The ramifications of this are to allow easy boarding of ships during a battle and piss players off that their barely scratched ship has no way of getting out of battle.
We are proposing to change the split and add empty space to the equation.
As a ship looses internal items further hits have a chance of passing through empty space within the ship. If this happens damage will be pumped back into the hulls.
An algothithm will also be applied to item type targeting when no items are present to account for empty space.
What will this mean?
Ships will fight longer and harder but if they do not pull out are more likely to eventually be destroyed rather than stripped.
We will have to modify certain item areas in order to maintain some of the underlying principles of the game.
We obviously won't make any changes if rational open-minded opinion is strongly against this move.
We feel that some item areas are currently out of balance anyway so may modify them whether or not this goes ahead.
i would be for this change, as it depicts a proper battle scenario regarding hulls destruction and the capacity of the vessel to fight on if required.
In recent battles I've had ships totally gutted of items with barely a scratch on the hulls.
It's very frustrating!!
*spins his Flump-gun one on finger and watches it sail across the room, taking out a nearby WMB Merc*
As an example, this 100 heavy took 26% damage but still has the following items present:
| 6 Bunks (98) - 10 mus |
| 1 Gatling Laser mkIV (218) - 10 mus |
| 1 ISR Type 3 Engines (150) - 20 mus |
| 1 Jump Drive - Hyper (177) - 200 mus |
| 2 Magazine (135) - 25 mus |
| 5 Phalanx (211) - 5 mus |
| 1 Scintillator (125) - 10 mus |
So it can EJ away as well as, in theory at least, move. I have also noticed from other battles 30-40% hull damaged ships being able to EJ clear.
I guess this will allow more ships the possibility to EJ, but will also increase the likely hood of EJing ending in debris.
Nik
The principle here is based on the likelihood of an item being hit. This will come down to how the item functions when installed.
Items that are completely contained within a ship will have the same surface area (or lower) than they have now. While items that project through the hull will have a higher surface area. Items that only partially project through the hull will have only a slight increase in surface area.
Items completely within the ship include Bridges, bunks, quarters, back-up generator, magazines, cargo bays, targeting computers, ISR 4 etc.
Items mostly inside a ship include Thrust Engines, Landing Engines, launchers, large to huge energy weapons, ISR 3.
Items mostly outside a ship include standard jump drives, sensors, lighter energy weapons, sensors ISR 2.
Items attached to the hull include gatling lasers, combat engines, faster jump drives, ISR 1
(ISR/Jump represents the amount of nodes on the surface of a ship required to produce the field faster). In case you are wondering, internal space is a catch-all term to represent hard-points, internal cargo, sleek design etc. A ship is not a box.
Most guttings are caused by missile/torp combinations, the DTR have been using this config from the start but I have yet to see an imperial warship with more than 20 gatling lasers. The Imperial normal carriers do carry more gats but there is less of an issue here since the normal hull can take less damage. The GTT’s new 150 hull configurations have less than 5 gats and 10 phalanx for an example of a poor new design.
Ships are being built to deliver lots of damage and then get out of the battle fast. Ships are made very fast ships to increase dodge, deliver as much damage as possible ,scints and point defenses come last on the ship builders list. Ships that are built this way will lose internal items faster than ships that have been built to stay in battle for several days. I don’t think that the DTR ship designs are perfect and we have not adjusted them for the recent improvements in the Imperial designs but we have always had more gats and phalanxes than the IMP equivalent.
Since armour and hvy hulls are designed to take damage why not increase the surface area of these items.
This initiative as it stands will also mean the Hyper / quantum drives will become obsolete in warship design as they will be easier to destroy.
Andy
Brian, DTR
| QUOTE (Romanov @ Mar 2 2005, 10:08 AM) |
| While I appreciate the concern that getting all items gutted is causing, can everyone also appreciate that one of the reasons that this is happening is badly designed ships. |
We are not talking about whether damage penetrates or not, this is the domain of defence, shields, scints, armour etc. There is nothing wrong with the system as it. We will not be meddling with this at all.
We are concerned with the damage once it has penetrated all the defences and how it is assigned.
A heavy ship has a hull mass of 100 to internal space 30 giving the split based simply on mass. But without empty space, all damage applied to internal items always hits an item irrespective of whether there is only 1 item left. Further, heavy hulls have 400 defence while most items only have a defence equal to their size. It therefore takes 10k to gut a 100 hull ship, but the hulls have only taken 6k (15-20%) damage.
So a ship is more likely to be gutted irrespective of defences, it will just require more damage delivered overall to do so on a heavily defended ship in order to penetrate it, it will however still be gutted.
| QUOTE (Andy @ Mar 2 2005, 10:48 AM) |
| This initiative as it stands will also mean the Hyper / quantum drives will become obsolete in warship design as they will be easier to destroy. |
As a standard piece of equipment for all warships and as viewed from a Referee's point of view, I welcome this.
Like all things in the game I believe that the hyper should be a niche item while at the moment it hangs around the neck of Phoenix like an albatross. It is assuredly Phoenix's equivalent to BSE's Photon Gun, you either have it or you are screwed.
I see its place fitted on lightly armoured, highly maneuverable ISR 1 rapid respons fleets, not on the mainstay of every warship in the game.
At the other end of the scale I also see ISR4 ships with heavy weapons and armour and back-up jump drives that look like moving fortresses.
| QUOTE (Mica Goldstone @ Mar 2 2005, 12:15 PM) |
| Like all things in the game I believe that the hyper should be a niche item while at the moment it hangs around the neck of Phoenix like an albatross. It is assuredly Phoenix's equivalent to BSE's Photon Gun, you either have it or you are screwed. |
A lot of work was put into the hyper jump engines in BSE and they contain a extremely rare ore in their constrution, so I do disagree with the fact that you are screwed if you dont have it.
Just don't add more zionite to the game and even the DTR will run out in the future and will be forced to design their ships based on normal engines, so Mica it's up to you in the end
Brian, DTR
| QUOTE |
| We are concerned with the damage once it has penetrated all the defences and how it is assigned. A heavy ship has a hull mass of 100 to internal space 30 giving the split based simply on mass. But without empty space, all damage applied to internal items always hits an item irrespective of whether there is only 1 item left. Further, heavy hulls have 400 defence while most items only have a defence equal to their size. It therefore takes 10k to gut a 100 hull ship, but the hulls have only taken 6k (15-20%) damage. |
Is this not the real issue? I had understood that damage was divided by surface area, it would then be logical that the less internal items you have the hard it would be to hit those items. However you appear to be saying that the program sets a value for the internal items and this does not decrease as items are lost. Just changing this parameter will make guttings very hard.
I can understand that KJC wants to make the game playable for all. While others might see the Hyper engine as an albatross, I personally see the Uber fleet strategy as the albatross. This strategy requires you to place all your ships in one fleet and then pound the defenders into oblivion in one day. No ship survive a ten to one battle but if your support ships can get to the battle quickly then the Uber fleet is less effective, it has to win the battle in one day otherwise it could be caught out. The hyper engine is the only thing that prevents the Uber fleet strategy completely running the game strategy, without the hyper it will be impossible to defend any position with standing ships/platforms.
If you want to limit the hyper engine effect make it limited to 100 hulls. As the 150 hulls designs start to replace the 100 hull designs then the situation will equalise. Allow a 150 hull design hyper but make it big surface area.
If the Uber fleet strategy is to be king then can we please have all DTR platform hulls turned into hvy hulls since these platforms were built based on the hyper engine strategy.
This means for instance that tractor beams, a weapon designed to slow down the opponent so that the damage dealing weaponry can have an easier task will fire after everything else. Not very important on fleet actions, but on a 1:1 it sure is important!!
On the photon weapons it will fire on the following order, battery, cannon and finally gun. Though this might actually be the best config to fight some type of target it surely isn't the best for conventional targets.
| QUOTE (Romanov @ Mar 2 2005, 12:01 PM) | ||
Is this not the real issue? I had understood that damage was divided by surface area, it would then be logical that the less internal items you have the hard it would be to hit those items. However you appear to be saying that the program sets a value for the internal items and this does not decrease as items are lost. Just changing this parameter will make guttings very hard. |
I agree that this approach seems far better and a lot easier to implement. instead of damage always being assigned on a 3000/13000 basis to internal items on a heavy hulled ship, have it more dynamic - so if only 1mu of internal is left, the chance to hit it is 1/10001 ...pretty steep odds, as it should be.
Introducing different "layers" for the internal items I feel just complicates warfare even more - presumably it would start to impact upon direct targetting too ie if i set my weapons to disable a ship, its easier to disable an ISR 1 ship, than an ISR 4 ship, etc.
Mark
| QUOTE (Romanov @ Mar 2 2005, 01:01 PM) |
| Is this not the real issue? I had understood that damage was divided by surface area, it would then be logical that the less internal items you have the hard it would be to hit those items. However you appear to be saying that the program sets a value for the internal items and this does not decrease as items are lost. Just changing this parameter will make guttings very hard. |
Isn't that basically what was proposed?
| QUOTE (Mica) |
| As a ship looses internal items further hits have a chance of passing through empty space within the ship. |
paraphrase = As you loose items there is more empty space.
You both appear to be saying the same thing to me.
The specific mechanics of it hasn't been discussed yet. But what's wrong with setting some items as being totally internal and some totally external (with some in-between)?
How do you imagine thrust engines to work if they are totally inside your ship's hulls? What about weapons? If weapons are truly "internal" then the first shot blows a hole in your own hull... etc.
Yes of course any change affects things that stand now. It is always very unfortunate and sad if that effects one aff/player more than another because of how they have designed their ships/strategy (especially when they have made good choices).
I agree that if, eg, the IMPs put less defence on their ships they should get more damage, of course they should but that's not the issue and is not being discussed.
| QUOTE (Romanov @ Mar 2 2005, 01:01 PM) |
| If the Uber fleet strategy is to be king then can we please have all DTR platform hulls turned into hvy hulls since these platforms were built based on the hyper engine strategy. |
You mean your stratergies aren't designed to cope with major changes in the underlaying laws of the galaxy
Personally I think something does need to be done to rebalance the internal hit effect, although i'm not sure how much, taking account of the unused space in the ships does make sense. Although just cause a shot hits empty space at first shouldn't mean I goes all the way through to the hulls again, I'd have said that maybe rather than removing empty space from the internal items you count half or a quater of it or something, no idea on the balances but i think all would make it too onesided the other way.
I don't really like the layers idea, even if it makes sense for things on the outside of the hull to be easier to hit/destory (although couldn't that be shown by just reducing their armour), i think it just over complicates things, and we already have locational targeting which kind of takes that into account.
But this is really a separate issue - layering internals will not change the amount of damage applied to internal items in the combat equation, it simply redistributes damage to different internal items.
The fixes discussed are either to create "empty space" so that the combat equation is always 30/130 (for heavy hulls), with a "hit" to empty space really being a miss; or else have a dynamic equation that changes based on the remaining internals.
Mark
| QUOTE (FLZPD @ Mar 2 2005, 01:41 PM) |
| Creating a new item parameter (its "layer" in the ship) seems pointless to me. If some items are easier to hit (as they are outside the ship, or whatever) then there are existing parameters that can be used ie. set the surface area to be larger than its mu size, set its defence to be lower than its mu, etc. This is already done for some items - AIs being easier to hit have large surface areas for example. |
er, sorry, forget this bit :-) Rushed at lunchtime and misunderstood the original idea (which was indeed to use surface area, etc to create the "layers")
mark
| QUOTE (Steve-Law @ Mar 2 2005, 01:04 PM) | ||
paraphrase = As you loose items there is more empty space. You both appear to be saying the same thing to me. |
They are slightly different ideas - creating empty space and anything hitting it being applied to hulls will give a different result to changing the dynamic approach.
For example
A 100 heavy hulled ship, when full has a 3000/13000 chance of hitting internals.
Say only 1000mus of internals remain.
If the equation is dynamic, it gives a 1000/11000 chance to hit internals ie 9.09% chance
if empty space is used, then the equation remains 3000/13000, giving 23.07% chance to hit internals. This is then further modified by 1000/3000 to see if it hits the empty space (ie hits the hulls instead of remaining internals). This means the 23.07% become 7.69% chance to hit the internals.
Mark
| QUOTE (Romanov @ Mar 2 2005, 12:01 PM) |
| While others might see the Hyper engine as an albatross, I personally see the Uber fleet strategy as the albatross. This strategy requires you to place all your ships in one fleet and then pound the defenders into oblivion in one day. |
But this is only tactically possible while your uber fleet can reach 'all' destinations at any given time which in turn is again only possible because of the hyper drive. You can pound the enemy in one day, but also return to defend another location in a couple of days had the first day been a feint.
Without the hyper the uber fleet comes unstuck if 200 ships hit twenty, but are then a week away from returning to tackle 80 ships stomping one of their lesser defended starbases. To cover everything they have to have a number of fleets that could theoretically overlap but overall they are spread out.
| QUOTE (Mica Goldstone @ Mar 2 2005, 02:57 PM) |
| Without the hyper the uber fleet comes unstuck if 200 ships hit twenty, but are then a week away from returning to tackle 80 ships stomping one of their lesser defended starbases. To cover everything they have to have a number of fleets that could theoretically overlap but overall they are spread out. |
Then stop adding more zionite to the game and this problem will go away. Simple solution to a big headache......
Brian, DTR
| QUOTE (FLZPD @ Mar 2 2005, 02:53 PM) | ||||
They are slightly different ideas - creating empty space and anything hitting it being applied to hulls will give a different result to changing the dynamic approach. For example A 100 heavy hulled ship, when full has a 3000/13000 chance of hitting internals. Say only 1000mus of internals remain. If the equation is dynamic, it gives a 1000/11000 chance to hit internals ie 9.09% chance if empty space is used, then the equation remains 3000/13000, giving 23.07% chance to hit internals. This is then further modified by 1000/3000 to see if it hits the empty space (ie hits the hulls instead of remaining internals). This means the 23.07% become 7.69% chance to hit the internals. Mark |
Erm, where did you get your formula from for Mica's proposal? I didn't see it. You are interpretting two words "empty space" into a formula that you are agruing against.
To me empty space is simply the space in the ship that is not filled with something (i.e. components, crew or cargo). As these somethings are destroyed the empty space beomes larger (and therefore the "internal target" smaller).
If and when the specific formula is announced you can discuss it, but isn't this purely theory and basic concept at this stage?
| QUOTE |
| I can understand that KJC wants to make the game playable for all. While others might see the Hyper engine as an albatross, I personally see the Uber fleet strategy as the albatross. This strategy requires you to place all your ships in one fleet and then pound the defenders into oblivion in one day. No ship survive a ten to one battle but if your support ships can get to the battle quickly then the Uber fleet is less effective, it has to win the battle in one day otherwise it could be caught out. The hyper engine is the only thing that prevents the Uber fleet strategy completely running the game strategy, without the hyper it will be impossible to defend any position with standing ships/platforms. |
im afraid i completely disagree with your uber fleet scenario. YOU and ANYONE who has a fleet full of hyperdrives in their warships has an Uber fleet as you have the ability to engage with your ENTIRE fleet within a very short period of time. The average ship without hyperdrives builds up an equivelent attack/defence some times for well over 1 week, then has a substantial time to return.
regarding the platforms.......come on.......... the platform hull has already been made more efficient production wise compared to the Heavy hull so all your big platforms you had when the productiion requirements altered, were they halved in size to take into account we are unable to deliver as much to the battle field to destroy them???? you have already benefitted from this alteration in a major way......asthe platform was made far more substantial a project than the heavy hull. and by stating this scenario you have again suggested the power of the hyper drive. what your saying is you have built large platforms in all your systems on the premis that your entie hyperdrive fleet can engage anywhere the next day...........that is EXACTLY what Mica is on about regarding the proverbial albatross.
anyway thats all besides the point
i like the look overall of the layered damage approach and if you think of a ship visually in your mind, everything mica has suggested to me would seem how a ship would look.
| QUOTE (brian kreiser @ Mar 2 2005, 02:04 PM) |
| Then stop adding more zionite to the game and this problem will go away. Simple solution to a big headache...... |
I have taken steps to impede addition of zionite to the game. However this still leaves zionite within starbases as it stands. It would be unfair to remove this. Then there is also the issue of the current number of drives already built.
So while this sounds reasonable, what is the given attrition rate for the hyper drive as it stands?
Obviously I cannot state the answer as it gives away tactical advantages, suffice to say it is not a viable solution.
Also making the item impossible to build undermines every effort to research it. It is much better to put a halter on the item.
That is down to Imperial ship configuration. They are changing their configurations right now as the latest battle in Audrey showed. With the right changes and tactics they can take chunks out of our fleet and take the Hyper drives out of the game.
The 150 hull variants are now coming on line in some affs. Why not, as Nic suggested, limit the Hyper Drive to 100 hulls heavy / normal and no limit to light / xlight. You will still get 150 hull slow moving defender types. The 100 hullers will become the fast response ships. Yes there are alot of 100 hullers in the game but in time the dependancy on this ship will reduce as the 150 hull variants take over.
Andy
| QUOTE (Andy @ Mar 2 2005, 04:22 PM) |
| The 150 hull variants are now coming on line in some affs. Why not, as Nic suggested, limit the Hyper Drive to 100 hulls heavy / normal and no limit to light / xlight. You will still get 150 hull slow moving defender types. The 100 hullers will become the fast response ships. Yes there are alot of 100 hullers in the game but in time the dependancy on this ship will reduce as the 150 hull variants take over. |
If you have spare HJE, then would you build 100+ heavies? I doubt it due to the removal of flexability. Since 150 heavies don't offer that much of an advantage over 100 hull heavies then you keep to 100 hull heavies and the 150 hullers do not take over.
Nik
| QUOTE (Mica Goldstone @ Mar 2 2005, 02:57 PM) | ||
But this is only tactically possible while your uber fleet can reach 'all' destinations at any given time which in turn is again only possible because of the hyper drive. You can pound the enemy in one day, but also return to defend another location in a couple of days had the first day been a feint. Without the hyper the uber fleet comes unstuck if 200 ships hit twenty, but are then a week away from returning to tackle 80 ships stomping one of their lesser defended starbases. To cover everything they have to have a number of fleets that could theoretically overlap but overall they are spread out. |
Yes, I have to agree in part with this. But as Nic has also written, we have put a lot of effort into platform production so that we don't have to keep so many ships stationed in home systems. So even if the DTR didn't have HJEs, we would still have more freedom of movement than many other affiliations as we wouldn't have to get back quite so quickly. The platforms will do the job. Whilst I see Richards point in some of this, I think he's way off the mark regarding platform hulls. They were altered the same as ship hulls so by this token the IMP fleet should have been halved.
Since Mica believes that the HJE is an albatros around Phoenix, then I suggest that he sends me proposals about what should be done as we will be the major looser in any change.
Nik
you are also not the only ones with this type of drive technology, so you are not the only loosers as you call it.
so any proposal should be sent to all, not just to you.
on thinking about it there isnt another proposal, this topic is the proposal, its at the start, regarding damage assesment. the hyper drive itself isnt changing, its just we have hijacked the posts slightly