Readme wrote:________________________________________________________________________________
ModWorks Leaky Armor Concept Mod
________________________________________________________________________________
Authors: Fyron and Suicide Junkie
Version: 1.0
Date: 28 July 2005
E-mail: modworks at spaceempires dot net
Game: Space Empires IV Gold
________________________________________________________________________________
Table of Contents
1) Introduction
2) Leaky Armor Theory
3) File Modifications
4) Credits
5) License
________________________________________________________________________________
1) Introduction
This mod is a practical implementation of the Leaky Armor modding concept for
the game Space Empires IV Gold, by Malfador Machinations
(
http://www.malfador.com/).
The mod was created as part of a series of such mods for SpaceEmpires.net
ModWorks (
http://modworks.spaceempires.net/). Visit ModWorks to find more such
mods or to get more help on the concepts illustrated in this mod.
________________________________________________________________________________
2) Leaky Armor Theory
Background:
===========================
Have you ever wondered why all armor on your ship, no matter which facing it is
on, must be completely vaporized before any damage can be done to internal
components (other than from armor skipping weapons)? The solution to this
conundrum is leaky armor. Leaky armor is armor in the sense that it protects
your ship from physical harm. However, it is not armor in the sense that it does
not have the Armor ability. It will protect from some weapon hits, and not
protect against others. Some hits will leak through the armor layer to damage
internal components. Thus, there is no magic wall to be penetrated as with
normal armor. Leaky type armor first appeared in the Pirates & Nomads mod, in
the form of Bucky-Tube Gel Plating.
How it works mechanically:
===========================
No component with the Armor ability will protect you from weapons with the Skips
Armor or Skips Shields and Armor damage types. Leaky armors treat armor-skipping
weapons as normal weapons, as there is no armor layer to pierce. Components with
the Armor ability are only damaged by armor skipping weapons once there are no
other components left intact on the ship that do not have the armor ability.
When a weapon hits a ship, it will first face the shield layer. If there are no
shield generators, or no shield points, the damage goes to the components of the
ship. If there are any components with Armor ability, they will be hit first.
But, if the weapon was one with armor-skipping damage, such as Shard Cannons,
then the damage will completely bypass the Armor layer and damage "internals,"
where internals are any components that do not have the Armor ability. Only the
Armor ability makes a component act like "armor."
If a ship has "leaky armor" components, they are not actually "armor" because
they do not have the Armor ability. They are treated exactly like other
internals. The reason that we use the term "leaky armor" is because having some
beefed up components (lots of hit points) without the Armor ability makes them
act similar to armor, except that some shots will not hit them but hit other
internals instead. So instead of complete absorption by the Armor, you have
partial absorption by the leaky armor.
A note on abilities:
===========================
Armor-skipping damage has one role, to bypass the Armor layer. Or, in other
words, those components with the Armor ability. However, testing has shown a few
other side effects. The abilities of Shields From Damage and Emissive Armor do
not get triggered by weapon shots with the armor-skipping damage type. Both of
these abilities will function when any component gets hit, even if that
component does not have that ability. This is why combining stock Armor and
Emissive Armor works. Any shot from a regular weapon that hits any armor
component will be emissed by so many damage points. The same occurs with
Crystalline Armor, which has the shields from damage ability. If you assign
either of these abilities to an internal component, then that ability will be
triggered when any component on the ship is damaged. Whether it is internal or
armor is irrelevant. But, their effects do not get triggered from weapon damage
of the armor-skipping type. So, if you mod in an internal component that has the
Shields From Damage ability (such as leaky shields as in some mods), no shields
will be added from the damage occurred by an armor-skipping weapon (such as
Shard Cannons).
Implementation:
===========================
To implement leaky armor, create a component that has no abilities. Give it more
structure (hit points) than the average internal ship component has. This way,
it is more likely to be hit first than other internal components. If the average
component has 10 hit points, then leaky armor with 15 hit points will have a
good chance of being hit first. But, a lot of shots will still hit other
internals.
Since the only purpose of leaky armor is to absorb damage, it should have a much
higher structure to space taken ratio than other components. If it does not,
then those other components might end up as being better leaky armor than your
new armor! The exact values are up to you, but I would recommend as a bare
minimum that all leaky armor components have at least 2 times the structure to
space taken ratio as most internals do. In stock SE4, most internals have a
ratio of either 1:1 or 2:1 (engines being those with 2:1). So, 4:1 is a good
minimal ratio for your leaky armor
Complexity:
===========================
You can implement a system where there is just one type of leaky armor. Or, you
can implement a system with multiple types, to create more strategic diversity.
Let's take a system with two types of leaky armor as an example. Light Armor is
1 kiloton in size and has, say, 20 structure (hit points). Heavy Armor is 10
kilotons in size and has 100 structure.
In this system, the Light Armor has twice as many hit points per kiloton of
space taken as the Heavy Armor. This means that it should create ships much
stronger than Heavy Armor can, right? Well, not quite. Even though the Light
Armored ships can take a lot more damage, you will find that the heavy armored
ships tend to win more often. This is because weapon hits are more likely to
strike a component of Heavy Armor than other internal components with the HA
ship than they are to strike a component of Light Armor than an internal on a LA
ship. The large amount of hit points that the Heavy Armor has individually gives
it a greater chance to be struck. So while the LA ships can take more damage
overall, they tend to be more leaky, so vital internals (engines, weapons) tend
to be struck more quickly than they do on the HA ships. The Heavy Armor has more
hit points than any (unmounted) weapon, after all.
Of course, it turns out that
the best design is a combination of LA and HA.
Using this example, you can create complex armor systems. More complexity (to a
point) means that there are more strategic options when designing and employing
your ships. This in turn leads to a greater depth of game play. Of course, you
should avoid going overboard. 12 different types of armor (not levels, but
different types entirely) would probably be too many.
"Leaky Armor" by Nolan Kelly (Imperator Fyron), February 23, 2004.
________________________________________________________________________________
3) File Modifications
Armor in Components.txt were modified:
- Armor ability removed from all Armor type components.
- AI Tag 01 ability added to Armor I-III, which can be used for AI ship
designs.
- Size of Armor I-III reduced to 2 kT. Hit points of each set to double
value over stock.
- Size of Organic Armor reduced to 5 kT. Cost divided by 6 to scale with
size.
- Size of Crystalline Armor reduced to 5 kT. Cost divided by 6 to scale with
size. Shields from damage rate of CA divided by 5.
- Structure of Emissive Armor I-III doubled to maintain more hit points per
component than Armor I-III, as in stock SEIV.
The following is a chart of the structure / tonnage (HP/kT) ratios of all
armors:
Comp Size HP HP/kT
Armor I 2 60 30
Armor II 2 70 35
Armor III 2 80 40
EA I 20 60 3
EA II 20 80 4
EA III 20 100 5
OA I 5 100 20
OA II 5 125 25
OA III 5 150 30
CA I 5 100 20
CA II 5 125 25
CA III 5 150 30
Stealth I 30 100 3.33
Stealth II 30 100 3.33
Stealth III 30 100 3.33
Scatter I 50 150 3
Scatter II 50 150 3
Scatter III 50 150 3
Note that the heavier weapon mounts make ships extremely vulnerable to damage.
In any practical leaky armor system, you should consider replacing them with
mounts that do not massively up-scale damage, but instead make interesting
changes and tradeoffs. Also, the heavy mounted guns become more vulnerable to
damage, due to having more comparable hit points per kiloton as the leaky
armors.
Note further that this leaky armor system has been implemented for ships and
bases. Units will become much harder to destroy now. The leakiness of armor does
not apply to units in any way due to units not taking any sort of partial damage
to components. In any practical leaky armor system, you will probably want to
make the leaky armor only available to ships and bases and create new armor
components with more reasonable hit points for the units.
Leaky Armor systems are naturally complemented by Leaky Shield systems. Most
mods that implement one scheme will also implement the other.
________________________________________________________________________________
4) Credits
The Leaky Armor system in this mod was based on the system designed by Suicide
Junkie. The documentation was written by Fyron. Both are used with full
permissions. The mod was compiled for use by Fyron.
________________________________________________________________________________
5) License
Space Empires IV Gold (SEIV) is copyright by Malfador Machinations
(
http://www.malfador.com).
The mod is a practical implementation of an advanced modding concept for the
game SEIV.
The mod was created as part of a series of such mods for SpaceEmpires.net
ModWorks (
http://modworks.spaceempires.net/). Visit ModWorks to find more such
mods or to get more help on the concepts illustrated in this mod.
The mod is provided for purely educational purposes. You are free to take the
modifications made by this mod and use them in your own SEIV mod. You are free
to alter them in any way you see fit.
________________________________________________________________________________
.
We should show them all three of our threads...
.
