Experimental Build: Very very very very heavily armored ship

[athios]

Sooo... I got bored again decided to try something else stupid & ridiculous.

Ship build:
All basic essentials
2× small weapons
1× Armored Bulkheads
2× Reinforced Structures
3× Void-Shield Pulse Booster
2× Fuel Tank 3
Final Armor rating: 43



Took it out for a spin.
First combat, never got hit — needed to stop using +Defense Talents.
Second combat, got hit by two Torps, 2 Officers nearly died (79-85 HP dmg each). They probably would have died if I didn't have the armor plating.

Third combat. Deliberately didn't use +Defense Talents for first two rounds until after recording some data.
Getting hit by Torp (-56 dmg)
Combat Log

Initial Analysis
Hmm... will the Combat Log specifically say so if there was a critical hit from the enemy?
HellFire & MK-Alpha do 50 & 66 Void Damage respectively, but 3× Void-Shields should block 60. Yet still getting heavy damage to components and crew (about 20-30% dmg per hit, based on 4 hits). It seems Armor is very good at soaking Hull damage, but not that great at preventing secondary damage.

I'll try again with the Engineer +30% Armor Talent and see what that does.

Questions for Devs
Do critical hits show up in Combat Log? <No>
Does the -20 Void Damage from each Void-Shield stack? <Yes>
Do Pilot & Electronics soak only affect chance to get hit, or also used to calculate amount of damage taken? <Yes,No; Shields buffer damage to components>

[grävling]

Mar 25, 2017 3:52:14 GMT -5 athios said:

Sooo... I got bored again decided to try something else stupid & ridiculous.

Ship build:
All basic essentials
2× small weapons
1× Armored Bulkheads
2× Reinforced Structures
3× Void-Shield Pulse Booster
2× Fuel Tank 3
Final Armor rating: 43

Nothing stupid there. Lots of us want to build the perfect turtle. I think this is not it, though. Fill this ship with assassins, and make sure they arrive in one piece to deal damage is the plan. Your plan has too much fuel tank and not enough energy sorts of shielding -- what is that called again? You have the pulse booster, but there is another one. I forget.

Took it out for a spin.
First combat, never got hit — needed to stop using +Defense Talents.
Second combat, got hit by two Torps, 2 Officers nearly died (79-85 HP dmg each). They probably would have died if I didn't have the armor plating.

This, I think is worth worrying over. Exactly how fragile do we want our officers to be for max fun? Bad if building a turtle like this means they 'nearly die', unless for damn sure they would have without the turtle.

I am finding my officers, on Brutal, die rather more often than I find reasonable, and indeed I wondered if my medical bay just made my doctor a target. (fallen says no.)

Third combat. Deliberately didn't use +Defense Talents for first two rounds until after recording some data.
Getting hit by Torp (-56 dmg)
Combat Log
Post-combat Ship Report
Post-combat Crew Report
Post-combat Talent use
Final repair bill

Initial Analysis
Hmm... will the Combat Log specifically say so if there was a critical hit from the enemy?
HellFire & MK-Alpha do 50 & 66 Void Damage respectively, but 3× Void-Shields should block 60. Yet still getting heavy damage to components and crew (about 20-30% dmg per hit, based on 4 hits). It seems Armor is very good at soaking Hull damage, but not that great at preventing secondary damage.

I'll try again with the Engineer +30% Armor Talent and see what that does.

Questions for Devs
Do critical hits show up in Combat Log?
Does the -20 Void Damage from each Void-Shield stack?
Do Pilot & Electronics soak only affect chance to get hit, or also used to calculate amount of damage taken?

I want those questions answered too, and critical hits do not seem to show in the combat log, but I wish they did.

[xdesperado]

I don't so much want a "turtle" ship as I want one that when combined with good crew skills and talents allows me to reach boarding range with a good chance that my combat types won't already be half dead from the enemy fire.
Avoiding getting hit completely through ship build and talents is great until the enemy gets lucky and lands a few shots and then suddenly your wading in blood and it's your own crews not the enemies.

[Cory Trese]

Easy fix, Armor max is actually 20 in the rules so you're just seeing a basic overflow check that's missing.

I'll add for the next release. Thanks for catching this.

[fallen]

Mar 25, 2017 3:52:14 GMT -5 athios said:

It seems Armor is very good at soaking Hull damage, but not that great at preventing secondary damage.

Armor protects Hull. Shields reduce Hull damage translation to component damage.

[athios]

Mar 25, 2017 6:15:37 GMT -5 xdesperado said:

Avoiding getting hit completely through ship build and talents is great until the enemy gets lucky and lands a few shots and then suddenly your wading in blood and it's your own crews not the enemies.

Exactly. That's why I wanted to delve in more about what the various ship bits and bobs do...

Cory and Andrew, thanks for the clarifications. What about the other questions?

[bobc]

Mar 25, 2017 9:17:40 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

Easy fix, Armor max is actually 20 in the rules so you're just seeing a basic overflow check that's missing.

I'll add for the next release. Thanks for catching this.

Is 20 armour the structural maximum?  I'm hoping / assuming that stacking the right buffs will take my armour value far higher than that?

[athios]

Mar 25, 2017 5:01:57 GMT -5 grävling said:

Your plan has too much fuel tank and not enough energy sorts of shielding -- what is that called again? You have the pulse booster, but there is another one. I forget.

...

This, I think is worth worrying over. Exactly how fragile do we want our officers to be for max fun? Bad if building a turtle like this means they 'nearly die', unless for damn sure they would have without the turtle.

I am finding my officers, on Brutal, die rather more often than I find reasonable, and indeed I wondered if my medical bay just made my doctor a target. (fallen says no.)

I just got the Fuel Tanks in order to get rid of dead weight from the Cargo Holds, which I didn't need anymore. I'm already swimming in credits.

You are thinking of Defensive Matrix something. That gives +Defense%, which I think is chance to avoid getting hit, not damage mitigation. Currently no upgrades that boost Shields, which is what xdesperado and I are wanting. Once those are implemented, it will solve the "fragile officers" issue.

[fallen]

Mar 25, 2017 3:52:14 GMT -5 athios said:

Questions for Devs
Do critical hits show up in Combat Log?
Does the -20 Void Damage from each Void-Shield stack?
Do Pilot & Electronics soak only affect chance to get hit, or also used to calculate amount of damage taken?

1. Don't think so.
2. Yes, they stack.
3. No.

[resistor]

Great experiment! I've wanted to try something like this and its interesting to see how it turned out for you.

Take this karma point!

[Cory Trese]

Mar 25, 2017 10:48:18 GMT -5 bobc said:

Mar 25, 2017 9:17:40 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

Easy fix, Armor max is actually 20 in the rules so you're just seeing a basic overflow check that's missing.

I'll add for the next release. Thanks for catching this.

Is 20 armour the structural maximum?  I'm hoping / assuming that stacking the right buffs will take my armour value far higher than that?

Maybe, but at this point, no. 20 will be the hard max.

We might consider some diminishing returns but really the balance is about stack and combo, rather than max out.

Critical to think about balance regarding damage soak because it is symmetrical! So critical, you really don't want to face fully math-hard inbalanced ship builds, right?

[Officer Genious]

Mar 25, 2017 19:25:39 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

Mar 25, 2017 10:48:18 GMT -5 bobc said:

Is 20 armour the structural maximum?  I'm hoping / assuming that stacking the right buffs will take my armour value far higher than that?

Maybe, but at this point, no. 20 will be the hard max.

We might consider some diminishing returns but really the balance is about stack and combo, rather than max out.

Critical to think about balance regarding damage soak because it is symmetrical! So critical, you really don't want to face fully math-hard inbalanced ship builds, right?

You... have a point. Having a guy slowly whittle you to death isn't much fun. Nor is it much fun to slowly kill an enemy either. That being said, officers are pretty fragile.

[Cory Trese]

We will keep working on providing a variety of bonus types for defense of the ship, hull, crew and officers.

Critical to these upgrade systems will be providing reasonable and limiting rules.

We will have to find the limits as we go. The important thing is that we add them ASAP and start collecting data.

Luckily very, very few people have come close to 20 with Armor so most of the test dataset remains valid.

[fallen]

Interesting that everyone is talking about how "fragile" officers are. I am not seeing this in any of my games. I imagine it is just a perception thing that is going around. There is no code that targets officers over standard crew for any reason

[athios]

I think it's just a mindset thing.

In games where I don't focus on combat, losing an officer is a big deal, because I "care" about them (took a damn long time to build them up). I would be very pissed and gripe about imbalance if a senior officer died from two torp hits in a single turn. But no, it's not common, just highly memorable.

In games that are combat heavy, damage is inevitable and essentially everyone is replaceable. There is a steady rotation of crew-->officer as people die off from ship and crew combat, and there is less a big deal if I am mentally prepared for it and plan ahead by having spare/backup crew on board.