Balance - Armor 2.0 Must Be Flat

[11.11.11]

I never understood the concept of something capable of ripping through armor failing to cause considerable damage to a person's flesh.

 

Arrows and Bolts don't do nearly as much flesh damage as bullets. Yes an arrow through the chest hurts and causes terrible internal bleeding, but it doesn't cause the same hydrostatic shock as a bullet. The difference is in velocities, an arrow or bolt is subsonic - most bullets are supersonic. A (relatively) large heavy arrow/bolt is good at breaking and piercing things - but it looses impulse very quickly when it enters flesh. Its large surface area dissipate the energy over a wider area, which is fine when that area is a brittle armor - but not soft tissue. Conversely the smaller surface area of bullets, and their higher velocity, means that they will ricochet off dense solids (armor) - but quickly and easily penetrate soft tissues - and travel further through them before loosing momentum - that's what allows them to cause more hyrdostatic shock (damage to the targets internal organs by forcing bodily fluids the wrong way). Remember is the impact and bleeding that kills a person - not the (relatively) small hole in their body, unless its in somewhere crucial like the lungs or heart.

 

 

 

 

I wished to say something, but then I saw

/facewall

 

? 

Edited October 8, 2013 by 11.11.11

[SquirmyBurrito]

Arrows and Bolts don't do nearly as much flesh damage as bullets. Yes an arrow through the chest hurts and causes terrible internal bleeding, but it doesn't cause the same hydrostatic shock as a bullet. The difference is in velocities, an arrow or bolt is subsonic - most bullets are supersonic. A (relatively) large heavy arrow/bolt is good at breaking and piercing things - but it looses impulse very quickly when it enters flesh. Its large surface area dissipate the energy over a wider area, which is fine when that area is a brittle armor - but not soft tissue. Conversely the smaller surface area of bullets, and their higher velocity, means that they will ricochet off dense solids (armor) - but quickly and easily penetrate soft tissues - and travel further through them before loosing momentum - that's what allows them to cause more hyrdostatic shock (damage to the targets internal organs by forcing bodily fluids the wrong way). Remember is the impact and bleeding that kills a person - not the (relatively) small hole in their body, unless its in somewhere crucial like the lungs or heart.

 

 

 

 

 

? 

 

 

You didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. Puncturing is causing serious damage if you're not plotting explosives on that same scale.

[CaptainohCaptain]

? ?!!

Learn the friggin history. Heavy armor disappeared because of two things:

1)Crossbows.

2)Arquebuses.

And after this I hear about magic AP arrow. Cut this piece of crap off.

Also, when actual Armor Penetrating occures, armor get fragmented|bended (In case of metal) and creates a heavy nearly inoperable wound if next layer of armor can't protect from it.

[SquirmyBurrito]

? ?!!

Learn the friggin history. Heavy armor disappeared because of two things:

1)Crossbows.

2)Arquebuses.

And after this I hear about magic AP arrow. Cut this piece of crap off.

Also, when actual Armor Penetrating occures, armor get fragmented|bended (In case of metal) and creates a heavy nearly inoperable wound if next layer of armor can't protect from it.

 

>Implying heavy armor has disappeared.

I wasn't talking about wearable armor (which exists today and is used).

[DreadScourge]

Need folks like you working for DE

[CaptainohCaptain]

>Implying heavy armor has disappeared.

I wasn't talking about wearable armor (which exists today and is used).

Yes it is. Armor magically moved into engineer structures. What comes to personal armor, it completely lost it's role. And now average policeman in blockade have more PA than soldier. And what comes to armor, which parts are seriously protected?

1)Body: Kevlar|Titanium vest on it.

2)Upper third of head.

Only temperature|abbrasion protection on every other part. You can't even see vital parts like neck being protected from being broken. (That actually the one thing that can kill you when a brick falls on your head. Hard hat does NOT guarantee your safety).

Yes, we have exceptions like blast suit. Guess how rare and situational are they?

[11.11.11]

You didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. Puncturing is causing serious damage if you're not plotting explosives on that same scale.

 

Good, but...where did explosives come into things? o-o

 

 

 

Yes it is. Armor magically moved into engineer structures. What comes to personal armor, it completely lost it's role. And now average policeman in blockade have more PA than soldier. And what comes to armor, which parts are seriously protected?

 

You are largely correct. Complete body armor largely faded out of use as weaponary shifted away from melee based combat towards ballistics. Most front-line soldiers today have a plate carrier and helmet, and thats it. Stab/slash retardant clothing is mostly limited to civil protection - and full body ballistic suits are in the realm of bomb defusal. 

 

But this is the far flung future of Space Ninjas and grumpy clone legions. There's no reason we can't have full body ballistic and slash/stab armor - as long as it has realistic drawbacks. 

Edited October 8, 2013 by 11.11.11

[SquirmyBurrito]

Yes it is. Armor magically moved into engineer structures. What comes to personal armor, it completely lost it's role. And now average policeman in blockade have more PA than soldier. And what comes to armor, which parts are seriously protected?

1)Body: Kevlar|Titanium vest on it.

2)Upper third of head.

Only temperature|abbrasion protection on every other part. You can't even see vital parts like neck being protected from being broken. (That actually the one thing that can kill you when a brick falls on your head. Hard hat does NOT guarantee your safety).

Yes, we have exceptions like blast suit. Guess how rare and situational are they?

 

What are you even trying to argue right now? Armor exists today, both in wearable forms and in mechanized forms. It sounds like you're trying to fling as much s*** at this as possible in hopes something will stick (be relevant).

 

Good, but...where did explosives come into things? o-o

 

 

 

 

You are largely correct. Complete body armor largely faded out of use as weaponary shifted away from melee based combat towards ballistics. Most front-line soldiers today have a plate carrier and helmet, and thats it. Stab/slash retardant clothing is mostly limited to civil protection - and full body ballistic suits are in the realm of bomb defusal. 

 

But this is the far flung future of Space Ninjas and grumpy clone legions. There's no reason we can't have full body ballistic and slash/stab armor - as long as it has realistic drawbacks. 

 

I brought up explosives because of the major difference in damage they cause when compared to other methods of damage dealing. Basically, I brought them up to cover that base before someone tried to exploit it.

Edited October 8, 2013 by SquirmyBurrito

[notionphil]

The particulars of which damage types would be effective against which armor types in reality are fun to debate, but the issue here isn't making this realistic or hyper specific.

 

The issue is making all weapon types viable in different roles/situations. let's not lose sight of the forest as we debate about types of tree leaves.

[.solitus]

We still don't have Armor 2.0 yet? Tsk tsk DE. What have you been doing these past two to three weeks. 

Try making your own Armor 2.0 within 2 weeks. I dare you.

[notionphil]

Try making your own Armor 2.0 within 2 weeks. I dare you.

 

Ok, how about...we still don't have any information on what Armor 2.0 even IS after two to three weeks. Do you think that should take weeks as well?

[LukeAura]

Try making your own Armor 2.0 within 2 weeks. I dare you.

And do all the coding with a small team for it. 

And do test runs with it, 

and then fix the bugs you found with it.  

 

[SquirmyBurrito]

And do all the coding with a small team for it. 

And do test runs with it, 

and then fix the bugs you found with it.  

 

 

Test runs? You mean every match after it goes live?

[r3dzer0]

Try making your own Armor 2.0 within 2 weeks. I dare you.

armor 2.0 has been slated long before update 10.  it was mentioned that it would be delayed till part way through september if i remember correctly.  yet now we're in october.  that's 4+ weeks. 

 

I've largely tried to stay out of this one, but i think Volt has a good point as well as 11.11.11.  Making armor flat so that the only difference is health would be great, but i think when you're starting out it could prove to be much harder

 

Example:  corpus crewman has defense of lets say 10 at all levels and scales health at a rate of 100x Y(constant) (lvlX)   A level 70 mob therefore would have gobs of hp and 10 defense.  whereas a lvl 6-10 crewman would have much more use out of the 10 armor since it covers more of their hp. 

 

With 11.11.11s idea you could have 100000000 defense, but there's still ways to chink out the armor reducing it, or circumventing it to attack health, allowing you to use w/e pool of weapons you've collected till now.   the problem here is that it could add to power creep if the armor doesn't have a top out value.  

 

Perhaps the middle ground is to kinda keep what we have, but have a hard cap on how much armor a unit can have.  but i digress.

 

One can only speculate what they plan to do, and that is what we're doing, no reason to belittle, triple firehouse dog dare, or yell at eachother :P

[Volt_Cruelerz]

I've largely tried to stay out of this one, but i think Volt has a good point as well as 11.11.11.  Making armor flat so that the only difference is health would be great, but i think when you're starting out it could prove to be much harder

 

Example:  corpus crewman has defense of lets say 10 at all levels and scales health at a rate of 100x Y(constant) (lvlX)   A level 70 mob therefore would have gobs of hp and 10 defense.  whereas a lvl 6-10 crewman would have much more use out of the 10 armor since it covers more of their hp. 

Then you misunderstand.  Armor reduces damage by the equation reducedDamage = rawDamage*100/(100+armor).  Armor will increase durability by a percent regardless of whether they have gobs of health or not.  Lower-health enemies won't get more use out of armor unless you treat armor as an ablative layer as several have suggested.  The OP did not suggest ablative armor though.

 

The points put forward in the OP would result in a system in which lower-level play might be dominated by AI weaponry.  Not because those enemies are more heavily armored relative to upper-level enemies, but rather that lower-level players are less likely to have maxed Piercing Hit.

Edited October 8, 2013 by Volt_Cruelerz

[Brasten]

Hard capping Armor values instead of letting them grow forever is perhaps the easiest fix.

=====

Thoughts

There are few other options. One is to make Armor an actual breakable health pool. You can then adjust how much 'health' is protected by the armor. Take those level 6-10 grineer sawmen. 10% of their HP could be in the Armor Pool and protect by damage reduction. Even if the minimum damage became 1 the overall number of shots need to 'break' the armor would be low. Say it had 300 health and 10% was in Armor. That would only be 30 HP protected by the damage minimum meaning 30 shots to break, a clip on most lowbie weapons. Then on the reload you're past the armor and into the unprotected health. Doing 16 a shot. So about 16 to 17 shots once the armor is 'broken' for the final kill.

That exact % of protected health can be adjusted around to make very different kinds of enemies with different Armor values. (more variation = good)

As an extend you can also play with different kinds of Elemental resistances at the level of Shields, Armor, and base health. If you cut back the number of elemental damage types to 4 (Electricity/Energy/Laser, Fire/Heat/Explosion, AP/Acid/Poison, Freeze/Cold) then you could have 2 vulnerabilities and 2 weakness at each level of protection (shield, armor, base health) you could even mix and match. Unspoken ins a 5th element which is the non-elemental or base damage.

Another facet of this problem is there are 15 different kinds of damage types in the engine currently. That's way too many for a system with 3 loadout slots. Not to be overly simplistic but Blunt, Pierce, Slash would cover basically the range. You then add Instant and "Damage Over Time" as modifiers to those and Elemental damage. Thinks like the Acrid become Pierce some innate AP DoT. Each gets an edge at different layer of health. Pierce for shields, Blunt for Armor, Slashing for base health.

You then have weapon speeds ranges: slow, normal, fast. Again each with an advantage at different health layers. Slow and heavy hitting weapons being good for armor, fast being good for shields to stop regeneration, 'normal' should be having the best overall DPS against health. This gets a bit more wishy washy but such is the nature of firing/attack rates.

This makes a rule of 3. 3 layers of defense, 3 loadout slots, 3 attack speeds, 3 damage types. In 'ideal' general build it would be one Fast Pierce weapon, a Slow Blunt weapon, a Normal Slashing weapon. 3 elemental mods on each weapon to cover any possible weakness/resistance combination.

Variation comes with specialization and tweaking within those bounds. Also which loadout slot takes which role or weapons that mixed such as fast and blunt.

=====

Looking at Instant vs DoT damage. DoT damage just means you're spreading out damage into smaller little hits over time that are guaranteed. This is essentially a 'fast' or 'normal' category depending on how its done and the rate of fire of the delivering weapon. There is no reason DoT should be intrinsically good against armor unless its elemental type helps. DoT would be inherently good against shields as it would stop them from regenerating very much. Of course you could always have very slow heavy hitting DoT effects that tick only once or twice over gaps of seconds instead of small hits at fractions of a second.

Edited October 8, 2013 by Brasten

[WondahBoah]

Soma doesn't ignore armor. And every single melee weapon when charged deals AP or Armor Ignoring damage, aside from Kogake, and possibly Kestrel.

 

And why are you even writing this? You know nothing of what armor 2.0 holds, just because you think it needs to be flat, doesn't mean it does.

 

Making a constant armor flattened game doesn't do anything aside from making pure bullet sponges, and making armor ignoring weapons good until you get proper mods.

 

You literally wrote an entire page saying this

"Make everything have a flat out resistance, and make them bullet sponges to make up for it"

 

-1 from me.

I normally love what you post, but @(*()$ read.

 

He says Soma gets modded for AP, not that it has it.

 

And he says nothing about bullet sponges. In fact, making armor flat will make it hell-of-a lot EASIER to kill things. Health isn't the problem, ARMOR IS, and he's just fixed it.

[Wiegraf]

Kind of a crazy idea here and I know a lot are going to consider it 'just another kind of health' but I remember playing Mass Effect 3. Yes, I'm referring to another sci-fi third person shooter with RPG elements and powers... anyway.

 

In Warframe, Armor works as a damage reduction mechanic on Health, reducing incoming damage by a percentage of the total 'base' damage received. The calculation makes it so that the curve will infinitely increases towards 1.0 (100%) without ever reaching it so that 'at least' some damage makes it through. Problem is, that method is completely thrumped by Armor Ignore weaponry as well as bullet-spongy heavy units.

 

It leads to having high level content turn into a one-of-a-kind setup based on AI mainly or weapons that directly damages health (toxins) so that damages types like "Bullet" or non-charge melee become rapidly inefficient.

 

In Mass Effect 3, armor became, yes, another kind of Health but it had it's use. For one, mechanical enemies only had Armor (and sometimes Shields) as Health so regular weaponry would deal little damage against it but other kinds of attacks managed to pierce through as well as having fire being quite effective. So you could have any mix of the three, from units with Health and Shields, Armor and Shields and some even had all three.

 

What it meant is that some weapons worked well while others underperformed. If we make a parallel to the factions of Warframe, we have the Grineer which usually favor heavy armor, little Shields and Health; we have Corpus who favor heavy shielding, little Health and little armor (other than their mechs which would be a combination of Armor and Shield). Then we have the Infested which have Health and 'some' happen to have a bit of Armor.

 

If the three could be distributed depending on the enemy type and faction, you'd have elements gain more efficiency on certain type of 'Health'. Shields would be the only regenerating sort of course, unless one schtick of the Ancients would be some Armor that actually slowly regenerates (!) making fire a MUST to take down Ancient Infested.

 

So AP damage adds part of the damage done to Armor to Health;

So AI bypasses it completely but doesn't damage (or only slightly) Armor (does what AP does backwards);

So Fire actually greatly damages armor and cause panic;

So Ice destroys shields and slows;

So Electric damage actually goes through shields to damage Health while stunning;

So Toxic damage affects Health directly.

 

But then, how would it work for the Tenno? Well, nothing prevents a set Damage Reduction on the frame type and some enemies though it would be a static value that never changes (other than Tenno's Steel Fiber and abilities).

 

What you'll get from this is "Oh, you want your Mass Effect 3 in my Warframe?". While true, it would help make some damage types more prevalent and still let "Bullet" damage be wholly viable against unshielded, unarmored enemies (from the get go or after having been taken down). That, and some frames' abilities would become much more viable against a certain type of faction.

 

It would also mean that instead of just adding some ridiculous amount of damage reduction on high level enemies, making you do pathetic amounts of damage, it would instead keep your damage output as effective and specialized. It would also make Rhino's Iron Skin have him gain a coat of Armor on top of his Health that is quite effective unless doused in flames or shot at by AP weapons, which will reduce it quickly.

 

---

 

I highly doubt such a change would come to pass however since I'm sure many would simply raise torch and pitchforks but I think the problem lies more in the fact that the current system makes one kind of damage (Armor Piercing) a must while others can be disregarded completely due to Armor reducing all other damage to near inexistence.

Edited October 8, 2013 by Wiegraf

[r3dzer0]

Then you misunderstand.  Armor reduces damage by the equation reducedDamage = rawDamage*100/(100+armor).  Armor will increase durability by a percent regardless of whether they have gobs of health or not.  Lower-health enemies won't get more use out of armor unless you treat armor as an ablative layer as several have suggested.  The OP did not suggest ablative armor though.

 

The points put forward in the OP would result in a system in which lower-level play might be dominated by AI weaponry.  Not because those enemies are more heavily armored relative to upper-level enemies, but rather that lower-level players are less likely to have maxed Piercing Hit.

well since you put it that way, i'm for it.  If it remains a constant percentage then that more than fixes the problem.

[XRacKS]

Hey,

I totally agree with you (OP) on this topic. Imo the "scaling could" be xx%. Therefore every incoming DMG would be reduced to xx%. AP Mods would simply reduce the xx% of the armoured target.

e.g.: 

Enemie 100 HP with 50% Armor vs Your normal Weapon with dmg 10 per shot

 

1 Shot = 10 DMG w/o AP Mod

10*0.5= 5DMG

AP Mod 50% amor reduction/piercing/whatsoever

 

1 Shot = 10 DMG w/o AP Mod

0.5*0.5=0.25 -> 25%Armor of the enemie when the AP Mod is equipped
10*0.25= 7,5 DMG

-> 1 Shot does 7,5 DMG to a armored enemie with a 50% amor.

 

What if we are categorizing the enemies in 3-4 Groups

1. Non to light armored 0-20%

2. Mid Armored 20-40%

3. High Armored 40-60%

4. Bosses (Maybe some extra rules will apply)

 

Those armor would be from lvl 1 to endless.

 

The problem would be solves, therefore armor should be a "Resistance" as some others posted above.

 

Just my 2 Cents

[LukeAura]

Hey,

I totally agree with you (OP) on this topic. Imo the "scaling could" be xx%. Therefore every incoming DMG would be reduced to xx%. AP Mods would simply reduce the xx% of the armoured target.

e.g.: 

Enemie 100 HP with 50% Armor vs Your normal Weapon with dmg 10 per shot

 

1 Shot = 10 DMG w/o AP Mod

10*0.5= 5DMG

AP Mod 50% amor reduction/piercing/whatsoever

 

1 Shot = 10 DMG w/o AP Mod

0.5*0.5=0.25 -> 25%Armor of the enemie when the AP Mod is equipped

10*0.25= 7,5 DMG

-> 1 Shot does 7,5 DMG to a armored enemie with a 50% amor.

 

What if we are categorizing the enemies in 3-4 Groups

1. Non to light armored 0-20%

2. Mid Armored 20-40%

3. High Armored 40-60%

4. Bosses (Maybe some extra rules will apply)

 

Those armor would be from lvl 1 to endless.

 

The problem would be solves, therefore armor should be a "Resistance" as some others posted above.

 

Just my 2 Cents

Well the problem is that AI weapons still have considerable advantage against categories 3 and 2. And will remain good against low armor enemies. 

While bullet weapons will be good against low armor enemies, start to falter in medium, and suck against high armored enemies.

Unless you make bullet weapons deal better damage/dps than AI weapons this imbalance still exists, it just won't be as bad as it was before but Despair, Acrid, Gremlins, Flux, Lanka will still come out with huge advantages. 

AP mod would be required on bullet weapons, and not at all on the AI. So you're now giving AI weapons a free mod slot and nine extra points to work with as another bonus to them. 

It's a start, but now instead of having AI weapons being hugely overpowered at high levels, they're a little overpowered at all levels.

[Stakhanov]

Now I think of this, you do make some good points, actually. I do notice when playing Kiliken Defence, just to name one, I use my Go-To Pistol, the Lex, just because I enjoy it, actually, and it can one shot the Corpus Crewmen up to Level 133 with a shot to the head, but after that, they start taking multiple rounds and such. However, with the Kunai or Despair, it can carry on murdering them with impunity as their level continues to climb.

I do believe some weapons are overshadowed by these quite obvious choices. However. When you argue with the Braton, I'm going to, for just arguments sake, refer to the MK1 Braton. It might not be able to deal out as much damage or be as effective as the Kunai can. But it's a starter weapon and is purely designed for the early game. I think it would be unrealistic to say that the Mk1 Braton should be able to compete with the much higher tiered weapons with higher masteries, unless someone really has used that gun to death and knows everything about it.

But the way armor is scaled currently, yes, I do agree with you in that there are some weapons that I would probably never take to a full armor scaled gunfight anymore. And I am, as many know, a man of variety, I use every weapon.

[XRacKS]

Well the problem is that AI weapons still have considerable advantage against categories 3 and 2. And will remain good against low armor enemies. 

While bullet weapons will be good against low armor enemies, start to falter in medium, and suck against high armored enemies.

Unless you make bullet weapons deal better damage/dps than AI weapons this imbalance still exists, it just won't be as bad as it was before but Despair, Acrid, Gremlins, Flux, Lanka will still come out with huge advantages. 

AP mod would be required on bullet weapons, and not at all on the AI. So you're now giving AI weapons a free mod slot and nine extra points to work with as another bonus to them. 

It's a start, but now instead of having AI weapons being hugely overpowered at high levels, they're a little overpowered at all levels.

Oh yes I forgot this point of view - thanks.

The Bullet Weapons need a slight buff or AP Wepaons need a debuff against unarmored targets... or like some other guy postet.

Look at WC3 and SC1+2 -> Un-,Light-Med-Heavyarmored vs Piercing Blunt etc pp attacks... That would be the "easiest" way.