From my discussion: https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/11307-the-way-combat-works-makes-me-hate-this-game-but-i-want-to-be-constructive



Me and members of the community brain stormed a bunch of idea to improve the combat system.





Altered phase accuracy and damage:

Long range accuracy/damage:

70%/100% Kinetic

100%/70% Laser

100%/100% Missile



Medium range accuracy/damage:

80%/100% Kinetic

100%/85% Laser

90%/100% Missile



Short range accuracy/damage:

95%/100% Kinetic

100%/100% Laser

80%/100% Missile

Nosferatiel wrote:
Let me propose some maths at the least for the lasers, then:



For each shot of a laser weapon with damage D at a ship with shields S in one round, the damage done D' shall be:

D'=D*(1+[D-S]/[D+S])



The shield shall be reduced by the absorbed amount D'-D, so the shield will have the strength S'=S+D'-D for the next shot.

Then you can just iterate this into oblivion.



A little example:

[CODE]Shot Laser Shield damage

1 100 400 40

2 340 45,45

3 285,45 51,89

4 237,34 59,29

5 196,63 67,42

6 164,05 75,74

7 139,8 83,4

8 123,2 89,61

9 112,81 93,98

10 106,79 96,72

[/CODE]



Doubling the laser damage with this equation is still more powerful than doubling the amount of lasers, by this equation (5 lasers with 200 vs shield of 400, cumulative damage: 814,4 vs 10 lasers with 100 vs shield of 400, cumulative damage 703,51), so the balancing should in principle be fine.

The only things you'd need to tweak, then, would be shield and laser strengths. Also this would harmonize a lot with the proposed damage malus at long distances we discussed earlier.



P.S.: An interesting side-effect occurs, if there is no shield/hardly any shield left. Then it does up to twice the damage. Perhaps D'=D*(1+[D-S]/[D+S])/2 might be the better option to make this more intuitive.

Nosferatiel wrote:
Okay, the version with damage divided by 2 is better in my opinion, just for balancing reasons. It's counterintuitive to have ships without shields being hit by twice the damage right from the start. ^^'



Anyways, two updated calculations for two scenarios and plots to show you the effects of doubling laser damage. Please mind that in total the shield can only absorb its maximum strength, but firing stronger lasers at a shield means to have more penetration power early on!



[CODE]shot laser shield damage laser eff. shot laser shield damage laser eff.

1 100 400 20 20,00% 1 200 400 66,67 33,33%

2 320 23,81 23,81% 2 266,67 85,71 42,86%

3 243,81 29,09 29,09% 3 152,38 113,51 56,76%

4 172,9 36,64 36,64% 4 65,89 150,44 75,22%

5 109,54 47,72 47,72% 5 16,33 184,9 92,45%

6 57,26 63,59 63,59% 6 1,23 198,77 99,39%

7 20,85 82,75 82,75% 7 0,01 199,99 100,00%

8 3,6 96,53 96,53% 8 0 200 100,00%

9 0,12 99,88 99,88% 9 0 200 100,00%

10 0 100 100,00% 10 0 200 100,00%

total damage 600 total damage 1600

[/CODE]

Nosferatiel wrote:


Anyways, I've come up with an interesting idea for kinetics, although I'd need a squareroot on codelevel for that...

Basic idea: Each slug shower that hits the deflector dents and compresses it, damaging the underlying structure the more the deflector is bent into the ship. That groaning structure gets more and more damaged, but the pressurized deflector will be harder and harder to actually penetrate, until it gives finally in when you blow a hole into the hull.



For shot N, may the kinetic damage be K and the deflector strength be D, while the initial deflector strength is D[SUP]0[/SUP]. Then the damage done should be K'=K*(D[SUP]0[/SUP]-D)/(D[SUP]0[/SUP]+D) and the armor strength of the given round D is D=D[SUP]0[/SUP]-Sqrt(N)*K. As long as D>0, it stays like the formula describes, otherwise it should stay 0.



Again two similar tables for the outcome and two graphs to get a feeling for this:



[CODE]

shot kin defl dam kin eff. shot kin defl dam kin eff.

1 100 400 0 0% 1 200 400 0 0%

2 300 14 14% 2 200 67 33%

3 259 21 21% 3 117 109 55%

4 227 28 28% 4 54 153 76%

5 200 33 33% 5 0 200 100%

6 176 39 39% 6 0 200 100%

7 155 44 44% 7 0 200 100%

8 135 49 49% 8 0 200 100%

9 117 55 55% 9 0 200 100%

10 100 60 60% 10 0 200 100%

total damage 343,76 total damage 1528,79

[/CODE]







As you can see the outcome is quite similar for powerful weapons, but quite different for less powerful weapons and I'd like to think of kinetics as faster firing but less powerful per shot, so this should suffice.

These together should allow lasers and kinetics to become and stay effective over a battle without the current problems of weapon immunity.