In this topic, I want to present my vision of armor system. Comments are welcome. Hit Points HP defines character alive or not. Initially, character has 100 HP. You can increase HP with implants. Armor Points AP grants "extra health" for character. AP absorbs some damage from each hit. Amount of absorbed damage depends on total armor absorbtion and enemy armor ignore. Character without armor doen't have AP. Energy Points EP is primary resource for anything. EP regeneration and max EP amount can be increased with armor bonuses or tech items. Energy Shield Points ESP is a first stage in defense of any adventurer. Shield gets 100% damage from any source. Character receives damage only when ESP is depleted. Shield regenerates ESP only when character doesn't receive any damage (except DoTs) for a while. ESP regeneration requires EP. More about items. Implants Implants work as tech items and have special implant slots. The only difference - they doesn't save when changed. Implants create main character build, they are like talents in MMO. You can change implants, but it will cost some time to search for necessary. Implants can be changed on the ship in medical capsule. Bonuses from implants: - Increase max HP; - Passive HP regeneration; - Bioluminescence; - Passive speed bonus; - Berserking with low HP; - etc. Energy Shields Characters will receive belt slot for shields and other instruments. Every shield has base stats: recharge time (time without damage before charging starts), ESP amount, recharge speed (ESP added per second when charging), recharge cost (EP consumed per second when charging). Also shields have special bonuses: - retaliate when damaged; - energy regen when damaged; - explosion when depleted; - speed boost when depleted; - extra damage when full (attacks consume shield, so it has cooldown); - HP / AP regen when full; - etc. Armor Absorbtion This stat defines how many damage from hit will be absorbed with AP. Heavy armor has high AA, when light armor can block small amounts of normal damage. Armor Piercing Positive AP means that weapon reduces target's AA and inflict more damage to HP. Negative AP used for blunt and explosive weapons that damages armor first. Such mechanics allow balancing high damage weapons like two-handed hammers and small fast attacking low damage weapons like daggers. Weapon Damage With new armor system weapon damage must be rebalanced. Melee weapons can be divided into groups: - Piercing: high AP, low damage, fast speed / high AP, medium damage, slow speed; - Slashing: zero AP, medium damage, medium speed / zero AP, high damage, slow speed; - Blunt: negative medium AP, high damage, medium speed / negative high AP, extra high damage, slow speed; Ranged weapons can be divided into groups: - Ballistic: low AP (for balance), medium damage, slow speed / low AP, low damage, fast speed; - Explosives: negative high AP, high damage, slow speed; Knockback Armor system will affect knockback mechanics. Knockback amount will be based on damage done to the target's HP in percents. So, targets with high AA will be almost unknockable until their armor is broken. For better tactics and balance weapon groups will have different knockback multiplier. Daggers and other high AP weapons will do less knockback, while hammers and explosives will do increased knockback. That's all I wanted to say, I hope you enjoyed it and it will positively affect the development of the game. P.S. I apologize if somewhere text is not quite clear - I use Google translator and dictionary
I like the idea of damage types and resistances, elemental types and resistances, mixed together. Giving armor a health of it's own, great ideas! Lightning, fire, earth, etc and then bashing, piercing, slashing etc, combined with armors that are resistant, hammers knockback but only hit one monster in a stack, two handed swords hit all monsters in a stack but don't knockback, daggers have a chance to slow or crit, etc. More can be done than fiddling with numbers. I like the ideas but I'd like to see a fixed pool of 'spendable' attributes to use the modifications. For instance you can increase your health with an implant, but it causes you to get cold easier, or not being able to hold your breath as long, or trading a portion of your energy pool while the implant is in. That way you don't end up linear progression and instead end up with play style customization that caters to the players? How's that sound? Maybe armors have weight and your character has a maximum capacity, so you have to use some implants to increase your weight capacity to use the heavier armors but that comes at the cost of some attribute. Then you give players a reason to use the lower level armors instead? I like the idea of having no wasted content, it makes me sad to think that I can just stockpile ores and then climb to the top of the tech ladder without ever making 90% of the gear in the game because it's 'low level' for instance. I want a reason to run around in copper armor some of the time. I think the scale that could be used would be that each race has slightly different capacities, slightly different health, energy, lung capacity, cold tolerance, get hungry faster/slower and that the purpose of implants should be generally to normalize these differences between characters. Then further used to specialize a character to a play style. To wear armors that would be too heavy, to use certain weapons that require too much energy to swing, etc.
That's exactly how combat in Fallen Enchantress worked on release. Because those resistances were 1:1 how it worked in GalCiv. Can't be wrong, eh? It was wrong. In fact, it sucked. =P Weapons do not become diverse and interesting by doing 2 more damage against this monster and 2 less against that one. All that gets you is the chore of constantly changing equipment to match armour types. Booooring. This is more like it. Weapons have active (with cooldown?) and passive skills attached. A dagger that you can throw over a short distance, a club that stuns... lots and lots of possibilities.
What about switching less often or making the player able to plan for switches? Like by sector or by planet biome type? I agree that forcing a player to switch frequently arbitrarily would be horrible.
Yes it is. However, I suggest new armor system, not weapon improvement. So I mentioned weapon damage, knockback and armor penetration to show how it will fit in new system. Primary goal of armor reworking - increase number of combat strategies and playstyles: - Melee fighters can try to inflict maximum damage to target's HP with AP ignore, but it will cost their own HP, because knockback is low. Therefore they must choose between increasing HP|AP and maximizing damage. Extra AP with AA will increase attack uptime on the target, because knockback will be low. - Or they can use heavy weapons and dodge attack until target's armor crushed, and then attack without risk of being hitted, because knockback will push enemy away. Good mobility required for this tactic. Player again can choose between increasing mobility, survivability and damage. - Or melee can stack HP and AP, take shield and tank everything. Yes, damage will be lower, but not everyone likes to be damage dealers, sometimes people want to be a tank (or heal, but it's more for multiplayer). - Also melee can increase energy regeneration, take fast recharging shield, some mobility tech and use implant slots for damage increase. This playstyle will be good for ninjas: fast and deadly attack, recovery after receiving a hit. - Ranged fighters can stack energy regeneration, take good shield and run in fight. Shield will save player from some hits, but survival will depend on player dodge skills, because ranged weapons have low knockback and enemy control. - Or ranged can take some medium armor, increase energy pool and try kill enemy with burst damage. If after that enemy still alive, player can switch to melee and finish him. - Or ranged can use lots of explosives and blow up everything. Armored enemies can move through explosives with low knockback, so player must choose again between dodge and survivability. - And many more styles that players will invent. TL;DR: Armor system allows you to choose between survivability, dodge, damage or combine everything in the right proportions. Energy shields are good for ranged and ninjas, when armor good for tanks and berserks. Many playstyles - our goal
