DevLog: May 2017 - Ship Roles and Armour

[StuartMorgan]

Welcome to the Galaxial development log for May!

Ship Roles

This month I have been adding all of the various ship roles. These give specialized bonuses to its ship designs, but each role is limited to certain ship hull classes. When choosing your fleet/squadron compositions in the game, you only decide which ship roles to use, and there can be many ship designs in each one.

Examples of ship role names include:

• Scout
• Destroyer
• Missile Destroyer
• Interceptor
• Escort
• Assault Ship
• Command Cruiser
• Interdictor
• Heavy Assault Ship
• Large/Medium/Small Miner
• Salvager
• Colony Ship
• Passenger Transport
• and many more...

There are much more ship roles than ship hull classes.

• The Scout role can use Destroyer, Light Cruiser or Heavy Cruiser class ship hulls.
• The Assault Ship role can use Destroyer or Light Cruiser class ship hulls.
• The Destroyer role can only use Destroyer class ship hulls.
• The Heavy Assault Ship role can use Heavy Cruiser or Battlecruiser ship hulls.

There are currently 8 different ship roles which can use Destroyer class ship hulls, and 16 that can use Light Cruisers.

Armour

Armour has been added as a defense mechanic for mitigating hull damage. Armour will be most effective at protecting against small hits. The damage reduction is currently capped at 90%.

• To prevent 50% of damage, you need Armour 1 times the damage
• To prevent 75% of damage, you need Armour 3 times the damage
• To prevent 90% of damage, you need Armour 9 times the damage

Weapons also have new effect modifiers for Armour Penetration and Bonus Shield Damage

Advanced Ship Hulls

Each ship hull will now also have an 'Advanced' version. (I'm not sure what the name will be for these yet...) The graphics will look mostly the same but are slightly modified and darker than the standard version. They have better stats, more specialized bonuses and cost a lot more to build.

Standard Version


Advanced version

[Geach]

so just by having 1 armor you mitigate 50% of all incoming damage?

[TuriusRay]

so just by having 1 armor you mitigate 50% of all incoming damage?

Not if the enemy is shooting you with a weapon way more powerful than your armor, but if your armor and their damage are equal then you mitigate 50% of the damage, if you are super armored then you mitigate 90%
It's what I think but Stuart will answer and bring light to the question.

[StuartMorgan]

so just by having 1 armor you mitigate 50% of all incoming damage?

Not quite, the effectiveness of armour is based on the amount of damage received from each hit.

Not if the enemy is shooting you with a weapon way more powerful than your armor, but if your armor and their damage are equal then you mitigate 50% of the damage, if you are super armored then you mitigate 90%

Yes, this is exactly how it works. So...

If you have 1 armour and are hit for 1 damage in a single hit, it will prevent 50% of it
If you have 1000 armour and hit for 1000 damage in a single hit, it will prevent 50% of it
If you have 1 armour and are hit for 9 damage in a single hit, it will prevent 10% of it
If you have 9 armour and are hit for 1 damage in a single hit, it will prevent 90% of it

[Geach]

are shields going to work the same way?

[TuriusRay]

are shields going to work the same way?

Shields usually works the same way but with a difference, shields can be depleted, armours not, some weapons will be more effective against shields or bypass them completely and others will be more effective against armour (penetration).

[Cornflakes_91]

If you have 1 armour and are hit for 1 damage in a single hit, it will prevent 50% of it
If you have 1000 armour and hit for 1000 damage in a single hit, it will prevent 50% of it
If you have 1 armour and are hit for 9 damage in a single hit, it will prevent 10% of it
If you have 9 armour and are hit for 1 damage in a single hit, it will prevent 90% of it

So the applied damage is damage^2/(armor+damage) ?

[StuartMorgan]

So the applied damage is damage^2/(armor+damage) ?

That is correct.
The damage reduction is capped at 90%, so you would also need to handle that somehow.

Code: Select all

damageReduction = min(armor / (armor + damage), 0.9)
resultingDamage = damage - (damage * damageReduction)

[moncho63]

great man I want to play how soon Please

[Cornflakes_91]

That is correct.
The damage reduction is capped at 90%, so you would also need to handle that somehow.

Code: Select all

damageReduction = min(armor / (armor + damage), 0.9)
resultingDamage = damage - (damage * damageReduction)

damage reduction as an explicit value to include armor piercing effects?

i'd personally do that as an subtractive value on the armor value.
so a small armor piercing weapon may has 5ap value, negating the 5 armor of a fighter
and battleship level ap cannon has 50 to negate the 50 armor of battleships.

so the applied damage would be
dmg*max(0.1, dmg/(dmg+(max(0,armor-ap))))

[StuartMorgan]

damage reduction as an explicit value to include armor piercing effects?

i'd personally do that as an subtractive value on the armor value.

The armor penetration value for weapons currently ignores a percentage of the targets armor, and is subtracted from the armor value. I prefer your idea of having armor penetration as an explicit value rather than a percentage (which may not be proportional)

It would be more realistic, so I will look into changing that.

so the applied damage would be
dmg*max(0.1, dmg/(dmg+(max(0,armor-ap))))

Yes

[Cornflakes_91]

The armor penetration value for weapons currently ignores a percentage of the targets armor, and is subtracted from the armor value. I prefer your idea of having armor penetration as an explicit value rather than a percentage (which may not be proportional)

it also scales infinitely.

research can add armor and armor piercing value more or less infinitely and the dynamics dont change (as long as both research levels are roughly equal)

[Cburton]

I can't wait for this game! What game engine is it build with?

[StuartMorgan]

I can't wait for this game! What game engine is it build with?

It uses my own custom game engine that has been written from scratch.

[TuriusRay]

It uses my own custom game engine that has been written from scratch.

Stuart I've seen your videos and your engine is impressive, moving thousands of ships around hundreds of systems at stable fps, what you think about games like Stellaris from great studios like Paradox, a game with a fps drop in galaxy view on mid game and horrible fps at fights in mid-late game? Why game studios don't launch smooth games like you are doing with Galaxial?