus damage.
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Dark.Revenant

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Re: Fragmentation Damage Scaling
« Reply #4 on: June 26, 2017, 05:44:53 PM »

It is a lot of work to make this change.  There is not much benefit from doing so, if any.
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Wyvern

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Re: Fragmentation Damage Scaling
« Reply #5 on: June 26, 2017, 05:57:47 PM »

Actually, if we're going to consider a change like this, how about going all the way and making fragmentation do 100% vs armor/shields and 400% vs hull/missiles?  That way the numbers in the codex would actually line up with how I value weapons, rather than having to divide by four all the time to get a fragmentation weapon's "real" dps.
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Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

ANGRYABOUTELVES

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Re: Fragmentation Damage Scaling
« Reply #6 on: June 26, 2017, 05:57:56 PM »

Personally I'm on Ranakastrasz side on this one. 50% armor 50% shields 200% hull is a more consistent application of the games logic.

BTW, there's a sneaky way to migrate everything immediately. If you create a second damagetype: FRAGMENTATION_2. Anything that declares their damage type as FRAGMENTATION will be divided by 2, new mods and updates just declare as FRAGMENTATION_2 and proceed with the new numbers.

That should cover all cases. Including scripted bonus damage.
And add something else for new modders to get confused about? I assure you that new modders will declare their vulcan-style ballistic PD as FRAGMENTATION then get confused when it's only half as effective as they expect, then annoyed when they find out that there's two fragmentation damage types and the one that has the same name as the in-game damage type is the one they're not supposed to use.
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MesoTroniK

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Re: Fragmentation Damage Scaling
« Reply #7 on: June 26, 2017, 06:14:23 PM »

There is no reason to change fragmentation damage, would have zero net benefit, and actually make things less optimal.

Alex

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Re: Fragmentation Damage Scaling
« Reply #8 on: June 26, 2017, 06:27:12 PM »

If a damage type does 50/50/200, consider that it doesn't do its listed damage to anything :)

(Actually thought about this option when coming up with the damage types; decided to normalize around everything doing 100% to hull.)
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Ranakastrasz

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Re: Fragmentation Damage Scaling
« Reply #9 on: June 27, 2017, 07:34:27 AM »

Actually, if we're going to consider a change like this, how about going all the way and making fragmentation do 100% vs armor/shields and 400% vs hull/missiles?  That way the numbers in the codex would actually line up with how I value weapons, rather than having to divide by four all the time to get a fragmentation weapon's "real" dps.

If a damage type does 50/50/200, consider that it doesn't do its listed damage to anything :)

(Actually thought about this option when coming up with the damage types; decided to normalize around everything doing 100% to hull.)

on that thought, I think that what we "Really Need" is an extended display for damage, showing damage to all 3 defence types. You need +1 line, shouldn't be too difficult. Show damage to hull, armor, and shield. You can drop the 200% damage/50% damage display, and show the actual damage amounts. Would make comparison easier.


~~~
Also allow it to be changed from mods, like all of those ones that give "Bonus damage on direct hull hit" or whatever.
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I think is easy for Simba and Mufasa sing the Circle of Life when they're on the top of the food chain, I bet the zebras hate that song.

Cigarettes are a lot like hamsters. Perfectly harmless, until you put one in your mouth and light it on fire

FooF

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Re: Fragmentation Damage Scaling
« Reply #10 on: June 27, 2017, 12:18:41 PM »

Perhaps I'm in the minority but I can usually cut figures in half or double them pretty easily. Even reducing to 25% isn't that hard to figure out. An extra line saying as much doesn't do much for me. The other thing is that DPS is only part of the story especially when dealing with armor calculations. I wouldn't turn down the extra data but I don't think it really adds much either.



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Midnight Kitsune

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Re: Fragmentation Damage Scaling
« Reply #11 on: June 27, 2017, 02:05:22 PM »

Perhaps I'm in the minority but I can usually cut figures in half or double them pretty easily. Even reducing to 25% isn't that hard to figure out. An extra line saying as much doesn't do much for me. The other thing is that DPS is only part of the story especially when dealing with armor calculations. I wouldn't turn down the extra data but I don't think it really adds much either.
And for me, it is just so ingrained that I know just how well things work just by the icon
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Ranakastrasz

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Re: Fragmentation Damage Scaling
« Reply #12 on: June 27, 2017, 02:31:15 PM »

True enough. Its not a huge deal, but it did seem wrong to me seeing the inconsistency.
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I think is easy for Simba and Mufasa sing the Circle of Life when they're on the top of the food chain, I bet the zebras hate that song.

Cigarettes are a lot like hamsters. Perfectly harmless, until you put one in your mouth and light it on fire

Deshara

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Re: Fragmentation Damage Scaling
« Reply #13 on: June 27, 2017, 07:24:40 PM »

could add a button to the URL which adjusts all DPS figures to be at %100 for a certain damage type.
Current default is hull damage (frag icon), click it it switches to shields (doubles the displayed DPS of kinetic, halves the DPS of HE, quarters the DPS of frag) showing a kinetic icon, click it again it switches to armor (doubled HE, halved shield, quartered frag) with an HE icon, click it again it cycles back to hull damage.
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