Crafting leaked

And you'd be wrong in saying that. It's true that using the phrase "entirely negate" is innacurate, yes, but only technically. There's a huge difference between a bruise from the impact of a bullet and, you know, a bullet hole. But that difference is gone when the gun is powerful enough- there's no appreciable difference caused by the tiny amount of energy the vest absorbed. Hence, binary.

Protection is useful because it negates (or, in a few cases, drastically reduces) potential injuries. If it doesn't, then it wasn't good enough. I used to have to wear protective gloves to handle cutting equipment- if I had slipped, I wouldn't have cut off half as much finger as I would without it, but rather none at all. Because the protection was sufficient for the task.

 

I completely agree! That's why a flat model should never be used - it allows a bullet to strike armor and yield zero damage. Whereas a non-flat model - for example, (att*att)/(att+def), though there are many others - realistically simulates bruising and other blunt damage from non-penetrative blows.

And you'd be wrong in saying that. A bullet-hole is often the least of your worries; rather than a 9mm hole (which shrinks), the temporary cavity caused by a 5.56mm round can be much more devastating. If a high-velocity round penetrates armor and becomes a low-velocity round, yielding a bruise from absorbing the initial impact and no tissue destruction from the temporary cavity, just a tiny 5.56mm hole (which also shrinks), then it's far less damaging than a pistol round (against bare flesh). But if a 5.56mm round - let alone a 7.62mm round - hits flesh with no energy reduction from armor, it is vastly more destructive, yielding a wound at least 40mm in diameter (I'm just estimating visually). All of the energy absorbed by the armor is energy not dissipated in your body. But even if the armor totally prevents the bullet from entering your body - you will still get hurt! This mechanic is modeled by the the formula I describe, but not by the simple formula (damage=(max(0, attack-defense)) which is very common and has lead to fundamental failures in otherwise great games like Age of Wonders. In fact, I can think of a huge number of games - Terraria, Master of Orion, System Shock, Total War (series), Diablo I (which had 4 classes of absorptive armor in addition to "armor class"), Fire Emblem (series), Castlevania Symphony of the Night, Crystalis, and gosh, there are just so many great games that used this formula, but all of them suffered from it.

Many of them used the mechanic because they were written in an era before hardware floating-point units were commonplace, so they had little choice. But why is it fun or realistic to shoot 10,000 rounds at an enemy (or have them shoot at you) with absolute certainty that each will incur exactly 0 damage? Modern processors can easily handle a floating-point multiplication and division per projectile. Let's take advantage of it.

 

Which would also allow a knight in full plate to be killed by enough papercuts.

 

Could be room for a hybrid approach, maybe. I know some games like FO3 or the ancient Infantry Online had a hybrid approach where armor could provide both a flat subtraction (useful against the papercuts) and a percentage reduction (useful against the BIG hits) at the same time. Some armors specialized in one or the other, others struck a balance between the two. What you picked was based on what kinds of attacks you were focusing your defense against.

 

Hybrid approaches are almost always better, but they still have the problem of tending to only use one of the aspects; depends on the game, of course (if every attack that hits you is over the threshold, as was potentially common in FO3 for example, you might as well just use the flat reduction at that lower rate). Just going with the better one is usually a lot simpler and easier for the players to understand (1 more armor point means I take 1 less damage per hit).

And these approaches still have the problem of percentage-based damage reduction being completely unrealistic, but, you know, video games.

 

No, actually, it wouldn't. You have a computer in front of you. Calculate (att^2)/(att+def) for a papercut, with values you think are accurate for the defense of a knight in armor and the attack of a papercut, and show your results. Then tell me how many papercuts would be needed to kill the knight, compared to the number of sword-cuts. It's not hard.

And please note that in reality, enough papercuts would in fact cleave through any normal matter, regardless of relative hardness. Note particularly that water - which has no hardness (at least on the Mohs scale) - is commonly used industrially to cleave through just about anything.

 

Any non-zero number used as [att] in that formula gives a non-zero number as a result, which if repeated enough times will result in any arbitrarily high number you choose. As you say, It's not hard.

 

Of course, I'm sure that paper cuts (or, say, Legos) would actually deal <1 damage against an unarmored foe, so I don't see how damage reduction fits into this example (it would be rounded down to zero). If the attack deals >1 damage, then it deals enough to be FATAL to an unarmored human, even if it is difficult or unlikely. The thing is, simply being tackled can be fatal to a person wearing full steel plate, but American Football players still wear pads because it is less likely than for someone without any protection. This is why some systems don't even have damage reduction and instead have armor that improves evasion rates (AC in D&D comes to mind). However, I never want to see the word "miss" instead of a number for my damage, and most gamers feel the same. If you aimed that attack and it passed through the opponent, it better do what it is supposed to do-- reduce the opponent's Hit points!

Of course, how can we discuss damage reduction without discussing Hit points as well?

Hit points are not a very accurate representation of how injuries work, obviously. There are even different theories as to what exactly they should represent. The dominant explanation is that Hit points are your ability to lessen the severity of an attack that does hit you, such as by flexing muscles, rolling with the blow, or otherwise absorbing impact in some creative fashion. Given a system like this, I think armor makes it easier to lessen the severity of a blow, but in no way negates any part of the damage. For this reason, I think armor should be percentile-based because it sort of magnifies the amount of Hit points you have (taking half damage is similar to having double Hit points, in some ways).

Also, this is a game. Realism is less important than fun gameplay. Like it has been mentioned before, flat reductions mean that if an enemy's attack is much higher than your defense, you may as well forget about defense and instead use armor that boosts attack or mobility. This seems like it would be unfair to tanking type play styles. On the other hand, percentile reductions might give that same player 3-4 times more durability than the squishier players, while still giving them incentives to avoid less damaging attacks because they will add up over time (and as we all know, a bunch of 1's only add up if you are a Cactuar).

 

Has anyone here played Dominions? It had a great system of 2d6(open-ended)-2d6(open-ended) for determining damage versus armor. Armor always reduced damage, but any hit had an upper limit of infinite damage - exponentially distributed, so that killing a god with a toothpick was incredibly improbable, but still possible, as in Greek mythology. Not that ancient Greeks had toothpicks, but they did have spears, which though made of wood and bronze could still slay the divine.

If you have not tried the series, I highly recommend Dominions 3. And also Dwarf Fortress, which of course was the precursor to Terraria, and also allows mortals armed by mere sticks to slay gods in all their divinity... with enough luck.

This, too. My ultimate goal is to make Starbound as fun as possible, and games where one class (*cough* Terraria melee *cough*) can waltz through damage that's fatal to other classes, due to a flat reduction, are... Well, Terraria was loads of fun, but it would have been far better if it didn't totally gimp all armor sets other than melee due to this primitive formula.

 

I don't want to wall of text this, but I'll try to explain myself a bit better here. Yes, a papercut is laughably small, hence its relevance to the example- it should be able to be ignored, but using a percentage model means it can't be ("should never result in zeros" or some such was the phrase used I believe).

No, hit points are not an accurate representation, but they work fine for less complex systems. We don't need full injury modeling outside of maybe some military sims. (edit- I seem to have missed some of your point, it being sort of like a stamina meter before you stop being able to guard yourself is... interesting. Not realistic in all scenarios, but it has some merit.)

My main beef with percentage armor is this- it's just extra health, approached backwards. If I take 50% less damage from all attacks, why not just double my health points? Oh, it's because that's not what armor is supposed to do. Except in this kind of system, that is what it is doing. Having a method that scales the percentage based on some formula is better, yes, but it still has the glaring flaw of not being able to ignore things it should be able to ignore (the papercut example), as well as ignoring the fact that if your protection fails, you are probably experiencing pretty close to the full effect of whatever it was supposed to protect you from.

 

I don't necessarily need a PERCENTAGE based system, but one like Terraria's PvP damage system would be nice.

 

Actually, many games do just that-- Armor adds to Hit points in Final Fantasy Tactics, for example. The only real problem with this is that adding to Hit points directly ALSO magnifies the amount of points you have to HEAL after taking damage. This is both unrealistic and also is inconvenient from a gameplay perspective. Otherwise it works pretty well.

As for ignoring the paper cut, even while wearing armor that can stop bullets you could still be hurt by the paper cut. It might not be fatal, but it would still effect you. This is represented, in my opinion, by the attack doing damage that is rounded down to zero. If something multiplied the damage then it could be fatal, dealing single digit damage. This could be like throwing a playing card, which realistically could cut someone's jugular artery and kill them. It is very unlikely, and therefore would take many attempts. Say, perhaps as many attempts as you have Hit points?

Also a funny thing: Why use paper cuts? Why not use drinking a cup of coffee? Or taking a step on soft ground? Some things simply are not fatal under normal conditions. Yet another fun fact: my thread on damage reduction says that elemental damage should be based on flat reductions, because if you are protected from radiation you are generally unharmed unless it is over a threshold level. However, I can swing both ways on this one, honestly.

 

It's unrealistic, but actually it was kinda neat in FFT. That game's biggest weakness was not the armor, but the horribly abusable "bravery" point system that let you (for example) get a 97% chance of "preemptive retaliation" ^^; Such an awesome game, I just have no clue what they were thinking with the stats. If you liked that, by the way, you should try Fire Emblem: Awakening, which just came out a few weeks ago (also a tactical RPG). I bought a 3DS just for that game, and consider it a worthwhile investment (though I must admit that I factored Rune Factory 4 and Etrian Odyssey 4 into the equation).

 

They do, and I think it's silly. Wearing a thicker shirt doesn't make me healthier... (I'm still using the "health as general physical toughness" model here, as most games tend to treat taking a hit this way, exaggerated blood effects and whatnot).

I picked paper cuts because it was the first extreme that came to mind (often testing a scenario with extremes is useful, as if your model fails in extremes it may fail closer to reasonable situations as well). Also, you would absolutely not still be hurt by it- sure, if it happens somewhere you aren't protected, but we're talking about the value of the protection so going around it isn't really relevant. That can be modeled with chance-based systems, as critical hits often are treated as an attack that bypasses armor.

The radiation thing presents another problem- it doesn't work well as *just* a flat reduction, as this leads to "well I've got an anti-rad mask on, guess I'm good" situations, but also, as you say, a radiation suit isn't going to protect you past a certain point, so percentages are also not great. Maybe some combination whereby each piece could only prevent a maximum of one third of the incoming element so you'd still need a full suit no matter how good the pieces are by themselves... there's only three armor slots in Starbound, yes?

 

I believe what you're getting at is a damage threshold. Attacks below the threshold are ineffective (as in the before stated paper-cuts). However a powerful weapon (projectile or otherwise) may be strong enough to break through the armor (overcoming its threshold). Once you decide on that, then you handle how much the weapon does to the soft target under the armor.

 

I disagree with this on principle. It is physically impossible for an attack, repeated infinite times, to incur zero damage, against normal matter - as you seem to be advocating. Once you hit level 100 tech, anything goes - but for the other 99% of the game, there's no reason to warp reality so ridiculously.

 

"Guys, hold on, I need to put on a bandaid under my metal plates, a bee just stung me."

e- that sounds a bit more sarcastic than it was supposed to. Up too late browsing imgur.

 

I agree about health not making sense. Was I not clear on that before? Did you even read any of what I said after that first sentence? I specifically said that the fact that adding health also adds to the amount of points you need to recover is both unrealistic and harmful to gameplay. Making armor a percentile reduction specifically fixes that problem.

As for the graphical exploits of most games, that is exactly what leads to the other leading theory for how Hit points work: You are Ichigo in an episode of Bleach, and you can stop your wounds from sheer force of will and spiritual pressure. In other words: Magic. Did I mention that the developers have very specifically said that magic will not be in Starbound? Also relevant is the fact that no amount of real life "physical toughness" can stop a knife in the heart from killing someone, or stop death from blood loss for that matter. This model is just about as far as you can get from realistic without intentionally trying.

<_< And going around the protection is completely relevant. With a flat reduction, you could wear a pair of high-tier iron pants that gives you equal protection compared to a full suit of low-tier iron armor. Now, you may say that chance-based systems can solve that issue, but chance-based systems are awful for PvP, and they are annoying. Gamers HATE seeing their attack connect with the target, only to see the word "miss" instead of their damage. Critical hits don't make up for it because they aren't even that exciting; they often occur when the enemy was already about to die, and they never increase your DPS by as much as just raising it normally. I could talk about why chance-based systems of combat are bad for gameplay for hours, but that probably belongs in another thread.

By the way, another problem with flat damage reduction is that the threshold it creates is too sharp. Take a wolf, for instance. In one suit of armor, the wolf may deal ~10 damage per hit, just enough to be mildly dangerous. Meanwhile, you add on a bracer of defense and now you just broke his damage threshold, so now the wolf only does 1 damage per hit (or even zero damage!) and you can practically ignore it.

EDIT:

Cactuar. All I can say is Cactuar.

That might mean he already plans on percentile damage reduction, if we're lucky. Even if he does go for a flat DR system, I think I can trust that they'll balance it fairly well. I just think it would be easier with a percentile system.

 

Can't argue realism with a hit point system. If you wanted a realistic damage system you'd have to track injuries separately. Your skin being covered in papercuts wouldn't kill you but it'd make actions difficult, while one severed artery from full health would kill you unless treated. And a bullet wound would have a considerable chance to kill you instantly.

That would be out of place in a game like this and is also why you shouldn't argue realism for armor either. What system works the best is up to gameplay testing, not our speculation.

 

True, but my opposition in this argument was the one who tabled the realism argument in the first place, which happens to actually be in favor of my position instead. I had to point that out on principle-- It's like choosing the shortest person to be on your basketball team because you think he's the tallest.
Obviously any formulaic system in a game will be unrealistic, but I argued that it was more realistic and also better for gameplay. Of course, we shall see when the game is play tested, assuming we'll be able to put both methods "side-by-side" and compare them in an experimental model.