Problems with "New" Organig Armour.

[oleg]

" 7. Fixed - Organic Armor was pre-regenerating itself before damage occurred
in combat."

Finally, MM fixed this bug. BUT, and I mean capital BUT, it makes OA very weak due to other, less known OA bugs/feature:

"regeneration" does not actually occur at the end of turn. Instead, "regenerated" points are stored in some invisible storage and will transfer to OA only, and only when a piece of OA is destroyed. Example: make a ship with one OA component. Now start to fire on it for several turns with some relatively week weapon, say DUC II. Check the ship damage - THERE IS NO REGENERATION AT ALL !!
Your OA will die as some primitive aluminium armor. It also means that in every ship, even one with several OA, the Last piece of OA will die without regenerating.

Second problem - but it may have been fixed, I'm not sure - the "renerated" armor does not add regenerating points after being destroyed. Hard to believe but it has been reported by sesveral people on this forum.

Together, "fixed" OA will become almost as bad as regular armor. I do not advocate reversing the fixed bug, but may be MM should increase OA regeneration by say, 5 points ???
OA was not unbalancing, nobody complained about it (PPB is REAL issue, IMHO), so please keep it as attractive ship defence.

[ October 11, 2002, 19:58: Message edited by: oleg ]

[geoschmo]

oleg, this fix you mentined is from Version 1.80. Last week the beta team got Version 1.79. One of the fixes on it was this:

5. Fixed - Ships with regnerating armor will regnerate all of their armor at the end of combat.

Does this sound like it clears up the problem with the bug you are talking about? I am not totally clear on what is the problem myself. I need to think about it a little bit.

There might still be some issues with OA in the curent beta patch related to the fixes made. But hopefully he'll get hem straightened out before a public release patch.

Geoschmo

[Baron Munchausen]

It's a complicated fix, but if you mod the game to have 'special' ships for organic races with the Armor Regen ability on the hull itself the organic armor will regenerate even when completely destroyed. I'd say this should have been done in the original game setup, myself.

But as Geo notes, the change to make armor regen completely replace armor after combat will make organic armor more resilient anyway.

[Suicide Junkie]

You don't even need special ship hulls...

If you add the OA regen ability to every hull, only Organic races wouldbe able to make use of the OA points anyways!

[Ed Kolis]

Wait, ALL organic armor components will regnerate after combat?!? Even destroyed ones??? 'Cause it's already the case that damaged but not destroyed components will regenerate after combat (that's how the "colony ship as minesweeper" exploit worked)... so you're saying that if I have a base with 30 OA and they all get destroyed, then they will all come back after combat, just like shields?!? That, IMO, is a bit powerful!

[PvK]

No, Ed, he's saying how to mod that in. The current fix is that if you still have some OA remaining after a combat, it will heal up completely, but not if all the OA is destroyed.

Some folks would like it to heal up even when all destroyed, so adding regen to the hull would be a way to mod that.

PvK

[Q]

Is this new change in organic armor repair balanced? Any reports from beta-testers? It sounds quite powerful to me, but the abolished pre-combat regeneration was of course also very potent.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Q:
Is this new change in organic armor repair balanced? Any reports from beta-testers? It sounds quite powerful to me, but the abolished pre-combat regeneration was of course also very potent.

In what way? The case could be made the changes made actually weaken organic armor. I don't see how anyone could say it makes them more potent.

Geoschmo

[TerranC]

Well, you'd have a regenerating dreadnought that if not taken down in one battle, it keeps going and going and going and going...

Although I think that was the original point of organic armor.

[PvK]

Uff. I hate how Internet Explorer forgets input windows when the connection times out and I try to use the Back button.

I wrote a detailed reply, now lost, but the gist was this. No, the new healing after combat just plain makes sense, and isn't commonly occuring enough to be important for balance. After all, it used to be based on the number of turns between the organic ship got damaged and the end of the combat, since it would heal up quite quickly until the Last enemy ship was destroyed or the combat ended.

PvK