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Author Topic: Frag damage ignores minimum armor or impact mitigation.  (Read 716 times)

HUcast

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Frag damage ignores minimum armor or impact mitigation.
« on: April 07, 2021, 08:14:21 PM »

Hey, so, as many people here have pointed out, fragmentation damage has received a very significant nerf in .95. With minimum armor, many frag weapons already had a very hard time doing their intended roles of dealing with armor stripped targets, and now with the prevalence of impact mitigation, this is even more pronounced, leaving many anti armor weapons far superior in doing damage even against foes with all the armor removed. I suggest frag weapons get a certain property that allows them to ignore a certain amount or all of minimum armor values. As it stands, fragmentation can barely perform in its intended role.
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Hatter

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Re: Frag damage ignores minimum armor or impact mitigation.
« Reply #1 on: April 07, 2021, 09:14:11 PM »

Isn't its intended role PD/? Frag weapons are Thumper, Vulcan, Locust, [Redacted]. Thumper is just terrible and [Redacted] is [Redacted] , but isnt the primary purview of the existing frag weapons anti-missile (Vulcan) or anti-fighter and anti-missile (Locust), which they fill fine without armor getting in the way. Frag ignoring minimum armor was a thing in the past, and Vulcan's 500 DPS got rather silly.

Also, wasn't residual armor added in 0.8? Looking at the patchnotes has "Armor value for damage reduction no longer goes below 5% of base armor value"
https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=11477.0
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Maethendias

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Re: Frag damage ignores minimum armor or impact mitigation.
« Reply #2 on: April 08, 2021, 04:47:04 AM »

you have a point, before you could use locusts as an effective large anti frigate weapon, now it isnt nearly as effective at that role, even fighters are sometimes beefy enough to survive frag defences

and about the armor change, the latest version HAS changed armor from before, or it didnt work correctly up until .95

because you could easily strip armor pre update
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SCC

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Re: Frag damage ignores minimum armor or impact mitigation.
« Reply #3 on: April 08, 2021, 08:51:28 AM »

Minimum armour was actually put into place because of frag weapons, so I don't think this one is happening.

intrinsic_parity

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Re: Frag damage ignores minimum armor or impact mitigation.
« Reply #4 on: April 08, 2021, 09:16:42 AM »

Nothing about armor itself or frag damage itself has changed.

The difference is the change to skills and the increased prevalence of officers with skills. In particular I think the loss of old target analysis (increased damage to shields and +150 damage for armor calculations) as well as the loss of old missile specialization which boosted missile damage are pretty significant in terms of the reduced effectiveness of locusts.

On the other hand, there used to be more armor boosting skills than the current release, but the odds of running into an officer with all of them wasn't very high, and those odds were even lower for small ships, or common ships like ventures that now feel so much tankier.
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HUcast

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Re: Frag damage ignores minimum armor or impact mitigation.
« Reply #5 on: April 08, 2021, 09:21:19 AM »

Isn't its intended role PD/? Frag weapons are Thumper, Vulcan, Locust, [Redacted]. Thumper is just terrible and [Redacted] is [Redacted] , but isnt the primary purview of the existing frag weapons anti-missile (Vulcan) or anti-fighter and anti-missile (Locust), which they fill fine without armor getting in the way. Frag ignoring minimum armor was a thing in the past, and Vulcan's 500 DPS got rather silly.

Also, wasn't residual armor added in 0.8? Looking at the patchnotes has "Armor value for damage reduction no longer goes below 5% of base armor value"
https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=11477.0

You have a point, the minimum armor has been in the game for a while, it's just gotten a bit worse in my opinion. While many HE weapons are PD, definitely, I feel many descriptions hint to them being effective against ships with armor stripped. You are also correct that having 500 DPS through armor would be silly, so, that's why I proposed a middle ground of sorts. I'd like for them to be at least above average vs ships with armor stripped, you know what I mean?
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