Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => General Discussion => Topic started by: Lorebot on May 04, 2021, 12:16:56 PM
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Today someone asked in the discord what the purpose of the Thumper is in the game and in the ensuing discussion someone mentioned that there essentially is no way to hit 'bare hull' anymore. I was very confused by this so I went digging on the wiki and it seems to confirm that armor can no longer be completely stripped from a target so if the target has any armor to start with there's no way for Flak damage to ever be fully applied. I recognize that armor will always provide 5% of its starting value for damage reduction even after being stripped from a target, but I had assumed that once stripped the damage would be applied vs hull not against armor.
If this is actually how it works then not only does it make Kinetic damage sub-par for finishing a target, but it makes Flak damage mostly useless against anything that has any armor at all which includes fighters and bombers which seem to be some of the targets it's actually meant to deal with most effectively.
I understand the change to allow armor to always provide 5% of its base value do the damage reduction calculation, but I had assumed that once stripped the damage would be applied vs hull allowing Kinetic and Flak damage types to do full damage against the target. Am I mistaken? This doesn't make any sense to me from a balance standpoint...the whole point of Flak damage is to be able to quickly knock out fighters and missiles, but if fighters always have armor they'll only ever take 25% damage from Flak which defeats the purpose of using the damage type against them.
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Base damage is reduced using values as if it was hitting armour (kinetics have half their hit strength, frag has one fourth). Four weapons with hit strength of 100 and different damage types, hitting residual armour of 25, would be reduced differently:
HE would be reduced to 89 damage
Energy would be reduced to 80 damage
Kinetic would be reduced to 67 damage
Frag would be reduced to 50 damage
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Y'know, I didn't feel all that confused about this myself until this thread started, and I have to admit that I'm not sure what your numbers mean there, SCC. Integrated armor has a reduced effect on damage reduction?
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Basically, there is hit strength against hull and hit strength against armor. When frag damage hits "bare hull" it uses full 100% hit strength for the damage, but 25% hit strength for calculating the reduction from residual armor.
Imagine a 100 damage frag shot hitting bare hull with 50 residual armor.
1) The damage reduction from armor is (100*25%) / (100*25% + 50) = 1/3.
2) The actual damage hull takes is (100*100%) * 1/3 = 33 damage.
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Residual armour is 5% of the total armour that your ship has, which can be increased with DC and Impact Mitigation's elite +50 armour for damage calculation effect always applies, even when only the residual armour is left.
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Base damage is reduced using values as if it was hitting armour (kinetics have half their hit strength, frag has one fourth). Four weapons with hit strength of 100 and different damage types, hitting residual armour of 25, would be reduced differently:
HE would be reduced to 89 damage
Energy would be reduced to 80 damage
Kinetic would be reduced to 67 damage
Frag would be reduced to 50 damage
This misses the point of my question. I'm asking if there's really no way to ever actually hit Hull for full damage anymore. I understand the damage reduction provided by armor, but the idea that stripping armor completely never actually exposes the hull to allow weapons to deal base damage is ludicrous to me. It makes Flak damage completely pointless and neuters Kinetic damage for anything other than taking down shields.
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Frag is mostly a PD damage type, that's true. It does, however, tend to have high dps and high flux efficiency. It's worth remembering that no amount of residual armor can reduce damage below 15%, so high raw DPS will still shred hull even with very low hit strength.
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Frag is mostly a PD damage type, that's true. It does, however, tend to have high dps and high flux efficiency. It's worth remembering that no amount of residual armor can reduce damage below 15%, so high raw DPS will still shred hull even with very low hit strength.
This is only applicable if the damage is being applied against hull not armor. If 'residual armor' still counts as armor the Flak will be reduced to 25% before the damage reduction from the residual armor is even applied. This is where my confusion lies, everything seems to point to 'residual armor' still counting as armor and not hull, so Kinetic and Flak damage types can never deal full damage to a target because they're never hitting 'hull'.
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That's not how it works. Residual armor doesn't "count as armor" before the damage reduction is applied. Read my post above. There's never a way to deal "full" damage to hull, but frag hitting hull with residual armor is much better than frag hitting actual armor. In the first case, you are only penalized by the armor damage reduction modifier, in the second, you get that ON TOP of the 25% base efficiency.
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This is only applicable if the damage is being applied against hull not armor. If 'residual armor' still counts as armor the Flak will be reduced to 25% before the damage reduction from the residual armor is even applied. This is where my confusion lies, everything seems to point to 'residual armor' still counting as armor and not hull, so Kinetic and Flak damage types can never deal full damage to a target because they're never hitting 'hull'.
Base damage is multiplied by damage reduction that uses anti-armour values. As in my example:
100 is the base damage of a frag weapon, 25 is the residual armour
100 x (100/4) / ((100/4) + 25) = 100 x 25 / (25 + 25) = 100 x 25 / 50 = 100 x 1/2 = 50
50 is the damage dealt to hull
In comparison, against actual armour of 25, the damage dealt would have been instead:
(100/4) x (100/4) / ((100/4) + 25) = 25 x 25 / (25 + 25) = 25 x 25 / 50 = 25 x 1/2 = 12,5
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Damage has two factors: the damage itself, and the hit strength multiplier which is hitstr/(hitstr+armor). (For projectile weapons hitstr = damage, but for beams, hitstr = DPS/2.) For frag vs hull, they still retain their damage, but their hit strength is as if they were trying to hit residual armor (5% of base armor value).
A vulcan (500 dps) hitting armor would be affected by both the armor damage reduction (25%) and the hit str (likely getting to the minimum of 15%), and thus end up doing 18.75 DPS to armor. But against hull, only the latter would apply, so it does 75 DPS to hull.
One of the new [REDACTED] shows off the advantages of frag damage to really great effect -- it basically acts as a mini-heavy blaster against shield and armor, but will completely shred hull very quickly once you get past the shields and armor.
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I'd also like to point out why residual armor was added.
Let's say way back before residual armor you had a Lasher. Put 5 vulcans on it, and 2 reaper torpedoes. Get behind an Onslaught. Kill it in approximately 5 seconds.
The reaper blows a hole in armor, so now the vulcans are hitting bare hull. 500 DPS x 2 (AAF) x 5 = 5000 bare hull DPS. 20000 hull goes away in 4 seconds. Now it takes much longer than 30 seconds.
On the other hand, vulcans kind of need that DPS to actually shoot down missiles in time due to their short range.
Essentially, in exchange for that 25% value, the base damage is much higher, and the flux efficiency much better, than equivalent weapons. 500 fragmentation vs 160 high explosive DPS or 100 kinetic DPS.
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This is only applicable if the damage is being applied against hull not armor. If 'residual armor' still counts as armor the Flak will be reduced to 25% before the damage reduction from the residual armor is even applied. This is where my confusion lies, everything seems to point to 'residual armor' still counting as armor and not hull, so Kinetic and Flak damage types can never deal full damage to a target because they're never hitting 'hull'.
Base damage is multiplied by damage reduction that uses anti-armour values. As in my example:
100 is the base damage of a frag weapon, 25 is the residual armour
100 x (100/4) / ((100/4) + 25) = 100 x 25 / (25 + 25) = 100 x 25 / 50 = 100 x 1/2 = 50
50 is the damage dealt to hull
In comparison, against actual armour of 25, the damage dealt would have been instead:
(100/4) x (100/4) / ((100/4) + 25) = 25 x 25 / (25 + 25) = 25 x 25 / 50 = 25 x 1/2 = 12,5
That's not how it works. Residual armor doesn't "count as armor" before the damage reduction is applied. Read my post above. There's never a way to deal "full" damage to hull, but frag hitting hull with residual armor is much better than frag hitting actual armor. In the first case, you are only penalized by the armor damage reduction modifier, in the second, you get that ON TOP of the 25% base efficiency.
You guys are throwing a lot of numbers at me and assuming I understand where you're getting these numbers from and that I understand the minutia of the game's armor mechanics. I'm sure you're well meaning, but it's not answering my question in a way that I understand. Perhaps the nature of the armor reduction mechanics in the game being as arcane as they are is part of the issue. Another issue is likely that we're having some sort of miscommunication around the terms 'hull', 'armor', and 'residual armor' because you both seem to have a much deeper understanding of things than I do perhaps I'm misusing a term?
My understanding of things is that Kinetic and Flak weapons have their damage reduced to 50% and 25% respectively when hitting Armor and then the Armor's damage reduction is applied. The value of the damage reduction from the armor is immaterial to my question because my question is whether or not that initial damage reduction to 50% or 25% is still being applied once the armor is stripped and the weapon is hitting Hull.
The person on the discord and the wiki both seem to indicate that even once the Armor is removed and only 'residual armor' is remaining that the weapon is still being treated as if it's hitting Armor and the 50% or 25% initial reduction is still being applied before any damage reduction from 'residual armor' takes effect, in essence making it impossible to deal damage directly to the Hull and thus never getting full damage application. If this is the case then even a Talon Fighter with only 25 armor will only ever take 25% of Flak damage even after that armor is stripped away. This would make Flak weapons essentially pointless against anything with even a minimal armor value because they'd always be reduced to less than 25% damage unless the target had no armor to begin with, like missiles.
Your answers seem to be answering a much more detailed question than the one I'm asking. I just want to know if I'm interpreting the wiki correctly in its implication that 'residual armor' still counts as Armor not Hull.
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The final applied damage counts as hitting hull. You are not hitting armor. There is no -25% damage from Impact mitigation for example.
Maybe this will clarify. The calculations we've presented are the equivalent when hitting hull with fragmentation damage of doing the following:
Multiply by 25%, determine armor mitigation and apply, and then multiply by 4 at the end, because you're hitting hull, and not armor. The 25% factor is undone.
The same is true for kinetic.
Multiply by 50%, determine armor mitigation and apply, and then multiply by 2 at the end, because you're hitting hull, and not armor. The 50% factor is undone.
So you treat it as hull, but you will never do full listed damage as per the weapon description against any target's hull unless it starts with 0 armor, as there is currently always some mitigation.
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The person on the discord and the wiki both seem to indicate that even once the Armor is removed and only 'residual armor' is remaining that the weapon is still being treated as if it's hitting Armor and the 50% or 25% initial reduction is still being applied before any damage reduction from 'residual armor' takes effect
This is wrong if that's all you are asking.
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The final applied damage counts as hitting hull. You are not hitting armor. There is no -25% damage from Impact mitigation for example.
Maybe this will clarify. The calculations we've presented are the equivalent when hitting hull with fragmentation damage of doing the following:
Multiply by 25%, determine armor mitigation and apply, and then multiply by 4 at the end, because you're hitting hull, and not armor. The 25% factor is undone.
The same is true for kinetic.
Multiply by 50%, determine armor mitigation and apply, and then multiply by 2 at the end, because you're hitting hull, and not armor. The 50% factor is undone.
So you treat it as hull, but you will never do full listed damage as per the weapon description against any target's hull unless it starts with 0 armor, as there is currently always some mitigation.
Thank you. I think the miscommunication is about my use of the term 'full damage' which to me means 100% of base damage being applied before mitigation. A Kinetic weapon hitting Armor is doing 'half damage' to me, it would deal 'full damage' against Hull and 'double damage' against Shields. I understand that each situation has it's own damage reduction mechanics, but the damage type itself is reduced or increased based on what type of structure it's hitting before any other mitigation is applied. The question wasn't about 'mitigation' it was about 'what type of structure is the weapon hitting' because the wiki and the guy on discord both implied to me that there was no way to deal damage against Hull anymore because of the 'minimum armor value' mechanic treating everything as hitting Armor even after the Armor had been stripped.
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In that case, then basically, all damage types apply 100% of their damage to hull. I think the confusing part may be that even when they're hitting hull, damage reduction (the x/(x+y) bit) still applies, and it's as if it's being applied against armor (5% of base armor once armor is gone).
Since frag has a hit str that's 25% against armor, the damage reduction can still be pretty significant even though it applies all its damage to hull.
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Armor is pretty nuanced and confusing. For another layer of confusion, in the real game the armor grid splits the damage into an area, with the outer ring of the area both contributing half armor value and taking half armor damage. A single shot can be doing hull damage and armor damage at the same time. Fun! We usually are lazy around here though and either theorycraft as if its a single impact spot or we count in game shots/record the time to kill.
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Hm, looks like you've got the idea at this point, but how's this for an explanation:
A weapon's damage can be thought of as being split into two cases: the actual weapon damage and that weapon's damage vs armor
where weapon damage changes depending on if you're hitting armor, hull or shields and damage vs armor is a constant equal to weapon damage * [damage type multiplier for armor].
Typically, the damage of a shot looks like
weapon damage * (damage vs armor) / (armor + damage vs armor)
When you're using an HE weapon against armor, you're dealing 2x weapon damage and 2x damage vs armor.
When you start hitting hull/residual armor, you only do 1x weapon damage, but you keep the 2x damage vs armor.
Thus, when a frag weapon is hitting hull/residual armor, it deals 1x weapon damage, but still 0.25x damage vs armor.
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When hitting hull, whether armor stripped or not, the applied damage, after reduction calculation, will first apply to remaining armor hp and any excess will be applied to hull. If the armor has been completely destroyed, in other words with 0 remaining hp, full applied damage will go to hull without "additionally being taken by minimum armor".
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Armor is pretty nuanced and confusing. For another layer of confusion, in the real game the armor grid splits the damage into an area, with the outer ring of the area both contributing half armor value and taking half armor damage. A single shot can be doing hull damage and armor damage at the same time. Fun! We usually are lazy around here though and either theorycraft as if its a single impact spot or we count in game shots/record the time to kill.
adds that the "ghost" armor exists, which is armor tiles not a full square or don't theoretically exists as they should be empty spaces (eg. out side the ships boarder where shown as transparent void) that all do take part in damage mechanism. Actually I believe them "armor at bottom of ship not shown on sprite".