...Y'know, I wonder how come this wasn't an issue in 0.9.1, but is now.
3 reasons:
1) Previously, the "kinetics don't damage hull skills" were spread across 3 different skills (the third being +50% armor for purposes of damage reduction, though thats less impactful than 150 min armor and -50% damage from kinetics to armor), so many fewer enemy ships had the full stacking bonus. Its the combination of 150 armor and -50% kinetic that makes shot size not matter: either one or the other still leaves variation. (The -20% armor damage is also important, though since thats the same skill as the 150 minimum I don't know if generated AI officers ever had one without the other).
2) Less enemy officers. Less chances to get the full stacking effect, and when it did happen it was a few select very tough ships, not every ship.
3) The 150 replaced armor instead of adding and heavy armor got buffed and its OP cost effectively normalized (because its built in now). Something like an enforcer went from 150 minimum armor to 210 with heavy armor; a Tempest went from 150 to 160, not a huge change but still more.
...Y'know, I wonder how come this wasn't an issue in 0.9.1, but is now.
There were more skills that increased damage and damage penetration? But it might have been an issue that people just didn't realize because they didn't armor tank as much. My .9.1 broadslaughts were obscene frankly.
I think, however that this isn't quite such an issue in .95 and Thaago is incorrect in his estimation. I think its probably OK that kinetic damage just bounces off skilled armor. It would be more an issue if kinetic damage didn't bounce off skilled armor OR if kinetic damage bounced off of all armor regardless. There should be a reason to take the armor skill and one of those reasons should be that it makes it easy to shrug off kinetic damage. If you don't then what is the point of having armor and the skill? Your AI is going to tank kinetic initially on its shield anyway unless it doesn't have one (and if it doesn't have one its going to eat a bunch of HE onto its armor removing it and thus taking it to the point where it cannot benefit from armor nearly as much)
For non heavily armored ships a 100 shot strength kinetic projectile was going to be doing 37.5/187.5 = 20% dmg to hull if they had 0 minimum armor and 18.75 dmg to hull for a ship with 350 armor. 100 dmg is a railgun or Heavy Autocannon. 50 is a needler or Light Auto Cannon. Mark IX's are 200 and HVD's are 275. Which is to say that there is still DR to be had for a large selection of ships with this skill for kinetic damage applied to armor.
And for a non-skilled ship you need onslaught level armor for minimum armor to start applying to Heavy Autocannons. So it was working as intended. With the skill you're well protected from kinetic, without the skill you need to be in an onslaught to be well protected from kinetic.
Now, 350 armor isn't a huge amount but.... A medusa only has 300 armor and a Shrike only has 250. So like... This doesn't seem to be a huge issue to me and maybe the skill should be reverted? Or moved up to 100?
For your numbers, those are without the old elite skill, which all remnants had and probably many officers had in .95rc8. Now that that is gone there is much more room for kinetic shots to still have their shot size matter. Raising the bonus from 50 to 100 without the 50% kinetic damage reduction would be ok and still allow for shot size to matter.
However, I question just how
much of a reduction to hull damage the skill should give. A tempest going from unskilled to skilled goes from 83.3% to 38.5%: a relative reduction of 54% damage. For a pulse laser, the damage goes from 91% to 62.5%, a relative reduction of 30.6%. Both those numbers, for mid caliber kinetic and energy vs a very light ship, are a better damage reduction than Damage Control gives. So if 50 residual armor from IM is not good enough, should we be looking at that skill too? Is the new Impact Mitigation too weak, or is Damage Control too weak and Impact Mitigation has been covering for it the whole time?
I think the main problem is actually that impact mitigation is on the same tier as ranged mastery and not shield modulation. Highly armored capitals and cruisers need both ranged mastery (for that shot speed!) and armor mastery (so as to not die). It would be far better that shield/armor tanking were on the same tier rather than phase/shield.
I agree with this. I hope the phase combat skill is made more universal and moved so it could become possible.
If playtesting finds the new IM to be too weak, and I'm on the fence but it might be, then my proposed change would be to bring back the 10% minimum armor instead of 15% minimum armor damage and add that to the skills. That would be a buff to armored ships primarily, but it would also protect frigates from machine gun/vulcan/beam pd chip damage from fighters and point defense. Would be good for phase ships too.
