A Path Beyond Directional Armor

[des1206]

Right now when you hit a tank's rear spot it does more damage vs the front. But what if instead we let the damage directly pass through to internal health? This way if you keep on hitting its rear, a tank can be destroyed without even depleting its armor. Tank battles will involve much more flanking, spinning and attacking from the rear.

[Raap]

I'll be honest and say that although I am aware regional damage exists, I can hardly notice it.

 

Perhaps it needs a consistency pass;

 

- Remove odd shapes and make any damage region of a vehicle register as that specific damage bonus/decrease, the reality of Internet delays will be less punishing on players this way, and the mechanic will become more obvious in general.

 

- Make damage regions consistent across the board for three vehicle types;

 

Tanks

• Front: 20% damage reduction.
• Top: 10% damage reduction.
• Sides: 0% damage reduction.
• Bottom: 30% damage increase.
• Rear: 30% damage increase.

 

Light Vehicles

• Front: 10% damage reduction.
• Top: 0% damage reduction.
• Sides: 0% damage reduction.
• Bottom: 20% damage increase.
• Rear: 20% damage increase.

 

Support/Naval

• No special damage regions due to general assumed vulnerability from any side.

 

If you flank a tank, you should be more clearly rewarded. Similarly, any vehicle driver exposing a vulnerable side in combat should be punished for doing so.

 

The end result will be similar to ignoring armor, but less confusing to new players.

 

Edit: On a related note, if Light Tanks had a turret rotation speed increase, they could be used to do some proper damage against slow turning vehicles like Heavy Tanks.

Edited March 25, 2016 by Raap

[Pyryle]

Right now when you hit a tank's rear spot it does more damage vs the front. But what if instead we let the damage directly pass through to internal health? This way if you keep on hitting its rear, a tank can be destroyed without even depleting its armor. Tank battles will involve much more flanking, spinning and attacking from the rear.

 

 

At the same time, probably integrate tank module damage and...wait a minute, this isn't World of Tanks! :

 

So basically what you are suggesting is to make shots to the rear function the same way as infantry armor, where a good chunk of that damage is dealt directly to the health while their actual armor is just slowly being chewed away? I'd think it's definitely something to try out from a tank vs tank (or anti-armor infantry e.g. RS/shock/volkov) standpoint.

 

However, for units that aren't specialized at dispatching armor (e.g. ranger/APC, riflemen/captains), how much of a damage bleed should they be capable of doing? I don't wish to find myself as a MBT that (literally) got my ass handed to me because some machinegun unit was able to destroy my vehicle quickly and easily as a side effect of this idea.

[Raap]

See, damage ignoring armor opens too many doors in balance land.

 

A flat damage reduction or increase works better.

 

Edit: Pyryle that avatar is hilarious.

Edited March 25, 2016 by Raap

[des1206]

See, damage ignoring armor opens too many doors in balance land.

 

A flat damage reduction or increase works better.

 

Edit: Pyryle that avatar is hilarious.

 

The reason I proposed this for tanks is because it will be much more noticeable to new players the difference between damage to front armor (armor depletes first), side armor (armor and health) and rear/weak point (health only). Just a thought here, maybe I'm over complicating this.

 

Also: Holy Hand Grenade Pyryle

[Isaac The Madd]

Just make the under side take the most damage, as to how you even shoot there is beyond me.

[Einstein]

Also: Holy Hand Grenade Pyryle

 

You rang?

[Pushwall]

Right now when you hit a tank's rear spot it does more damage vs the front. But what if instead we let the damage directly pass through to internal health? This way if you keep on hitting its rear, a tank can be destroyed without even depleting its armor. Tank battles will involve much more flanking, spinning and attacking from the rear.

 

First of all, having the damage pass directly to internal health would mean everything will kill the vehicle at least twice as fast as normal. In the case of things that actually have a damage penalty against the armour as well, the time to kill becomes even faster, an example being rifle soldiers killing four times as fast since they also deal twice as much damage to vehicle health as they do to armour - a rifle guy shooting a tank from the rear would down it almost as fast as a rocket soldier shooting a damage-neutral zone. Also it would mean tesla tanks could potentially kill inattentive medium tanks in two shots. In early testing builds of Delta, the damage bonuses were much bigger; shooting a vehicle's wheels was worth 1.5x damage and the rear was about 2.5x damage if I remember right, which by current vehicle stats would mean a tesla tank could kill a light tank in one shot! Pretty much nobody liked this and it was deemed too harsh on newbies that don't understand it.

 

Second of all, the only way I could think that this would be possible is clone a ton of armour types and give them 100% passthrough for everything, then have each part of a vehicle that has a different damage modifier spawn as a separate object (with said new armour types) from the main vehicle and be attached to it, with all the problems that that entails - the most obvious one being parts not despawning properly sometimes - see: Mammoth MK2 occasionally leaving floating turrets around. AI Ore Trucks also previously had a technician model attached to the cab to give the impression that someone is actually driving them, but this also occasionally didn't get removed on death. Having that many separate vehicles attached to each vehicle probably isn't good for the netcode either.

[VERTi60]

Yea passing the armor part would be probably worse in a long run balance wise.

[System Error Message]

i thought in C&C logic the damage is the same anywhere regardless.

[Pushwall]

Not really. In C&C (assuming you mean TD/RA) you do more damage to a tank if you hit it in the very middle, and do less damage the further from the middle you hit. This is easiest to see when you have a bunch of tanks attack a stationary tank and then attack a moving tank, particularly in RA where tanks aren't inaccurate, they will all still clearly appear to hit the moving tank but it will take more "hits" to kill as the tank moves away from the impact point. This was also the case with infantry who had the exact same sized hitboxes as vehicles; it just wasn't as obvious because bullets had a much smaller splash radius than explosives, but still large enough that they would still take damage from bullets that landed on the tile adjacent to them (though in their case, moving to reduce damage didn't really help because bullets were instant and running meant not taking the 50% damage reduction bonus of being prone). But of course none of that translates well to an FPS environment. Well, except prone, but that doesn't translate well to this engine, which I actually find a shame, and I'm honestly surprised it's not in Renegade to begin with.

[GeneralCamo]

the most obvious one being parts not despawning properly sometimes - see: Mammoth MK2 occasionally leaving floating turrets around.

 

This was caused by a highly outdated script on the MKII, which was fixed in the latest version.

[SarahNautili]

Rangers and Supply Trucks still have the same problem with their driver/passengers, though. Very rarely but it happens.

[delta]

You mean like this?

 

[Raap]

Speaking of vehicle related issues potentially caused by scripts, any clue on what causes the vehicle rendering issue where a part of a vehicle in the game world will randomly appear stretched and spinning across the screen? You can see this issue from maximum rendering distance and it will completely block your vision in the direction of the affected vehicle, until you reboot the client. This is a Delta issue, so something related to vehicle rendering is busted. It seems to occur on average once every 8-10 matches.

Edited March 27, 2016 by Raap

[Pushwall]

Speaking of vehicle related issues potentially caused by scripts, any clue on what causes the vehicle rendering issue where a part of a vehicle in the game world will randomly appear stretched and spinning across the screen? You can see this issue from maximum rendering distance and it will completely block your vision in the direction of the affected vehicle, until you reboot the client. This is a Delta issue, so something related to vehicle rendering is busted. It seems to occur on average once every 8-10 matches.

 

Never seen this, got any screenshots?

 

...well actually, I have seen it. Except it was in Nuclear Winter and not Delta. Never saw it in Gamma either.

 

 

[Raap]

It looks different from those screenshots although judging by the missing wheels, it might be similar.

 

If I see it again I'll be sure to press print screen. As I said, it's quite common.