Hull System Choice - Please read and vote.

[NiteHawk]

I narrowed it down to two I like and think would be best. Virtually they are BOTH the same overall but a couple minor things. This is basic, and will be improved as times come, lets keep it basic first.

Let's say we have this:

First bar is ACTUAL HULL POINTS.
Second bar is HULL INTEGRITY (I believe it would be called this?)  

-The first bar is basic, the hull points is your actual hull. This can repair slowly and at a planet. If this bar is at 0, you explode.

-Hull Integrity works differently. Integrity is linked to how much damage your subsystems will take. If you have 5000 Hull Integrity points, and you have 2500 left (2500/5000 Integrity) your subsystems are subjected to taking 50% of whatever damage your actual Hull points are taking. If it was 1250/5000 for Integrity, you would take 75% damage. Currently, you take 100% damage when shields are down, so it will create a different gameplay a bit. This will only be repaired at a starbase. If this is at 0, you don't die, but your subsytems are subjected to the full damage, as it 'currently is'

-Modules will have lower hit points to compensate for this. Currently we raised them ALOT to have an 'act' of actual hull points, but it doesn't really work that way in general, and can cause issues if you give too many hull points of a ship never being destroyed.

So, for the options:

1. Let us say you have 5000 HULL POINTS and 5000 INTEGRITY POINTS. You take 200 damage. You are left with 4800 HULL POINTS and 4800 INTEGRITY POINTS. Hull points will slowly regenerate, integrity points will not.

2. Let us say you have 5000 HULL POINTS and 5000 INTEGRITY POINTS. You take 200 damage. You are left with 4800 HULL POINTS. The amount of Integrity points lost will be determined like this: Random from 25% to 100% of the actual damage, so it can be between 50 to 200 damage in this example. So you can be left with 4800 TO 4950 INTEGRITY POINTS. The values can change depending on what we want it to be, (50%-100%, 0%-100? 25%-50%? Someone come up with a good one here) I like this one more as these points also do not regenerate.


Both have positives and weaknesses.
1. is good because you can just add more INTEGRITY, for example 2000 HULL and 10000 INTEGRITY and you'd know the actual damage in general..
2. is better for a more 'realistic' ideal and isn't so basic, and you don't lose so much INTEGRITY and you do have a chance to not take as much INTEGRITY damage.

I can always add it so you can adjust values, aka defining the 25%-100% damage, (so you can do 100%-100% if you want option 1. too), but I need a default system use in SOL overall. Please input your says into either 1. or 2.. Also please state about the percentage of INTEGRITY DAMAGE if you state 2.

If you have any other comments, also let me know. I'll try to make it as customizable as I can.

Edit: You can still die from a power (reactor) hitting 0 as well.

[NiteHawk]

Also Armor is now a percentage base. aka Armor*25 means armor will absorb 25% damage. So if you fire a weapon that deals 200 damage, 50 is taken to the armor, the other 150 is taken as normal. Armor doesn't work when the damage points of the armor is gone (like standard). We can get fancy and make types and special armor later.

Should be alot better then the current 'wierd' setup for armor, not going to bother explaining it.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

No, that seems 'off'.

What I see reading that is that hull 'integrity' has been retasked from armor.

Hull Integrity is a function of the load bearing capability of the hull structure.  If integrity is compromised, the ship's ability to handle its own mass is compromised.  IE, just firing your reaction drives could snap you in half.

If anything, at a minimum, rename it.

Hull Integrity should be your 'hull points'.   When your hull integrity reaches zero, your ship breaks up under its own stress.  (Explodes)

As for what you call hull integrity right now...  Retask it.

See, you CAN do field repairs to structural integrity/hull integrity.  However, as time goes on, these repairs get less and less effective.  What you could make the second bar do is show your 'maximum integrity' value.  As you take damage, your ship suffers damage to the hull.  The HI loses points faster than the MHI, but will auto repair.  The kicker is that it will only auto-repair up to the level of the MHI.

This will simulate 'cumulative damage' and your crew's ability to do damage control.  

If your MHI is say, 50%,  your hull will only auto-repair up to 50% of your total integrity.  As this value drops, your ship becomes more and more 'rickety'.  It's important to pay attention to MHI, especially in a larger, tough capital ship, as it can determine easily if you can walk through several firefights without dying, or if your battleship is as fragile as a frigate.

As far as system damages, just tie it in to regular hull integrity.  (First Bar)  Internal damage is directly related to hull integrity anyway.  The more the structure is compromised, the more damage internal structures will take.  No need to slap different values up.

And put armor as bonus modifier to hull integrity, not as a seperate entity.  Armor is part of the hull after all.

[NiteHawk]

Alright I understand that part for the most case.

For maximum integrity if we go that route, how should it degrade? I was thinking overall the method 2 where the bar can go down via a percentage of the hull. For this one it would need to go down a lower amount though. Maybe even sometimes not at all when hit. It can be configurable but I'm not sure how to handle this without maximum integrity going down a crazy amount, yet.

It can be configurable drop percentage min/max, even if its super low or nothing, but I'm not so sure its the best option yet, and how it should be if it doesn't degrade at all (the percentage of a non-degrade)?

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Max integrity would be a function of how much damage you took at once.

Let's say you get hit by a stay shot and it damages you.  It's... TRIVIAL to repair that one piece of the hull.

Compare to say, a salvo of antimatter missiles peppering your hull into nuclear swiss cheese.  If your ship somehow survived not getting atomized, the structural integrity would be so compromised that you'd have no chaince of repairing it.

So I would see MHI as a function of extremety of damage.

Rules to apply.

1: MHI is a function of the amount of damage inflicted during one time unit.
2: MHI can never drop faster than hull integrity.  

Therefor, the function should be that MHI is the function of damage inflicted during the time unit selected, and placed at a fractional/decimal value that's a log or exponent of the damage inflicted.

In terms of percentage.  If you get hit for 1 percent hull damage, you don't lose any Max integrity value.

If you're inflicted ten percent damage.  you lose two percent.

Twenty percent?  Five to ten percent, depending on how the maths curve.

Fifty pecent, should lose you something like forty percent...


Essentially, if graphed, the max value percentage that takes a hit should show an curve that approaches, but never reaches the actual damage inflicted.

The time unit should ideally, be large enough to include near coincidal hits, but short enough not to be cumulative in over a period greater than the exchange.  So something between five to ten frames.

And the exact curve of log value should  appear S shaped to not quite break even.  Damage permenance climbs exponentially in relation to the damage early on, but as it approaches 'total' (AKA, one-hit-kill) it tapers off because there's only so much permenant damage that can happen at any one time.

EDIT:  Here's a visual function.

[NiteHawk]

My issue is balancing something like that. In general it's another option but it feels like it would be hard to play when you have to always dock to get your max hitpoints back up.

I have this feeling that max hitpoints would degrade very rapidly and it would be a pain when you often will lose HP too often for it to be a pain, if you get me. Often people are getting hit with a good amount of damage, (when you get hit with one bullet, normally there are several to follow that you can't dodge.)

That would be the reason why I did attempt to split up hull damage and subsystem. I wanted a method where hull can rise to max still, but your subsystems can take more wear/tear over time before having to dock. So it wouldn't affect that sort of gameplay too much, but wouldn't be that every time you take a good amount of damage you 'feel' like you have to dock. (becuase with max hitpoints idea you just lost have your points from one skirmish and taking only one good wack.)

Get me though? Right now I see both ideas having there flaws and strengths atm.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

I understand.  But the value is a log, so you can simply change the core log component until we find something that works.

That's the nice thing.  The curve can be adjusted to be more shallow, or steeper.  A shallow curve allows you to take a LOT more punishment over time because the max damage doesn't add up until you start picking up crippling blows.  And chances are if you're nearly crippled, you'll get finished off before it can come into play ANYWAY.

And we're also talking about the new 'much tougher' ships.  What was a crippling (or lethal) broadside in SF-Classic might not inflict more than thirty percent damage... and that's not accounting for shields, armor modifiers, and stuff like that.

Right now, I'm treating the hull.  And only the hull.

An additional option the idea allows, is that if the MHI acts as 'the' max value which everything is calculated off...  as it degrades, it becomes easier to inflict further degeneration... if that makes sense.  (Kind of a value that as you get more and more damaged, permenant damage becomes easier and easier to accumulate.)


Anyway, the problem I see with assigning some kind of fixed integrity value to a bar like in your first post, is that nobody's going to pay attention.

"Okay, so my second bar... the shorter it gets, the more likely I'll take system dama-  Yeah whatever."

It's not really giving you 'USEFUL' information.  All you really know is 'long bar good, short bar bad.'

It's like SF-Classic's sensors modules.  It provides a function, but it's more or less just a 'meh' function.  It didn't provide targeting, it didn't blind you if it was removed... it was just, there... 'Meh'.

[NiteHawk]

Alright that sounds good as well then. It would also be nice if other people have comments too for this. I don't mind either or (The MHI or subsystem bar) but I want some votes going on mainly because I hate adding something large, then having to change it completely because the main playerbase failed to say anything. (Much like it seems I'll be doing all the balancing, oh well.)

Can we get some other replies onto what system you like? The first post or the one ATC described basically. This is one of those things where I'm in the middle and the playerbase counts. If I don't get any replies I'll end up probably doing the MHI way, since technically its one vote for that.

[Mobious]

Well I do like the MHI method, and I have been playing with a simple model of it and would like to share some illustrations and equations to make it work. ATC, while I do like the scaled damage based on the total for the system I believe that making what we are calling the "Hull Integrity" is basically a parameter of the sigmoid function to define how critical damage would be towards a ship.

Let me run though an example to give you some idea...

Lets assume:

Starting Hull: 1000/1000
and a damaging shot of: 100hp

So - when this shot first hits the hull we decrease by 100
Hull = 900/1000

We need to now assign the new Hull maximum based on the integrity curve and the damage received.

So utilizing a sigmoid function we can say that damage that is close to the remaining hull strength would severely damage the hull needing massive repairs, damage that does not will not affect it as greatly... we can do repairs.

If we define a sigmoid function as follows, we have a method of calculating how much damage should be dealt.

Please excuse the formatting - it was simulated in Mathematica

Code:

sig[x_] := (1/(1 + Exp[-intV*x]));

so it is a basic sigmoid function taking in x (a value corresponding to the damage we will calculate) as well as having the intV value which can be different for different ships... Below you can see a plot of the sigmoid function from -15 to 15 with 1 as the intV value.



For this example I will use a intV value of .35 which would suggest the ship can take a little more damage - the curve increases slower in comparison to the value of 1... you can see this curve below...



So, now what we will do is calculate the new maximum hull value based on this damage... the method would be as follows (as code with annotations)

Code:

system[dam_] := Module[{val2},
   hullPts -= dam; // Damage of the shot subtracted from hull points
   val2 = (dam/hullMax)*20; // 2lns - Converting the ratio of damage / maximum possible hull to a value friendly to the sigmoid fcn
   val2 = val2 - 10; // This will allow us to calculate how much the max hull decreases
   hullMax -= sig[val2]*dam; // subtract from max hull the percentage generated from the sigmoid times the damage...
   ];

Therefore, for our example... If we have 1000/1000 hull to start

Then we get damaged 100...

We will then have: 900 out of 994 possible
The next hit would make it: 900 out of 988

If it was a more critical hit... say 800 hit points with 1000/1000 hull to start...

We will have: 200 out of 287 possible

This curve can be modified for different ships and the method can be perturbed a bit... thoughts?

EDIT:

Thoughts on this... should the damage be taken from the initial hull value or rescaled to the hull value after the "integrity" loss - either way is possible...

[NiteHawk]

I really like it Mobious. I would think it would be better to take it from the MHI so that the MHI starts scaling down slower. Would be better as your 'brand new hull' would take more MHI loss but a beaten ship would not lose as much, since its already been in much pounding. Would also prevent a ship that has 20% MHI left lets say, to lose tons more, keep it a bit so they can at least 'sort of fight still' but with a obvious disadvantage.

I was also thinking, How would this affect vs LARGE ships, for example.

Lets say 1000/1000 hull, and another ship has 20000/20000 hull. The above method we talked about, would they both start leveling off at the same point of hull points or would the 20000/20000 level off somewhere higher?

[Mars]

I like them both but i vote for the bar because it may be easier to code and should have reasonable math behind it to support the hull integ.  

The bar will give players a feeling they can see the damage both got in battle and the repairs ongoing over time or orbit or dock repair.

it would be nice to use both systems but use  the bar as the main display of the hmi which by the graphs makes good logic.    I also agree with tigerclaw because once your hull is gone armor any thats left would just implode with the rest of your ship.  

the base 25 percent taken for armor however is illogical.   it should be way more to knock armor off faster and provide the support for the reason you would buy armor for anyway.  if i get hit with say 100 points on a shot out of a 1000 total hull points and i have full armor at x value the damage should be taken off the armor first.  or at least a much larger percentage of it.  say 80 percent or so.   thus armor would not last long in a battle and would serve to help you if you made just one mistake that you should have avoided.    A second example would be a string of powerful mines.   if i hit say three of them layed before me and this value exceeded the armor limit the hull would then take normal damage but you would not have poped because you had the majority points being ate from the armor.   if it were just 25 percent and the mines did massive damage then you could exceed your hull points and pop regardless of if you got the armor or not.

but thats just the 200 pound eagle in the room


i vote for the bar.

Mars

[alex136]

Two bars in the Damage panel.
A percent in the lower-left area.
The hull integrity based on the sigmoid.

I like both the bar and math thing.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Ah, Sigmoid function.  That's what I was thinking of more or less originally.  (Note my strikethrough comment at one point.)  But I couldn't articulate the maths involved.

As a point of conflict though...  Mars.  Should you really be putting your vote in on the judgement of what is easy vs not so easy to code?

You're not coding it.  Nite is.  And if Nite didn't want to go about coding it, he'd either let us know, ever never bother presenting us with an option.

"We choose to go to the moon and do the other thing!  Not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
- Pres. John F. Kennedy.

Answering Nitehawk's question.  With the Sigmoid Curve... yes... the ships would all level off in the same areas.

[Mobious]

ATC does have it right, all ships would generally level off at the same rate in terms of damage. What we can play with is altering the intV parameter of the sigmoid function. If all ships have a different intV value they will be more or less resistant to major hull damage.

If you have a value of 1... damage will become much more substantial to your hull. I'd imagine this could be possible with smaller faster ships while a big carrier or something might have a value of .25 and then damage that is received only moderately affects your maximum hull strength.

[NiteHawk]

Since Mobious gave me the formula will be a plug and play for inital things, then I can modify the modules to have values (like a changable intV). This is perfect now with ATC's idea and a very nice formula.

Mobious also came up with a better method for the bars, instead of two bars, have one that has two representations. This would handle alot of issues where you can't figure out for example what exactly is your MHI and Hull Points. By putting it into one bar, you're able to tell how far your HP will go.

I'll end up making a nice interface hull point bar I think though too, but this is just for the damage area, at the moment.

Something like this in the damage area at the moment (just made it quickly)