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.