Multiple Damage Types From Projectiles

Discussion in 'Feedback' started by Ranger, Dec 31, 2015.

  1. Ranger

    Ranger Member

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    It would make sense for HE to deliver high amounts of explosive damage and small amounts of kinetic damage if it hits its target and vice versa for RC. Have you ever considered this?

    Does it already exist perhaps? Like, it doesn't matter just what the damage type is but also the speed of the projectile etc.

    At this state it would complicate things I guess with things already being unbalanced, but would you like it as a feature?
     
  2. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    The only thing to use speed of projectile is vehicle armor scripts, and regardless of what spartacus might think it's a pretty messy way of dealing with things.

    I don't see much reason for it. It makes sense that's how it should work in real life, but that doesn't really mean anything for gameplay. It just makes it harder to balance a weapon when we can set the resistance to everything else accordingly. I thought it would be neat if the general tree resist system was suppose to add on to something, but honestly thinking about it now I'm not sure it's a good idea, even if we could communicate it clearly which I remember was spartacus's valid point against it.
     
  3. ImSpartacus

    ImSpartacus nerf spec plz

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    In hindsight, I think it's probably a pipe dream to be able to properly balance everything based on an elegant projectile speed system. If you could, it would be frighteningly simple for noobs to intuitively "get" and that's fucking awesome. But it's just really hard to be that cohesive with your design.

    And there's that bug in the mortar/cannon physics function where the projectile weirdly gets dragged towards one of the cardinal directions of the map when you input a really high projectile speed into it. And even if you could fix that rats nest of physics code in order to jack up projectile speed, you still have to deal with Source not being built to accurately network projectiles that fast (that's why hitscan exists). So you're handcuffed to a relatively small speed range in a task that's already herculean in difficulty.

    So the rational conclusion is to cut your losses and remove SToD entirely. I've never thought that it made sense to have the complex SToD mechanic just for one single armor (token usage in compo doesn't count). But then what the hell do you do with Absorbant? You could artificially add some cannon and bullet resists to it, but that's sloppy design. No one wants spreadsheetpires where you have to memorize that there's a 50% bullet resistance or a 30% cannon resistance. Maybe something like a Budget Armor could elegantly replace it without too much disruption. Functionally, Budget Armor is basically identical to 2.51's "Absorbant" and everybody was chill with it for over a year.

    But that pesky nostalgia makes it tough to give up on an armor like Absorbant. No one likes to "remove" (or replace) something that's been a part of the game for effectively a decade. People get attached to stuff, you know?

    I don't have an answer. Maybe there isn't one.
     
  4. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    My main beef against spod was it limits you a lot in making weapons functional. You're right that being able to up the cannons speeds would help a lot, but there's still a case to be made that missile needed a speed increase to not be shit, like uml was. Faster projectile = easier to land shot = waaaaaaaaaay more useful weapon.

    I will never see why using the resist system would be bad at all, as in why it would be more spread sheet pires then spod. No one, and I mean no one in the game, really knows how it works. It just a general "it's good against rails" and that's it, I swear people don't realize it also lowers ml damage a bit too. With actual kinetic resist and such you really can say," it's good against cannons" and people will be fine with that, Saying it's kinda good against cannons and marginally ok against missiles or using something like 30-50% good against canons and 15-25% good against missiles is even harder to grasp. Yes, there is a simple faster stuff does less damage, but most of the time that feels horribly vague. When someone is rocking abs and think it's shit against ranged you got a problem.

    Honestly though, I wouldn't remove it from abs. The comparison to budget isn't a bad idea, but a couple of armors had their hp raised to a point where that extra plate from abs/budget doesn't justify it. It isn't enough that's it's cheap either, people lose tanks so fast with budget that the temporary firepower you get from an extra tank doesn't pan out well enough. Abs was in a good position when it was basically reflect that you didn't have to think about and compo was expensive and slightly time consuming to get, but both are always in a better to get position. My main point being cheap shit armor is useless, it needs something extra to resist shit so it doesn't explode instantly.

    A slightly better retool for spod isn't changing how much damage it does to the armor, but what % pierces the armor and deals direct damage to the hull, possibly with some additional modifiers that change how much of the total damage is resisted or damages the armor or whatever. But that's an entirely different discussion and I swear there's like 5 threads on it already.
     
  5. ViroMan

    ViroMan Black Hole (*sniff*) Bully

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    I like the idea of a weapon doing multiple types of damage. A primary damage and a secondary damage. Primary damage can be resisted but, secondary should not since it is not the intended damage.
    Most objects should NOT have any resistance at all except tank armors. The fact that you have to assign resistances to buildings is just fucking silly. Simply hard code a blanket X% off of all damage aimed to buildings (unless its a bunker buster weapon that doesn't do much to players) OR lower the damage dealt and change vehicle health to match OR raise building health and fix the X% calc per health for engy.

    Armors should generally only have 2 resistances listed except in the case of composite. A primary resistance and a secondary resistance. Again secondary damage from attacking weapon will not be resisted and it will be low damage anyways.


    Weapon Types
    • Cannon - Cannons go here. (No bunker busters for cannons?)
    • Missile - Missiles go here. Nuke should have no resistance to its damage
    • Artillery - Being a bunker buster weapon it should have no resistances to its damage
    • Machine Guns - MG's go here.
    • Other - Grenades, mines, and other creative things created

    Damage Types
    • Kinetic - Purely high speed impact related damage. (Add push to objects with %Damage = push?)
    • Heat - Burn damage. (as well as transfer of heat to target?) (generally a secondary type)
    • DOT - Why call it bio it can be any type of DOT? Acid, nanite jiz, mini rat sized droids wrecking your shit, fucking what ever.
    • Shrapnel - (aka explosive or splash) Generally a primary for missiles and secondary for cannons (except HE). (This maybe could effect radius of explosion? Tie this into the math and have higher damage mean larger radius?)
    • Energy - LASERS, sticky stun, and what ever else. (emp from nuke?)
    Simple example weapons
    Nuke- P=Shrapnel S=Heat
    HE cannon- P=Shrapnel S=Kinetic
    Rail- P=Kinetic S=Kinetic <-- fucking its all its got going for it and the secondary type can't be blocked
    HEMG- P=Shrapnel S=Heat
    PMG- P=Heat S=Kinetic
    BMG- P=DOT S=Kinetic

    You get the idea...
     
  6. ImSpartacus

    ImSpartacus nerf spec plz

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    You know, I don't know if I've ever thought about in this particular fashion, but one of the things that I've never liked about Empires' design is that it has like a dozen different half-realized design mechanics (as opposed to a handful of fully-realized design mechanics). It's just all over the place. Stuff like Absorbant's SToD shows up once and very people really understand how it works (as you mentioned). Reflective's reflectivity is the same way (though to a lesser degree after I prayed to the Lord of Light). People frequently don't understand how Bio DoT stacks (I STILL have questions that devs haven't answered). People historically didn't understand Max/Idle Heat (myself included) and often couldn't use coolant/fission to their fullest. People rarely how some key details on how overheat used to be implemented. It goes on and on*.

    None of these mechanics are bad, but they never get to spread their wings. As a result, it's often possible for a new player to never (or rarely) encounter them. The player literally doesn't get enough experience to "learn" how some of these mechanics work.

    In principle, I'd prefer to either remove some of these half-realized mechanics so you can expand others into something more "core" to the game design. Usually when that happens, resources can be invested in properly explaining/integrating the mechanic in a more intuitive way.

    So when I say that I don't like the idea of an armor's "thing" being a laundry list of resistances, I see that as another blossoming half-realized design mechanic that'll only see a home on like one armor. In another universe, if you have a bunch of armors that have complex resistances, then you might properly invest in that mechanic. You might smartly display the resistances in the build interface and/or in the vehicle HUD. Or you might integrate the resistances (not just the armor name) into armor detection. Or just generally do a better job of educating the player of how the mechanic works.

    Same deal with a "piercing" mechanic. It's not a bad idea in principle, but it's just not going to be properly fleshed out if it only gets featured in one armor. And that really sucks because it would be really fun to test.

    One example of a game series showing discipline in attempted game design mechanics the armor system changes in FO3, FO:NV and FO4. FO3 uses a "percentage-based" "Damage Resistance" for its armor. FO:NV wanted to introduce a "subtraction-based" "Damage Threshold," so they recognized that they needed to scrap the Damage Resistance system for that game. Having both mechanics present in the same game would've been overly complex. Neither are "better", but you can't properly do either if you try to do both. FO4 actually went back to Damage Resistance, so they didn't implement a Damage Threshold system. Again, neither system is better, but they shouldn't be present at the same time. That's clever design for a mainstream game like modern Fallout series.

    * I once had Vicki ask me "what the formula for vehicle armor" was. I knew exactly what she meant to ask, but I completely fell flat in explaining it because the conversation kept going, "well for this armor, it's this, but for this armor, it's this." There were way too many disparate mechanics interacting (though thankfully we had removed the silly order of operations from armor resistance by that time).
     
    Last edited: Dec 31, 2015
  7. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    Note when I mentioned that it was more in response to you saying you'd want to put spod to all armors, but I wouldn't like it at all and would rather a piercing effect for all armors. In a general sense it would help a lot of empire's current problems with tank combat if there was a way to bypass 500 hp or whatever, or in a more immediate sense people didn't know exactly when they were going to die so there was more of a risk/reward for staying in combat, not to mention help people use different weapons just because of fancy and useful effects, see bio ml for an example.

    @ViroMan, that's pretty darn complicated. You have to realize that a lot of buildings have very different resists, and empires would work a bit differently if you bothered to redo the health and resist system.

    Also that whole thing makes me think of warframe with it's multi damage type thing, like enemy A taking 50% more damage from heat but 25% less from cold. It doesn't exactly pan out at all for warframe,(there's little reason to actually bother with it) but I guess in empires people can't up their damage to obscene values to bypass it.

    ALL THAT SAID, I'd like to point out that when you get too funky with resists like what viroman wants or spartacus mentions is really that just encourages a more hard counter type of system. The one where it's vital for the commander to research the right weapons or defense so they win/don't lose the game. I've said previously it stinks, it just doesn't work for empires. If you go too light on it your doing a lot of extra work for not a lot of gain. Just right probably doesn't exists, I really can't see how it works.
     
  8. Ranger

    Ranger Member

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    Are you saying you would downgrade the whole research tree and keep some basic weapons and armours? I've had a similar idea

    What would you say if cannon shells instantly reached their target just like targets? I believe with the proper effects that were once in-game it would be possible to make it as the shell was actually there. If you rememver the old effects of HEMG you'll know what I mean.

    Rockets and missiles do not have problems with any speed limit, right?

    Do you think it would be worth to implement a physics system to calculate damage both correctly, thus making sense, but also in an obvious way for most players, because you know... physics, not base numbers and coefficients.
     
  9. ImSpartacus

    ImSpartacus nerf spec plz

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    I miscommunicated. I didn't mean to suggest that SToD was some kind of miracle mechanic that would fix everything if it was somehow expanded to everything.

    What I meant was that if you have the goal of preserving the existence of Absorbant armor, you can either use some implementation of SToD or you can use a laundry list of manual resistances. I've previously unpacked the troubles with either avenue. I can't think of anything else that would still make Absorbant "feel" like Absorbant (and if it doesn't feel like Absorbant, you might as well replace it). Just clarifying.

    In principle, that's the kind of "tight" design that my gut prefers. However, in reality, there is a certain amount of momentum with respect to what makes Empires feel like Empires. That needs to be respected. No one has the right answers - surely not me.

    I might not be the best person to answer your later questions, but yes, there's nothing fundamentally stopping cannons from becoming hitscan like bullet weapons. You might want it to be an option (it's currently not) because not every cannon would look good in hitscan - and not all of them would need to be hitscan.

    Gren rockets and vehicle MLs don't have that speed issue. It's just the stuff that gets run through a particular physics function to give it that parabolic "drop" (cannons & mortar). Note that Source still doesn't accurately track fast projectiles, so there's no way to get around that unless you go hitscan.

    I don't think it would be worth it to completely redo the damage system. It'd be different if you're making a new game that's not Empires.
     
  10. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    No I understood that, not sure how you thought that's what I thought about how you thought, it was just a thought that popped into my head when you said making systems work across the board instead of just a single instance.
     

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