Armor, Shields and Damage (FAQ)

Zanthis · #1 February 6th, 2001, 07:26 PM

SunDevil:
Well, they do each have hit points right now. At least, they have a maximum hit points. They *don't* have a current hit points because they cannot be damaged, only destroyed.

This is most likely a programming choice for two reasons. First, it is easier (less code to write) to just not track individual component damage. Second, it requires less space (memory). Every component would get bigger by at least 2 bytes. How many components have you seen in tactical combat? Not that many right? But guess what, it would increase the size of every components in game, not just in combat. So, how many components have you seen anywhere in the game at one time (remember to include fighters, troops, mines and platforms)?

The only way to avoid that memory waste would be to make two Versions of the component structure, one with current hit points, one without. Then, in tactical combat, use the former, otherwise, use the latter. Lots of programming and doubles the work required whenever code changes are made to the components structure (since you have to change both Versions).

Drake:
Another possibility is to have two "this is the component we are trying to kill" pointers. One for normal attacks, which will typically be pointing to a piece of your armor, and one for armor-skipping attacks which would be pointing to something other than armor.

I said in the FAQ that I thought they already did this (using only one pointer) so it shouldn't be a problem to implement two.

[This message has been edited by Zanthis (edited 06 February 2001).]

[This message has been edited by Zanthis (edited 06 February 2001).]

Seawolf · #2 February 6th, 2001, 07:52 PM

Kudoes to Z for getting that information but I think no one has pointed out is that if we go to this damaged but not destroyed system for components what impact wil it have on the game? If they perform at normal levels then there is little point to keeping track of damage. Damage control could be fixing them while combat is ongoing to account for needing to reach the threshold to destroy it.

Also the entire repair system would have to be converted to a point system rather than a component systems. How much work that would intail I don't know but would guess alot as well as increase exponentially the memeory requirements. While making the game more realistic I don't think that the benefit received outweighs the cost involved.

------------------
Seawolf on the prowl

Nyx · #3 February 6th, 2001, 08:05 PM

Why not just have "extra damage to armor" and "extra damage to internals" as fields to store the info and extra damage is never aplied to shields (as it should never be from what I can tell)? Organic armor wouldn't regenerate at all until damage was taken and then it would only regenerate against the "extra damage to armor" value. The above would also break the CA weirdness as extra damage to armor would pile up and tear down the CA like I presume it is supposed to.

------------------
Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.

LintMan · #4 February 6th, 2001, 09:08 PM

Zanthis - great work!

This is one screwey damage modelling system!

I think the best fix is to allow partial component damage. If it's data storage of management concerns that prevent this - it even only needs to be tracked during combat - let's justr say that all partial damage is automatically repaired (by damage control teams) after combat (that's how I thought it already worked!), so only destroyed components would need to be repaired at space yards, etc.

If the partial damage is only tracked in combat, the data management and storage is minimal and much of the screwiness is fixed.

It sounds like OA needs some tweaking also - I'd prefer if it didn't store up points while undamaged, but if there was partial damage tracking, that should be healed. If removing the built-up repair storage made OA a bit wimpy, maybe then its repair rate could be increased.

For Crystalline, it seems like the absorption should be on a per-armor-component basis. In other words, on a ship with 4 CA's, it you hit with a single weapon for 60 points of damage, that damage would be applied to a single piece of armor, and only THAT piece's absorption would kick in, so only 15 back to shields, not 60. A separate hit on that or another CA piece would also have 15 points absorbed. (Again, this might need to be rebalanced fr more absorption if this made it too wimpy)

Lastly, multiple fighter weapons or grouped weapons, should still count as individual attacks for the above purposes. As it stands now, emissive armor is totally worthless.

Zanthis · #5 February 6th, 2001, 10:07 PM

Seawolf:
I am not advocating keeping track of partial component damage outside of combat. I think it would be more trouble than its worth.

Nyx:
I agree completely. This is the solution I would pick were I in MM place. Especially OA regenerating "extra armor damage." I think that is very advisable when eliminating the regeneartion build up.

LintMan:
I don't think CA should be changed in that fashion. Just fixing it so "extra [armor] damage" isn't pulled out to not only restrike shields, but re-generate shields would make massive CA armor beatable even by a weapon that did one point of damage.

Basically, as long as you were doing less damage than it could turn into shields, every other hit would do no damage.

Drake · #6 February 7th, 2001, 01:09 AM

You actually wouldn't need to track partial damage to components outside of combat, so you wouldn't constantly need to store that information with the component, increasing its size everywhere in the game. Couldn't you just create a temp damage tracking table one combat starts for all the components? Heck, you'd only need to track components that were hit - when applying damage, if you don't see an entry for that component, it's undamaged.

Then you're probably only looking at a performance hit, the effective of which I can't determine not knowing the programming details. You might run into an issue with massive battles, but the additional amount of info should be a small percentage of what it's already tracking. Am I missing something?

I do think this ought to get passed on to Aaron, if it hasn't been already. I know it was mentioned that they know how it works, and these are just some screwy things that come up, but it may just be broken... I'm guessing that the stuff with organic armor is a bug, not an intended effect, and that the game doesn't check to make sure regenerated damage resistance points don't exceed the max for the ship. That seems more likely to me then that it's working as intended.
-Drake

[This message has been edited by Drake (edited 06 February 2001).]

Zanthis · #7 February 7th, 2001, 01:44 AM

Drake wrote:

quote:
You actually wouldn't need to track partial damage to components outside of combat, so you wouldn't constantly need to store that information with the component, increasing its size everywhere in the game.

True, but if components had a "current damage" stored with them, the easiest coding solution is to make it a universal change. OTOH, since I believe tactical combat is basically a separate program, using to different data structures for components may not be so bad.

quote:
Couldn't you just create a temp damage tracking table one combat starts for all the components? Heck, you'd only need to track components that were hit - when applying damage, if you don't see an entry for that component, it's undamaged.

But this gets messy. How does this "damaged" list indicate that Quantum Engine-III #6 is damaged? The components look identical, but you have six of them. Basically, extra work for the programmer. Not saying impossible, or hard, just extra work. Other solutions are easier to do and would appear to do the same thing.

quote:
I do think this ought to get passed on to Aaron, if it hasn't been already.

Yeah, guess I'll mail it off. Is se4@malfador.com the address to use?