A possible overhaul on the damage/turrets/armor system

[Akama]

Hey folks,

 

I've been a fan of this game for a long, long time. With that being said, some of the stuff I'll suggest here probably won't be to everyone's taste. These changes are geared towards making the game somewhat more realistic (not LITERALLY realistic, but you'll understand once you read it!) and interesting.

 

First of all, I think the number of turrets shouldn't be limited by PP, but by something else, or even not limited at all - aside from technical limitations you'd have to work around. Perhaps this could be done with an ammo system - you'd need a lot of ammo, stored somewhere inside of the ship, to fire a large number of turrets for a sustained period of time. This could be very expensive, very heavy, and especially very dangerous. This could be solved with turrets requiring either ammo or energy to fire, and functioning like fighters in the way that you could transform a turret you have into a blueprint and make many more of that. It would also be way easier to standardize a ship's weaponry.

 

On the aspect of danger, I think critical parts (such as generators, fuel if it's ever introduced into the game, torpedo storages, that sort of stuff) should produce catastrophic results if ever blown up. It should be a design's first concern to properly armor its 'citadel' if it wishes to survive. The current system relies on a matter of 'HP' to calculate damage, and sturdier blocks naturally have more HP, but I find that somewhat lacking. The main issue you have with one of your generators blowing up is that it's costly to replace. With what I have in mind, you'd be lucky to even survive a central, large generator blowing up. Likewise, a critical hit on an enemy's exposed entrails should reward you with a large, satisfying explosion. 

 

This ties into the usage of armor and, just maybe, ammo types. Imagine if blocks, aside from their HP, had an armor rating metric. Projectiles could potentially punch through said armor and reach the ship's inside, and do it without largely damaging the armor block itself. If implementation is taken to another level, variables such as armor angling could be taken into account as well. This would add another whole level of depth into the game; the fancy-looking ships from the workshop, normally featuring sharp angles on their armor, would do something aside from looking good. This naturally tends to limit overpowered ships, because you'd either armor yourself adequately OR have a very large number of turrets and ammo. You could potentially do both, but you'd end up with a very expensive design.

 

On the matter of ammo types, maybe ammo factories could produce different kinds of shells/ammo for certain types of turrets. A cannon, for example, could fire a purely HE shell, a purely AP one, some sort of APHE, so on and so forth. HE could be potentially devastating for an under-armoured vessel, but utterly useless against thick armor. Those are historical examples and we're talking about space, so there's a lot of room for imagining something that makes sense and is easy to balance. How energy or lightning should react against armor is up for debate, for example. Again, the current model uses something like a 'shoot the enemy until it's dead' system and combat can feel very dull at times.

 

When all of this is taken into account, the game drastically changes. You could be potentially oneshot by a low tier ship's torpedo hitting an ill-protected generator, whose explosion could chain into everything sensitive nearby and decimate the insides of your ship. A thick-armored monster could perhaps even bounce AP right off, but would be tremendously sluggish and easily overwhelmed. You could make a small gunship with tens of turrets, but a single penetration could detonate your appropriately large ammo rack and spell your doom. You get the idea.

 

I understand this would take a tremendous amount of work and would throw previous systems into the garbage bin, but personally I think this sort of approach would make the game even more enjoyable. It would naturally encourage smart designs and punish mistakes. Of course, the enemy generation system would have to account for this as well lest the game becomes too easy.

[DivineEvil]

The armor/damage/weapon overhaul is the topic, that has been debated for a very long time. The idea that something has to be done about it seems to be completely undeniable. In the end, it comes down to the opinions and which of them Koonschi and his team will find more appealing. I will respond to your suggestions in order, to avoid quote blocks from taking space unnecessarily.

 

- I agree, that there has to be a principle of increasing turret slots apart from System Modules. From the perspective of the current design, the most viable way to do so might be to add Weapon Control blocks, which provide additional arbitrary slots based on total ship's volume, the relative volume of such blocks on that ship and materials used for building these blocks. It can be vulnerable, but should not be explosive, as the penalty of losing control over the turrets, that rely on Weapon Control blocks to function, is sufficient. I have argued for the turret blueprint conversion and reproduction literally for years, and there's no valid argument against this mechanic in existence.

 

- The question of the dangerous components is open for interpretation, but it is a good idea overall since it allows explosive and penetrating weapons to shine without overpowered stats. It can have a chance component in which the probability of a catastrophic event is proportional to the damage already sustained, i.e. a 50%-damaged Energy Battery has a 50% chance to explode upon receiving any additional damage.

 

- The idea of considering armor angles for penetration is questionable. It might not worth the effort and the potential performance drops caused by additional processing during combat. The use of armor is currently tied against mobility, not firepower, and there's little incentive to go further than making some weapons less or more effective at destroying or bypassing it.

 

- Personally, I despise any notion of the ammunition as a separate commodity or supply, including currently present components for crafting Turrets. Technologically advanced civilizations, that can warp around through the galaxy, should not have issues fabricating any type of ammunition in plentiful amount, and any storage space it might occupy should be neglected entirely. Different sorts of warheads should only exist as a feature of Torpedoes and as optional perk of some Turrets, which modifies its Damage Type. Damage Types themselves should be adjusted to make more sense because currently, they don't make much.

 

- What will have to be sacrificed to make some of these adjustments is irrelevant - these relate to the very basics of the game process, and until the associated problems are addressed there's little benefit from working on something more advanced.

[Vis]

Yeah, the thing I hate most about this game is how hard it is to standardize a ship's weaponry. We need a way to make copies of turrets instead of only being able to build what is available at a turret factory, because if you find a turret at a turret factory that you like and want it to be a standardized weapon for all your ships... Before you can get enough materials to build all the turrets you could ever need, an update resets all the turret factories and that design is lost forever. :(

 

But I don't think ammo should be a thing. It makes sense for other games, but I think it would just be a pain to have to do that for a whole fleet of ships or many fleets if you build a lot of ships. If this was a game where you only fly one ship I could see that being a thing.

[FuryoftheStars]

Yeah, I'm in agreement with the others on ammo.  While it could add some new dynamics, etc, I think the amount of additional management it'll add will be too much for this game.  Maybe if there were ways to have supply ships and automated resupply, etc, that might make me reconsider.

 

I do like the idea of volatile blocks and getting number of turrets off from system upgrades, though.

[Vis]

Yeah, I'm in agreement with the others on ammo.  While it could add some new dynamics, etc, I think the amount of additional management it'll add will be too much for this game.  Maybe if there were ways to have supply ships and automated resupply, etc, that might make me reconsider.

 

I do like the idea of volatile blocks and getting number of turrets off from system upgrades, though.

Yeah, I see Avorion as much more of an RTS kind of game. How much of a pain would it be if you had to reload all your units in StarCraft?

If Avorion was a turn based strategy game, like Space Empires V, then I would be okay with needing to reload/resupply ships. But in that game you only have 'ammo' and 'supplies'. You didn't need to make different kinds of ammo for each type of weapon. That would be too much of a pain.

[FuryoftheStars]

Sorry, somehow double posted.  ???

[FuryoftheStars]

Did you ever play Earth 2150?  Non-energy weapons had limited ammo, but resupplying wasn’t too hard.  You plopped down an ammo supply structure, assigned some light aircraft to it, and it took care of the rest.  You had some control over at what ammo level resupply was requested and the structure could only support just so far and so much ammo in each resupply aircraft.

 

Still, without some kind of management system like that for this game, not sure I’d want it.

[Vis]

Did you ever play Earth 2150?  Non-energy weapons had limited ammo, but resupplying wasn’t too hard.  You plopped down an ammo supply structure, assigned some light aircraft to it, and it took care of the rest.  You had some control over at what ammo level resupply was requested and the structure could only support just so far and so much ammo in each resupply aircraft.

 

Still, without some kind of management system like that for this game, not sure I’d want it.

No, I never played that game, but resupplying in Space Empires wasn't hard, because you could build a resupply center on one of your colonies and if I remember right it would auto-resupply your ships in that sector with ammo and supplies up to a set amount each turn. But it would take a massive fleet or many fleets in need of supplies to out pace the amount of supplies the resupply center could do. So it only took 1 turn to resupply your fleet most of the time.

[Akama]

On the subject of ammo management, what I had in mind was something akin to an 'ammo factory' block, utilizing a resource similar to how energy works. You wouldn't need to manually purchase or equip any given sort of ammunition, unlike torpedoes, and the amount of ammo you'd be able to fabricate would dictate for how long cannon-type based weapons would be able to fire continuously least their stocks deplete. I thought of it as the price to pay for an over-armed ship, but it is not of paramount importance. Ammo also shouldn't, under this model, cost any resources to be fabricated. It is thought of as merely a detail, not something you'd have to actively manage. From the posts I believe I made myself hard to understand; to be clear, I did NOT mean an ammo system like the current torpedo system. You could, for example, set your factory, configure which kind of ammo (maybe with varying costs in the amount fabricated per second/minute?) each weapon or weapon group would use, and be done with it. It would not cost any resource or require any micromanagement whatsoever aside from this initial configuration.

 

About the possible implications of armor angling's impact on performance, it greatly depends. If the game is being engineered as an RTS, in the sense of having tens of ships battling each other at the same time, it -might- have an impact depending on how it's implemented. Again, the goal isn't to overcomplicate gameplay as much as it is to reward good ship designs that feature sloped/angled armor on their hull. The formulas and metodology utilized can greatly vary, however, and it is impossible to answer whether or not the performance price would be costly.

 

Overall, the most important things in my opinion are the turret and damage model issues, which shouldn't be that hard to implement and would add wonders to the gameplay.

[FuryoftheStars]

Hmm, ok.  So essentially like an energy generator only for ammo.  I'm not as against that idea, though some balancing would need to be done so that small/early ships that are heavily reliant on ammo turrets aren't hard nerfed by it, while not making the inclusion of it almost irrelevant on larger ships.  Maybe some kind of diminishing return of fabrication speeds/amounts?  It'd also be good if turrets had a default ammo storage which could be expanded with the use of turret base blocks, dedicated ammo storage blocks, the inclusion of ammo storage with the ammo fab blocks, or some combination thereof.

[Vis]

Armor angling wouldn't have a big impact on performance at all. If From the Depths can do it, than Avorion should be able too as well. Of course they would work a little different because in From the Depths blocks have both an HP value and an Armor value. And the sloped armor in From the Depths I think gives shots a chance to skip off the armor and do no damage based on the Armor value and the angle it hits at rather than do less damage. But I think my suggestion to have it just reduce the damage would work better for Avorion because of the lack of an Armor value for blocks.

[TESL4]

An interesting Idea, but idk if I like the being limited by ammo. 

 

Sure energy weapons would be fine, but that would make them pretty OP compared to ships that need a ton of storage in order to fight.  Energy weapon based ships would be lighter, less volatile, faster, smaller, and just purely better overall.  It would also add a bit too much grinding, imo, to a game where the traders are already not fully stocked. 

 

Also, I personally like needing to put in turret hardpoint systems to increase the number of turrets.  The only thing I'd change is maybe increase the number of availible turrets as the ship scale increases, ever so slightly.  Kinda weird that a 15 slot ship would only be able to fit 2 small millitary turrets and 1 small civil turret.

 

I do think armor needs some kind of rework or benifit other than just providing "extra HP" and stopping railguns.  There are other suggestions out there that might fit better instead of relying on a penetration value based on ammunition.  For instance, the new damage types can kind of already give you weapons with different damage types (ammo).  There could be more variety for kinetic based weapons instead of purely physical damage that would essentially give different ammo types (give turrets some sort of toggle between damage types possibly, idk).

 

I'm just not sure if it would really fit with the game to have ammo.

 

[gn_leugim]

one idea for the ammo would be to have blocks dedicated to ammo. those would not actually count as ammo storage, but as ammo generators / logistical centres. if a turret is built on one/next to one, then no penalty to turret speed or damage occurs, but if it is further away, the turret suffers a penalty.

 

The idea is that ammo still has to be moved around (and also generated i some way) and therefore it may cause constrains in the fire rate of a weapon. if these blocks are within a (short) radius of a turret, then ammo is quickly dispatched to where it is needed and no harm occurs, otherwise, turrets have problems firing.