Weapon ODF Command hullDamageMultiplier

[DOCa Cola]

posted on May 11th, 2011, 6:30 pm

Last edited by DOCa Cola on May 28th, 2011, 6:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I find it interesting that the hulls are pretty strong even though the shields are down.  I'd expect this strength if damage bled through the shields, but not from a direct hit.  So I was thinking that damage could bleed through the shields by using the "shieldProtection" command in the ship/station ODF file and making the value under 1.0.  0.8 to 0.95 should be good for most ships.  Then in the weapon ordinance, put a "hullDamageMultiplier."  And for balance purposes, the "hullDamageMultiplier" should be multi-lined.

Here's how it would work.  Any damage that bleeds through the shields will not be multiplied by the multiplier.  But if damage is applied directly to the hull, which would happen when the shields are down or when the torpedo is designed to break through the shields, that's when the real damage would happen.

If the shields block some of the damage, but cannot block all of it, bleed-through damage would be calculated with a certain portion of the hitpoint that the weapon would cause, and the remaining hitpoints would be multiplied.  Something like this:

shieldPointsLeft/shieldProtection=damage1

baseDamage-damage1=damageHull

damage1*shieldProtection=damage2

damage1-damage2=damage3

shieldDamage=shieldPointsLeft-damage2
hullDamage=hullPointsLeft-damage3

hullDamage=damageHull

Don't start with those "it'll throw the balance off" comments.  Even if it's not used in the fleet-ops game-play, it would be a great command for modders to have so please add the command even if you don't plan to use it in fleet ops.

posted on May 11th, 2011, 6:45 pm

it'll throw the balance off

sorry, you were asking for that

but seriously, having less hull total will mean certain hull only stuff will have to go. like shield breaking torpedo.

personally i look back at canon and see 1 photon hit destroy unshielded ships, but gameplay has to trump that. there are many ways this could be explained, maybe new hull reinforcements have been developed between nemesis and fleetops time. also we look at the dominion war and see plenty of ships get hit without shields and they dont die instantly, granted some had plot armour, but a lot didnt, they just took the hits and didnt explode. so theres justification for extra hull technobabble in war.

thats my opposition for it being in fleetops, as for being a modding tool i have no objection.

oh yeah, and whats the difference between a [strong request] and a normal request do you really think that tag would make them any more likely to add something unless it benefits fleetops? i mean in an ideal world fleetops could have every modding feature any modder on the planet could possibly want, but the devs only have so much time, money and beer. they usually focus on fleetops features, with the occasional slight stray from the road when its easy to give a modding benefit.

posted on May 11th, 2011, 6:49 pm

Fleet Ops isn't TOS where Enterprise was absolutely screwed up after a single torpedo hit.

Currently ships in FO are fragile enough. If the ships would have less hull hitpoints, the shield bypassing weapons would be even more devastating and boarding would become even more difficult. Cloaking would also become more delicate if hull strengths were to be lowered.

posted on May 11th, 2011, 6:49 pm

Strong request, lol.

I don't see how this "feature" would benefit gameplay, I'm afraid. I'd agree that use of "shieldprotection" less than 100% would be useful sometimes, but not to this kind of extent.

posted on May 11th, 2011, 6:54 pm

I think you could mimik the behavior you are suggesting by reducing the actual hull hitpoints and using higher values for shield protection. That way only minor fractions of damage bleed through shield, but if the hull is hit directly, the ship goes boom

posted on May 11th, 2011, 7:05 pm

The hull strength isn't lowered.  The damage that a weapon would do to the hull would be multiplied if it isn't bleed-through damage.  Plus, since it would be multi-lined, it could be set on a per-ship basis.

Speaking of the shieldProtection command, I was thinking that it could be made multi-line for weapon ordinances.

PS:  The Dominion did have shields.  They were just from different technologies from the shields we're used to.  Which would explain why they didn't have a visual reaction when a weapon hit the shields.  I didn't really like that I couldn't tell when the shields went down on the vessels though.

---

@Optec
That would not produce the desired results (maybe to an extent, but not to the extent that I want.  My idea doesn't require as much math).  I want the hull strength to remain the same so that bleed-through damage doesn't destroy the ship, but direct hull damage does heavier damage to the ship than it does the shields.

posted on May 11th, 2011, 7:20 pm

Cube firing graviton torpedoes at non-borg ships in blue nebula...

imagine the destruction 

posted on May 11th, 2011, 7:23 pm

You could then fire at any stationary target from any range and still hit it with near 100% accuracy.  Account for some space dust here, the effects of a nearby planetoid here, and you could torpedo a starbase from across the map!

posted on May 11th, 2011, 7:28 pm

You could then fire at any stationary target from any range and still hit it with near 100% accuracy.  Account for some space dust here, the effects of a nearby planetoid here, and you could torpedo a starbase from across the map!

thats actually true you know. torps should easily fly accross a map as we saw when worf's gf was shot in a torp/escape pod to the ent.

maybe it could be explained away by the fact that the target would see it coming for ages in advance and could just fire phasers at the torp at max phaser range. but that doesnt explain away why a susa is short range but not a sang

meh, trek tech has holes in it.

posted on May 11th, 2011, 7:32 pm

Whoops, I wrote this in the wrong thread.

I was talking about TCR's out of range thread.

posted on May 11th, 2011, 7:44 pm

TCR, another way to mimic what you want is to make the shield value really low, but the shield regen value super high.

This way, if the shields have 90 points, and they take 100 damage, that's 10 points of hull damage.  But the shields will go back up rather quickly, and be able to take another hit.  We assume that the shield generators are restoring things towards 100% anyway, and that the shields go down when the generators can't keep up and blah blah blah.

Anyway, that's another way to do it, maybe.

posted on May 11th, 2011, 7:45 pm

Whoops, I wrote this in the wrong thread.

I was talking about TCR's out of range thread.

i answered it independent of this thread lol, didnt even realise it didnt belong.

[Anonymous]

posted on May 11th, 2011, 8:02 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on May 11th, 2011, 8:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That was interesting.

@Optec
That would not produce the desired results (maybe to an extent, but not to the extent that I want.  My idea doesn't require as much math).  I want the hull strength to remain the same so that bleed-through damage doesn't destroy the ship, but direct hull damage does heavier damage to the ship than it does the shields.

I forgot to ask.  Are the Hitpoints integers, or floats/doubles?  I have the same question for maxShields, maxHealth, and maxSpecialEnergy.  Integers, floats, or doubles?  Because if we lower the hull strength, then the subsystem strengths would need to be lowered too and integers will greatly restrict my ability to lower the values.

posted on May 26th, 2011, 11:06 pm

I just thought of another reason to add this command.  If a weapon is designed to destroy the ship but can't harm the shields (like canon Borg cutting beam), having this command will allow the shields to protect the vessel from the weapon.

I also had other ideas to implement this by adding these ODF commands:

Code: Select all

damageBase = 25
damageBaseMultiplier = 1
damageBaseShield = 0
damageBaseShieldMultiplier = 1
damageBaseHull = 80
damageBaseHullMultiplier = 1
damageBaseSubsystem = 15
damageBaseSubsystemMultiplier = 1


Even if they are not implemented in stock Fleet Operations, they would be great for implementing in mods.  Plus passives would be easier to program with these commands.

posted on May 28th, 2011, 5:43 pm

Interesting.

The game thinks of the hull as being a subsystem anyway, in how it calculates hits and that, so it might be a bit difficult to split the hull/subsystems apart, but I can see the logic behind it. Makes for much more complicated odfs though.

Another thing to take into consideration is that it's not a very simple thing to just "add an odf command". It's a very complex process.