Balance Increase Directional Armor as Allied Buff?

[des1206]

Hey guys, the whole conversation in another thread about larger scaled games made me think. I think one issue that contributes to the more pro-Soviet balance is the added difficulty to flank and hit tanks on the side/back in larger games. But what if we upped the ante and rewarded flanking more by upping the rear armor penalty to 20%-25% (from the existing +15% front / -15% rear)? We can raise the front armor bonus to be equal as well to make things even.

I think this will not only give a boost to the faster Allied vehicles, but also indirectly give a boost to the RJ, Mobile GAP and Mechanic. The RJ blind Soviets to flanking, GAP makes it harder for Soviets to flank Allied tanks, and the slower rate of damage by front armor bonus helps mechanics to repair more easily. Mammoth will also get a slight boost during its health regen if it is able to keep its front armor facing the enemy. Radar Dome will become a more important building for the same reason as RJ.

An added idea is we can make Tesla weaponry to ignore armor bonus/penalty, since electric damage goes through armor. This would be a relative buff to the TT and Shockie since Soviets rarely flank well. Although if well aimed skilled players can always hit a side armor with these 2 units. Lastly faster Soviet units like Volkov and Hind will get a benefit too.

Overall this is more of a Soviet tank nerf than an Allied buff. It could encourage more team work on both sides in the game to exploit/protect this new vulnerability. Remember flanking doesn't mean you need to hit the rear, if the front armor bonus is there, all you need to do hit the side to bypass front-armor protection.

Edited April 13, 2017 by des1206

[Pushwall]

44 minutes ago, des1206 said:

An added idea is we can make Tesla weaponry to ignore armor bonus/penalty, since electric damage goes through armor. This would be a relative buff to the TT and Shockie since Soviets rarely flank well.

But to do this their damage has to be turned into 100% splash damage. Which means that damage is calculated based on where the server thinks you hit instead of where you hit. Pre-delta has shown that to be a Bad Thing since it often caused TTs to do about half as much damage as they should do - if their anti-vehicle damage was all splash instead of partially splash like it was back then, you'd get to enjoy direct hits sometimes doing no damage whatsoever. Splash still has to exist against infantry since it's hard to directly hit them anyway, but for vehicles it would be dumb outside of fringe cases like the Arty/V2 which have large blast radii and aren't expected to be able to directly hit every time.

Something I remember from Renegade's campaign (which I might be misremembering completely) is that damage-over-time effects actually worked against vehicles. If this was actually a thing and I'm not misremembering, finding a way to bring that back could be a possibility to bypass directional armour multipliers... but then we run into the problem where no matter how many shocks/TTs you have attacking the same vehicle, they'd all put out the same damage as a single one because DOT effects don't stack. Which isn't really an issue against infantry because while shocks/TTs rely almost entirely on that effect against them, it only takes two DOTs from a shock or one from a TT to kill standard infantry.

44 minutes ago, des1206 said:

But what if we upped the ante and rewarded flanking more by upping the rear armor penalty to 20%-25% (from the existing +15% front / -15% rear)? We can raise the front armor bonus to be equal as well to make things even.

Ok, done. By which I mean it's already +/-25% and has been since the start of Delta.

[des1206]

That's fine if we can't do it with Tesla weapons. It's usually easier for hit-scan weapons to aim at a side armor.

Is it really +/- 25% already? I could have swore it was 15% when i tested it. I feel embarrassed if that's the case!

[OrangeP47]

3 hours ago, Pushwall said:

Something I remember from Renegade's campaign (which I might be misremembering completely) is that damage-over-time effects actually worked against vehicles.

Hmmmm, it's been awhile, but remember any specifics? That's an interesting tidbit and I honestly don't remember because it's been so long... I should give the campaign another go...

[FRAYDO]

4 hours ago, OrangeP47 said:

I should give the campaign another go...

Cool kids go through the Renegade campaign pistol-only.

[ganein14]

I've played the campaign quite a few times, and from the only times I got to use a weapon that has a DoT effect IE Chem Sprayer, Flamethrower, VAR, etc. its only the weapon's damage and not the DoT itself that harmed them.

[NoSpoons]

On 14/04/2017 at 5:55 AM, FRAYDO said:

Cool kids go through the Renegade campaign pistol-only.

I've actually tried this before because i hate myself and I'd like to add that fighting tanks was really awkward 

On 13/04/2017 at 9:25 PM, Pushwall said:

But to do this their damage has to be turned into 100% splash damage. Which means that damage is calculated based on where the server thinks you hit instead of where you hit. Pre-delta has shown that to be a Bad Thing since it often caused TTs to do about half as much damage as they should do - if their anti-vehicle damage was all splash instead of partially splash like it was back then, you'd get to enjoy direct hits sometimes doing no damage whatsoever. Splash still has to exist against infantry since it's hard to directly hit them anyway, but for vehicles it would be dumb outside of fringe cases like the Arty/V2 which have large blast radii and aren't expected to be able to directly hit every time.

Something I remember from Renegade's campaign (which I might be misremembering completely) is that damage-over-time effects actually worked against vehicles. If this was actually a thing and I'm not misremembering, finding a way to bring that back could be a possibility to bypass directional armour multipliers... but then we run into the problem where no matter how many shocks/TTs you have attacking the same vehicle, they'd all put out the same damage as a single one because DOT effects don't stack. Which isn't really an issue against infantry because while shocks/TTs rely almost entirely on that effect against them, it only takes two DOTs from a shock or one from a TT to kill standard infantry.

Ok, done. By which I mean it's already +/-25% and has been since the start of Delta.

if Dot did work however, i have some ideas how it could work, I don't know what kind of coding is capable and what isnt but i suppose maybe use a variable as a counter to track how many hits the tank has taken that would cause Dot and then after a bit of calculation reduce the tanks health accordingly and reset the counter? 
anyway, whether or not this is feasible is beyond my knowledge