Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: Sooner535 on February 14, 2018, 11:12:47 PM
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I love ships like the imperium, it feels super cool to tank hits with armor however it cannot be used as a sole defense like shields can. I think I may have thought up an idea to fix that. So here is armor as I understand it:
Armor is finite and it gives damage mitigation to increase its overall HP, as you damage armor it lowers the amount of armor mitigation until it’s broken and bye bye ship.
Now let’s say for simplicity sake that 500 armor gives a 50% damage mitigation, so if you get hit by a 200 hit shot it’s now 100, you’re down to 400 armor and 40% damage mitigation (yes I know the math isn’t right, it’s fine). As you get hit more and more armor nose dives into the floor and is just gone. Now what is my idea?
Give armor 2 “health bars”
So let’s say you have 500 armor with 50% mitigation again and you keep taking hits, normally once you hit near 0 you lose almost all mitigation and damage goes to hull after armor. What if instead that when that armor hit 0 it went back to 500 but in a broken state? In the broken state it gets half the damage mitigation (because you know, it’s broken). Now when you take damage with broken armor there is a percentage chance that the armor will block the shot, let some of it through, or just not block anything. Why is this a thing? Well think of it as you made a hole in a armor plate, there’s no guarantee that you will hit that exact spot again, so you may just hit more armor, or the projectile may hit some of the armor, or it could just hit the same spot again.
Some extra rules that will help:
In the first “hp bar” of armor, damage mitigation cannot drop below half of the total armors mitigation (makes sense, why would broken armor magically make it tougher right?).
The chance to ignore armor in the second “HP bar” should be based on total armor left (since you know, you’re hitting and blowing holes in more armor as you go, increasing your chances of getting those nice squishy hull shots).
Anyways that’s my idea on armor, I’m not a super experienced player but I can say it seems like the hegemony has almost no chance against shields and EMP weapons (which is the bane of armor tanking, ever seen an onslaught spin around? EMP those engines). It seems to me poor low tech could use a bit of help, and it’s not imho a giant buff, though it is a moderate one admittedly, anyways, thoughts?
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As a low tech player consider the hull mod that gives you EMP resistance and increases venting rate. Plus “not getting overwhelmed by high EMP carrying ships” of course. To achieve the second consider adding monitors, brawlers, and centurions (fit for point defense, even the brawler) to your fleet in that order of priority. They will run interference for your larger ships.
As it stands “more armor” isn’t really going to fix your issue.
Edit: more general tips coming
Armor focused ships in general have an ability to tank damage limited to a ship or their same size and not one larger. The problem you’re likely having is that you’re relatively small vs relatively even or better equipped opponents. You can’t tank them because your fleet isn’t equipped to and because you’re not experienced enough to selectively shield tank the HE shots.
Many of the best ships in the game are Hegemony. The onslaught is widely regarded as the best capital warship(and with good reason, it is), while the Hammerhead is considered the best destroyer (it is not, assuming top of the line equipment that goes to the Sunder). There are no good high tech cruisers (the Apogee and Aurora are OK but the Eagle, Falcon, and Dominator are mainstays. ), and the defensive frigates for the hegemony are far better than their high tech equivalents
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See the problem with armor is not it’s ability to tank a single fights worth of damage, it’s the inability to stay in the fight. Armor can run out extremely quickly (even cruiser level armor can be stripped extremely quickly due to missile barrages). The problem lies in the fact that armor runs out and it can do so extremely fast (meanwhile while shields can get fluxed out quickly, they regenerate eventually). Let’s take an extreme example of 2k armor with 90% damage reduction, right now 4-8 well placed Missiles will kill that armor quickly because unlike high tech ships, all that armor slows you down ALOT. If a low tech ship ever gets a enemy with Missiles behind them it’s kiss your butt goodbye, meanwhile aurora and other high tech vessels are almost impossible to flank if you play them right thanks to their maneuverability and speed. Now keep in mind that on that 2k armor ship that the second armor bar gives only 45% damage mitigation and has a 50% chance of being ignored, I would not consider that much of an improvement, however it could give you a few extra hits before you go splat. Hegemony ships are strong in player hands and are considered the best because we realize that their big weakness is flanking, same with high techs weakness being attacked by multiple targets. But, the AI with a hegemony ship is a lot easier to kill then a Aurora, (either that or I’m just amazing at fighting low tech with ships that are kitted to fight mid tech). Armored ships are basically a giant kill me sign because once they start getting hit it escalates quickly, and there’s little a 5000 ton ship can do to get out of it, meanwhile auroras have the nice advantage of movement and maneuverability to help them get out. There’s a reason derelicts (the ones without the shields right?) are easy to kill while remnants can be considered a challenge.
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4 to 8 well placed missiles kill any ship regardless of tech type especially if you choose the type of missiles.
Low tech, high armor ships that can tank the kinetic missiles and then shield pop the HE missiles without shielding tanking the kinetic do better against barrages (they also tend to have flack and so get hit by fewer missiles)
High tech ships do not have enough armor to risk letting the Sabots through, so they eat the reapers anyway
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It does not really matter what abstraction, like "second layer" you use - could just increase armor value and minimal armor to get exactly same effect (beside not making armor system unnecessarily hard to understand). Though it's not really needed.
As for armor being weaker than shields - depends on what you do with it. If you waste armor getting hit for nothing in return (like AI often does) - sure, armor is not particularly strong. If you trade it for flux advantage in situation where you are also in position to exploit that advantage (enemy can't retreat fast enough to avoid damage) - armor can be quite good.
And it's not like landing a big missile barrage is that easy (for AI anyway) - it takes significant amount of missiles or something like minimal distance Reapers to get through Onslaught's PD (the one with 2k armor).
Also, armor is not even primary layer of Onslaught's protection. Primary layer is overwhelming firepower at superior range that can only by surpassed/matched by Paragon/Stations/Gauss Conquest. If enemies end up overloaded before they can approach close enough to attack, they can't do much to your armor.
There is also big difference between armor only ships (pirate and derelict) that can't do anything at all about HE and low tech that just need to be more selective about what they block and what they armor tank.
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4 to 8 well placed missiles kill any ship regardless of tech type especially if you choose the type of missiles.
A well piloted player ship using phase skimmer or phase cloak could avoid any such barrage. Hyperion wouldn't be even bothered by it.
I guess phase cloak part may even apply to AI control. AI is nowhere near good enough with skimmer and manages to fail even with Hyperion (How? How does it manage to be so bad at piloting it... Just mindlessly spamming teleport would already make it much more dangerous, through sheer unpredictability if nothing else)
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4 to 8 well placed missiles kill any ship regardless of tech type especially if you choose the type of missiles.
A well piloted player ship using phase skimmer or phase cloak could avoid any such barrage. Hyperion wouldn't be even bothered by it.
I guess phase cloak part may even apply to AI control. AI is nowhere near good enough with skimmer and manages to fail even with Hyperion (How? How does it manage to be so bad at piloting it... Just mindlessly spamming teleport would already make it much more dangerous, through sheer unpredictability if nothing else)
Yea OK sure you can avoid fire in phase frigates and destroyers and cruisers. But phase frigates and destroyers and cruisers are the weakest part of high or low tech fleets. They’re great in small engagements sure, but not every engagement has to be idea for low tech ships.
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I would go so far as to say there is never a position I had been in where a 1v1 with the same sized ship with me being high tech and then being low paid off for them. Armor just gets stripped more and more, while shields can soak up technically infinite damage. Maybe I just need to work on how I use low tech ships, I’m just simply pointing out that you can use shields with minimal to no armor and be fine usually, while the other way around is a pretty big death sentence. High tech is faster, can run more weapons, usually has range, and has more options, low tech is a floating bulls eye, I cannot think of a single low tech faction I have trouble beating, all the factions I’m terrible against (Templar, approlight, TT, and DME) are high tech factions that can hide behind shields and can skim around like nothing. If high tech is supposed to be better in most ways to low tech then that’s fine, if their supposed to be balanced I think it’s slightly off (though then again, what games balance isn’t slightly off?)
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I think high-tech should rarely have range--high-tech tends not to have large (relative to ship size, e.g. mediums on a frigate) ballistic or hybrid mounts, and ballistics normally have longer range than non-beam energy. This is important to balance--combining a speed advantage and hard-flux range advantage would allow kiting. But vanilla and well-balanced mods do not give that option.
Granted, having no shields at all is a critical vulnerability--without excellent PD you get toasted by MRMs, and even with excellent PD you are vulnerable to beams. But I cannot think of a serious low-tech combat ship with no shields, just improvised combat freighters.
To me, the difference is that as a player I expect to win battles, and so "difficulty" usually means not "how hard is it for me to win" but "how quickly/easily can I kill everything". In my hands, at least, low-tech is very powerful against an aggressive opponent but is often frustrating as faster opponents often just kite. I find it harder to keep the upper hand with ships in the high-tech style (fast, energy or DME's short-ranged ballistics) but less frustrating because I control pace.
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The high tech factions yes. They tend to have the strongest mixed fleets. But not the high tech ships. Its the fact that low tech factions field the *** low tech ships rather than having a strong fleet doctrine that really saves the high tech fleets. That and the fact that they tend to just be bigger in terms of total RC. And you are not limited to fielding (D) Combat Freighters and Shuttles
And in a 1v1, yea, sure, the high tech ship may win. But the game isn't a series of 10 1v1's right after each other where you slam 20 RC ships into 30RC ships until the victor is decided. Its a fleet combat game and you start with at least two combat capable ships right from the get go.
The strongest high tech ship is the Astral, and its not really a "high tech ship" its a carrier. The next strongest carrier is the Heron, not a high tech ship. The next strongest carrier is the Drover. Again not high tech. The Astral is only good in a strike role, because the other carriers bring more ordinance per RC and the Astral cannot utilize recall effectively on interceptors.
The strongest warship is the Onslaught(not high tech), followed by the Odyssey or Paragon(depending on skills), followed by the conquest(not high tech), and then the Eagle and Falcon(not high tech), or maybe the Dominator (not high tech), then either the Gryphon or the Sunder, then the Hammerhead then Enforcer(of which only one is high tech and the Sunder requires both ITU and Advanced Optics AND access to tachyon beams or High Intensity Lasers to be particularly effective). This list might change depending on how you value your RC, but its not going to put weaker and more expensive ships like the Paragon on top.
The best frigate is the Monitor(not high tech) and then the Omen, then the Brawler(the regular Brawler not the TT version) and then probably the Kite(a). And the Brawler might be better than the Omen.
A few of the phase ships are particularly effective in the hands of a player, but not so much so in the hands of AI against a properly partitioned fleet. They're too expensive and they run out of CR too fast. For every Shade you bring you could have brought a Hammerhead. For 5 more supply of a Doom you could bring an Onslaught. For every Harbinger phase destroyer you could bring a Heron.
Tell me, would you rather have a fleet of 4 Paragons or 5 Onslaughts? The paragons wouldn't even have time to raise their shields before they would be flux locked and dead. Would you rather have 4 Medusa's or 6 Hammerheads? The Hammerheads would fill the air with so much lead the Medusas would only be able to phase skip into more lead.
"High tech" weapons are generally weaker than low tech weapons all things equal. They're better in specific circumstances but you have to have a very distinct purpose to everything. The only 1000 range energy weapons are beams and beams cannot generate hard flux. The next longest range is 700 which only come in a large size*... they're 200 range below the Large Kinetic Ballistics, 300 below the Medium Kinetic Ballistics, and 100 below to even with the Small Kinetic Ballistics. Flack Cannons do not have an equivalent high tech weapon and flack cannons are civilization. Energy weapon has only one HE option.In the long range high tech weapon category until you get to large size you've got Graviton Beams, Tactical Lasers, and Ion Beams. Graviton beams are great, especially if you have a lot of them... for killing shields. Tactical lasers are ***. And Ion Beams are great, if expensive, if you can EMP lock something and if you can generate the hard flux needed to arc through the shields in the first place, otherwise you're just paying 150 flux per second to the enemy. The only really particularly good long range energy weapons are the HIL and the Tachyon lance... which require large fittings... which require a Sunder, Odyssey, Paragon, or Apogee.
*The exception being the Thermal Pulse Cannon but well, that only comes on the Onslaught
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The strongest warship is the Onslaught(not high tech)
The best frigate is the Monitor(not high tech) and then the Omen, then the Brawler(the regular Brawler not the TT version) and then probably the Kite(a). And the Brawler might be better than the Omen.
Are we talking about which ships are ok to let AI pilot or player piloting? Seems to be neither.
Paragon is stronger in raw stats than Onslaught and will usually win if you just auto-pilot vs AI. But less fun to pilot and it's harder to protect other ships in your fleet while using one (since it's so slow). It can't dictate combat pace like Onslaught.
Frigates seem to be ordered by AI-usability, though Tempest should be near top of the list then. For player piloting uncontested best is Afflictor. Nothing can kill a Paragon/Onslaught as fast as an Afflictor, even other Capitals. Followed by Shade (it's strictly worse, but still a phase frigate) and Hyperion (nowhere near as fast at killing stuff, but Teleport is still ridiculously strong ability and base stats are good).
Phase DE and especially Cruiser seems to be a dead end to me - point of phase ships as I use them is to bypass enemy shields by precise fast maneuvers in 3x speed. Both are just not fast enough to do it. They also have somewhat shorter duration they can spend in phase, so are highly threatened by smaller phase ships.
Tell me, would you rather have a fleet of 4 Paragons or 5 Onslaughts? The paragons wouldn't even have time to raise their shields before they would be flux locked and dead. Would you rather have 4 Medusa's or 6 Hammerheads? The Hammerheads would fill the air with so much lead the Medusas would only be able to phase skip into more lead.
Paragons (well equipped ones, which for this case means 4x tach lances, Tac lasers in small, HVD in universals, Optics hullmod each) would probably win quite easily if you just auto-pilot. In fact, Onslaughts will get outranged and will have serious issues even approaching. Also AI is quite good at using fortress shield to prevent getting bursted (one of very few systems it is good at using). Onslaughts are also *more expensive* to maintain in campaign - 40 vs 50 supply matters way less than 15 vs 10 fuel consumption.
Medusas are just not suitable for AI piloting (AI is quite bad at using skimmer and that kind of finesse in general). Both Enforcer and Hammerhead are more suitable for that even in 1 to 1 ratio.
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I stand by my statement that most, if not all, low tech ships are easily killed by 1 or 2 EMP weapons on their engines then armor smacking torpedoes. With Omni shields or fast high tech ships it’s much harder to get behind them and do the same thing, heck the last hurrah mission was easy because of those same reasons, just run circles around the onslaught until it gets dizzy. I again cannot name a single ship that is low tech that I have trouble fighting, they all fall to the exact same thing, their slow, bulky, and less useful. What’s the point of flying an onslaught when I can get in a tempest and destroy most ships extremely quickly, (that terminator drone though). I believe though that if the majority thinks armor is in a good place then so be it, I will continue to just play the same old high tech super shielded ships that seem nigh near unkillable.
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I stand by my statement that most, if not all, low tech ships are easily killed by 1 or 2 EMP weapons on their engines then armor smacking torpedoes. With Omni shields or fast high tech ships it’s much harder to get behind them and do the same thing, heck the last hurrah mission was easy because of those same reasons, just run circles around the onslaught until it gets dizzy. I again cannot name a single ship that is low tech that I have trouble fighting, they all fall to the exact same thing, their slow, bulky, and less useful. What’s the point of flying an onslaught when I can get in a tempest and destroy most ships extremely quickly, (that terminator drone though). I believe though that if the majority thinks armor is in a good place then so be it, I will continue to just play the same old high tech super shielded ships that seem nigh near unkillable.
The only low-techs I personally pilot are Lasher (SO Melee Lasher is cheap, easily available and has ridiculous flux-free dps. Very cost efficient and fast for remnant/pirate/low-tier stuff cleanup) and Onslaught (for obvious reasons). In DE tier Medusa is too fun to pilot to pass on, and Cruisers I tend to completely skip straight for Capitals - they generally don't do enough to justify fleet speed drop (and either way I'd prefer Eagle/Aurora or even Falcon. Dominator has more raw power, but it has nothing to counter Capitals).
Though using "1 or 2 EMP weapons on their engines then armor smacking torpedoes" as comparison point is quite invalid - once you get into that advantaged position, of course you win (unless enemy can phase cloak/skim/teleport). Question is how to get there. Also torpedoes are a very much limited resource.
"What’s the point of flying an onslaught when I can get in a tempest and destroy most ships extremely quickly" - even if you use 100% flux on weapons and land 100% shots on hull/armor (unrealistic assumptions), both your total damage output till CR runs out and dps are way lower than what Onslaught can do.
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High tech ships are more powerful in the player hands while low tech ships work great in fleets, especially larger ones. Also, two of the factions you listed, Templars and Appolight, are both boss factions so I'm wondering what other mods you have installed. You might try Interstellar Imperium to see if they statify your needs for more powerful low tech ships
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Paragons (well equipped ones, which for this case means 4x tach lances, Tac lasers in small, HVD in universals, Optics hullmod each) would probably win quite easily if you just auto-pilot. In fact, Onslaughts will get outranged and will have serious issues even approaching
What game version are you playing in? Onslaughts are, by far, the fastest capital ships. And Paragons are, by far, the slowest and least maneuverable. So while the Paragon does outrange the onslaught, being the only high tech ship that does it will not do so for long, and will barely even have time to maneuver before being beset upon by superior firepower and flux stats.
As for the frigates no, the list is there because it doesn’t matter a hot minute how good the ship is in a 1v1 fight it matters what the ship does in a fleet. And Monitors allow your fleet to get closer safer to the others and slaughter them with concentrated fire.
(As an example an afflictor will be volleyed by a properly set up Onslaught as soon as it unphases behind t)
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Paragons (well equipped ones, which for this case means 4x tach lances, Tac lasers in small, HVD in universals, Optics hullmod each) would probably win quite easily if you just auto-pilot. In fact, Onslaughts will get outranged and will have serious issues even approaching
What game version are you playing in? Onslaughts are, by far, the fastest capital ships. And Paragons are, by far, the slowest and least maneuverable. So while the Paragon does outrange the onslaught, being the only high tech ship that does it will not do so for long, and will barely even have time to maneuver before being beset upon by superior firepower and flux stats.
As for the frigates no, the list is there because it doesn’t matter a hot minute how good the ship is in a 1v1 fight it matters what the ship does in a fleet. And Monitors allow your fleet to get closer safer to the others and slaughter them with concentrated fire.
(As an example an afflictor will be volleyed by a properly set up Onslaught as soon as it unphases behind t)
Onslaughts are fast at closing distance with ship system, but you can't Burn Drive at 4x Tach Lances because it drops shield - you'll be half-dead on arrival. Other than effectively countered Burn drive, Onslaught has lower base speed (25) than Paragon (30). So a Paragon going for maximum humilation can even kite an Onslaught to some extent.
Monitor is the best bullet sponge, which means you list mostly for AI usage. Still, Tempest should be second then. Combination of being fast itself + distraction by drone make it quite survivable too.
Afflictor is a player ship, which means operating under assumption that player commits no obvious mistakes. Onslaught does not have that many rear-facing weapons and no variant used by AI just bunches up HE guns there (PD is 1st priority, Kinetics is good at keeping frigates away, HE is distant third). Afflictor is fast enough to just dodge most shots (and there won't be many in first place, due to disabling ship system + Reaper salvo).
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What game version are you playing in? Onslaughts are, by far, the fastest capital ships. And Paragons are, by far, the slowest and least maneuverable. So while the Paragon does outrange the onslaught, being the only high tech ship that does it will not do so for long, and will barely even have time to maneuver before being beset upon by superior firepower and flux stats.
What version of the game are you playing? The paragon has vastly superior flux stats, 8k more flux capacity and more than double the flux dissipation (1250 vs. 600). Plus fortress shield which makes it more or less invulnerable. Onslaught will flux lock itself long before paragon gets anywhere near max flux.
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I tend to use a cruiser and/or carrier heavy fleet.
For frigates, I tend to use Lasher and Wolf (or whatever I can find) early, then Afflictor, Tempest, and Hyperion late in the game. Tempest for enabling pursuit or AI use in small fights, Afflictor or Hyperion as playership.
For destroyers, Medusa or Hammerhead early in the game, maybe Condor too. Late in the game, Drover or bust.
Cruisers are my primary fleet ships, and I use Falcons as grunts, Eagle and Dominator as tanks, and several Heron and/or Mora. As a flagship, I tend to gravitate toward Heron or Eagle with Converted Hangar.
Capitals, either Legion for general-purpose brawling or chaff sweeping, or Paragon if I want to kill just about everyone. If I need a third capital, I possibly bring Astral. (I will bring Astral along if I find it before I find Paragon.) I usually only deploy one and I pilot it.
Generally, high-tech is hit-and-miss. Some hulls are very powerful while others are mediocre by demonstrating energy weapon weakness all too well. Also, high-tech is a royal pain to outfit because none of their energy weapons are on the Open Market (mining laser does not count - too rare and too weak), and Black Markets only have the basics (PD lasers and pulse lasers).
Many of my fleet's ships are low-tech or midline, with few high-tech exceptions.
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What game version are you playing in? Onslaughts are, by far, the fastest capital ships. And Paragons are, by far, the slowest and least maneuverable. So while the Paragon does outrange the onslaught, being the only high tech ship that does it will not do so for long, and will barely even have time to maneuver before being beset upon by superior firepower and flux stats.
What version of the game are you playing? The paragon has vastly superior flux stats, 8k more flux capacity and more than double the flux dissipation (1250 vs. 600). Plus fortress shield which makes it more or less invulnerable. Onslaught will flux lock itself long before paragon gets anywhere near max flux.
Usual AI vs AI experience here is Paragon dead, Onslaught 20%-25% hull with an optimized L20 pilot. Seriously considering reconfiguring the game to increase fleet limit beyond 30 on my next playthrough, if I can find an appropriate JSON adjustment.
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Usual AI vs AI experience here is Paragon dead, Onslaught 20%-25% hull with an optimized L20 pilot.
Are you saying the onslaught has a level 20 officer and the paragon doesn't?
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What game version are you playing in? Onslaughts are, by far, the fastest capital ships. And Paragons are, by far, the slowest and least maneuverable. So while the Paragon does outrange the onslaught, being the only high tech ship that does it will not do so for long, and will barely even have time to maneuver before being beset upon by superior firepower and flux stats.
What version of the game are you playing? The paragon has vastly superior flux stats, 8k more flux capacity and more than double the flux dissipation (1250 vs. 600). Plus fortress shield which makes it more or less invulnerable. Onslaught will flux lock itself long before paragon gets anywhere near max flux.
The Onslaught will armor tank while the paragon doesn’t so while the Onslaught has a lower cap it will still flux lock slower than the paragon. It also has more Flux efficient weapons. If the paragon fortress shields it’s not shooting. If it’s not shooting it doesn’t matter.
And consider that you have more onslaughts than you have paragons....
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Usual AI vs AI experience here is Paragon dead, Onslaught 20%-25% hull with an optimized L20 pilot.
Are you saying the onslaught has a level 20 officer and the paragon doesn't?
The paragon is Threat; it has an L20 pilot, typically with garbage skills.
The Onslaught is mine; as stated its officer has optimized skills. The Paragon will win if the Onslaught's officer only has good but not optimized skills.
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What game version are you playing in? Onslaughts are, by far, the fastest capital ships. And Paragons are, by far, the slowest and least maneuverable. So while the Paragon does outrange the onslaught, being the only high tech ship that does it will not do so for long, and will barely even have time to maneuver before being beset upon by superior firepower and flux stats.
What version of the game are you playing? The paragon has vastly superior flux stats, 8k more flux capacity and more than double the flux dissipation (1250 vs. 600). Plus fortress shield which makes it more or less invulnerable. Onslaught will flux lock itself long before paragon gets anywhere near max flux.
The Onslaught will armor tank while the paragon doesn’t so while the Onslaught has a lower cap it will still flux lock slower than the paragon. It also has more Flux efficient weapons. If the paragon fortress shields it’s not shooting. If it’s not shooting it doesn’t matter.
And consider that you have more onslaughts than you have paragons....
Paragon has 1500 armor vs Onslaught's 1750. There is not much difference here. Onslaught has more efficient weapons, but Paragon counters a lot of that by having more efficient shield. And then Fortress shield on top of that.
On skill-less character, player piloted Onslaught can win against not particularly well equipped sim Paragon, but it requires some tactics and won't happen on auto. Against optimized build of Paragon even player piloting won't help, under same no skills assumption (you can put custom variants into sim by relatively simple file manipulations).
In reverse situation Paragon easily auto stomps sim Onslaught. You have to make an intentionally trash variant for it to lose.
Also what's the point of comparing trash/no officer Paragon to optimized L20 Onslaught? By same logic L20 Dominator could probably defeat officer-less Onslaught - does that make it a superior ship?
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You can't armor tank 4x tach lance , that will punch straight through and disable a bunch of weapons in the process. 4x tl does 6000 total damage in one burst. Plus the capacity is not very important, dissipation is the important stat, and paragon has (I think) the best in the game. Onslaught will flux cap into fortress shield and then paragon unloads massive damage into armor/hull while disabling many weapons in the process. Paragon can also armor tank reasonably well with 1500 armor.
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Sure 6,000 total damage in one burst before armor. Doesn't really matter. You can armor tank it. With Heavy Armor, Resistant Flux Conduits, and Armored Weapon Mounts you're pretty much immune to EMP damage and you have 2325 armor before skills. Plus the Tacyon damage doesn't produce hard flux so its not hard to shield tank the Paragons or shield pop them while their tachyon lances are up. After skills that number can be as high as 3637 for the purposes of mitigation. Which is pretty hilariously strong given that the paragons have essentially zero High Explosive Damage... which is what you need in order to punch through heavy armor.
I mean. AI vs AI the Onslaught wins... and there are more Onslaughts than there are Paragons due to deployment costs.
The Onslaught is a really hilariously good ship.
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Also what's the point of comparing trash/no officer Paragon to optimized L20 Onslaught?
That's how 30+ battles in Nexerillin+Dynasector played out (no extra factions, just a Sindrian Diktat commission start). AI fleets almost always have trash L20 officer Paragons.
If the Onslaught starting the battle has the non-optimized L20 officer, Paragon owns the Onslaught. If the Onslaught starting the battle has an optimized L20 officer, Paragon dies (along with the rest of the fleet!)
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I mean. AI vs AI the Onslaught wins...
This is not my experience at all. I routinely let an officer pilot my paragon and I have never lost a paragon while the AI was piloting, even when fighting multiple onslaughts. I have, however, lost multiple onslaughts when they have been piloted by the AI. They simply don't have the flux dissipation to sustain fire with all of their weapon mounts and routinely get into risky situations with their burn drives. Many people in this forum have also noted that their experience in the simulator with paragon v onslaught is that the if the two ships are equally well optimized, the paragon wins almost every time. Obviously if you have a L20 officer with an optimized set of skills piloting your onslaught, it will win vs and unskilled or unoptimized paragon, but a well optimized paragon will win.
In terms of armor effectiveness, I am vary aware of the how the armor mechanic works. In the case of beams however, the standard formula does not apply since beams do damage over time rather than 'per shot'. As far as I know, beams have 50% penetration coefficient for armor meaning they do a flat 50% damage to armor. I also discovered that beams do a little additional damage during charge-up and charge-down so a full (single ) tach lance burst does something like 2200 damage. This means that 4xTL will do ~4400 damage in a burst to armor, more than enough to strip the armor off anything in the game. That's based on the math in this thread: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=12268.msg208193#msg208193
The bit about beams is not in the original post, its a few comments down.
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Also what's the point of comparing trash/no officer Paragon to optimized L20 Onslaught?
That's how 30+ battles in Nexerillin+Dynasector played out (no extra factions, just a Sindrian Diktat commission start). AI fleets almost always have trash L20 officer Paragons.
If the Onslaught starting the battle has the non-optimized L20 officer, Paragon owns the Onslaught. If the Onslaught starting the battle has an optimized L20 officer, Paragon dies (along with the rest of the fleet!)
Which is exactly why ships should be compared on even ground - either no officers or L20 optimized for both.
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Yes TLs can eat onslaught armor from the front too, and if the poor guy kept that shield up their not shooting back. Most low tech ships have crazily inefficient shields to the point that I want to use shield bypass, however if a non shield ship meets just 1 ship with even good armor stripping they lose, while most shielded ships can handle a ship designed to kill them (by careful use of when to have the generator on or off, which I occasionally see the AI do). I got in a bought with the hegemony just yesterday and they had 3 onslaughts, all officered, I have a tempest, beatitude, and 3 destroyers from ORA (idk why I’m blanking on the name). I proceeded to kill their 4-7 random frigate/destroyer escorts then just EMP locked them one at a time from behind with the tempest while the beatitude beat some sense into them. Their engines are so slow they cannot help each other or disengage fast enough, once caught out they just sit there and die. With high tech ships, your speed, shields, and light use of armor can offer you a second chance, while most low tech ships don’t get that chance at all. Now I’m not saying a onslaught should be able to tank the world, just would be nice if they could tank just a bit more than now, and that goes for all low tech ships.
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I mean. AI vs AI the Onslaught wins...
This is not my experience at all. I routinely let an officer pilot my paragon and I have never lost a paragon while the AI was piloting, even when fighting multiple onslaughts. I have, however, lost multiple onslaughts when they have been piloted by the AI. They simply don't have the flux dissipation to sustain fire with all of their weapon mounts and routinely get into risky situations with their burn drives. Many people in this forum have also noted that their experience in the simulator with paragon v onslaught is that the if the two ships are equally well optimized, the paragon wins almost every time. Obviously if you have a L20 officer with an optimized set of skills piloting your onslaught, it will win vs and unskilled or unoptimized paragon, but a well optimized paragon will win.
In terms of armor effectiveness, I am vary aware of the how the armor mechanic works. In the case of beams however, the standard formula does not apply since beams do damage over time rather than 'per shot'. As far as I know, beams have 50% penetration coefficient for armor meaning they do a flat 50% damage to armor. I also discovered that beams do a little additional damage during charge-up and charge-down so a full (single ) tach lance burst does something like 2200 damage. This means that 4xTL will do ~4400 damage in a burst to armor, more than enough to strip the armor off anything in the game. That's based on the math in this thread: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=12268.msg208193#msg208193
The bit about beams is not in the original post, its a few comments down.
Beams do not do “flat 50% damage to armor” they do damage to armor as if their damage was 50% of what it was.
So a HIL does 500 damage. Against 2000 armor it will do 1000 raw dmg because it’s HE and have a total initial DPS of 1000 * 500/2500= 200 dps
A tachyon beam does about 2200 damage over 2 seconds. So it’s total damage is 2200 * 550/2550= 474. Good but not enough to strip a heavy armor onslaught let alone one with skills.
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Beams do not do “flat 50% damage to armor” they do damage to armor as if their damage was 50% of what it was.
So a HIL does 500 damage. Against 2000 armor it will do 1000 raw dmg because it’s HE and have a total initial DPS of 1000 * 500/2500= 200 dps
A tachyon beam does about 2200 damage over 2 seconds. So it’s total damage is 2200 * 550/2550= 474. Good but not enough to strip a heavy armor onslaught let alone one with skills.
Not quite. Beams do damage to armor as if their per-hit damage was equal to half their raw DPS. See this thread (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=12268.msg208348#msg208348) for some discussion of the details - but the short of it is that the Tachyon Lance penetrates armor to about the same degree as a 750 damage per hit weapon, which is quite good enough to be a serious threat to even an Onslaught's armor.
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To get back to the OP's suggestion:
Armor's relative weakness (vis-a-vis shields) is that it is finite, not that it is ineffective. High armor values will absolutely cripple low damage/shot weapons to such a degree that they become effectively inconsequential. The best a shield can do is reduce damage via weapon type (i.e. HE reduced to 50%, Frag down to 25%). Armor can reduce damage down to 15% naturally and down to 10% with skills, which drastically improves effective HP.
Ships "face-tanking" whole fleets is fun in theory but not in practice. Every ship with insanely high armor turns into a version of the current Mora: crippled but you just can't bring it down. You end up spending a lot of time (and flux) killing a ship already "dead," it just doesn't know it yet. Fights take longer to resolve and it makes many low damage/shot weapons completely unusable (because they're only doing 15% of their listed damage for long streaks).
Let me be clear: I don't think the high-tech vs. low-tech debate has a clear winner. They both have pros and cons but if you wanted to give low-tech something of a "endless supply" of something (like high-tech has shields), I'd go with slowly regenerating armor or regenerating HP over some kind of second armor band. I still think that's overkill but if it was reasonable and allowed for low-tech to "rest" a bit (which high-tech does very well via venting and having more maneuverable ships), then it could be made to work.
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Let me be clear: I don't think the high-tech vs. low-tech debate has a clear winner. They both have pros and cons but if you wanted to give low-tech something of a "endless supply" of something (like high-tech has shields), I'd go with slowly regenerating armor or regenerating HP over some kind of second armor band. I still think that's overkill but if it was reasonable and allowed for low-tech to "rest" a bit (which high-tech does very well via venting and having more maneuverable ships), then it could be made to work.
How about something like "armor overheating" (or whatever fluff word fits better). That is armor takes less damage than currently when it wasn't damaged for a while, then gets progressively overheated thus taking more damage, then cools off. Similar to shield, but process is passive and has separate heating/cooling pool from flux.
Since armor is per-cell, "armor overheating" can be too. In this case, you'd need more concentrated attack from single direction to get through armor.
Now, I do not know if such mechanics would actually make game better (fiasco with clips proves that being good on paper is not good enough), but it might be interesting to think through in more detail, at least.
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Let me be clear: I don't think the high-tech vs. low-tech debate has a clear winner. They both have pros and cons but if you wanted to give low-tech something of a "endless supply" of something (like high-tech has shields), I'd go with slowly regenerating armor or regenerating HP over some kind of second armor band. I still think that's overkill but if it was reasonable and allowed for low-tech to "rest" a bit (which high-tech does very well via venting and having more maneuverable ships), then it could be made to work.
How about something like "armor overheating" (or whatever fluff word fits better). That is armor takes less damage than currently when it wasn't damaged for a while, then gets progressively overheated thus taking more damage, then cools off. Similar to shield, but process is passive and has separate heating/cooling pool from flux.
Since armor is per-cell, "armor overheating" can be too. In this case, you'd need more concentrated attack from single direction to get through armor.
Now, I do not know if such mechanics would actually make game better (fiasco with clips proves that being good on paper is not good enough), but it might be interesting to think through in more detail, at least.
And now I'm reminded of an older anime called Starship Operators in which that was the primary way the ships were killed: the hulls got heated to the point where the entire ships' hull cooks the crew alive with the extreme thermal runaway
Also, what would stuff like KE or EN type weapons do? How would you track it on your allies or enemy ships?
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Also, what would stuff like KE or EN type weapons do?
Damage-type wise I didn't intend any changes, though I guess there is some potential. Like separating armor-heating weapons from armor-crackers(that are better applied after heating). But that seems too fiddly.
How would you track it on your allies or enemy ships?
Current damage decals already look a lot like that. So tuning them to make sure that their brightness and linger time depend on current heat in particular spot as opposed to fixed duration may be a start.
Then maybe 2 (small) bars/indicators for most heated armor spot and global overheat.
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I'm trying to envision how the "overheat" system would work with current armor mechanics. If "cooled" armor had a modifier to it (let's say +25%) and "overheated" armor had a negative modifier (-25%), you'd get a kind of wacky armor degradation curve. Of course, it begs the question, which weapons add "heat" and which don't and is it intuitive?
I still think we have an answer in search of a problem though... :)
How about the idea of spending flux to repair armor? Don't ask me "how" this makes in-game sense but as a mechanic, low-tech ships can activate some kind of armor-repair mode that draws a fair amount of flux but repairs armor to a certain degree (perhaps even full, given enough time). Using it mid-battle would be discouraged by armor taking extra damage or some such and/or weapons shutting down. Almost like a form of reverse-venting. The point being, if you can get a few seconds downtime, low-tech ships can recuperate some of their lost armor at a cost that is effectively limitless (just takes time).
Then we have the question of which ships are "low-tech" and get this feature. Do mid-line ships get it? Do all ships get it but it benefits low-tech the most, etc. Perhaps the regen rate is a % of max armor/sec so ships with high armor repair "faster" in absolute terms and so it benefits something like an Onslaught more.
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I'm trying to envision how the "overheat" system would work with current armor mechanics. If "cooled" armor had a modifier to it (let's say +25%) and "overheated" armor had a negative modifier (-25%), you'd get a kind of wacky armor degradation curve. Of course, it begs the question, which weapons add "heat" and which don't and is it intuitive?
I still think we have an answer in search of a problem though... :)
How about the idea of spending flux to repair armor? Don't ask me "how" this makes in-game sense but as a mechanic, low-tech ships can activate some kind of armor-repair mode that draws a fair amount of flux but repairs armor to a certain degree (perhaps even full, given enough time). Using it mid-battle would be discouraged by armor taking extra damage or some such and/or weapons shutting down. Almost like a form of reverse-venting. The point being, if you can get a few seconds downtime, low-tech ships can recuperate some of their lost armor at a cost that is effectively limitless (just takes time).
Then we have the question of which ships are "low-tech" and get this feature. Do mid-line ships get it? Do all ships get it but it benefits low-tech the most, etc. Perhaps the regen rate is a % of max armor/sec so ships with high armor repair "faster" in absolute terms and so it benefits something like an Onslaught more.
I think to a degree it can solve exactly that problem you mentioned, of giving 'endless' (or at least lasting long enough within CR time) supply of something to low-tech.
All weapons would add heat proportional to damage before armor reduction, but after damage type multipliers. I don't see need to go more complex than that (tracking heat per armor tile seems already be prohibitive in terms of chance of Alex ever implementing something like this). But then again armor is tiled (and thus directional), building up extended armor mechanics that ignores this core property seems just wrong (and it would be too similar to giving Templar shields to everything).
If modifiers are big enough, like x0.25 cool - x2.0 hot it would mean that you can't easily nibble at armor in small portions like now. Either you fully overwhelm a single facing within relatively short period of time, or you do only minor long term damage. Though heating/cooling should be slower than typical flux cycles, like 3-5 flux cycles per full armor cool-off.
Since it's flux-independent it wouldn't add extra stress to already limited flux pools/regen of low-tech ships.
Such dynamics would put some pressure on high-tech, since they wouldn't be able to simply nibble at armor and out-regen the opponent (within CR constrains, anyway). Of course I'm not just offering to up all present low-tech ships - they may end up paying for it in other stats (maybe by decreasing/removing their advantage in raw CR).
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Too complicated. If you want to give a boost to armor you could have a minimum value for the purpose of DR attached to it. Say 25% to 50% of the Armor value still provides DR against armor and hull damage.
Noticeably this would be a boost to frag weapons* and a nerf to high DPS high explosive weapons which might be interesting.
As an example of how this would work suppose you’re shooting at a 2000 Armor target with a 750 damage HE weapon. First hit does 624 damage to armor. Second does 787 and so on and so forth until the target has 500 (or 1000) Armor. All shots after that do 1125 damage to armor (1500*1500/2000) and once armor is gone 450 damage to hull (750*750/1250). A thumper shot would do 57 damage to armor or so (200*200/700) and end up around 250 DPS (compared to current 1000, a hellbore at around 170 DPS compared to current 250)
*the boost to hull damage would be more relevant when you had to overcome armor type DR and the high flux efficiency of these weapons would make them clear superior options for finishing off ships that had their armor punctured.
Alternately frag damage could ignore the minimum armor DR.
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Alternately frag damage could ignore the minimum armor DR.
I think the reason minimum armor was added was to prevent the likes of Vulcan (which does fragmentation damage) melting an unarmored Onslaught down to slag almost instantly.
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Alternately frag damage could ignore the minimum armor DR.
I think the reason minimum armor was added was to prevent the likes of Vulcan (which does fragmentation damage) melting an unarmored Onslaught down to slag almost instantly.
There isn’t minimum armor is there? I thought that only allied to armor and not to hull. Either way 5% is peanuts when you’re in hull.
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Since 0.8, hitting what used to be unarmored hull is treated to have 5% base armor. This is significant for weapons that do low damage per shot (like LMGs or Vulcans) and the target is a heavily armored battleship.
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Too complicated. If you want to give a boost to armor you could have a minimum value for the purpose of DR attached to it. Say 25% to 50% of the Armor value still provides DR against armor and hull damage.
Yeah, but effect is completely different. Increasing minimum armor makes armored ships hard to kill, but does not change how they are killed, tactically. You can still nibble at them, it will just take longer. It will also completely invalidate use of frag, kinetic and to significant degree energy against ships hulls/armor (which is a too harsh nerf to high tech).
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Why would it? HE doesn’t get bonus damage to hull with minimum armor values
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Why would it? HE doesn’t get bonus damage to hull with minimum armor values
As extreme case stuff like small damage per shot frag or needlers start doing real hull damage only after armor is fully (well, to 5%) stripped.
With 50% minimum armor value, that never happens. So pretty much everything that is not high damage per shot HE will get reduced to minimum 15% or close.
And HE still counts, since as I understand armor calculations use effective damage after type multiplier.
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Alternately frag damage could ignore the minimum armor DR.
I think the reason minimum armor was added was to prevent the likes of Vulcan (which does fragmentation damage) melting an unarmored Onslaught down to slag almost instantly.
There isn’t minimum armor is there? I thought that only allied to armor and not to hull. Either way 5% is peanuts when you’re in hull.
It depends on the weapon mix. Consider a fairly typical example of a Heavy Autocannon vs an Enforcer hull. It has 37.5 armor, so the autocannon does 57 damage per shot instead of 100. The 5% residual armor reduced the damage by 43%. For more heavily armored ships all but the heaviest kinetic weapons have a drastically reduced effectiveness vs hull, so all of the high kinetic builds that crush shields will not kill a ship quickly. Even smaller caliber energy and HE weapons become ineffective at dealing hull damage.
Why would it? HE doesn’t get bonus damage to hull with minimum armor values
In the above example, a heavy mortar would be doing 94 damage per shot instead of 110, or 85% of listed damage. HE effectively gets bonus damage to hull because it is not reduced nearly as much.
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Alternately frag damage could ignore the minimum armor DR.
I think the reason minimum armor was added was to prevent the likes of Vulcan (which does fragmentation damage) melting an unarmored Onslaught down to slag almost instantly.
There isn’t minimum armor is there? I thought that only allied to armor and not to hull. Either way 5% is peanuts when you’re in hull.
It depends on the weapon mix. Consider a fairly typical example of a Heavy Autocannon vs an Enforcer hull. It has 37.5 armor, so the autocannon does 57 damage per shot instead of 100. The 5% residual armor reduced the damage by 43%. For more heavily armored ships all but the heaviest kinetic weapons have a drastically reduced effectiveness vs hull, so all of the high kinetic builds that crush shields will not kill a ship quickly. Even smaller caliber energy and HE weapons become ineffective at dealing hull damage.
Why would it? HE doesn’t get bonus damage to hull with minimum armor values
In the above example, a heavy mortar would be doing 94 damage per shot instead of 110, or 85% of listed damage. HE effectively gets bonus damage to hull because it is not reduced nearly as much.
A heavy mortar would be doing 74.5% damage against 37.5 armor minimum 110*110/147.5 = 82.033. HE weaponry doesn't have particularly better penetration than Kinetic Weaponry. A Heavy Autocannon would be doing 100^2/137.5 = 72.7 damage for 72.7% damage of normal(Same as Pulse Laser). HE does not have a particularly noticeable caliber advantage except for Hellbore cannons and actually has raw caliber disadvantage for top tier equipment at the medium and smaller tier. (Heavy Blaster 500, HVD 275 vs Mauler 200 | Antimatter 1400, Railgun 100 vs Light Mortar 75)
Edit: The problem seems to be that there is no high caliber frag weaponry (Best is flack at 200!)
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I believe the damage multipliers vs armor are applied before the armor calculation (2x for HE and .5 for KE) so HE actually have a major armor penetration advantage vs pure armor. I'm not sure what multipliers are applied with minimum armor though since the weapon is hitting both hull and armor. Does anyone know how the damage through armor to hull is calculated?
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I believe the damage multipliers vs armor are applied before the armor calculation (2x for HE and .5 for KE) so HE actually have a major armor penetration advantage vs pure armor. I'm not sure what multipliers are applied with minimum armor though since the weapon is hitting both hull and armor. Does anyone know how the damage through armor to hull is calculated?
Almost certainly yes. Because if that is the case then it makes zero sense with regards to how KE gets a bonus damage against shields.
But with minimum armor the weapon is not hitting armor, its hitting hull and armor is simply adding DR. If it had to penetrate the armor first many weapons would do zero damage against hull versus high armor targets. This is clearly not the case.
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I'm 95% sure that the weapon type does factor into the 5% residual armor rating. Basically, the "armor penetration percentage" is calculated separately from the damage. This is also how skill like "+50% hit strength for armor damage reduction calculation only" work - it applies only during the percentage calculation, not the total damage.
So for an autocannon with shot damage 100 and type Kinetic against the 37.5 residual armor of a stripped enforcer:
Damage dealt against hull = 100 * [50/((37.5+50)] = 57.14
For a mortar with shot damage 110 and type HE:
Damage dealt against hull = 110 * [220/(37.5+220)] = 93.98
I will test and get back to this thread.
[Edit] Quick and dirty test in the mission sim, was getting ~92 damage to hull per shot and 1 or 2 to the tiny bits of armor at a large distance - hard to uniformly strip all of the armor without killing it while the bugger is turning, but it shows that the HE is helping to penetrate.
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If it works like that then it should not. If it does then Kinetic would not get a damage boost against shields and HE and frag would not receive a damage penalty against shields similarly. Nor would Frag get a damage bonus against hull.
It should not matter that that is how skills that give "hit strength for armor damage reduction" work because that is not how individual damage type damage bonuses work
Edit: my guess is that there is something going on with the CR of deployed ships in the mission default. I will test with annenergy weapon later.
Edit: it would also be consistent with the old 10% damage bonus given to player ships.
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I'm 95% sure that the weapon type does factor into the 5% residual armor rating. Basically, the "armor penetration percentage" is calculated separately from the damage. This is also how skill like "+50% hit strength for armor damage reduction calculation only" work - it applies only during the percentage calculation, not the total damage.
Yep, this is how it works. Armor reduces the total damage dealt by a percentage, based on the strength of the hit, regardless of whether there's any actual armor left or it's using the minimum for the calculation - that is to say, it's consistent in how it works vs a given armor value, regardless of whether that value comes from remaining armor or the minimum. The strength of the hit is modified by the damage type's multiplier vs armor.
The damage calculated from the hit strength is then modified by the multiplier against either hull or armor. So, for armor and hull hits, the damage type multiplier can apply twice, in a sense. Unlike for shields, since hit strength doesn't matter there.
Edit: it would also be consistent with the old 10% damage bonus given to player ships.
(Hmm, not sure what you mean here?)
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Didn’t there used to be a bonus to the player ship before skills went in?
Also you should change how minimum armor works because that little sense and unnecessarily hampers frag damage (which is already not good). The damage multiplier to bypass DR should be the strength of the hit not the modified strength of the hit.
I mean look at a thumper vs Hull here.
200 * 25/62.5 = 80. It has higher total DR than the Heavy Mortar even after the 2x damage multiplier
Against higher armor it will be doing minimum damage into hull easily...
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Didn’t there used to be a bonus to the player ship before skills went in?
Hmm - pretty sure there wasn't; doesn't sound like something I'd put in. I mean, not impossible, but I have no recollection of that, and it goes against the general design philosophy.
Also you should change how minimum armor works because that little sense and unnecessarily hampers frag damage (which is already not good).
The "minimum armor" mechanic was literally put in to help out high-armor ships and stop them from getting entirely wrecked by smaller caliber weapons once armor got stripped. Stuff like Vulcans from Talons is still extremely effective, just no longer deletes something like an Onslaught in a few seconds. Likewise, the Thumper is still pretty good vs hull, but yes, falls off vs heavier targets, like it's supposed to. Even so, vs fully stripped 1250 base armor (per your example), it's still getting better flux efficiency for hull damage than most weapons.