News Discussion with Mark Allen on damage and defenses

[Distance]

Using that logic, a railgun is the last weapon you'd want to fire when trying to break open a cargo ship because it should leave holes not only through the hatch, but also through all the cargo containers behind the hatch along its line of entry

Good point. You should also be destroying cargo with penetrating weapons as well.

You should be able to take the pilot out as well by the same logic with rail guns. If they punch a hole through the ship and you hit the canopy it should be hard to fly with a superheated hole through your body

 

[Xzanron]

Greetings Commanders,

Recently and over time, we've seen a fair amount of discussions regarding game mechanics, such as damage and defenses. Mark Allen joins us today to discuss such!

Love it! This is an excellent post. Please bring us more

Why are shields so effective against missiles? I mean an explosion is pretty 'thermic'! I'd love it if you could make missiles much more terrifying. In the original elite an "incoming missile" was a wet your pants event, in ED it's not even worth worrying about, especially if you have PD. Maybe more expensive missile types with penaids and larger warheads?

 

[Jynessa Loraeyn]

Thank you so much for this info - excellent stuff.

 

[Distance]

Love it! This is an excellent post. Please bring us more

Why are shields so effective against missiles? I mean an explosion is pretty 'thermic'! I'd love it if you could make missiles much more terrifying. In the original elite an "incoming missile" was a wet your pants event, in ED it's not even worth worrying about, especially if you have PD. Maybe more expensive missile types with penaids and larger warheads?

Because people were filling eagles with missiles and taking out anacondas in seconds.

They overnerfed them imo which is why missile based weapons now do nothing to shields.

 

[Parmo]

What about hardpoints and utility mounts?
No mention of these.
As far as I understand the cockpit is not a module nor is the canopy; they are not utility mounts either. One cannot buy them. I cannot recall if they are on the repair list. Seems modules and utility mounts, the terms, are not well defined for the player to grasp the damage model that is presented from this view.
If the canopy shows cracks, is this damage? If so, is it on the repair list?
When the repair button is clicked the canopy is repaired or replaced, the player cannot tell. It seems intuitive that a broken / breached canopy is replaced while a cracked / chipped one may be reasonably assumed to be repairable. Thinking of my car windscreen here!
Is the canopy an intrinsic part of the cockpit? The image of the damage model geometry does not make it clear.

 

[Pixeldemon]

Because people were filling eagles with missiles and taking out anacondas in seconds.

They overnerfed them imo which is why missile based weapons now do nothing to shields.

I agree that they were overnerfed.

In fact, I feel like anything that's not a pulse laser is a bit of a novelty weapon. Imo, weapon balance really needs work, starting with buffing missiles and increasing ammo counts on weapons like Frag Cannons and Rail guns.

 

[Lazerus Artificial]

I agree that they were overnerfed.

In fact, I feel like anything that's not a pulse laser is a bit of a novelty weapon. Imo, weapon balance really needs work, starting with buffing missiles and increasing ammo counts on weapons like Frag Cannons and Rail guns.

^
this.

cannons could also need some projectile speed, i have read somewhere that even the plasma projectile is faster...

especially the 1.4 powerplant change could mean that projectile weapons need a major overhaul.
currently you mainly use railguns and cannons to snipe the PP, but when that gets changed...for what would you use them then?
if you cant take out a target with a direct hit to the PP then, all the projectile weapons would need a lot more ammo to take out a target through hull damage, so all of them, not just railgun and frag, would need a huge ammo increase.

if the projectile weapons stay like they are right now, it would turn lasers even more into the one and only viable weapon.

 

[Ben Ryder]

Very good to hear how things are working and plans. Thanks

 

[mossfoot]

I still really want to know about the subsystem damage capacity though

 

[Dodgey]

Does this mean we can fire at a number of specific modules so they malfunction before the ship blows up?

Will NPC ships in 1.4 surrender and power down once we've disabled their essential modules (FSD, thrusters, weapons, life support) and beg for their lives?

 

[ROSS-128]

Hull re-inforcements & Armour at the moment primarily increase your total hitpoints (which indirectly reduces penetration chances - after taking the same punishment your hull health is higher which is factored into step 3).

Just a note to be clear - What does Armour mean in this sentence? Bulkheads, or the stat that ships have, and HullReinforcements increase? =]

Somewhat repeating this other poster here ^ but you are referring to the "Armor" stat visible in the Shipyard, correct? If so, does this value indicate your ship's base HP directly, is it modified by other factors, or is it a modifier itself for some hidden base value?

It would definitely be nice to have more hard numbers about things like this, as well as vital stats for things like shields and weapons. How shield HP and regen rate are calculated, base damage values for all the weapons, projectile velocities of all the projectile weapons, etc.

If a lot of these things cannot be successfully determined until the relevant module is installed in a ship (for example, if ship mass, Powerplant capacity, and/or Power Distributor efficiency influence your shield HP and regen rate), then a "Ship/Module Info" panel in the 4 menu would be a good place to put this information. Here we could view our ship's total HP, its current armor values, its shield/weapon stats, max speed, etc. for our current configuration and power allocation (so if we move some pips and open the "Ship/Module Info" panel again, it would update any stats that were altered by power distribution). Putting everything on one screen might get a bit crowded, so perhaps allow us to highlight individual installed modules in order to view in-depth info that is specific to that module (again, with all current modifiers applied).

Making that kind of info readily available would go a long way towards helping equipment discussions be based on a solid foundation, rather than rumor and hearsay.

 

[Lobstris]

Cheers for the informative article. More of this kind of thing please.

 

[Everett Mcgill]

Very interesting. Is it possible to have a single maneuvering thruster damaged or is any damaged thruster just counted as generic engine damage? It would be awesome if we could lose a single thruster that affected flight performance causing us to improvise new tactics. For example, if one of the thrusters used for pitching were disabled your pitch speed would be reduced. Or if one of your two main engines were damaged your top speed would be reduced along with a tendency to yaw. I think it would be great to feel the damage to the ship in the flight model.

 

[Rubberboots]

Mark wrote: "3) Next we decide if the shot has penetrated the armour. This is a random chance that scales with current hull health. The exact values vary per weapon though a typical example is 40% chance when you have full health, 80% when close to death. If the penetration roll fails then we deal all damage to the hull and skip to step 8."

I have to admit, the RNG nature of this bothers me. Why not make it a fixed percentage of the damage making it through, with this percentage starting small (say, 10%) and then ramping up as your armor takes damage? It feels antithetical to the skill-based nature of the game to have the damage calculation have this random element.

 

[Leo Sagan]

Epic post Brett, thank you so much Mark Allen for this goldmine !

 

[Vandaahl]

Cool read, thanks a bunch!

 

[scbfromnc]

You can see that Elite fans want this kind of information and it's fantastic that ED Developers are responding with more information. Thanks!

 

[racketear]

Thanks for that info!

Very welcome and very interesting

Cheers!

 

[Zmaj od Bosne]

Because people were filling eagles with missiles and taking out anacondas in seconds.

They overnerfed them imo which is why missile based weapons now do nothing to shields.

They could have made missile racks and torpedo pylons only fit on large and bigger hard points. That would have given larger ships the power they deserve and keep it away from smaller ships that should not have room to fit large weapon systems in the first place.

 

[nrage]

They could have made missile racks and torpedo pylons only fit on large and bigger hard points. That would have given larger ships the power they deserve and keep it away from smaller ships that should not have room to fit large weapon systems in the first place.

Nah, small ships are already disadvantaged why make it more so. Small ships with missiles should not be a threat to large ships because they have more utility slots and should be running point defence. Maybe if the game made loadout suggestions on the rebuy screen more people would have realised that.