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New player here. Lost interest quickly due to Integrity Field Generator. :/


Jhaerik
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I was rather under the impression that ships were going to be destroyed part by part, components disabled, ect.

 

However what I got was just a bunch of HP bars floating around DPS'ing each other. :/

 

Why does this exist exactly?  It really feels like it doesn't matters how I design a ship, it's just a big ball of hp that trades numbers with other big balls of hp. I started off trying to armor the correct places, take facing into account, protect vulnerable components, ect... 6 hours later I was just slapping things on in big cubes and couldn't tell much if any of a difference.

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Ooof. Honestly for most players the Integrity Field Generator is what lets them keep playing Avorion. I use it tons, but that doesn't meant that I build giant cubes, quite the opposite in fact. It challenges me to build nice-looking designs while slipping in IF Generators so that the ship can take some damage.

 

Keep playing. Don't get just one part get you down :)

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Yes, the game has opted for "HP bar battles" (HBB) rather than "destruction battles" (DB).

 

If you focus enough, you still can destroy some vulnerable and strategic parts, but I think that Ships integrity is more like a weakness that can appear if the ship is not well built, and not a battle main point.

 

The HBB was increased with the introduction of the torpedoes in the 0.16.6:

We've got a few changes in this patch to improve this behavior. First off, we're buffing integrity fields. Second, we're adding a system where blocks won't be immediately blown off, to ensure that you get a fighting chance while taking damage. In order to understand why we're doing what we're doing, here's some explanation on how damage in Avorion actually works.

 

Each block has its own HP, which is a threshold until it breaks, which is normally its HP that it contributes to the ship (with several exceptions, but we're not going into too much detail here. For example, inner blocks have a higher break threshold to make intricate ship designs combat-viable and to make designing more fun).

Damage to blocks is ALSO directed to the normal HP of a ship (health bar). What integrity fields do, is reduce the damage that a block itself takes, so it takes longer to break, while damage to your durability stays the same.

With this patch, we're doubling damage reduction to block HP through integrity fields, and blocks protected by integrity fields also only send 50% of the damage taken to the ship's HP, instead of 100%.

 

We're also adding another major change: Blocks on PLAYER owned ships (not NPCs!) that take damage start breaking only after a certain threshold of ship HP is reached, based on difficulty.

For example, on "Normal" difficulty, this threshold is 40%, so your ship's blocks only start breaking after your ship has 40% or less health.

 

That mentioned block break threshold (BBT) depends of difficulty, which is in some way indicative that block break is not a game core feature:

This threshold scales by difficulty:

Beginner: Threshold is 0%: Your blocks will never break.

Easy: Treshold is 20%: Your blocks will start to break once your ship hits 20% or less HP.

Normal: Treshold is 40%

Veteran: Treshold is 60%

Difficult: Treshold is 80%

Hard & Insane: Treshold is 100%: Blocks will start breaking immediately (pre-patch behavior)

(This threshold is only for player ships, not IA's)

 

Are DB viable?

I think that yes, it could be a mechanic with more importance in the game with an active presence in battles. I would even say that it would not require big changes.

 

  • IFG block mechanic is nice, it introduces complexity in the construction aspect of the game. In order to introduce DB, its effect has to be reduced significantly.
  • Not everyone likes DB?  Well, as with the collision damage, BBT could be a separate game setting, not linked to difficulty.
     
  • What about massively torpedoes damage? I find it ok. If a torpedoe has a certain damage and it hits you, well, you should suffer that damage, right? If the IA kills you easily, low the difficulty. Is the IA launching too much torpedoes? Is the IA launching very powerfull torpedoes?
     
  • You are able to repair your broken blocks anywhere, and in cheaper way in stations. Nice. If with the introduction of DB the reparation cost are to high, reparations costs in general could be lowered.
     

 

DB would also in some way mitigate the Health/durability issue: https://steamcommunity.com/app/445220/discussions/0/135510393198186982/.

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I actually haven't played since I posted. Thus why I hadn't checked back until now. (Also been busy with life.)

 

From my rather limited game experience... On insane difficulty the only things on my ship that would break before the entire ship exploded were corner pieces and things like external solar panels (which have zero reason to be placed externally for some weird reason.

 

I think the main issue is the game doesn't use anything resembling the voxel based destruction I was hoping for. Instead you just coat your ship in huge slabs of  thin armor which have the effective hit points due to their surface area that they are just never destroyed before the ship itself.

 

There needs to be a reason to place something other than turrets and armor externally for there to ever be any real strategy to ship building other than purely cosmetic.

 

I was hoping for Eve meets Cosmoteer... but it's just not like that. It's just a really dumbed down Eve with cosmetic ship design.

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I was both bummed and delighted upon discovering the integrity field generator. Since then, I’ve not cared much about how it affects the game (though I sometimes missed tearing apart the little ships in the early iron stages). This post has made me reconsider it.

 

One of my first thoughts immediately after reading this post was: imagine the game dividing your ship systematically into equal-volume chunks made of any combination of block types, which chunks are physically destroyed after its combined HP is drained.  This would mean that you could focus fire on one particular area of a hugely wide and thin armor piece that would normally take ages to destroy, but is instead partially destroyed (because you focused fire on a particular area). Although the blocks that your ship is composed of cannot actually be divided by the player and different blocks merged together in our current game, this adjustment really wouldn’t cause many issues in the game since you’re not allowed to tweak your ship plan when you have a damaged ship, anyway, and your ship is divided into these tiny pieces only when taking damage (not in the editor). I really want to stress that this would eliminate the invulnerability of thin but wide armor and also the giant weak blocks such as shields when placed as a huge chunk.

 

The first idea I like so much now that I’ve typed it that I don’t like the second one I’ve had so much anymore. I’ll share it, anyway. One of my most recent thoughts was: what if we compromise between the beauty builders who build fragile hulls and the fun-fighting players who miss the realism in concentration of fire? Well, that’d be great! The compromise would be something like setting the integrity field’s multiplier to 2X instead of 10X. And/or only allowing a certain volume of integrity field generators directly related to the volume of the ship.

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Honestly I'd just prefer another game type. Normal and Realistic (or maybe Strategic/Simulator)

 

Normal mode would be exactly as it is now, with the current option to flag creative mode.

 

The other option would effectively act as a separate difficulty. No integrity field generator, weaker shields, less resources, add in a fuel cost, and have no option for creative mode.  Also where the box for creative mode is normally located add the option for "lock alternate control scheme" to force people into the secondary F2 control setup. This would make for MUCH more strategic gameplay. One where you'd really have to consider more than just "can I kill it" and think more along the lines "is it worth killing." Also you'd actually have to put some serious thought into both designing and piloting. Taking good angles, and not giving them an angle on the more vulnerable areas of your ship when shields go down.

 

While building pretty ships is great and all... I don't think there is going to be a lot of lasting appeal. Games that rely on "pretty graphics and a cool idea" tend to disappear the moment a bigger company uses that same idea with even prettier graphics. You need some form of difficulty for people to give a crap 5-10 years down the line. If you just want to cash in, sell some copies and stop support... that's one thing. If you want to make a game people will remember a decade from now... maybe listen to the life long gamer. :)

 

As someone who loves the WarThunder realistic/simulator battles, this greatly appeals to me.

 

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As another note I rather question the reasoning behind the Integrity Field Generator enabling more creative builds to begin with.

 

There is already another path to making more aesthetic ships less prone to damage. That is the combination of high shields, a shield hardener and shield boosters.

 

I think the real issue with this is the weird limitations on turrets. Personally I think that turrets should just be limited by ship size so other options other than "spam as many turrets as possible" is a viable option.

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