Damage resistance piercing/penetration

[lutrin]

more of a general mechanic than a specific suggestion.

tldr Give specific damage sources the ability to ignore part or all of the target's resistances.

might be a little complicated, since you could have:
*flat flat resistance ignore,
*percentage flat resistance reduction,
*flat percentage resistance ignore,
*and percentage percentage resistance ignore.

it'd probably be a good idea to only include one or two of these, but for the rest of this post I'll assume all four are in, and I'll represent piercing amounts as 'x/y%/z/w%' where x...ww represent the concepts listed above in order, and will assume that final effective resistance calculations will be calculated similar to the current damage formula, such that the original resist is "damage" in the formula and the pierce is the "resistance".

so for instance, if a damage source with 4/25%/0/50% penetration damages a target with 8/30% of the relevant resist, the final damage will be calculated as if the resistance was 2/15%

the 8 flat resistance is modified by the 3/25% section. and like the damage formula, the 25% pierce is applied first, followed by the flat 4 pierce, giving 8*(1-.25)-4=2. the 30% percentage resistance is effected by the 0/50% part, in the same way, giving 30*(1-.5)-0=15%. the 2 and the 15% are then used in the normal damage formula

as an example of how such a system could be useful, consider this.

currently bullets are:
regular mag- 2 physical dmg
piercing rounds mag- 5 physical dmg

currently, 'piercing' rounds are just 'better' rounds, which is fine from a gameplay standpoint. however, it doesn't really reflect 'piercing'ness. for instance, against the unarmored small biter, piercing rounds still do 150% more damage, as the 5 vs. 2 damage is unmodified. against the heavily armored Big biter, things change. the regular magazine will do 0.11 damage, while the piercing magazine does 0.2 damage. this is only about an 82% damage increase over the regular, which means despite being 'piercing', the advantage gained over regular bullets decreases as the target's armor increases, which doesn't reflect piercing at all. with an actual penetration system, the bullets might exist like this:

regular mag- 2 physical dmg, 0/0%/0/0% physical penetration

piercing rounds mag- 2 physical dmg, 5/0%/0/0% physical penetration

against small biters, piercing rounds would have no advantage over regular. this is half gameplay, half reality, since all other things equal an armor piercing round does roughly the same or even less damage than a 'regular' round against unarmored targets, due to the fact that the round doesn't change shape as much within the body, making a cleaner wound, and has a greater chance of going straight through, leaving some of the bullet's energy in the bullet and not the target.

against large biters, things change. the regular round still does .11 damage, while the piercing round now deals a relatively huge .33 damage; a 200% increase, and making the rounds valid as piercing.

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if penetration is added, negative penetration might be as well. the same concept and formula, just with negative numbers, to represent things that do very badly against armor/insulation/whatever. for instance, the final bullet types might be:

regular mag- 2 physical dmg, 0/0%/0/0% physical penetration

piercing rounds mag- 2 physical dmg, 5/0%/0/0% physical penetration

hollow point mag- 6 physical dmg, 0/-300%/0/-300% physical penetration

this would, like real hollow point rounds, be very effective against soft targets, but any armor would be effectively quadrupled. while it could cut through small biters like butter, each shot would do less than .04 damage to big biters.


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thoughts?


edit: it should probably be hardcoded that 100% resistances can never be lowered, to preserve immunities. either that or have an actual 'immune to x' attribute.

[ssilk]

thoughts?

Hu?

Hm. Instead of describing the "How it works", I recommend to describe what you want to a achive, and why.

[lutrin]

sorry, that was mostly clarification for how I think it *might* work, specifically, allowing for more combat variety within a certain damage type. as it is now, the damage/resistance system includes something like this by using different resistances for different damage types; bullets do high damage but are effected by armor, lasers do low damage but aren't. however, the fact that physical and laser damage are logistically difficult to produce in the same types of situation makes this feature hard to exploit, and fully upgrading gun turrets makes the mechanic mostly null anyway, since despite armor they do more damage-per-second than laser turrets (this doesn't effect guns, robots, etc, but since the vast majority of combat is turrets vs attack parties they don't matter as much outside of raiding spawners imo) even against big biters.

a damage penetration system would provide the combat system as a whole with more flexibility by allowing different damage sources within the same damage type to behave differently with armor, which could give the player more options and/or allow for enemies that would be very difficult to kill without using it. the end results would depend on the balance decisions made by the devs, but as a whole I think adding some simple flexibility, whether or not it's extensively used is a good thing, both for the 'real' devs and modders.

[bobucles]

There are only three types of enemies in the game- melee, ranged, and turret. The higher tiers of enemy are superior to the lesser ones in EVERY way.

Armor penetration only really matters for creating :rock paper scissor networks" between like a dozen or more enemy types. That is completely overkill here. All that matters is making sure the regular enemies have fair armor ratings.

That being said, big biters kind of have too much flat armor for my taste.

[ssilk]

sorry, that was mostly clarification for how I think it *might* work

Be specific. Make one example, that everybody can follow. Use graphics/pics.

specifically, allowing for more combat variety within a certain damage type. as it is now, the damage/resistance system includes something like this by using different resistances for different damage types; bullets do high damage but are effected by armor, lasers do low damage but aren't. however, the fact that physical and laser damage are logistically difficult to produce in the same types of situation makes this feature hard to exploit, and fully upgrading gun turrets makes the mechanic mostly null anyway, since despite armor they do more damage-per-second than laser turrets (this doesn't effect guns, robots, etc, but since the vast majority of combat is turrets vs attack parties they don't matter as much outside of raiding spawners imo) even against big biters.

Don't explain in walls of text.
Don't make assumptions, that you (or the others) cannot prove to be true.

a damage penetration system would provide the combat system as a whole with more flexibility by allowing different damage sources within the same damage type to behave differently with armor, which could give the player more options and/or allow for enemies that would be very difficult to kill without using it.

Again: Be specific: WHY would that be better? WHAT type of gameplay would this improve? Well, you get more options.... nice, but WHICH options?

the end results would depend on the balance decisions made by the devs, but as a whole I think adding some simple flexibility, whether or not it's extensively used is a good thing, both for the 'real' devs and modders.

Don't argue about, how other will like that. This is your suggestion. There is nothing wrong with it: If you want something like so, then you want it like so.
But this sentence makes all open again. "I would like to have this like so and ... and in the end I don't care." Very shorted to the basics.

That are simple explainable things. A dev, that looks at this as it is will just cry and go to the next suggestion. There are thousands, he can choose. You have only this chance.
I bet with you, that the above suggestion can be written together in under 5 lines.

I hope that was enough "thoughts" for now. Don't blame yourself: I also make these errors all the time. This is somethings that must be told from outside.