Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Pages: 1 [2]

Author Topic: what does impact mitigation's elite effect actually do?  (Read 3143 times)

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23987
    • View Profile
Re: what does impact mitigation's elite effect actually do?
« Reply #15 on: September 17, 2021, 10:41:59 PM »

Ahh, I see, thank you for elaborating! After double-checking - this is actually how reductions to the damage taken by armor work; they're applied to the raw damage *before* the armor's intrinsic damage reduction is calculated.

I don't know if a residual armor of 50 is particularly weak. It means no effect for ships with a base armor of 1000 or above, but helps out all other ships once their armor is gone.

Sure, it's definitely situationally useful! But maybe not so good for an elite effect of an armor-focused skill that you probably wouldn't take if you had a low-armor ship in the first place.
Logged

Vanshilar

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 585
    • View Profile
Re: what does impact mitigation's elite effect actually do?
« Reply #16 on: September 18, 2021, 12:10:22 AM »

Ahh, I see, thank you for elaborating! After double-checking - this is actually how reductions to the damage taken by armor work; they're applied to the raw damage *before* the armor's intrinsic damage reduction is calculated.

Oh I see! I was thinking of it as the game doing the D * H / (H + A) first, then * 0.75 afterward. You're saying any incoming damage is multiplied by 0.75 first, then goes through the damage reduction calculation. In which case it's actually 0.75*D * 0.75*H / (0.75*H + A). Mathematically it ends up with the extra factor of 0.75 for the H's but otherwise the same.

In this case then the desc says it's -25% armor damage taken, but it's actually much more powerful, because the *0.75 is applied twice in the numerator. That's somewhat balanced out by the 0.75 in the denominator, but not completely due to the A term. Hence in this case, an Eagle taking a harpoon hit, it actually reduced the damage by 34%, from 900 (without Impact Mitigation) to 595 (with Impact Mitigation). So it's actually pretty good. In fact -25% is actually the limiting case where armor is 0; the higher the armor value, the more Impact Mitigation does, up until the armor is 425% of the incoming damage, where the H / (H + A) "bottoms out" at 15%, and so Impact Mitigation actually reduces the damage by 41% at that point. After that it gradually decreases in effectiveness (due to the 15% minimum), until the armor is about 567% of the incoming damage, when the damage hits 15%, so it goes back to reducing the damage by 75%. For much of the range Impact Mitigation actually decreases incoming damage by around 35-40%, i.e. you actually only take around 60-65% of the damage compared with if you didn't have Impact Mitigation. (I'll post a graph later that explains this a lot better I think.)

I don't know if there's an easy way to change the desc to eliminate this ambiguity though, since against hull, this only affects the hit strength H and not the actual damage D. "-25% incoming damage against armor"? It might look similar to the current desc "-25% armor damage taken" at first glance but "taken", being the past tense, implies something applied afterward, as opposed to reducing the incoming damage. Probably needs a better wordsmith than I to see if there's a way to clarify what it does easily, or just leave it as-is.
Logged

RustyCabbage

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 347
    • View Profile
Re: what does impact mitigation's elite effect actually do?
« Reply #17 on: September 18, 2021, 12:25:06 AM »

In which case it's actually 0.75*D * 0.75*H / (0.75*H + A). Mathematically it ends up with the extra factor of 0.75 for the H's but otherwise the same.
Another minor point that I didn't see mentioned (on mobile though so I perhaps missed it): When hitting residual armor, that 0.75 multiplier in 0.75*D disappears (like the 2x damage bonus of HE weapons against residual armor).

Anyways yeah, as has been said throughout the thread: the base effect is excellent and even better than you'd expect from the description due to the 25% damage reduction for armor calculations, while the elite effect is somewhat underwhelming, particularly on heavily armored ships (I think it'd be in a pretty good spot at +100; +150 was a bit excessive before, although on the other hand armor tanking could always use a buff :)), but situationally helpful.

Vanshilar

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 585
    • View Profile
Re: what does impact mitigation's elite effect actually do?
« Reply #18 on: September 18, 2021, 12:31:22 AM »

Another minor point that I didn't see mentioned (on mobile though so I perhaps missed it): When hitting residual armor, that 0.75 multiplier in 0.75*D disappears (like the 2x damage bonus of HE weapons against residual armor).

That's because it's hitting hull, not armor. So the 0.75*H applies due to residual armor (i.e. for damage reduction, it's always as if it's trying to hit armor for H / (H + A)), but the 0.75*D doesn't apply since it's not actually hitting armor, but hull instead.
Logged

FooF

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1378
    • View Profile
Re: what does impact mitigation's elite effect actually do?
« Reply #19 on: September 18, 2021, 06:43:46 AM »

Ahh, I see, thank you for elaborating! After double-checking - this is actually how reductions to the damage taken by armor work; they're applied to the raw damage *before* the armor's intrinsic damage reduction is calculated.

I don't know if a residual armor of 50 is particularly weak. It means no effect for ships with a base armor of 1000 or above, but helps out all other ships once their armor is gone.

Sure, it's definitely situationally useful! But maybe not so good for an elite effect of an armor-focused skill that you probably wouldn't take if you had a low-armor ship in the first place.

Right, the Elite portion of the skill is counter-intuitive: it helps low armored ships better than high ones. I glanced at the Skill Changes blog and didn't see the Elite effect of Impact Mitigation mentioned. Some of the other Combat Skills are getting new and interesting effects. If IM isn't being changed much, yes, I think the Elite effect needs to be looked at if it wants to compete at a meta-level with the others.

I'm wondering if +50 armor, if added to whatever armor/residual value, would be enough instead of this weird "minimum value" that we currently have. However, it's not immediately obvious to a player that this is happening as +50 Armor doesn't seem like much when just glancing at the tooltip. That this probably doubles or triples the residual armor of anything below an Eagle might be worth mentioning. After all, this Elite effect only kicks in when you're already "losing" (i.e. taking hits on hull) so its slowing the bleeding, not stopping it.

Alternatively, make the Elite effect raise the 5% minimum residual armor to 10% or 100 armor, whichever is greater, so high-armored ships are affected more but lighter ships aren't left out. An Onslaught, for example would go from 87.5 residual to 175. Obviously a significant increase (not much better than the original +150 IM bonus!) but it's the toughest ship in the game.
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23987
    • View Profile
Re: what does impact mitigation's elite effect actually do?
« Reply #20 on: September 18, 2021, 10:33:28 AM »

In which case it's actually 0.75*D * 0.75*H / (0.75*H + A). Mathematically it ends up with the extra factor of 0.75 for the H's but otherwise the same.
Another minor point that I didn't see mentioned (on mobile though so I perhaps missed it): When hitting residual armor, that 0.75 multiplier in 0.75*D disappears (like the 2x damage bonus of HE weapons against residual armor).

Indeed! And it's applied in the same step of the calculation, so it makes sense to think of it as a multiplier to the damage type's multiplier vs armor.

Alternatively, make the Elite effect raise the 5% minimum residual armor to 10% or 100 armor, whichever is greater, so high-armored ships are affected more but lighter ships aren't left out. An Onslaught, for example would go from 87.5 residual to 175. Obviously a significant increase (not much better than the original +150 IM bonus!) but it's the toughest ship in the game.

Hmm. Something like that, or perhaps something to do with the maximum damage reduction by armor... the latter might be more interesting because, as I think Thaago (I think? not 100% sure) pointed out a while back, that would increase the differentiation between kinetic weapons rather than decrease it (as general purpose increases to minimum armor do, making more things hit the cap).

On the other hand, I'm not sure that "really great at tanking Vulcan and LMG damage" is good enough. On the other other hand, it'd also help a good deal along the way before armor is depleted. Thinking about something like maximum reduction becoming 90% instead of 85%, say. Basically, making armor more good at what it's good at given its strength, rather than broadening what it's good against.

Honestly, just thinking out loud here, don't have strong feelings either way (at least, as of yet).
Logged

Thaago

  • Global Moderator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 7174
  • Harpoon Affectionado
    • View Profile
Re: what does impact mitigation's elite effect actually do?
« Reply #21 on: September 18, 2021, 10:57:17 AM »

There was some discussion in this thread though its a bit out of date: https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=20894.0

IMO increasing the max damage reduction from 85% to 90% would be an impactful elite skill for heavily armored ships. It would still requires blocking high impact shots in some way (so there's room for player/loadout skill) but it expands the amount of time the armor can take chip damage by half - and for a skilled Onslaught the shot size threshold for 'chip damage' starts at something like 300. I'll also note that the combined impact of -25% damage and then minimum damage at 10% is reducing armor damage of small rounds by half, which is pleasing mathwise (100 shot size -> 75 after skill -> 7.5 damage vs high armor with elite. 100 shot size no skill -> 15 damage vs high armor).
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23987
    • View Profile
Re: what does impact mitigation's elite effect actually do?
« Reply #22 on: September 18, 2021, 12:44:31 PM »

Ah yes, that's the thread I was thinking about. I think I'm sold on this change, and at the very least, it's an improvement over the current effect, at least for ships with decent armor.
Logged

FooF

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1378
    • View Profile
Re: what does impact mitigation's elite effect actually do?
« Reply #23 on: September 18, 2021, 01:11:57 PM »

Yes, yes, that was a .8 (.9?) skill effect that went away and I appreciate its return.
Logged
Pages: 1 [2]