Revised the graphs to be more readable and with data that is more relevant. Empires 2.5 RC 4 - Armor Analysis - Revision 2.ods
That's cool as fuck but I'm not sure if I understand it. Also yeah, per plate is a fairly important part of it, or rather per weight. Reactive having 120hp per plate sounds awesome, but it weighs 20 or something, so that obviously draws it back.
trickster my first glance interpretation would be that you did a quite good job in differenciating armors. also abs is a bit op. but i think its not weighted and theres things with higher impact then others. fe. id value rpg much higher then heat transferrence, also bio is very situational, money often counts nothing and so on you get the idea ... ... you need to read it more like, what armor is the best choice in which situation. its very interresting nevertheless, nice job reaper.
I do not know the mechanics of how these values are actually applied in the code; if health, weight and cost are the only things that stacks per inch or if the same applies to multipliers. However the values have been normalized for the graphs, so that the property with the lowest value represents 0% while the armor with the highest value of that property represents 100% ("Titanium 6AL-4V" aka Com.vehicle excluded). Negative traits have been inverted so high weight gives a lower rating and vise-versa. This should let you compare each armor and choose one for appropriate situations. (Although it seems that Absorbant is better than most in average.)
That graph weighs each category equally. So absorbant looks op. However, since certain things like heat transference isn't super important, it skews the graph. Still, it's nice looking. Visualizing data is fucking hard. I like the normalizing work.
I think it's an excellent way to visualize what can be improved in an armor. Maybe reflective could have some kinetic dissipation?
It is wrong though, reactive takes more damage from rpgs, not less. That is why it's a negative value. I mean yeah it looks neat, but some extra factors also make it look very skewed in certain ways. Take the regen effect. It works off of the health of the plate, so while your graph looks like you just used the 2 values(.02 for compo and .08 for regen) it's really 1.5 hp a tic for compo and 4.4 hp for regen. So it is closer to a third, not a quarter.
Resistances are [base damage]*(1-[resistance])=[actual damage]. For your purposes, it would be [effective HP/plate]=[base HP/plate]/(1-[resistance]). For example, reactive has an effective 100HP/plate against RPGs (120 base / (1- -.2) = 100 effec). You'll want to do the same with bio stuff, except the provided parameter is the entire scaling factor, so you just skip the "1-blah" business. There are also some issues with inherent discontinuities that make this kind of analysis a fucking nightmare, especially concerning weight. Whenever your weapon loadout causes you to butt up against the plate limit (i.e. early vehicles), reactive wins. Likewise, whenever you don't butt up against the plate limit (i.e. late vehicles), compo wins. It's hellish to quantify that sorta thing. Ugh, I need to ask for wiki privs so I can start writing this shit down. Everyone in this damn community is allergic to writing shit down. PROTIP: Pester the devs in steam chat for answers. P.S. Have mercy on us and do work in google docs. It's basically the same as excel. Trust me. Godspeed, brother. He's not controlling for HP or anything else, so it's skewing it to make plain look not-shit. He needs to model HP/plate/cost, not cost/plate.
/me Monocle drops I'll have you know I rewrote the entire Manual several times, wrote the Quick-Start Guide and wrote around 80% of all content on the Wiki. Whenever script changes occur, I ensure the changes are documented on the Wiki.
That's admirable and you should be commended, but there are a lot of details of many mechanics that are doubtfully on the wiki. I'll put it another way, when I forget shit and want to know certain things, I check the ctrl v thread because I copied a bunch of helpful chats there. Ideally, I should be checking the wiki.
Yeah, Cost Efficiency was a misnomer. It's as ImSpartacus said; just the cost per plate. I'm still toying around with the graphs and numbers though, see what USEFUL information can be found and shown in a friendly way. I'll probably do the same for projectiles and engines too. Wish I could see how the actual damage formulas in the code look, and not go on hearsay and comments in the script files. PS: I've tried using google docs for this. It's glitchy and inconsistent for making graphs.
fuck dude this game is complex. seeing this though helps me understand the changes to the armors much better now though. it's much better than the wiki descriptions... which missiles deal kinetic damage?
Revised the graphs to be more readable and with data that is more relevant. Empires 2.5 RC 4 - Armor Analysis - Revision 2.ods From the Radar Graph on the right, you can deduct that: - For most raw health, Reactive. - If you're on a budget Absorbant is the way to go. - To fit a lot of weapons and have decent health, Composite. - And for the most bang for your buck, Absorbant again. Bar Graph on the left: - Plain armor is paper and even worse against bio. - Reflective can save some resources but still hold up to composite if you're skilled & lucky. - Regenerative now handles bio weapons best of them all, but it's still the weakest. - Reactive is weakest against both RPG-Launchers and Bio-weapons, but it still outclasses the rest.
I'm not sure how the angle modifier works (candles, we need you!), but the rest of those look correct. It's clear and helpful for people that didn't run the numbers themselves.
