Armor type and thickness

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Momaw
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Armor type and thickness

Post by Momaw »

Suggestion: Instead of simply buying "armor", for greater customization allow the player to purchase both a type and a thickness.

1. Thickness. Thickness of armor is measured in centimeters. Every ship has a basic armor thickness, and additional thickness can be added in 1cm layers from the Upgrades shop.

2. Material. The actual composition of the armor determines its density and resistence to damage.

3. Mass. The mass of your armor is determined by the density of the material, multipllied by the thickness of the armor you've specified. This is then multiplied by a fraction of your ship's tonnage: the bigger the ship, the more surface area it has to cover. Let's say 2% just to have a number.

4. Cost. Derived from the armor's cost per centimeter, times the thickness you're installing, times 2% of sihp's mass. When adding armor thickness, only the cost difference between the new and old values is considered. In effect you only pay for the armor that's bolted on, you don't have to "re buy" everything that was already on there. When you change material type however, you must buy the full thickness.

5. Damage resistence. This is calculated by multiplying your armor's thickness by the durability of the material you've bought.

Naturally not all of these needs to be presented to the player, who really only cares about the end result: how well will this protect me, and how much will it cost.

Some examples of numbers in action:

Plasteel = density 1.1, durability 100mJ/cm, cost 1500cr/cm
Tungsten carbide = density 1.8, durability 300mJ/cm, cost 15000cr/cm

A 50 ton fightercraft comes standard with 3cm of armor.

Using plasteel, this fighter has an armor rating of 300mJ. The mass of the armor is 1.1 (armor density) * 3 (thickness) * 2 (2% of ship mass) = 6.6 tons, and its cost is 1500cr/cm * 3cm * 2 = 9,000 credits.

A 200 ton assault ship might have 5cm of armor standard. Using plasteel, this fighter has an armor rating of 500mJ. The armor has a mass of 22 tons, and costs 30,000 credits.

Our ships are feeling a little naked, and we don't have a great deal of money to spend, so let's buy another centimeter of armor in the upgrade shop.

The fighter now has 4cm of armor and 400mJ of damage resistence. The armor now weighs 8.8 tons, and has a total value of 12,000 credits. The upgrade cost us 2.2 tons and 3,000 credits.

The assault ship now has 6cm of armor, and 600mJ of damage resistence. The armor now weighs 26.4 tons and has a total value of 36,000 credits. The upgrade cost us 4.4 tons and 6,000 credits

Using our slightly improved endurance, we take on a very lucrative headhunter's contract, and have enough cash on hand to upgrade to that sexy new Tungsen Carbide armor that the upgrade shop has been teasing you with.

The 50 ton fighter has 4cm of armor. Using much tougher tungsten carbide, its damage resistence is now 1,200mJ. This material is also denser, and the armor now has a mass of 1.8 * 4 * 2 = 14.4 tons. It's also expensive, and costs us 15000 * 4 * 2 = 120,000 credits.

The 200 ton assault ship has 6cm of armor. Using tugsten carbide, its damage resistence is now 1,800mJ. The mass is 43.2 tons, and its cost is 360,000.

Some efforts will have to be made toward balance. However the basic idea I believe is sound. You can have significant amounts of protection, if you can pay for it... and the tougher you are, the worse your ship will handle as the armor grows increasingly massive. You can compensate for a cheap armor material by wearing a lot of it, or exploit the toughness of advanced materials by using a thinner layer to gain equivalent protection. Big ships will tend to use cheap armor because they can cope with the tonnage of adding a whole lot of it, while fighters will greatly benefit from high tech armor because a lot of extra tonnage hurts them a lot.

"Enjoy the choice", as somebody is famous for appending.
shadow_slicer
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Post by shadow_slicer »

I wonder if this could be implemented with a simple change to the master parts list...
If you set it up so that you could purchase multiple armors, and their stats stacked (i.e. were set to ADDITIVE), wouldn't this produce a result very similar to what you are proposing?

The potential problems I see are:
1. The master parts list method might allow different types of armors to mix (but this might be fixable in the master part list as well)
2. The damage calculations may not work correctly. They may distribute damage to one or all the armors (or may simply SEGV).
whatch1
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Not sure how relevent this

Post by whatch1 »

its important to know the version of veaga strike your playing when you post as 4.3 will no longer get updates .5 is a beta release needs testing but is mostly stable

To this current discussion

The distance to spec dropout i think is related to velocity and mass

mass is inversly proportionate to manuverablity

ex. Lama loaded with heavy cargo 4000% initial mass handles like a garden slug towing a tractor trailer slow starteup won't turn, can't stop

armor adds mass cargo adds mass

take a hyena for exaple again very little interior space for power upgrades
add very heavy armor you get a target not a fighter

Bill
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Xit
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Re: Not sure how relevent this

Post by Xit »

whatch1 wrote:
take a hyena for exaple again very little interior space for power upgrades
add very heavy armor you get a target not a fighter

Bill
I think that's the point though, you can choose your material (aka price point) and the thickness (mass) so that you get a good compromise that doesn't weigh the ship too much or cost too much, and it could be made to suit the player's flying style. I think it's a great idea :D
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javier
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Post by javier »

This discussion is related to this thread.
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... hp?t=10836

The weapons model presented there is deriving to a shield/armor model. We could merge the both of them.

EDIT: As there is not something like a maintenance cost for parts in VS, price is not a balance factor. Sooner or later you can afford the desired part, and being a one time expense, in an advanced game, when you're swimming on credits, price means nothing.
Momaw
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Post by Momaw »

javier wrote: EDIT: As there is not something like a maintenance cost for parts in VS, price is not a balance factor. Sooner or later you can afford the desired part, and being a one time expense, in an advanced game, when you're swimming on credits, price means nothing.

False to a degree. In the case of consumable resources, cost is a balancing factor. Armor becomes damaged fairly easily due to weapons which deliver shield-piercing damage, and you must then spend money to repair it. The repair cost is a function of the initial value.
bgaskey
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Post by bgaskey »

I have a problem making a profit on bounty missions sometimes with high armor because a little bit of damage => high repair costs :?

Armor is in fact really the only thing with a maintenance cost, as other components shouldn't get damaged often.
Miramor
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Post by Miramor »

I'd have to disagree, when your shields are down and the bullets are flying things ought to get damaged.

However, it would be nice to have lightweight armor variants, with less mass, less protection, and correspondingly lower repair costs.
bgaskey
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Post by bgaskey »

I'm not saying things shouldn't get damaged. I'm just saying armor gets damaged first and with a decent armor, it takes a while for damage to penetrate into your ship's internals. Thus armor gets repaired alot more than...say...your reactor. at least thats my experience.
Xit
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Post by Xit »

I think this'd be great when you look at the repair parts thread too, if we had to get a complete light set of armour plates for the ship in question, we could then decide that we're going to spend some time doing runs on big, heavy ships. Then we could store our light armour on a planet somewhere and buy a new set which is heavier.
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Breakable
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Post by Breakable »

Would be nice to see some customization for armor and maybe even other components, but this implementation does bring up some issues:
1)How would be the armor units produced in factories. By some minimum amount?
2)The system for buying/maintaining/damage calculation becomes much more complex.
3)Believability suffers - as how would you expect a custom amount of armor is applied.

Maybe an improved idea would for the player to allow buying different thickness of armor made from the same material. Like:
a)Light armor - meteorite protection only
b)Medium armor - merchants bargain
c)Heavy armor - warriors choice
d)Super heavy armor - deep incursion into enemy space

This might allow even to reuse the current system, and just modify items data.
TBeholder
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Re:

Post by TBeholder »

Breakable wrote:Would be nice to see some customization for armor and maybe even other components, but this implementation does bring up some issues:
1)How would be the armor units produced in factories. By some minimum amount?
Plate by plate, probably. Meaning, service part in armor cost should be considerable, that's right.
Breakable wrote:3)Believability suffers - as how would you expect a custom amount of armor is applied.
Believability also suffers from comparison between armor of Schroedinger and Plowshare (or Mule!) in terms of cost, mass, total hitpoints benefit... :(
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