Tell me what you think of this design:

 

-Slugs do high hull damage but low shield damage and lose their armor and shield piercing.

-Ions do high shield damage but low hull damage and lose their aoe, power drain, and debuffs.

-Plasma does debuffs but loses almost all damage.

 

The debuffs could be whatever combination of what's already out there, i.e. armor ignore, energy drain, snare, and/or evasion ignore -- but not accuracy reduction or ability disabling because **** that.

Yeah, that's terrible. The ion AOE debuff is not a problem - it's 18 energy and no lockout, BFD. The ion single-target debuff is very damaging but completely survivable - I regularly survive it in both my Flashfire and my Quarrel. The way you know that the single-target debuff is balanced? Because against a target with no shields, ion is not worth it. All ion's debuff really does is give the gunship a chance to land the second shot with slug. Without the debuff no good pilot would ever die to a gunship because after the first shot they would be alert enough to dodge the second.

Slug should keep the shield piercing; a ship running around with 10% health and full shields should still have something to be afraid of. It should have the armor ignore reduced to 50%, or maybe even removed entirely.

Yeah, that's terrible. The ion AOE debuff is not a problem

aaaaand I'm done.

Default ion railgun drains nothing.

At tier 3, you get "drains 10 extra".

At tier 4, you get "drains 18".

18+10 = 28 to primary and secondary targets. The damage is halved, not the drain, nor the debuff duration.

Your above solution is far more mathematically complex and requires a new mechanic. Armor and armor pen currently work exactly like the ground game. This is a virtue because it means people don't have to learn a second system. Reducing 100% armor pen to 50% armor pen preserves the current mechanics while ensuring armor is still always somewhat valuable.

In the ground game damage reduction from armor is pretty much baked into the character armor class, and there's really nothing in the way of gearing choice to create much variation.

In GSF, armor based damage reduction comes primarily from gearing options. There's a high opportunity cost to get it, so it's a lot more of a problem if it's not working properly.

How happy would tanks be if they had to get armor based damage reduction from ar/mod/enh slots and then found out that maybe 35% of boss abilities in new content were going to ignore armor completely? How many of them would pick armor at all over defense, shield, or absorb except maybe for spare armor sets used to get through the rare boss with no armor pen?

That's more or less the problem in GSF. You can tweak numbers to sort things out once the mechanics are sound. The problem is that you have gear choices where you're paying for a defensive secondary stat that is useless in some situations and that gear is competing against gear with defensive secondary stats that always work.

In some ways that's the core difference. Ground game armor functions as a baked in primary defense, GSF armor is more of a secondary stat that comes out of gearing budgets.

As design philosophy, I'd also question that armor pen is an offensive secondary stat that's useless in some situations. As a practical matter that means useless against scouts (assuming they aren't making terrible gear and crew choices) and their hull health is low enough that the fact that armor pen is basically useless against them doesn't make much a of a practical difference.

Armor penetration by itself is ok.

Damage reduction armor components and crew skills by themselves are fine.

It's their interaction compared to the interaction of other [defense + defense counter] combos that's messed up.

Tell me what you think of this design:

 

-Slugs do high hull damage but low shield damage and lose their armor and shield piercing.

-Ions do high shield damage but low hull damage and lose their aoe, power drain, and debuffs.

-Plasma does debuffs but loses almost all damage.

 

The debuffs could be whatever combination of what's already out there, i.e. armor ignore, energy drain, snare, and/or evasion ignore -- but not accuracy reduction or ability disabling because **** that.

I'd rather see:

- Slugs do high hull damage, low shield damage, and lose armor and shield piercing

- Ions do high shield damage, low hull damage, keep the AOE damage, but make the debuffs single target only and scale with charge

- Plasma does good damage to both hull and shields, but some of the damage is applied as a DOT, gains armor ignore

Slugs would still be useful because of their high burst damage to hulls, making them useful for finishing a target off once their shields are down. They'd no longer be the hands-down best damage dealing option in all situations, however.

Ions would actually be more useful for shield stripping now, since Slugs do less damage to shields and lack shield piercing, and still has the AOE damage for clearing mines/drones. It would still debuff the primary target, but the debuff would scale with charge, and you would no longer be able to disable all the enemies around a satellite by simply shooting a turret or drone. So Ion would become relatively more useful for dealing damage (since Slugs are no longer ideal for stripping shields), but would not be as insanely effective at CC.

Plasma would become more valuable because it is effective against both hull and shields, but the fact that it relies on a DOT means Slug and Ion would be more effective against their intended targets because damage now is better than damage later. Plasma would gain armor ignore, which would improve its performance against things like bombers; these targets also tend to have higher health, and thus the dot from Plasma is more likely to actually be useful (unlike against targets like scouts, where they're often dead before the full damage is applied).

I think that would force gunships to actually make an interesting choice between railguns, rather than simply take Slug and Ion while forgetting Plasma even exists.

The real problem I have with all those ideas is that you've swapped from "hey, lets talk about armor penetration" to "waaaaah gunship shot me waaaaaah". We have threads for that. If your first thought upon seeing the gunship is to make them have to swap between two weapons to have any chance of having a kill (with all the debuffs put on a third weapon that, if you have, you've lost the ability to actually kill anyone), then screw that.

The Starguard has an ion cannon, but his other weapons do normal damage against shields. If they didn't, he'd be a terrible ship.

Slug is your straightforward good weapon. It's the go-to. If someone lets you slug them a few times, they deserve their death. I just think that number could go up a bit, by like, a shot.

Ion debuffs are too powerful, but they don't need to be removed. They just shouldn't apply as readily and in full magnitude.

Plasma kinda needs a home, but that shouldn't be "only way to get a kill" or "worthless debuff only gun that you then swap to ion or slug, neither of which can actually kill the target if he has both shields and hull". It's possible plasma is more about right, and people would line up for the 1890 average damage if the slug wasn't averaging 1760, but instantly, piercing shields to a degree, and entirely ignoring damage reduction.

Default ion railgun drains nothing.

 

At tier 3, you get "drains 10 extra".

At tier 4, you get "drains 18".

 

18+10 = 28 to primary and secondary targets. The damage is halved, not the drain, nor the debuff duration.

Pretty sure default ion drains 25.

How happy would tanks be if they had to get armor based damage reduction from ar/mod/enh slots and then found out that maybe 35% of boss abilities in new content were going to ignore armor completely?

Speaking as a tank... that's exactly how it works already. I/E damage ignores armor, and F/T damage ignores defense (which is part of your stat budget rather than fixed like armor). Damage ratios of M/R vs F/T K/E are crucial for determining optimal stat weights.

That's more or less the problem in GSF. You can tweak numbers to sort things out once the mechanics are sound. The problem is that you have gear choices where you're paying for a defensive secondary stat that is useless in some situations and that gear is competing against gear with defensive secondary stats that always work.

Yes, which is why simply taking the armor pen weapons and reducing them to 50% armor pen instead of 100% armor pen substantially alleviates the problem. Now armor becomes good in many situations and at least partially good in the rest. And you achieve it without altering the game mechanics at all, just change a few tooltips.

Well, as I discussed, proton torps would need a buff then.

The thing is, some things really SHOULD go through armor. The setup of a protorp is pretty exceptional. If a protorp hit for 600, it's kind of not worth using- especially that under the same logic the concussion hits for 500 without the talent.

In a game where you have a tank and some effects ignore his passive defense- say they are internal, or magic- under normal circumstances those attacks are harder to use in some way. For instance, in WoW, casters need to cast, which tanks (or anyone) can interfere with, whereas melee simply need to be close enough to punch, which MANY classes can stop happening, but not normally tanks. In this game, the armor ignoring weapons have that too, but it's relatively smaller. Burst and Heavy lasers both have tight positioning constraints compared to some weapons- but at the same time, they both excel in other situations as well (close but off center, on center but far).

I think in this game, the appropriate thing would be for something that is good at armor to mostly have to make a choice to do that. The protorp already made that choice- that's why he's only 800ish damage instead of the 1200+ you would expect if he didn't deal "true damage".

You forgot about Seismic and Interdiction mines. They ignore armor, too.

Ah, my bad. They only ignore shields.

Default ion railgun drains nothing.

 

At tier 3, you get "drains 10 extra".

At tier 4, you get "drains 18".

 

18+10 = 28 to primary and secondary targets. The damage is halved, not the drain, nor the debuff duration.

The description of the ion railgun says: "It fires ion particles enclosed in a magnetic field which do minimal hull damage but cause severe damage to shields, and drain weapon and engine power."

And the description of the t3 talent says "drains additional 10 units of energy".

So, the ion railgun has a base energy drain + additional 28 through upgrades.

If Kuci is right and the default drain is 25, than 25+28=52 energy drain. Thats HALF of the engine and weapon pool of up to 4 targets with a single shot that only needs 1 second to reach the minimal 25% charge to fire off!

And people still think this is balanced? o.O

Ignore Armor is largely useful against turrets, gunships, and bombers, which are generally the hardest to kill in general shot for shot. They have the highest damage redux, which is what gets ignored when using this stat certain items, such as Concussion Missiles. I don't think it needs a nerf and I'm not entirely convinced the OP knows what he is asking for...

On my GS, I use lightweight armor instead of reinforced / deflection. My theory - if they can't hit you, they can't hurt you. if they nerf my evasion again though, I'll be upset more than I would with losing armor

Well, as I discussed, proton torps would need a buff then.

Yes, I have previously alluded to an exception for proton torps. I don't think that asterisk is a big deal either way. (Especially since proton torps would still be underpowered.)

On my GS, I use lightweight armor instead of reinforced / deflection. My theory - if they can't hit you, they can't hurt you. if they nerf my evasion again though, I'll be upset more than I would with losing armor

Correct. As established above, DR is bad, and evasion buffs your effect health and shield pool while the +health armor just buffs your health pool. (As a side effect this buffs the effective healing from Hydrospanner.) Finally, evasion gives you a chance to dodge the ion debuff.