Remove Anti-Xeno Damage Type, and replace it with Armor Hardness

[DemiserofD]

This was brought up in another thread, but I thought it deserved its own topic.

1. The AX damage type makes very little sense. Thargoids are nearly completely immune to human damage types. This includes firing large kinetic projectiles at them. However, they freely take damage when ships ram into them - which are basically just bigger projectiles. This makes no sense.

2. Having BOTH hardness AND AX damage make very little sense. If Thargoids are already immune to everything but AX damage, why not just set their damage exactly where you want it, and increase the thargoid HP directly, rather than going through the unnecessary step of using Hardness? A Hydra, for example, could have zero hardness and 5333 HP, and it would behave identical in respect to Gauss. With Hardness removed, you could just reduce the AX damage component of other weapons according to their relative AP before the change, and again, achieve exactly the same results.

But Hardness is a game-wide mechanic, so removing it wouldn't be a good idea. No, the obvious solution is to remove the AX damage type. It would actually be super simple. This is how you would do it.

Step 1: Remove AX damage. All AX weapons now do JUST their human damage component.

Step 2: Increase Thargoid Armor Hardness by a factor of 10. Cyclopses now have 1000 Hardness. Hydras now have 2300 Hardness.

Step 3: Increase AX weapon Hardness by a factor of 10. Gauss now has 1400 Armor Piercing. At first this might seem overpowered, until you realize that Gauss already had AP well in excess of any human Hardness in the game, so this change actually makes no difference. (The only thing that might need adjustment is Advanced weaponry, possibly requiring a slight reduction in damage to account for the increase in Armor Piercing. They might have their AP increased by 12.5x, for example, and their damage slightly reduced by 20%.)

What is the result? Well, AX weapons will perform exactly the same. They do the same exact damage as before to Thargoids, and the same damage to human ships.

However, human weapons will now do a slight amount of damage to Thargoids, feeling more realistic, but ultimately making little difference in terms of practical combat. An Overcharged Huge Multicannon, for example, will do 3.2 DPS to a Cyclops, or approximately 1/5th as much as a Gauss Cannon. They will also be extremely inefficient, making them a poor choice in AX combat. However, they will feel more realistic, doing a small amount of damage rather than none at all.

The unnecessary AX damage type will have been removed.

 

[Greasetrap42]

1. The AX damage type makes very little sense. Thargoids are nearly completely immune to human damage types. This includes firing large kinetic projectiles at them. However, they freely take damage when ships ram into them - which are basically just bigger projectiles. This makes no sense.

I know nothing about thargoid physiology. Projectiles are high speed small piercing things. Ramming it with a ship is a relatively slow but massive item. The impact would be different. Hundreds of small piercing knife attacks vs being hit by a cement truck. Not the same. Edit: and a huge difference in kinetic energy on impact.

 

[Tividar]

I know nothing about thargoid physiology. Projectiles are high speed small piercing things. Ramming it with a ship is a relatively slow but massive item. The impact would be different. Hundreds of small piercing knife attacks vs being hit by a cement truck. Not the same. Edit: and a huge difference in kinetic energy on impact.

We don’t actually know barrel speed or bullet mass. Might not be that much of a difference, and that argument actually runs the other way: all that kinetic energy focused onto a small impact point should do a better job of piercing, not worse.

 

[Greasetrap42]

We don’t actually know barrel speed or bullet mass. Might not be that much of a difference, and that argument actually runs the other way: all that kinetic energy focused onto a small impact point should do a better job of piercing, not worse.

Individual projectiles fired from a ship will not have nearly the same kinetic energy as an entire ship driving into something. Not even in the ballpark. Whether the projectiles are fired or self propelled if they had similar impact as a ramming ship we would certainly know it.

Don't know anything about the physiology of the Thargoids. Attempts at piercing it might be futile while smashing it with a cement truck at full speed with crushing force might cause internal damage without piercing it. Very different kind of damage.


Cutting Down a Tree With An AR-15 (Fail)
And that's just a 10" Dia tree. Notice how the axe (much more mass) works better.
An F150 Pickup truck traveling at 80km/hr would knock it down too.

 

[Tividar]

Individual projectiles fired from a ship will not have nearly the same kinetic energy as an entire ship driving into something. Not even in the ballpark. Whether the projectiles are fired or self propelled if they had similar impact as a ramming ship we would certainly know it.

Don't know anything about the physiology of the Thargoids. Attempts at piercing it might be futile while smashing it with a cement truck at full speed with crushing force might cause internal damage without piercing it. Very different kind of damage.

I keep imagining relativistic projectile speeds for multicanons, but your probably right. I just took the time to look, and 1,600 m/s makes me . As for concussive vs piercing, if they’d get rid of The AX damage type we’d have a partial answer.

 

[DemiserofD]

I know nothing about thargoid physiology. Projectiles are high speed small piercing things. Ramming it with a ship is a relatively slow but massive item. The impact would be different. Hundreds of small piercing knife attacks vs being hit by a cement truck. Not the same. Edit: and a huge difference in kinetic energy on impact.

In any case, I think it would feel more authentic to have normal weapons do some small amount of damage, only reduced due to mechanics you see everywhere in the game, rather than specifically for this one place.

And since there's no statistical reason it wouldn't work, why not? Simplicity and clarity are always ideal if the option is there.

 

[Kissamies]

The decision to give Thargoids a lot of hardness is bit of a headscratcher. I suppose it was originally to encourage using missiles to exert Cyclops and multicannons to pick off the hearts. However, the introduction of tougher interceptors with more hardness and Guardian weapons made the whole dynamic dysfunctional. Gauss was the only serious AX weapon and remained so up until the Salvation mods were introduced.

I think, if you want to encourage using different weapons for different tasks, the interceptors should be soft instead of hard. Piercing weapons would just mostly overpenetrate, but be good at penetrating the bulk and hitting the vital organs. You would need massive tissue damage from explosions and plasma to make the organs expose themselves. Of course, it's a pipe dream to expect so radically different mechanic to happen now, so we must play with what we have.

One idea I've seen is making the thargoid non-AX damage resistance, and AX damage type too I suppose, go away, but make the current AX weapons ignore the crazy hardness interceptors have completely. Pretty similar to OP, I suppose. OP is probably better because you can get pretty high piercing values to things like sturdy rails or focused plasma. Anyway, I agree that AX damage type should go. It's very gamey.