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[Steven Shi]

Seems armor is a bit too easy to penetrate in the current version. While the lore sorta indicates how kinetic/frag/energy are far less efficient in dealing with armor than HE, in the reality armor on the largest vessel hardly holds up under non-HE weapons.

I understand shield is suppose to be the ideal counter but even for low-tech factions like Hegemony, I rarely find armor to be any more use than some extra health and hardly pay attention to armor coverage short of the direst circumstances. There's something nagging at me whenever I see a lowly frigate penetrates a cap ship's armor in two passes (no shield of course) - shouldn't getting past the armor be the HARD part?  

Anyway, seriously buffing up the armor resistance to non-HE (or even ships of significant lower class) might make fights more tactical by:
 
1. less emphasis on fighter spam;
2. put more emphasis in maneuvering/positioning;
3  demand more thoughts into weapon load-out;
4. reinstate cap ships' reputation as bad-asses - making head-on fights with a cap ship without one of your own a serious consideration instead of the pushover now.

Of course, balance with the shield/flux will have to be made for factions but currently, I just see no reason to have an 'armor' mechanic. What does the community think?

[arcibalde]

I would change how armor function. Armor would still have HP like now (but with higher values) BUT it would have something like DMG threshold. For example:

Armor 300 (15) -  300 = HP of 1 armor square
                           15 = DMG threshold


Now, this armor square is hit by weapon that makes 35 dmg. After hit armor would have 265 HP and ship hull would be damage for 20 (35-15) DMG.

So if dmg threshold is high enough some weapons would not penetrate armor BUT they will damage it and eventually destroys it.

I think it would give big ships that feel that little ones cannot kill them easily.



I do have 1 Q:

Alex (or someone else who knows) how does armor functioning right now? ( i know that each square is 1/8 of armor value but there is something else - adjacent squares do something to one that is hit? )

[mendonca]

The armor threshold / penetration you describe is (kind of) actually in, of a fashion.

I'll see if I can dig out the previous discussion on this, because my attempts to describe it are failing ...

e:

It's a little involved. Don't have the code in front of me, but each armor "cell" has roughly 1/8th of the armor rating worth of hitpoints. Damage reduction is based on a contribution from nearby cells - not just adjacent, a bit farther than that, though the farther off cells contibute less. What armor rating means is how much damage to armor you need to do (after reducton), shooting at a single point, before any damage at all gets through to the hull.

The actual formula is:
actual damage = base damage * base damage / (armor value + base damage)

The actual damage is then applied to armor cells contributing to the armor value, so subsequent hits to the same spot do more damage.

So a hit for 200 points of damage vs armor 200 will be reduced by 50%, and apply 100 points of damage to the armor. The next 200 point hit to the same cell will be reduced by 33% - 200 * 200 / (200 + 100).

[arcibalde]

TNX.  But it's different. For now ship have, like, two HP. Hull and armor. You could damage hull only when you destroy some part of armor. What i propose is that you can dmg hull thru armor (if your dmg is higher then armor TH - threshold). Basic difference between my proposal and current system is that weaker weapons would have harder time to dmg bigger ships. Basically smaller craft would take more time to hurt bigger ones unless they have heavily damage armor. This system would have big impact when attacking big ship with smaller one and little impact  when same shp size attack same ship size (compare to now).

OR

You can integrated current armor system on proposed one 

[Steven Shi]

Maybe use a system that gives x% damage mitigation to armor/shield depending on the weapon class with full base damage only applicable to ship internals.

For example, a small/medium/large kinetic weapon would only do 10%/20%/30% of base damage to armored area so wings of Broadsword (small MGs) will be almost useless against a fully armored capital ship but still remain dangerous to shield or once the armor is gone. (hey, I think I just solved your MG op problem  )

Consequently a S/M/L HE weapon can do 50%/60%/70% base damage to armor but only 15%/25%/40% to shield etc.

We have several damage types but as of right now, their in-game effects are just too similar to warrant much tactical thought beyond sticking on as much weapons as flux allows.

What Arcibalde is suggesting sounds awfully like Armor Piercing. Possible new damage type in response to an over-effective new armor mechanic?   

[arcibalde]

SQW If you link lowering dmg by % based on weapon size, that would effect all ships.

 I think that point is that smaller craft (and they are with smaller guns) cant harass bigger ships (with nastier armor) like now. So fighting against lots of smaller craft (and you are in big and ugly cap ship) would be beneficial for you (compare to now) but fighting with same class ship would be equal.

With damage threshold you can design ship armor for every ship separately and thus you can fine tune it.

[Steven Shi]

Maybe add an extra level of damage modifier depending on the difference between the ship class?

Either way, I agree with your point about a swarm of MG armed fighters should not be as big a threat as they are now.

Come to think of it, the easiest fix would probably be simply massively increase the armor count on all existing ships....now where's that ship attribute file.

[harrumph]

I don't think armor needs to be buffed across the board, but I do think certain ships need a great deal more of it. For the most part, cracking a ship's armor is something you get a brief opportunity to do—when it's overloaded, when it's venting, when it turns to block a missile volley. Some ships always have their armor exposed, though. For something like the Dominator, which has ample PD covering its weak rear and strong armor to begin with (and shouldn't be flying around without escorts to keep AM-blaster-armed frigates anyway), that's fine; for something like the poor Buffalo Mk. II (which is underarmored even compared to some frigates), it's not. A ship without shields needs something to compensate—if not Hound-like speed, then stronger weapons or tougher armor.

Worth noting: the way armor works right now is a little difficult to understand, particularly for a new player who looks at a ship's stats and just sees a single number for armor. For example, it might seem like applying heavy armor to the Buffalo Mk. II would double its defenses (200 to 400). In reality, that improvement to armor will halve the damage dealt by only the weakest weapons (e.g. the mining laser); it will cut the damage of a mid-range weapon like a pulse laser by a third and barely dent the damage of a strike weapon. All that is fine mechanically (I actually like the system right now), but I hope that somewhere down the line there'll be a thorough tutorial demonstrating the effect of weapon types and armor rating to the player.

[Steven Shi]

Increasing ship armor (not fighter armor) by a factor of 10 completely changes the dynamic of the battle!!!

Even a Hound can now survive multiple Talon wings indefinitely. Interceptors are only suitable for intercepting fighters thus requiring dedicated bombers against larger ships. Kinetic/frag weapons are next to useless against armored section forcing you to include HE weapons; I actually start paying attention to armor coverage of targets since beating through the healthy sections is a waste of time/ammo. Battles are now drawn out but much more tactical; no more wiping out a fleet of support destroyers with a handful of fighters.

I don't know if this is what Alex had in mind for Starfarer but sweet baby Jesus, I think I've just found my perfect space sim!

Probably need to do a bit of tweaking here and there but seriously, those who think ships in Starfarer are a little fragile and long for the epic battles of Battlestar, Star Wars or 40k should definitely play around with the csv file.

[kevindrosario]

^Doesn't that really throw off the balance of the ships, giving low tech ships a huge advantage over high tech ships?

Edit: Or did you also decrease the shield damage factor?

[RawCode]

Armor by factor of 10 and remove shields, in other case any battle will lasts for hours.

[kevindrosario]

Maybe I don't completely understand how the mechanics of the game work since I just started playing a few days ago, but again, wouldn't that give a huge advantage to low tech ships which already have high armor rating? And a big disadvantage to high tech ships which are supposed to rely more on shields?

[Nanostrike]

Some ships (*Cough* Sunder *Cough*) need a significant armor boost and, ideally, I think armor could be boosted a bit all-around.

Armor tends to only last seconds on most ships due to the crapton of missiles or the sheer volume of projectiles (Machine Guns/Vulcans/Constant Beams).  I only run into armor issues at all on the largest ships.

[Steven Shi]

Yes, I will needs to drop the health a bit to further emphasis the importance keeping your armor between you and bullets, balance the high/low tech a little too and several other minor changes here and there (eg ammo). What I did was just a quick and dirty way of testing my theory so no reason factor of 5 or 7 wouldn't work better.

The point is, with a massive increase in armor, you'll definitely have to think about ammo, damage class and positioning whereas now, to win, you just have to have to keep the guns firing. You'll not easily take on a pirate Dominator with 15k armor with a middling fleet of destroyers and Broadswords I tell you; you'll need a Cap ship to take on a Cap ship!

Kevin, another advantage of High Techs is their flux capacity and vent rate. The armor might keep Low Techs alive longer but you don't hit any harder so it's not as unbalanced as it seems on paper. Since Kinetic is useless on armor and HE doesn't work on shield, High Tech still has a big advantage by paying more attention to flux.

RawCode, this is why you have to think about positioning and try to attack sides where armor's been stripped away. You don't have to destroy every bit of armor to get to the inner goodness. The battles are definitely longer but not a slog (in my opinion) with the right weapon setup.

Nanostrike, I sent two veteran wings of Talons on a Buffalo. Before it's bye bye Buffalo but this time half of the fighters died without cutting through the armor.



  

[Darloth]

Be interested to see this topic as a poll, but in my opinion, yes.

Armour doesn't last long enough to be a significant factor for me - if I have a big enough ship to beat down the shields of a Whatever, I can destroy the armour of it in a few seconds, and armour generally only protects against one significant attack that was not caught by shields.

I feel it should be more, especially on larger ships. x10 might be a bit too much, but I may try x3 later.