Armor, Shields and Damage (FAQ)

Nyx · #1 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.

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LintMan · #2 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 · #3 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 · #4 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 · #5 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?

apache · #6 February 7th, 2001, 02:34 AM

Wow, that is some damn fine research work. Definitely organic armor should not add up extra points if there is no partial damage.

" 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."

But you don't have to know which one is damaged. Like you said, they are all identical. If one of your Quantum engines are partially damaged, then who cares which one it is? The program could automatically count damage on the first component in a list of identical components, if one of those are selected to be damaged. Once that one is destroyed, it could pick another component to damage.

Drake · #7 February 7th, 2001, 03:39 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Zanthis:
How does this "damaged" list indicate that Quantum Engine-III #6 is damaged? The components look identical, but you have six of them.

Well, I don't know the data structure for how the game was programmed, or any of those details. However, when I design something, usually each object has a unique identifier so other objects can refer to it. Simply keep a separate current damaged list, and on it you have the component ID, and the points of damage taken. Only necessary for combat, and anything on the list isn't damaged.

I only proposed that method though because you brought up the point that modifying the data structure of components to add partial damage might be a problem in terms of extra memory needed to process. Since you don't need the info outside of combat, restrict it to the combat engine only. If adding partial data info isn't a big deal, then add it. Either way, problem fixed.

-Drake