Ships "Funny Hull" - a commonly known phenomenon?

[Kayvan]

The other day I watched a youtube video by a guy who had engineered a ship for 85% Thermal hull resistance.
This is the build he used:

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

s.orbis.zone

As you can see, he uses:

• Mirrored Hull w/ reflective plating --> ca 72% thermal
• a bunch of Kinetic and Blast HRPs (which all reduce thermal resist), and NO thermal HRPs.

Yet the total Thermal resist rises to 85% and the other resists aren't too shabby either (49 explosive, 59 kinetic)Is this

Is this a known phenomenon? Does it also work with other hull types? tbh I haven't run a lot of tests.
I'm just asking because none of the builds I have seen posted anywhere made use of such an exploit, ever. (And yes, stacking HRPs that give negative resistance and receive a resistance increase is certainly an exploit)

 

[Northpin]

If indeed it is replicable in game (and it's not only a coriolis bug - which probably it isnt), then it is an exploit (check the linked post, post #20 in the same thread, eventually the entire thread)
A bug exploit, to be more specific, that can be used to gain unfair advantages - which is cheating, which is a punishable offense

And if you get reported for using that, you may endanger your account.

 

[GroG79]

If you can just build it... It is not an exploit? Or am I misunderstanding?

Negative percentages are still a positive number.. -25% is value x times 0.75
Perhaps I should go back to school

 

[Factabulous]

Yeah, it's not cheating - just a clever build. If fdev don't like ppl using it they'll patch it out like they did The Egg - which was an exploit ...

 

[Kayvan]

Well, from the video it is pretty obvious that it indeed works ingame, the player posted it himself to show how his ship is basically immune to lasers.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjiiumKsWzg

Negative percentages are still a positive number.. -25% is value x times 0.75

That would be correct, -10% equals *0.9; but then 72% -10% should equal 64,8% and not 73.2%.

If you can just build it... It is not an exploit? Or am I misunderstanding?

Yeah, it's not cheating - just a clever build. If fdev don't like ppl using it they'll patch it out like they did The Egg - which was an exploit ...

The definition of an exploit is to make deliberate use of a bug. Negative resistances resulting in a net increase is certainly a bug.

Cursory tests on Coriolis suggest that it works only with Mirrored hull, which reinforces the suspicion that it's a bug and not an intentional feature.

 

[Factabulous]

... And if it's a bug, and if fdev care then they will fix it.

Given that Mirrored is supposed to be strong against thermal, and everyone knows that thermal is not great against even ordinary hull then I don't see this as a big issue. They certainly won't be banning anyone for trying the build out.

 

[Jmanis]

I'm really curious about the mechanism for this, as it doesn't make sense to me for it to be replicated in something like coriolis the same way as it is in the game, given the numbers for items "look right".

Fiddling with the fitting, i noticed that throwing on a G5 Thermal HRP substantially reduces the thermal resistance, when using mirrored plate... weird.

 

[Northpin]

... And if it's a bug, and if fdev care then they will fix it.

It is a bug - since that build makes use of kinetic and blast resistant HRP - which every single one of them are supposed to diminish the thermal resists

So we start from this (+72.4% thermal resist):

Then we add a bunch of Kinetic and Blast HRP (which each of them are supposed to diminish the thermal resist by 9% - 11%)

And, with not a single thermal HRP in the build, we end up with 85.3% Thermal resist...

What sorcery is this?

Well, the sorcery has a name: bug,
using the sorcery also has a name: bug exploit, also know as cheating.

However, the more people exploit this bug and get reported, the merrier chances for FDev it to fix it and take measures

Cursory tests on Coriolis suggest that it works only with Mirrored hull, which reinforces the suspicion that it's a bug and not an intentional feature.

Yea, based on Coriolis/EDSY the bug starts to manifest around 65-66% resists, so about G4 Mirrored with Thermal (but at that level the increases are slower than with 72+ for G5 Mirrored Thermal) - and since this is the only bulkheads that can reach this level of resists...

 

[Northpin]

Well, from the video it is pretty obvious that it indeed works ingame, the player posted it himself to show how his ship is basically immune to lasers.

Does the video show the build? the in game numbers?
I personally don't care about it that much to build a ship personally - but still i'm mildly interested if the build works in game as it works in Coriolis/EDSY because if it doesn't...

 

[Jmanis]

If you can just build it... It is not an exploit? Or am I misunderstanding?

For me... you need to think about it a bit.

FD make it pretty clear in their EULA that just because they don't correct something, it doesn't mean it's not against the rules.

But there's a grey line which looks something like "is it doing what it says it should on the tin".

For me, there's the very obvious "no it's not" ones, like a fitting supposed to reduce a resistance actually increases it, or not receiving a fine/bounty for an action that is meant to incur one. Knowingly taking advantage of those is against the rules in my books[1]

Then there's things like post-mineral-price- change deliveries, which saw things like "deliver 40t of gold" skyrocket from 8m reward to 50m. Clearly a bug (design oversight[2]), as FD corrected it soon after... but it was doing what it was meant to on the tin, and you could argue that it was how it's meant to be, so i don't think taking advantage of that is cheating, even though it was a bug.

Then you had Rockforth Fertiliser... you could buy it for 1cr, and sell it for thousands back to the same market. Doing what it says on the tin, but FD certainly thought that was cheating and punished people as such.

... which comes to the hard bit, being "how reasonable/easy is it to punish someone for it, and what's the impact? And the last bit makes things more grey, as it also ties to the urgency for the issue being fixed.

I would say anyone using this, yes, objectively cheating. But what's the impact? Is it a major advantage? I don't have a horse in that race (noting i didn't watch the video for <reasons>... might do if when i get home).

[1] There's a slippery slope to add "only if it confers an advantage" here... but i don't, simply because there might be further unintended ways to take advantage of that. It's a quick walk to then suggest mission stacking is cheating, as it's knowingly taking advantage of a design oversight which doesn't limiting the maximum amount of functionally identical missions in situations where few variations can spawn, for in some cases, significant advantage... yet isn't the point of deciding on which missions to take, to optimise your outcomes?

[2] yes, this is a bug.

 

[Markov Chaney]

Does the video show the build? the in game numbers?
I personally don't care about it that much to build a ship personally - but still i'm mildly interested if the build works in game as it works in Coriolis/EDSY because if it doesn't...

The creator (CrimsonGamer99) links to the build:
Linky

It relies on 10 internal slots like what the Cobra Mk IV has; so this manifestation of the issue will only affect players with a Mk IV. Since that's a reward ship it seems unlikely it will be nerfed tbh.

 

[Northpin]

The creator (CrimsonGamer99) links to the build:
Linky

It means nothing unless they show the ingame numbers as well

It relies on 10 internal slots like what the Cobra Mk IV has; so this manifestation of the issue will only affect players with a Mk IV. Since that's a reward ship it seems unlikely it will be nerfed tbh.

it works for ANY ship that has enough internals to pump up the resists high enough

Here is a Phantom (9 internals) 82.7 thermal
Here is a Conda (13 internals) 90% thermal

The problem is not with the ship - is with the formula behind engineering stuff that has more than 66% resists and it can be exploited on any ship

 

[Aleks Zuno]

Is this a known phenomenon? Does it also work with other hull types?

What sorcery is this?

There seems to be a very strange phenomenon which occurs when a damage resistance of the Armour, engineering or otherwise, reaches two-thirds:

• Based on the Reactive Armour seeming predictable with reinforcing its Explosive but a discrepancy shows when reinforcing its Kinetic, I think the phenomenon starts occurring when the Armour module provides around +25%, at which Hull reinforcements start having reduced effect.
• Using a Mirrored Armour with grade 4 Thermal resistance gives +66.5%, at which Hull reinforcements have apparently zero effect.
• Continuing the pattern, the phenomenon is that exceeding +66.6% from the Armour then causes Hull reinforcements to have a negative effect.

All Armour modules seem capable of exhibiting that phenomenon, although only Mirrored actually has a high enough initial number to cross the critical two-thirds amount.

Within the context of the Armour module alone, everything seems fine; for example, the Mirrored has +50% Thermal, and adding +40% Thermal resistance gives the result +70%. There is no problem here, because as factors applied to damage they are 0.5, 0.6 and the correct product 0.3 respectively.

The problem occurs when further reinforcement modules are applied, because that +70% has exceeded +66.6%:

• Making the resultant resistance from Armour something not above +25% seems to be fine with reinforcements; factor multiplication works as expected.
• Between +25% and +66.66% from Armour, reinforcement resistance scales down and reaches zero.
• Beyond +66.66% from Armour, reinforcement resistance scales below zero into negative factors.
  • Attempting to boost that resistance—with a simple Heavy Duty module, for example—actually harms it.
  • Harming the resistance deliberately by engineering for negative effects actually helps it, a lot.

I think those thresholds at least do not admit the possibility of beyond +100% resistance via reinforcements, which could cause Thermal damage to repair the hull, because it would occur only when the original Armour has breached +100% without reinforcements helping it. Specifically, +108.33% (13/12).

As an arithmetic mechanism it is quite similar to the way Short Range works so well with Thermal Vent, where the latter applies a negative factor to the Beam heat. It is likely not intended though!

 

[Northpin]

There seems to be a very strange phenomenon which occurs when a damage resistance of the Armour, engineering or otherwise, reaches two-thirds:

yea, yea, i was sarcastic with the sorcery thingie
And i played a bit with EDSY and i noticed the point where it goes downhill uphill is around two thirds

Yea, based on Coriolis/EDSY the bug starts to manifest around 65-66% resists, so about G4 Mirrored with Thermal (but at that level the increases are slower than with 72+ for G5 Mirrored Thermal) - and since this is the only bulkheads that can reach this level of resists...

 

[Markov Chaney]

Does the video show the build? the in game numbers?

It does not. There's a brief (like five seconds of the four minutes) demo of him getting lasered to doody and back with none of it damaging the hull. That's it.

I personally don't care about it that much to build a ship personally - but still i'm mildly interested if the build works in game as it works in Coriolis/EDSY because if it doesn't...

So see above - there's a demo of the effect working, but it's all cockpit footage and a few relevant captions.

Surely one of you lot has the cash lying around for an attempt to reproduce...

 

[metatheurgist]

It's not the cash. It's the mats. And the CMIV is a sore point for some.

 

[Factabulous]

It's not the cash, or the mats, or the CM4.

It's that I'm waiting on an FC to get ferried back from Colonia with a load of rare Mollusc samples that I travelled 100k LY to get. And no way will a truckload of samples fit into a ship also filled with HRP

 

[Morbad]

Is this a known phenomenon?

Yes. It's been around forever and has been accessible since 3.0. There was a lot of theory crafting and experimentation with it back around 2017 in the PvP scene, but with plasma + (shadow) ramming becoming so prevalent the downsides of any resistance focused build, even if the resistances were extreme, almost always outweighed the advantages. Though that resulting neglect of resistances did open up a bit of a niche, for a while (every fix/balance pass funnels more people back into plasma + ramming).

Does it also work with other hull types?

Not to the same extent.

I'm really curious about the mechanism for this, as it doesn't make sense to me for it to be replicated in something like coriolis the same way as it is in the game, given the numbers for items "look right".

Fiddling with the fitting, i noticed that throwing on a G5 Thermal HRP substantially reduces the thermal resistance, when using mirrored plate... weird.

Corriolis has been getting closer to what shows up in game, but it's still not quite there, or wasn't, last I checked, which was a fair bit back. Still the phenomena is real.

The problem is how the game handles supposedly diminishing returns and that there is no subtraction done any where in the actual resistance calculations, it's all multiplication.

 

[Factabulous]

Phew - an expert turned up So much for being a new bannable cheat

 

[Northpin]

Phew - an expert turned up So much for being a new bannable cheat

I dont think anyone said it's a NEW banable cheat
I did expected it to be as old as the "new ship engineering"

It doesnt mean it's not a bug exploit - it only means FDev closed an eye to it and it wasn't prevalent / reported much and/or easy enough to get fixed
And FDev is enforcing the ToS at their own pace (or when the media is on it)

If some known gaming outlet will publish tomorrow an article that hits on "exploiting bad engineering math" FDev may seem obliged to intervene - like it happened in the past
Else, nope.