Oolite Bulletins

I've been playing around with Thargoid's "IronHide Armour" OXP, and I noticed that, even though I had over 90% armour, damage was still being passed through to equipment. This felt wrong, so I coded up a tweak that will only start letting equipment be damaged when the armour falls below 50% for standard armour, and 75% for military, with the chance increasing as the armour reduces. Cargo damage can still occur, but equipment damage is minimised.

This felt much better and fits more with what I think armour does. However, at 750cr, this seems a bit cheap for what now basically amounts to a secondary shield. So I'm thinking of creating a new OXP, based largely on IronHide, that does this new job, but at a higher cost. I'm thinking in this new OXP there will be 4 levels (basic, commerical, industrial and military), each with their own cost point.

The question (yes there is one!) is how to balance this. I'm thinking that armour like this will have an impact on the performance of the ship. My thoughts (and I don't know if this is achievable yet) is to reduce the maximum speed of the ship by 1, 2, 3 and 4 percent for each of the different armour types. Would that be a suitable balance? I could also adjust the max pitch, yaw and roll values by a small value as well.

I'd appreciate any thoughts on how to balance this.

phkb wrote:

The question (yes there is one!) is how to balance this. I'm thinking that armour like this will have an impact on the performance of the ship. My thoughts (and I don't know if this is achievable yet) is to reduce the maximum speed of the ship by 1, 2, 3 and 4 percent for each of the different armour types. Would that be a suitable balance? I could also adjust the max pitch, yaw and roll values by a small value as well.

I'd appreciate any thoughts on how to balance this.

I played with Ironhide a bit when I first started, but I found it largely just a money-sink, given how little protection it seemed to give compared to the cost of continually repairing it after each fight. I do like your idea of tweaking the ship handing and acceleration based on the extra mass, though. You either have to put the armor on the exterior, in which case, you're messing up the handling, or on the interior, in which case it's filling up cargo space. I wonder, I know Hardships has some specialized armors for components. Would it be better if the Ironhide-like armor only protects certain parts of a ship, like an extra-armored cargo hold, or special plating for your energy unit?

Another player-centric er, 'advantage', so maybe the best balance would be to award the equivalent to random NPCs in some way, if that is possible.

I propose the military version be accessible only after having completed a military mission among a list of currently existing missions.

This has several advantages :
- no military equipment for a not military person,
- a significant reward for existing missions,
- money isn't enough to access the best version of the equipment.

The information of the existence of the military version could be given to the player via the Galactic News Network.
EDIT: and through ads in F8 :p

Smivs wrote:

Another player-centric er, 'advantage', so maybe the best balance would be to award the equivalent to random NPCs in some way, if that is possible.

Agreed, but I think Hardships does the same thing for NPCs, so it should be possible. Ask Norby how he set that up and go from there. I never used Hardships, so, can't say for sure.

Layne wrote:

Hardships does the same thing for NPCs

Yes, [wiki]HardShips[/wiki] put additional armour into all ships by default, moreover handle 6 separated armour sides for each ship like on a cube. NPCs with IronHide equipment (awarded by [wiki]ShipVersion[/wiki]) receive somewhat larger numbers. Technically use the same way as IronHide on the player ship.

I think the fixing cost could be much less than the initial - fixing a cut or a hole need much less material than the whole armour. Maybe buy a costly equipment first time but the code replace instantly to a cheap non-buyable one.

I can imageine free automatical fixes in dock but reducing the max. strength by a few percent at each refill. You can display the actual strength if you define many equipments with values in the name and offer a replacement in the shop for the cost of difference to get back the max. strength.

Could be even better if you implement 6 sides and make front, aft, port, starboard, top and bottom armours - feel free to copy my FindWhichSide function from hardships.js to determine which side received a hit. The fixing cost will be lower if a few sides are damaged only and players probably will pay more often for replacing the most important front and aft armours than others.

Norby wrote:

I think the fixing cost could be much less than the initial

That's what I was thinking.

Norby wrote:

but reducing the max. strength by a few percent at each refill.

I might look at implementing that.

Norby wrote:

Could be even better if you implement 6 sides and make front, aft, port, starboard, top and bottom armours

The only counter I have for that is that is makes armour a complex arrangement - complex to implement as well as complex to display (front = x%, rear = x%, port = x% etc) and repair (which side are you repairing, all sides etc). I like the simplicity of "Armour strength = 95%". However, I can also see the value in having a more realistic representation of armour. I'll think about it a bit more.

phkb wrote:

This felt wrong, so I coded up a tweak that will only start letting equipment be damaged when the armour falls below 50% for standard armour, and 75% for military

Isn't this backwards? Military armour should be tougher than the standard stuff...

Sorry, I meant armour reduction. So, damage starts being passed through after 50% of the standard armour is gone, or 75% of the military armour.

Ah.. that makes more sense.. thanks!