Brief comparison of current values for Horatio ships:

1. T2 defender, 2750 health: two T2 platings give ~300 flat HP and 31% damage reduction for effectively about 300 + 0.3*3000 = 1300 effective HP versus projectile, 300 versus everything. Two T2 shields give 540 shield capacity.
2. T3 guardian, 10450 health: four T3 platings give ~2500 flat HP and and 63% damage reduction for effectively about 2500 + 0.6*12000 = 10500 effective HP versus projectile, 2500 versus everything else. Four T3 shields give 5400 shield capacity.

Going from the baseline that a perfectly matching defense of the same tier should be roughly equally good, shield capacity values need to be roughly doubled. I think diversity still applies to some degree with (equally buffed) flotilla shields later making many small ships a soft counter for energy weapons, but without some equivalence for comparable encounters, energy weapons will just continue to dominate.

Also the +100% shield damage of antimatter beam weapons is IMO ridiculous, making them completely unciounterable. Give them +10% hull plating penetration instead.

samsonazs wrote:

Published mod that improves shield HP and adjusts weapon penetration.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1294096509

I like the idea, but looking at the screenshot, roughly double effective HP vs energy from a single shield module seems a bit much if you compare it to the two equivalent (I think?) plating modules.

anendlessbore wrote:

Armour would simply provide a HP boost and shields would provide a seperate HP pool that energy weapons would first need to deplete before they could damage the hull while projectile weapons ignore it. Damage and HP values would then need to be rebalanced accordingly.

In that case using lasers wouldn't be such a good option as those weapons would be a lot weaker as they would need to go trough an additional layer of protection (if a ship would have shields installed).

I would stick with the original simple idea:
- projectile weapons mostly bypass shields and are countered by hull plating

- energy weapons are mostly countered by shields and are excelent agains hull plating

Just to make this work correctly the defence values need to be in line.

Combine this with the new weapons "gauss cannon" that can bypass shields and hull and also improve flotilla shields (I did not change those yet in my mod) and I think this can work.

Game mechanics aren't so complex once you know them and even if they are as long as they uphold fundamental laws that are easy to understand then all is good.

Just to put it there also.

Currently experience provides significant bonuses to ship HP which widens the defence gap even further.

So I suggest this IDEA that changes the way ships level up.

So how is this going? People don't care? I think that "power to shields" tactic is still 150% useless and nothing changed with recent patch, or am i wrong? 

Currently that card is still useless in my opinion.

Working on changing the way missiles and flak work to have it as a combined battle mod.

I played some with the increased shield HP mod I created that also changes penetration values and it worked out fine in my opinion.

Sometimes my ships got killed when they still had shield HP as kinetic weapons mostly bypassed it.

Having those extra HP meant that it did make sense to use "power to shields" if you were fighting agains an energy fleet.

But did any of new patch since beggining of this thread changed something on how shields work or not? 

Published mod that improves shield HP and adjusts weapon penetration.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1294096509

Aitarus wrote:

I just want to reiterate this as the most elegant solution: to use the 'damage against shields' modifier. It requires no tweaking of individual shield capacity and scales across all levels automatically. Not only that, it does not adversely affect projectiles like any other buff to shields would as you can assign them the 50% back.

Your proposed changes, without any alterations to weapon penetration values, could end up making an intensifier crit chance stacked energy meta the only option, or railguns. Projectile weapons with their base penetration of 50/60% vs. shields and their riskier ranges would be hamstrung still further.

The mod also changes weapons behaviour so that kinetic weapons have 0,9 and 0,8 shield penetration.

This way shield don't protect much against projectiles and your ship can get destroyed when your shields still have HP.

Kinetic   SPF=0,8   HPF=0,2

Missile   SPF=0,9   HPF=0,1

Laser      SPF=0,2   HPF=0,8

Beam     SPF=0,1   HPF=0,9

The modification of every weapon being reduced by shields that you suggest means that you no longer have a rock / paper / scisors approach to space battle where one defence works well only agains one type of weapons.

The solution I am suggesting is more in line with that.

Also this will mean that rail guns might get more attention and I am very interested to see how swarm missiles will work.

Uploaded a corrected version.

Higher level shield modules on attacker and sometimes on hunter class ships will still have HP when ship gets destroyed.
This is intended to balance modules between small and large hulls.

YertyL wrote:

But the shield problem goes beyond this: If you raise shield capacity to the point they never run out, you effectively just have a second layer of armor. I think shield modules should just have 100% absorption as standard, with additional modules only increasing capacity. It's somewhat close to what we currently have, but much clearer. Then you can raise capacity by about 100% so full shields of the same tier roughly give double effective HP against pure energy (like pure armor does against projectiles), but raise shield penetration of projectiles to 90%.

That is why in the mod I made projectile weapons have 90/80% shield penetration.

YertyL wrote:

I found another fun fact: Currently, Quadrinix shields are arguably worse than antimatter ones:

Quadrinix shields give 60 health, 330 shield, with 450 reloading each phase. Antimatter shields give 50 health, 900 shield and 4% evasion.

I would count effective shield value for Quadrinix shields at 450 * 2 + 330 = 1230 HP

As the reload means you get a 450 HP boost twice in battle. (if you live to use it twice).

That doesn't change the fact that I would also still go for the 4% evasion as that applies everything and it is much better then that extra 330 shield HP.

Can any of you break down how missile damage works in relation to both Kenetic and Lasers? I never use them as they seem like they do very little damage vs Lasers in my initial tests.

My normal build out is:

1 Yellow 100/100/100 Laser (for the enemy -20 accuracy)

2 Orange 50/100/50 Lasers for the damage

1 Kenetic Flack cannon to blast missiles.

1-2 Shields

1 Armor

1 Engine

1-3 Laser Damage Enhancers

Even on Endless difficulty I seem to melt everything as long as I keep up my CP.

Thoughts?

Missiles are supposed to deal more damage than anything else in the long range phase, outdamaging the beam ships, if the enemy does not have flaks, it has a tiny window to be used in the early game where it can destroy beam users with insufficient flak. But since there are much stronger hero abilities for energy damage +40% and 80% shield penetration and flaks exist, they are easily countered. While lasers and beams, especially the orange lasers as you mention have little real counterplay.

Even better "endgame" setup would be to use the current version AoE weapon, which works well with barrage card and at max range being the strongest weapon dps wise in the game.
If you have the MP to spare, you could also try irradiation shenanigans with boarding mods.

samsonazs wrote:

Did some calculations and the gap between projectile defence and energy defence grows wider and wider as the modules improve.

On a Hunter class ship if you mount 3x basic era 2 plating you end up with 8.316 HP and 32% kinetic damage reduction.

This means you need 12.229 projectile damage to kill the ship.

If you mount 3x basic era 2 shields then you end up with 7.620 ship HP and 2.430 shield HP.

So you need 10.050 energy damage to kill the ship.

If shields would have twice current HP then this would equal out (actually shields would be a little better).

But with modules using strategic resources this gap is a lot larger.

On a Hunter ship mounting 5x Improved Reactive Plating gives 10.780 HP and 68% kinetic damage reduction.

So you need 33.687,5 projectile damage to kill the ship.

Mounting 5x Improved Uniform Shielding gives 7.900 ship HP and 7.430 shield HP.

So you need 15.330 energy damage to kill the ship.

That is less then half of what hull plating is providing.

Those calculations don't take into account shield penetration and hull penetration and the percent of damage sent to shield HP on each shot but give a nice indication of the gap that needs to be fixed between those two defences.

You forgot to include the ship HP bonus from XP which only inceases ship HP and not shield HP which makes the armor even more ridiculous.

The solution in my mind is make the progression of shields decrease the penetration of lasers and beams, so shields then get you a energy hp pool that doesnt take full damage from energy weapons until depleted, the more advanced the shield, the more decrease in damage and larger the pool. This makes the most sense in my mind.

Also flottilla shields, can we make that module useful, like a large shield pool that does not regenerate or something to that liking. I dont even understand why they are in the game in there current itteration. Ive tried stacking them with three upgraded protectors in each flottilla offering no decernable difference . The resources spent are always better spent on weapons and armor, and of course the repair modules. Lets give flottilla shields and shields in general a special defense mechanic, to counter the all incompassing armor that reduces damage and adds hitpoints. 

Aitarus wrote:

This is not a 'new mechanic' for shields, it has always been this way. I just assume that people didn't catch onto that until recently.

You are wrong about that. 

As you can see in this post from Mysterarts shields used reduce damage even when shields HP was depleted.

Currently there are 2 steps in the shields process:

• A proportion of the salvo is absorbed based on the type of the weapon (currently 100% of the beam, 75% of the laser) => this amount is removed from the shield health (“the shield value”)
• Then the remaining damage is apply to the ship with the formula: damage * (1 - energy defense / (energy defense + 100)) for the energy salvo
• If the shield has no more health point, the first step is obviously ignored

Not sure when it changed as I had a few months without looking at this game.

I would return to this approach and include a diversification of damage from weapons (the way it is right now) so that some damage is treated as energy an some as projectile.

But those values would needs some tuuning to make them work.

Maybe there would be a weapon that does 50% / 50% of projectile / energy damage an in this way would take advantage of ships that specialize in one type of defence only?

A weapon that does 100 damage but is 80% energy / 20% kinnetic would always make some damage even when shields HP is not depleted.

Yes it was a long time ago but no mention this got changed in any of the updates (at least no mention of that in the release notes).

As for penetration I was thinking more of weapon damage split.

A slug for example would be 90% kinetic and 10% energy damage.

So a slug that does 100 damage gets split into two values for calculating damage.

This way shileds provides a little protection against it (but just a little) and in the same way hull plating provides a little defence against energy weapons.

To give an example:

A ship has 40% projectile damage reduction and 20% energy damage reduction.

(putting asside different weapon penetration values that would reduce this)

A weapon does 100 damage and is 80% kinetic and 20% energy.

It does 80 damage as kinetic and 20 damage as energy.

Kinetic gets reduced by hull plating by 40% so we are left with (80 * 0,6) = 48 damage.

Energy damage goes to shileds if those still have HP.
If not then that 20 damage gets reduced bu 20% so we are left with (20 * 0.8) = 16 damage.

This weapon would do 64 damage

This would normally be 60 if all damage was just kinetic.

In the same was 100 damage points that are 80% energy and 20% projectile would end up doing 76 damage (as opposed to 80 if it would be all energy damage).

Not sure if that really is the case.
Would be great if the mechanics would be explained somewhere and updated if they change.

What isn't in place right now and I think should be implemented is that the energy mitagation should reduce the energy damage even if shield HP is depleted.

If shields still have HP left then it is reduced by the whole value without damage reduction (so that shields HP doesn't work too well specially with reloading).

Did some calculations and the gap between projectile defence and energy defence grows wider and wider as the modules improve.

On a Hunter class ship if you mount 3x basic era 2 plating you end up with 8.316 HP and 32% kinetic damage reduction.

This means you need 12.229 projectile damage to kill the ship.

If you mount 3x basic era 2 shields then you end up with 7.620 ship HP and 2.430 shield HP.

So you need 10.050 energy damage to kill the ship.

If shields would have twice current HP then this would equal out (actually shields would be a little better).

But with modules using strategic resources this gap is a lot larger.

On a Hunter ship mounting 5x Improved Reactive Plating gives 10.780 HP and 68% kinetic damage reduction.

So you need 33.687,5 projectile damage to kill the ship.

Mounting 5x Improved Uniform Shielding gives 7.900 ship HP and 7.430 shield HP.

So you need 15.330 energy damage to kill the ship.

That is less then half of what hull plating is providing.

Those calculations don't take into account shield penetration and hull penetration and the percent of damage sent to shield HP on each shot but give a nice indication of the gap that needs to be fixed between those two defences.

In the 1.1.15 version defences are hard to figure out and generally broken.

I did some testing and as everyone knows the problems are mostly with defence against energy weapons.

Tests were done using Hunter class ship.

Shield defence no longer reduces incoming damage but transfers part of it to shields "hit points".

Once your shields are depleted you take full damage.

As the Sophon hunter ship has 3 defence slots I did two versions.

One had 3x shields

   at the start when I still had shields they absorbed damage and that worked fine but ended quickly

   this one was taking 114 / 127 regular damage from enemy weapons after shields were empty (and sometimes 194 / 215 critical).

The second version had 3x armour 

   this should reduce damage significantly (46% damage reduction) but was giving only 10% reduction (as those were energy weapons)

   I was getting hit by 103 / 115 damage from enemy weapons

So shields that are the designated defence for energy weapons only provided some extra health but once that was gone I was getting more damage from enemy weapons.

This new mechanic of shields means that the tactic card "Power to Shields" is something you NEVER want to use.

It just means your shields will deplete faster and you will be doing 10% less damage.

In short the defence mechanics need to be reworked as energy weapons are just overpowered.

You don't have any defence for them and the assumed counter of using missiles as superior weapon at long range just doesn't work (even if they don't have flak to shoot down missiles)

I like the fact that things are changing and we are looking for a solution to have everything balanced but we are far from being there and a lot more internal testing before a release of a solution is needed here.

With the current changes I would bump up the shield reloading modules as the values they reload each turn (antimater re-shield giving 200 reload) is far from even considering using this module.

Energy defence should still be able to reduce the amount of damage you receive from energy weapons.

This way it is something to consider over projectile defence.

It doesn't even have to provide any "shield health points".

Or maybe the solution is to greatly increase the extra health of shields as despite that you still take normal damage so even if you have and endless shield health your ship will still get destroyed.

Save from the testing in system Libra if you want to play with it:

Defence testing.sav

I just updated my Combat Balance Mod that makes all energy weapons only deal 50% of their damage vs. shields, while projectiles continue to deal their full damage. This according to the calculations I did should even out the defenses somewhat.

samsonazs wrote:

Those calculations don't take into account shield penetration and hull penetration and the percent of damage sent to shield HP on each shot but give a nice indication of the gap that needs to be fixed between those two defences.

You cannot really get an accurate indication if you are not including all relevant variables.

I think the way to go here apart from increasing shield HP is to change the penetration values of weapons.

But I would see it differently.

Projectiles should be good agains shields and reduced by armour .

Energy should be reduced by shields and good agains armour.

So those are the penetration values I would use:
            KINETIC:
                    ShieldPenetrationFactor            Value="0.8"
                    HullPlatingPenetrationFactor       Value="0.2"
           
            MISSILE:
                    ShieldPenetrationFactor            Value="0.9"
                    HullPlatingPenetrationFactor    Value="0.1"

            LASER:
                    ShieldPenetrationFactor            Value="0.2"
                    HullPlatingPenetrationFactor    Value="0.8"

            BEAM (100% hit on all ranges):
                    ShieldPenetrationFactor            Value="0.1"
                    HullPlatingPenetrationFactor    Value="0.9"

Apart from that I would change the "flotilla shields" (which are currently not worth considering to be installed) to reduce incomming energy damage by a percent just like hull plating does.

That would make protectors / coordinator ships very usefull and flotilla defence modules an interesting choice.

Flotilla shields would not have any HP just energy defence that would be calculated for damage reduction like hull plating.

samsonazs wrote:

I think the way to go here apart from increasing shield HP is to change the penetration values of weapons.

But I would see it differently.

Projectiles should be good agains shields and reduced by armour .

Energy should be reduced by shields and good agains armour.

So those are the penetration values I would use:
            KINETIC:
                    ShieldPenetrationFactor            Value="0.8"
                    HullPlatingPenetrationFactor       Value="0.2"
           
            MISSILE:
                    ShieldPenetrationFactor            Value="0.9"
                    HullPlatingPenetrationFactor    Value="0.1"

            LASER:
                    ShieldPenetrationFactor            Value="0.2"
                    HullPlatingPenetrationFactor    Value="0.8"

            BEAM (100% hit on all ranges):
                    ShieldPenetrationFactor            Value="0.1"
                    HullPlatingPenetrationFactor    Value="0.9"

Apart from that I would change the "flotilla shields" (which are currently not worth considering to be installed) to reduce incomming energy damage by a percent just like hull plating does.

That would make protectors / coordinator ships very usefull and flotilla defence modules an interesting choice.

Flotilla shields would not have any HP just energy defence that would be calculated for damage reduction like hull plating.

I agree with the direction your going here but I think the other options for defense need to be taken into account. Missiles/Kinetics have counters besides armour, missiles are also countered by flak and kinetics are most effective at short range, after your opponent has had up to two phases to reduce your firepower. Energy weapons however are only countered by shields.

With that in mind I would like to see values such as these:

Kinitec: SPF=0.9 HPF=0.2

Missile: SPF=1.0 HPF=0.5

LASER:   SPF=0.0 HPF=0.8  DamageToShield=200%

Beam:    SPF=0.0 HPF=1.0 DamageToShield=10%

Kinetics are hard countered by armour but double as flak.

Missiles become a high risk/reward option as they do high damage but can be countered by flak.

My view on energy weapon balance comes from FTL. While up shields provide 100% protection from energy weapons. Lasers are used to overwhelm and bring them down. Beams are ineffective against shields but will rip through any hull not protected by them.

Aitarus wrote:

I just updated my Combat Balance Mod that makes all energy weapons only deal 50% of their damage vs. shields, while projectiles continue to deal their full damage. This according to the calculations I did should even out the defenses somewhat.

I just want to reiterate this as the most elegant solution: to use the 'damage against shields' modifier. It requires no tweaking of individual shield capacity and scales across all levels automatically. Not only that, it does not adversely affect projectiles like any other buff to shields would as you can assign them the 50% back.

Your proposed changes, without any alterations to weapon penetration values, could end up making an intensifier crit chance stacked energy meta the only option, or railguns. Projectile weapons with their base penetration of 50/60% vs. shields and their riskier ranges would be hamstrung still further.