Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Alright here's the basics of this post idea:

-EM, Therm, Kinetic, Exp all would have small secondary effects whose effectiveness and frequency occur on a very small percentage of hits, say 1-3% for standard t1 with more on t2 and faction. This would function as a 'critical' hit, and there would certain in-game things like implants that would increase it, as well as pirate faction weapons doing more.

-These would stack proportionately to negate the issue with giant numbers of people doing continuous crit damage, so each additional player doing damage would have a 5-10% decreased effectiveness of critical hits to compensate.

-Each race would have a small resistance to its enemy's crit type in the same way t1 armor resist profiles are set up.

-The chance one damage type has to deal crit over the other is split proportionately to the damage type of the ammunition. Hybrid weapons that deal equal parts kinetic and therm would have equal chances for kinetic or thermal critical hits occuring, and half that of what a missile would do. Odd-numbered damage amounts with projectiles or lasers to an extent, would follow the same formula.

-EM has a chance to randomly shut off a module for a certain length of time due to short-circuiting or causing too much interference for an operation to go through. (shut off does not mean deactivate. It means that it is inoperable for x # of seconds)

-Thermal would apply a small to moderate amount of heat damage to a random module on the enemy's ship, detailing a successful 'hit' on a weapon or upgrade module that heats up or partially melts a component. This would be especially noticeable on weapons, active rep modules, and prop mods since they tend to overheat a bit more. People who have a feel for their ships generally have a good idea how much punsihment their modules can tank, so increasing the possibility for the other guy burning out a prop mod or rep is a good thing in a fight.

-Kinetic would have the chance to deal extra overall damage for a well-placed strike on a relatively more vulnerable part of the ship. This would follow with hitting a part of the shield field strength that has fluctuated at that particular time and place to be less strong, a kink in the armor, etc.

-Explosive would have the chance to deal additional hull damage through armor and shielding for a well-placed explosion compromising hull integrity. The extra damage would be proportional to the initial alpha strike, and fall in line with major sci-fi lore in spaceship combat, where even when shields were up, the people on the bridge would still be rocked around violently with a console blowing up in flames or something. Can't tell me that doesn't cause some kind of structural damage...


These crit chances would have a very low probability to compensate for being attacked by larger numbers, but specific things like faction weapons, faction ammo, and new implants and skills would be able to increase that slightly. I think this would add more flavor to pvp and help faction weapons out a bit, and add some more fun variables in combat in this game, considering how stale the actual combat mechanics in this game are in relation to things like 'manual' piloting and other factors that go into pvp.

The EFFECTIVENESS of each critical hit does NOT increase with the amount of typed damage being done. A battleship will still do the same amount of secondary effects as a frigate per individual weapon. You can't have someone hit with a thermal crit and burn out all the other guy's modules, or an explosive arty crit alpha'ing right through to the hull. That does not however mean that secondary damage will not increase; it will stay at a fixed percentage of the total alpha damage, which fits nicely in line with arty.

EDIT: After the issue being raised with integration and practicality, i have come to the conclusion that damage types should deal to specific slots of modules, as well as landing a perfect strike plus some extra damage that the surgical strike skill would increase per level, both in overall damage and chance to hit. I still like some of the ideas from the initial post, so i won't be totally abandoning it, although this new one seems like it might have less issues. So here's a new setup:

-Thermal does damage to high slot siot mod targeting active modules; melts a component due to a well-placed hit on or near the module in question that partially melts a component for a weapon, transfer array, etc.

-EM does damage to any mid slot item; a well-placed EM blast short-circuits vital electrical systems and forces power to reroute, meaning it's closer to overloading and subsequently offlining.

-Explosive does damage to hull and armor upgrades specifically; a well-placed explosion in a kink of the armor can damage the upgrade itself in addition to the armor, including the many nanite tubes used in repair, hardening and damage control systems.

-Kinetic does random damage to any module, since its force can pierce through weaknesses in any defense line due to the application of concentrated force.

These would all apply a small to decently-sized amount of heat damage, and each ship dealing it would face appropriate stacking penalties to mitigate a guy getting attacked by a bunch of people while active tanking having to watch his modules offline one after the other.

That is so minmatar I don't even

Ideally a crit hit WOULD have a highly visible graphic when it applies. EM gets a big lightning arc thing, thermal puts a gout of fire or visibily heats up on a random part of the ship for a second or two, kinetic makes the ship that get this piercing mechanic of a shot going through the ship or something (kin crit would only do damage to whatever HP type is being attacked) and explosive would have a big explosion that physically rattles the ship, both viewing it and a severe camera shake for the player who gets hit.

It does not function as ECM, and as I clearly stated, the EFFECTIVENESS of critical chance does not increase with the size or power of the weapons employed against it. At most it functions as a random low-hit, low-power sensor damp, and if you had bothered to read the article, I also clearly stated that the effectiveness and frequency of critical hits decrease with the number of ships firing against it.

And to clarify, the sensor STRENGTH hit that it would do would be a smallish percentage off of the ship's current sensor strength. That includes ECCM, backups, skills, etc. As was stated this is a VERY small hit with small chance of occurring, so comparing it to the effectiveness of ecm and damps would not be applicable at all, since it would land in far, FAR less frequency than normal ecm, and be significantly less effective than even unbonused ecm or damps.

And to clarify, you are correct to a certain degree about how effective it would be against larger ships. Since it bases off of a small percentage for the strength of the sensors and how they lock, it would be *somewhat* help ecm land jams better, and cause a few more problems in battleship fleets, although definitely not anywhere near the point that they would go out of their way to focus around that tactic.

I like the idea you had about missiles, but the one you have about EM is already what thermal does. Perhaps a hit to capacitor would work better?

Increased crit chance would favor missiles too much because of how they apply all their damage at max range anyway. Your guns still track and hit specific areas on your target from your ship, and in the end missiles do it the same way. That being said, they deliver a payload rather than have their shot be fired over vast distances to a specific area, so it makes sense to me that there would be fewer variables involved with that. Your idea does have a good amount of merit from that perspective.

Also, the amount of damage you do will not have anything to do with the chance to crit; it would be based off of a formula that combines how well damage gets applied to the target in relation to a static base percentage based off of the crit chance of the ammunition and weapon being used. I.e. if what you're shooting at has zero transversal to you and is within your optimal, you have a higher chance to crit than if you're kiting within your falloff.

This helps amarr because they'll do more crit damage on average since they have such good optimal range. This mechanic will ALSO apply to all drones, since the crit chance factor is based off of the individual weapon, not the whole ship. So yeah, lasers would be good for this since they have a chance to disrupt and damage weapons with EM therm. If the capacitor thing is implemented, then it would help with that even more, since hybrids would be good for crit since they have such high damage potential with their RoF.

+1

After all, the crit should never be ignored!

oooo that sounds good actually; I like that a lot. I would probably instead tweak it to not operate for a standard length of time since some things like guns or launchers have a relatively short cycle time; especially the small weapons. And when you put it like that, it makes a bit more sense with missiles. +1

Changing EM secondary effect to random module deactivation (not offlining). Thank you sir~

You make a very good point. How about Thermal doing damage to high slot modules, EM to mid slot modules, explosive to low slot modules, and Kinetic to random?

I was thinking more like penetrating hits damage high/mid and smashing hits damage hull. Or simply randomize the damage with smashing doing more than penetrating hits

1-3% is way to much, especially given people's propensity to blob (even with the stacking penalty). Crits are cool in other games (like mechwarrior/battlech) because they are super rare. 1 out of 100 isn't rare enough imo.