SE4 Stock Balance Mod

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
Armor is a cheap, early game option.

I agree that it should be, but I am not sure it really is. Since you have to research chemistry as a prerequisite. It's no easier to get early armor then it is to get early shields unfotunatly. If it weren't for getting to stealth armor I'd venture a lot of people wouldn't even research it. And very few use much of it on their frontline warships. Usually it'a a piece here or there to finish off a design when nothing else will fit.

Geoschmo

[oleg]

Another option to balance armor - increase EA effect. If we also reduce the benefit of mounts, it can make high-damage, low reload weapons like WMG and torpedos much more valuable than say APB or PPB !

[Loser]

Originally posted by geoschmo:

quote:

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Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
Armor is a cheap, early game option.

I agree that it should be, but I am not sure it really is. Since you have to research chemistry as a prerequisite. It's no easier to get early armor then it is to get early shields unfotunatly. If it weren't for getting to stealth armor I'd venture a lot of people wouldn't even research it. And very few use much of it on their frontline warships. Usually it'a a piece here or there to finish off a design when nothing else will fit.

---

Actually, Armor ought to be highly useful in PBW games and I know it is in tough TDM games, where you know the other guy is chasing PPB, so there's no reason to put Shields on your ships until you get to the sixth level. And even at the sixth level it's hardly worth it.

But Armor takes ten kilotonnes of space for forty kilotonnes of protection. Emissive Armor give you fifty kilotonnes of protection and thirty kilotonnes of a sort of recharging protection for twenty kilotonnes of space. That's pretty worth while. Unless you're facing a crystalline or NSP opponent Armor is a good thing. And it rocks on Weapon Platforms.

If Weapon Platforms are hit in order of placement, and I believe they are, then putting a few cheap 100% Armor WPs on a planet means the badum has to dish out serious damage before the shooting WPs or Relic/Sensor WPs are even touched. Shield WPs do the same, but are so much more expensive (take longer to build). I think it takes the third level of Phased Shielding to beat out Armor for protection/kilotonne.

And on Units, unless I am mistaken, Armor piercing is a moot point. The unit is not impaired until all its components are destroyed, so the Armor piercing still has to deliver the whole sum of the damage, while Shield piercing does not. Since the components do not need repair, the Armor could be said to recharge, just like Shields, and the only advantage to Shields over Armor in a Unit is the greater protection/kilotonne offered by higher level shielding, which is expensive and takes a long time to get.

I'm not sure on what the dividing lines are, but I'm thinking that it's Late Game before I'm putting Phased Shields on Weapon Platforms.

[ July 25, 2003, 15:44: Message edited by: Loser ]

[Loser]

Originally posted by oleg:
Another option to balance armor - increase EA effect. If we also reduce the benefit of mounts, it can make high-damage, low reload weapons like WMG and torpedos much more valuable than say APB or PPB !

The amount of 'soak' on Emissive Armor III makes it exactly equivalent to Armor III: 40kt structure/10kt for Armor III and 50kt structure + 30kt 'soak'/20kt for Emissive Armor III. If you increase the amount of 'soak' on Emissive armor I think it would be proper to decrease the amount of structural kt, as this balance seems appropriate.

I really think Armor is fine as it is. It is useful in it's time. That people fail to take advantage of this feature does not mean that the feature is unbalanced or nerfed, simply that its merit is undiscovered.

Do experienced PBW players avoid the use of Armor and Emissive Armor?

Am I just naive for thinking that it is a great component? This is possible...

[ July 25, 2003, 15:46: Message edited by: Loser ]

[oleg]

Originally posted by Loser:
...If Weapon Platforms are hit in order of placement, and I believe they are, then putting a few cheap 100% Armor WPs on a planet means the badum has to dish out serious damage before the shooting WPs or Relic/Sensor WPs are even touched. Shield WPs do the same, but are so much more expensive (take longer to build). I think it takes the third level of Phased Shielding to beat out Armor for protection/kilotonne.

And on Units, unless I am mistaken, Armor piercing is a moot point. The unit is not impaired until all its components are destroyed, so the Armor piercing still has to deliver the whole sum of the damage, while Shield piercing does not. Since the components do not need repair, the Armor could be said to recharge, just like Shields, and the only advantage to Shields over Armor in a Unit is the greater protection/kilotonne offered by higher level shielding, which is expensive and takes a long time to get.

I'm not sure on what the dividing lines are, but I'm thinking that it's Late Game before I'm putting Phased Shields on Weapon Platforms.

No, WP are destroyed more or less starting with weaker one, with some element of randomness. There were some Posts with detailed results as I remember. Shield point on WP and fighters are part of structure. PPB does NOT skip unit's nonphased shields. Neither does NSP. Planetary shield is more like "normal" shield and is skipped by PPB, IIRC.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Loser:
I really think Armor is fine as it is. It is useful in it's time. That people fail to take advantage of this feature does not mean that the feature is unbalanced or nerfed, simply that its merit is undiscovered.

Do experienced PBW players avoid the use of Armor and Emissive Armor?

This is a good question. One worthy of it's own discussion. I will start a new thread...

[Loser]

Originally posted by oleg:
Shield point on WP and fighters are part of structure. PPB does NOT skip unit's nonphased shields.

Is this so?

I thought the PPB skip didn't work only on Units for which Phased Shield are not provided in the game, Fighters and Troops, as opposed to Weapon Platforms, Satellites, and Drones, for which Phased Shields are provided.

[edit:

Originally posted by geoschmo:
This is a good question. One worthy of it's own discussion. I will start a new thread...

Oh... right... cut-and-paste time.]

[ July 25, 2003, 16:17: Message edited by: Loser ]

[Slick]

Originally posted by oleg:

quote:

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Originally posted by Loser:
...If Weapon Platforms are hit in order of placement, and I believe they are, then putting a few cheap 100% Armor WPs on a planet means the badum has to dish out serious damage before the shooting WPs or Relic/Sensor WPs are even touched. Shield WPs do the same, but are so much more expensive (take longer to build). I think it takes the third level of Phased Shielding to beat out Armor for protection/kilotonne.

And on Units, unless I am mistaken, Armor piercing is a moot point. The unit is not impaired until all its components are destroyed, so the Armor piercing still has to deliver the whole sum of the damage, while Shield piercing does not. Since the components do not need repair, the Armor could be said to recharge, just like Shields, and the only advantage to Shields over Armor in a Unit is the greater protection/kilotonne offered by higher level shielding, which is expensive and takes a long time to get.

I'm not sure on what the dividing lines are, but I'm thinking that it's Late Game before I'm putting Phased Shields on Weapon Platforms.

No, WP are destroyed more or less starting with weaker one, with some element of randomness. There were some Posts with detailed results as I remember. Shield point on WP and fighters are part of structure. PPB does NOT skip unit's nonphased shields. Neither does NSP. Planetary shield is more like "normal" shield and is skipped by PPB, IIRC.

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Here's my post from a while ago where I tested the order of Weapon Platform damage:

I started a new high tech game with 2 human controlled empires, turn based. On homeworld A I built Weapon Platforms. On homeworld B I built 2 dreads with heavy mounted APB's. I conducted tactical combat at homeworld A using 1 weapon at a time, checking for surviving WP's after each shot.

Series 1
On Homeworld A I built 6 WP's as follows:
1 small WP with only WP computer core
1 medium WP with only WP computer core
1 large WP with only WP computer core
1 small WP with WP computer core and filled with APB's
1 medium WP with WP computer core and filled with APB's
1 large WP with WP computer core and filled with APB's

Result: the first shot would always kill the 3 empty WP's then the remaining would be successively killed in order from small to large. 20 tries, exact same result in all cases.

This result is what might lead one to believe that WP's are destroyed from weakest to strongest since there usually is a significant difference in WP hitpoints in real games. And at first, I thought I proved it worked this way.

But then I started wondering if my test method was valid. After consideration I realized that randomly applied damage would still show the same results. This is because a small amount of damage would destroy a weak WP while it would "accumulate against" the strong WP without destroying it. So this test series didn't really prove anything.

Series 2
On Homeworld A I built 10 WP's as follows:
1 small WP with WP computer core
1 small WP with WP computer core and 1 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 2 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 3 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 4 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 5 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 6 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 7 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 8 PDC 5
1 small WP with WP computer core and 9 PDC 5

The idea here is that there is only 20 kt difference between successive WP's.

Result: 20 runs. The WP's were NOT destroyed in order from weakest to strongest. Weaker ones TENDED to be destroyed before stronger ones. But there were several cases where the stronger WP's were destroyed before weaker ones. This validates the "random damage" position. If you randomly apply damage, you would expect this result.

Conclusion: WP's are not destroyed randomly but are damaged randomly; WP's with less hit points tend to be destroyed first because it takes less random hits to destroy them. [edit] This makes the idea of "shield platforms" interesting. Shield WP's will help absorb random hits to keep your weapon WP's alive longer, but only so far as they add more targets for the random damage - NOT that they get hit before or after other WP's.

Slick.

[macjimmy]

If even the basic armor was improved some in HP, maybe by 10hp/level, then this also might help guns like MB, since the space they take up is 10kt less than APB or PPB leaving room for armor. Point of this is to make armor competitive in the late game, when all it is really used for is defense bonuses. If you made unused weapons like GHB or maybe high level torpedoes armor skipping, it would increase the values of all these underused techs, without having to mess too much with everyone's favorite guns. Emmisive armor would also have to be adjusted to keep it up with regular armor.
Also, would it be possible to increase the cloaking amount on stealth armor at its highest level to preventing EM active/passive 2? I saw someone pointing out that Hyper-Optics was too cheap, and this might help out.

Macjimmy

[oleg]

Originally posted by Loser:

quote:

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Originally posted by oleg:
Shield point on WP and fighters are part of structure. PPB does NOT skip unit's nonphased shields.

Is this so?

I thought the PPB skip didn't work only on Units for which Phased Shield are not provided in the game, Fighters and Troops, as opposed to Weapon Platforms, Satellites, and Drones, for which Phased Shields are provided.

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I am pretty sure about this. See, the "blue bar" for a satellite, same as for the fighter, is a decoration. When you add a shield to the unit, its "red bar" - structure, jumps by the same amount of points as the "blue bar". Does not matter, phased or not. Same for the planet with WP. I might be wrong of course and I did't check it for drones.