Lets Fix High Yield Shell

[Frenotx]

As some of you may know, the "High Yield Shell" (HYS) special effect for cannons was fixed in the beta, and thus made extremely strong. The fairly large and reliable internal AoE made cannons equip with this effect extremely effective at wiping out internal modules. Even if the opponent had module reinforcement packages, the AoE hitting several modules (and thus the MRP absorbing the damage several times over per shot) was quickly overwhelmed. Justifiably, the effect was nerfed with the launch of 3.0, but FDev's (hopefully temporary) "fix" was to simply cut the damage in half. It's now fairly useless.

As long as module reinforcement packages continue to work as they do (damage effectively getting multiplied per module hit by an AoE) HYS (and to a similar degree, super penetrator) is going to be extremely difficult to balance in its current form. I think it needs to be changed to behave differently. I've come up with one possible implementation, but I'd love to see you all put on your thinking caps and see if you can come up with others. The objective is to come up with an implementation that's interesting and an appealing choice, but also fair to be on the defending side of. Here's my idea to get the conversation started:

Proposed changes to High Yield Shell:

• Make damage 100% explosive
• Make breach chance extremely low, if not outright 0%
• Give it a splash radius, but keep it very small
• No damage decrease, possible slight damage increase

What this does:

• Makes high yield shell a great hull-smashing tool, giving it a unique role
  • The role of cannons is already sniping modules. The current implementation of HYS just makes them way better at it (making the effect difficult to balance). This change makes it so HYS has its own role, instead of just being "Cannons, but better."
  • Finishing off someone with cannons can sometimes be a little frustrating. When their hull is low, the cannons breach almost every shot. Since their damage gets dumped on some random module when they do this, destroying that last bit of hull can be annoying. This special effect lets you set up your cannons to be great a breaking hull specifically, at the expense of being able to damage internal modules.
• Allows HYS cannons to damage external modules, but requires a basically-direct hit.
  • Keeps them unique from missiles: higher speed, no vulnerability to PDT and potentially higher damage, but requires MUCH closer aim, and realistically can only hit one module at a time.
• Keeps it from being excessively good at killing internal modules

 

[V'larr]

On the surface it's a sound approach, though I wonder at the merit of, essentially, turning cannons into dumbfire missiles. (I feel like I've said in the past that munitions travel speed in this game is too slow for my liking....)


I, personally, believe this could be better fixed during a grounds-up balance update that addresses hitpoint inflation and Engineer blueprints being too strong by at least a factor of five. I might even remove special effects from Engineering altogether and instead add certain ones into the base functionality of the various weapon types available in the game. Cannons having a built-in reduced form of the explosive effect (as in, a balanced form) would certainly make them more interesting, no?

 

[Frenotx]

On the surface it's a sound approach, though I wonder at the merit of, essentially, turning cannons into dumbfire missiles.


I, personally, believe this could be better fixed during a grounds-up balance update that addresses hitpoint inflation and Engineer blueprints being too strong by at least a factor of five. I might even remove special effects from Engineering altogether and instead add certain ones into the base functionality of the various weapon types available in the game.

Yes engineer balance is quite broken, yes hitpoint inflation is out of control, and yes it could do with a ground-up rebalance / rework. As much as I'd like to see that happen, I'm increasingly finding it to be unlikely. In lieu of that, I'm trying to come up with / inspire the community to come up with far-more feasible changes that would improve the current situation. You know, make the best of the situation we've got.

As far as turning cannons into missiles, that's somewhat the idea. They wouldn't be nearly as effective at destroying exterior modules since they'd require an almost-direct hit, but they wouldn't be vulnerable to the various anti-missile counter measures. Gives HYS a nice niche of dedicated hull-smasher, with a side-benefit of being able to occasionally damage externals with an extremely well-placed shot.

 

[TheSisko]

Heh, we had a thread about this last night. Good. Because this needs to be fixed properly. 50% less damage is overkill.

I disagree with turning HYS into missiles, that's what missiles are for. What about diminishing returns instead? We already have this for shield resistances. So, if you have 1 HYS Cannon, its hits with full damage, but 2 or more results in less hull and internal module damage - the more HYS Cannons you have, the less the additional damage stacks.

You could also cap the maximum amount of internal module damage, regardless of how many HYS Cannons you have.

Frontier used this method to fix the heat-weapon meta.

 

[Frenotx]

Heh, we had a thread about this last night. Good. Because this needs to be fixed properly. 50% less damage is overkill.

I disagree with turning HYS into missiles, that's what missiles are for. What about diminishing returns instead? We already have this for shield resistances. So, if you have 1 HYS Cannon, its hits with full damage, but 2 or more results in less hull and internal module damage - the more HYS Cannons you have, the less the additional damage stacks.

You could also cap the maximum amount of internal module damage, regardless of how many HYS Cannons you have.

Frontier used this method to fix the heat-weapon meta.

I'm not a fan of diminishing returns for this problem, because it isn't very intuitive. What if MRPs absorbed the damage from all the modules (as the do now), but only took "one copy's worth" of damage to themselves? It would make them equally effective at protecting modules against single target weapons, and multi-hit weapons.

Also, I don't know if I'd call heat weapons "fixed". They're pretty useless currently.

 

[Eriseley]

I don't know how it would work with their code and ship module organization, but damage dropoff at the edge of the aoe might be another choice? Hits the one module very hard, hits nearby modules decently if there are any, tickles things at the edge of the aoe.

Also, having some ability to weight what MRPs protect could be an interesting mechanic (give it a little Battletech feel for allocating armor).

 

[Frenotx]

Also, having some ability to weight what MRPs protect could be an interesting mechanic (give it a little Battletech feel for allocating armor).

That would be another cool thing for an engineer role (multi crew) to do on the fly!

 

[trooper1023]

Whatever the solution might be... FDEV, fix the description text! IT'S WRONG!
https://imgur.com/a/lqGMs

Honestly, I'd take the Beta HYS redonkulousness over this 100% USELESSNESS.

Idea: flip the -50% damage to -50% Rate of Fire. So in the game, you're flying, and see another commander with cannon equiped and go, "Oh ****, does he have HY? Or does he have Dispersal Field on that cannon?" Then it becomes a game of keeping your shields up, or outflying his infrequent shots...

 

[Maka Gucci]

100% Agree, please under nerf this poor soul. We don't have an incendiary mod, these are the Cannons USP. The nerf mallet over hit HYS.
.. Oh wait, you want it nerfed more?

 

[Truesilver]

At the most basic level, would this be the time to raise again the fact that modules still (afaik) (?) count as having infinite hp at 0% health, in that shots sprayed across a hull with many modules at 0% health do trivial damage if they touch the 0% modules?

Because if this is still so, I think this is relevant to HYS and all hull attacks. Modules at 0% health should not reduce hull damage at all.

 

[Frenotx]

At the most basic level, would this be the time to raise again the fact that modules still (afaik) (?) count as having infinite hp at 0% health, in that shots sprayed across a hull with many modules at 0% health do trivial damage if they touch the 0% modules?

Because if this is still so, I think this is relevant to HYS and all hull attacks. Modules at 0% health should not reduce hull damage at all.

A G R E E D
If a module has 0% health (except the power plant in its current imperfect implementation, I guess), it should no longer count as a module that can be hit. A shot that successfully rolls for a breech but only has 0% modules in its path should just hit the hull, instead.

 

[bladebss]

I would be happy with making the damage of the cannons back to 100% and just keeping the breach damage at 50%

So you can hit 2 modules with 50% damage or not have HYS and hit one module with the full penetration damage. So it just does what it was always suposed to do..
Add splash damage to breach damage but spread the damage across the modules hit rather than apply full damage to all the modules.

 

[NecasekO]

Wouldn't it be enough to just reduce breach damage? Because that's how I understood the patch notes - that HYS cannon is supposed to do less damage to modules - instead they reduced damage to everything.

Or is the AOE damage to modules directly tied to weapon damage and the "breach damage" value is actually not used in case of HYS cannon?

Another option would be to reduce piercing value, which would actually fit the concept of high explosive shell (instead of armor piercing). That would keep the mod effective against shields and smaller ships, but reduce damage done to harder hulls (and their modules).

 

[V'larr]

At the most basic level, would this be the time to raise again the fact that modules still (afaik) (?) count as having infinite hp at 0% health, in that shots sprayed across a hull with many modules at 0% health do trivial damage if they touch the 0% modules?

Because if this is still so, I think this is relevant to HYS and all hull attacks. Modules at 0% health should not reduce hull damage at all.

Mechwarrior Online had the *same* exact flaw: you can destroy an arm, leg, or torso section, and then from that point onward that 'destroyed' part of the mech acts as an insanely effective damage sponge. Many designs specifically loaded only one half of the mech with weapons so that you could intentionally get the other half blown up and use that side to tank damage with between weapon salvos.

It's incredibly lame.

 

[philngraves]

As a subjective take on 'High-Yield', one would assume the shell is the futuristic equivalent of an modern, self-oxidizing enhanced explosive shell. This would mean greatly enhanced shield damage, and large scale module damage with diminishing effect from the area of impact. AoE should be larger than current and hull damage greatly reduced by hardness. Internal modules would take damage from force of impact, but hull should be largely resistant per size of the shell and hull hardness value.
If any of this makes sense, awesome. Probably not a feasable solution, but it would give the cannon more function as a shield/module breaker without making it excessive against hull. Explosives are meant to penetrate in cannon anyway, unless specified.

Kind of reminds me of the 152mm Russian tank killers they fielded during WW2. Meh, my 2 pence lol.