How to implement Weapon Penetration right.

I want to start off with I like the idea of Weapon Penetration because it's a way of dealing with armor that wasn't just finding a higher DPS weapon and I want to keep that idea in the game but get rid of what I believe to be the negatives of the old system. I'll explain it below.

In my opinion the right way to implement Weapon Penetration would to put it on some weapons as an added affect Kind of like fire or poison.

With that being said the weapon penetration of the old system directly affected how much damage you could take off and also acted like weapon levels by making it where a weapon could take off higher amount then what the damage stat was of the weapon when fighting creatures with low armor/Level. I think that is the wrong use of Weapon penetration.

The right way to use it would be to implement it as a way to bypass some armor nothing more. So if a weapon that dealt 50 damage had weapon pen of 5 even if the creature you were fighting had 0 armor you should not take off more than 50. But if you were fighting a Creature with 6 armor you would ignore 5 of their armor and only get the damage reduction as if they only had one armor.

To off-set the benefits of having armor pen on a weapon the weapons themselves should either attack slower or have lower base damage than weapons with out.

To clarify it the game would still use the combat system that we have now post-update but with using armor Pen as an added affect on certain weapons and armor pen would work as earlier described not how it was in the old system.

Anyone here think this is also a good idea that would appease both sides of the Armor penetration argument?

Edit: I also like this idea to implement AP

 

Whether you're for Armor Penetration or against, I think we can all agree that it really shouldn't have been called "Armor Penetration" because that's just a confusing name

 

I don't see how the name is confusing as it allows you to penetrates armor. Could you elaborate how it is confusing so that I could understand where you are coming from? Or maybe suggest a better less confusing name.

 

Technically, Armor Penetration is just a Level stat. Using a weapon with an AP rating of 5 against a level 3 enemy will dish out a lot of damage, but using it against a level 8 enemy will make it hardly effective.

It should be renamed "Weapon Level" or something

 

In the system I am proposing Weapon penetration won't act like a weapons levels and allowing you to take off more damage the higher it is but only work as an added affect to the weapon allowing you to ignore some armor on creatures nothing more.
I do agree in the old system it worked more like Weapon levels but in the idea I am proposing it does not work like that.

 

I don't think it had anything to do with 'armor' other than being associated with a particular level (as enemies either had equivalent an level per their planet, or were fodder NPCs). The end result was either a one-shot of either your enemies or yourself, or not dealing any damage whatsoever after each tier. There was no variety.

EDIT: So you're wanting to re-implement some sort of system. What would the purpose be? What enemy would have it and how would we know? With the exception of obvious guard NPCs in settlements, regular mobs are pretty random in appearance and colors, and simply more powerful per tier.

 

TIL I can't read. Sorry.

 

I am suggesting that we keep the system as it is post-update but add some armor to creatures and armor pen would be a way to bypass armor. Armor Pen wouldn't allow you to deal more damage than the weapons damage stat indicates just lessen the amount of damage reduction that would occur from armor.

 

Can I have more feedback from the community please?

 

Any feedback good or bad would be appreciated.

 

I'm fairly ignorant on this matter, but what I do know is before this newest update, armor penetration seemed to be more important than the actual damage of the weapon itself.
It basically represented the monsters physical defense/resistance/mitigation.

I had a warhammer that I used for quite a long time because it's damage was 30-something with around 4-5 armor penetration. Killed things pretty well, but as I got out of the Alpha Sector, I quickly realized it wasn't going to be viable much longer.

On a whim, I tried out a weapon I found that had lower attack but a higher penetration value and suddenly I'm able to kill anything in one hit.

I don't know if I have the knowledge and experience to say the old system was bad or unfix-able, but that seemed a bit wonky to me.

That said, the old system had some novelty in that, similar to Borderlands, you couldn't always go just by the numbers, and the best way to see what a weapon was like was to give it a shot.

 

Personally i agree with you ; like i said in another thread , they should at least keep the old system but tweak it while using the new one. Using a linear HP / Damage system is very boring and not original in my opinion , i would really like them to keep weapon variety by keeping armor penetration on some of the weapons. A logical way to keep this old system for me would be to at least give some armor penetration to melee weapons while keeping it off ranged weapons like guns , since ranged weapons already have a good advantage. They could just adjust the scaling of armor penetration too since the previous scaling was somewhat ridiculous to begin with.

A good simple example would be that vs an enemy with 0 armor , you do full damage , with every armor point above or under 0 would add / remove 1.5% of damage. So for example on a low armored monster ( 5 ) with a weapon having 9 AP , you would get a 6% damage bonus. This is how i would keep the old system in without making it too hard to balance.

 

I would be happy with a system like this also. It's simple and more in-depth than the current system which like you said can get very boring and is unoriginal.

 

I updated the OP with an alternate Idea of how to implement Armor pen. So I'm just going to bump this to see if anyone would like it and post.