Making Armour Make Sense

[CMaster]

I've posted already about how the current armour system is broken, a combination of old items and new ideas in an amorphous, unjoined up lump. I received critcism there that I didn't really do enough in demonstrating how the current system is broken rather than just silly and there was a lack of suggestions as to what would be better.
This posts details a variety of failings of the current armour and resist system, how these failings let down the class structure and particuarly hurt PEs. There is then a proposal for a new resistance and armour strcuture, that without dramatically departing from the current state of the game would solve a lot of these issues, and remove a lot of the nonsense.

Introduction to some important concepts around damage mitigation
This post is not going to shy away from the mathematics of the situation, because understanding those is key to understanding what will and won't work. It also seems to be something that whoever designed the current system didn't really understand.
An important but not entirley inutitive element of this is that resists do not scale linearly. Going from 10% to 20% resistance (or more importantly 90-80% damage) is a small change. Going from 90% to 95% is a huge change, which will result in a character being able to soak up twice the damage (ignoring healing factors). In practicality, it's the latter issue we want to look at, to understand the situation appropriatley. The important parameter to look at from a balancing point of view is lifetime - how much longer does the mitigation let a character live than they would without any. From this we can see that 90% mitigation would lead to a 10 times longer life, and 95% to one that is 20 times longer.

Why this all matters
Well, the amount of punishment that a character can take is a big part of how effective that character can be in both PvE and PvP. It's a big part of what makes a class viable, and also what can make them overpowered.
Also, with every class having a total of 300 levels, spread across the five main skills, an implicit part of this system is that a class's strengths in one area lead to weakness in another. For this to hold true, all mainskll have to matter to all classes - this includes strength and constitution. Right now, there is a case to be made that stregth really doesn't matter to anyone except tanks.

How things are at the moment - numbers
When calculating damage, each different form of damage mitigation (sheild, psi resist, resist, armour) is applied seperatley. If the total mitigation is greater than the mitigation limit for the class, then damage is brought back up to that limit. Total damage remaining can be easily calculed by multiplying the damage factors (ie 100% - mitigation %) of each mitigation togheter
The numbers used here for existing values for armour and resist mitigation are taken from Neoskiller, which uses a reverse engineered resist calculation. I can't promise it is entirely accurate, but the shape of the curves certainly fits with what I saw in testing long ago. Below are the resistances given per point for armour and con skills at the moment in NC2.2:

Not exactly a pretty picture, with weird bumps and rather abrupt changes in slope. To understand a bit more what this means, let's look at the lifetimes graph (y axis is the lifetime muliplier, ie 2 means last twice as long), below:

So what we can see is that despite the changes in slope, more resist points actually get increasingly effective as you go along. Equally, the "bumps" between slope changes lead to some weird behaviour in the resist section. Armour actually works out relativly flat and reasonable, eventually giving about 50% life extension.
It seems that improving the effectivness of resists with increasing points spend is not entirley desirable, and the link between armour and resists, and what these points values mean, is pretty obscure to the player actually in the game.

How this could be better - numbers
While a little mystery can be exciting, it strikes me that players should be able to understand what a "point" of armour or resistance really means. It would also be good to have a nice, stable increase in lifetime throughout the range. To this end, I suggest introducing a new armour/resist calculation:

Where D is the factor that incoming raw damage is multiplied by to give final damage, A is armour or resist points value, C is an adjustable factor, and R is the resistance value that players tend to talk about (D = 1 - R).
The prescence of C as a tuneable constant is important, as it lets us decide just how influential we want armour and resists to be. The reason for picking this function is quite simple - it gives a linear increase in lifetime with respect to investment of points. Using a factor of 0.01 (as is used for later examples), every point in armour/resist gives a 1% increase in liftime. So for 20 points, you'd last a fifth longer than somebody without any. With 100 points, twice as long (and 2/1.2 = two thirds longer than the guy with 20 points).
Graphically, this looks something like this for resistances:

and this for lifetimes:

Notice how lifetime now increases by a nice, consistent amount in return for investing the points/ getting the armour.
Practically, I'd say 1% per point is too much (it's used here because of similar values to existing situations). 0.5% per point produces a more reasonable picture that might be approriate to start off for both armour and resist - they can be diversified if needs be.
"But" some may say "Shouldn't overinvesting be discouraged? This linearity looks like the opposite". Except that the game already punishes overinvestment - in resist, those first 50 points to get your lifetime up to one and a half of what it was without takes only a single skill point each point. To raise it then up to 75% will cost you more. In armour, the same thing happens - the higher up the TLs you go, the less additonal points you see per TL (and this can be refined of course).

How things are at the moment - armour
It shouldn't really be necessary to provide a recap of the current armour system - for those who need it, take a look at the item DB. Some key issues to draw out: belts still have a whole set of int-based belts, letting Spies and monks boost their armour in one stat heavily for the torso only. Spies (and monks) can use high tl int-bsaed underwear, which gives better stats than the mid-tier str or int based that PEs can use. Monks have their complete own set of armour, that gives good resists for pretty much every damage type except poison. The fact that there are only two armour slots per target zone, combined with the current armour-resistance curve means that armour that protects against multiple damage types is rather perferable to those that don't. Energy armour is only available from all-over pieces, and the tank-only Duranium.
So, the conclusions from this: carbon armour is a joke at the moment, delivering less posion than the more versatile kevlar - the boost in piercing and force is largley irrelevant considering how much other protection players will get against this. Duranium is tank only. Kevlar at the moment is pretty fantasic armour. One of the key things to note is that PEs gain very little in this whole space from their strength. The kevlar armour that spies wear is more useful to the than anything in the 40-65 category. They lack the int to use the really effective belts. Getting even bad duranium requires some serious gimpage, and the overalls available to PEs are wearker than those for spies or monks. Practically, PEs wind up using either spy armour or newbie monk armour. Meanwhile, monks with their cripplingly low strength get away scot free (other than low force resist/transport_). Spies get to dance around near enough as tough as a PE. Tanks remain happily built of bricks of course, with the best of almost everything available to them. Spies do have to flail a little for any reasonable energy protection, althoug in theory Holovests serve that very well.

How things could be better - armour
Here, there's a need to tear down a lot of elements that are there for old or bad reasons. To start, I'd see an end to all int-based armour - let class's strength be a genuine indication of their survivability. Remove the locational armour system - it's a neat idea, but the reality is that having to cove everything in a few slots really hampers setup viability, and makes one-offs he titan and viper king chest weird. Sort carbon armour out - the poison component needs to be competitive with kevlar - or perhaps better it could have x-ray added to the mix. Bring in a new line of energy armour, (call it Duranit like the old stuff maybe), in the same strength range of inq/carbon. So Spies could spec for the bottom tier as a choice, and PEs would have default access to middle tier and option to spec for top tier.
More dramatically, I'd like to see psi armour gone as well. It's stats remain absolutely fantastic (holy spirit has more energy than duranium, then adds xray and fire too!). Monks are meant to be weaklings, let's see them feel it. As a compensation, perhaps make some low tier (10-30 ish) "vaporisation" armour available - small amounts of energy/fire, maybe x-ray - at the cost of no pierce force whatsoever. This step needs to be considered a lot more cautiously than the others, but it would be nice to see monks who actually consider con and armour setups like other characters do.
The idea over all of this is that characters lacking in strength have to make harder choices about what they are doing with their strength, and at the same time would see benefits from imping/drugging to increase it. That PEs would actually have something to differentiate them from spies, other than being able to use worse weapons.
One thing that is also important to keep, is that the highest TL armour is 90 or so. Tanks shouldn't be able to bump up strength and see damage AND defense go up as a direct consequence.

Some notes on Power Armour
One of the general principles in Neocron is that setups trade damage for defense (in theory, they should trade off mainskill, weaponskill and defence, but for the moment the first two almost always go togehter). Power armour right now spits in the face of that idea. Higher levels of PA, for every class, give more armour, more mainskill and more weaponskill. This is wrong. The simple fix that works for this is simply to fix all PAs for a class at the same armour values (still allowing for camo to be different). It would be interesting to see PA do different things, but that's changing the game, rather than tweaking it.

Conclusion
Set out above is a plan to make the resistance more comprehensible to players, and more supportive of the class balance and differentiation. The two stages, adjusting the resistance calculation and adjusting the armour sets are related, but the implementation of one needn't require the other - I'd place much higher priority on adjusting the armour set than on tweaking the way things are calculated.

For those interested in the numbers part above, you can find the spreadsheet I did calculations on, with some factors that can be adjusted, here. - You also see what a linear and an exponential resistance system would be like.

Anyway, thanks for those who bothered reading the whole way through, and open to comments we go!

[Nose]

read it, love it.

nuff said

[Dribble Joy]

One of the general principles in Neocron is that setups trade damage for defense (in theory, they should trade off mainskill, weaponskill and defence, but for the moment the first two almost always go togehter). Power armour right now spits in the face of that idea. Higher levels of PA, for every class, give more armour, more mainskill and more weaponskill.

This is something that I have mentioned before, but it's not just the PAs, it's the whole implant system too (as I mentioned in the implant redesign thread John Doe started many moons ago).

Higher TL weapons do more dmg/time for a given skill point total, this is fine since you have had to increase the amount of +main-stat in order to use it.

The problem is that all the higher end implants give bonuses to main stats and skill points. There is no point in using a lower TL weapon since you are either wasting the +main stat from your imps/armour or forgoing the imps that give both bonuses.

Lets take the MC5s as an example.
Rename the DIP to something like the Co-ordination Accelerator. It gives +8 dex or whatever. A rare version of the Co-ord 3 (the SF could do something similar at about +6 dex).
Rename the CCP to the Experimental Targeting Matrix. It gives +25 PC/RC and +10 TC. Rare version of the Close Combat/Long Distance CPUs (SWAT again do something similar)

Same with Herc/Ballistic and Psi chips. Of course the whole skill system needs to make the bonuses balanced and noticeable, and proportional to the defence benefits of the other imps.

As to PA, do we split them in a similar way, or have the different levels like the imps do? The underwears also need a good look at, they should be viable alternatives. Personally I would make the PAs more defence orientated and the underwears more offence and/or skill point based.

Edit:

As to the whole armour/resist system, the implementation of any base changes is critical.

If you have a 50% resistance to a dmg type and you increase it by 50% (to 75%) then you halve the amount of dmg you take (100 dmg points received, with 50% that leaves 50 points, with 75%, 25 points).

That in itself is not necessarily a bad system, if the means of attaining that increase to proportional to the offence loss incurred in doing so.
The skill point relationship between armour, resists and dmg output needs to be closely aligned so that neither goes too far and/or any extreme setup outside a given range is disproportionate. 'Prototype' or 'Experimental' imps could be available to facilitate these extreme setups (insert shameless plug about Kamis).

[Kanedax]

Frankly, the PA system is fine IMO. I would still adjust the armor values but for tanks at least you take a big hit in speed using the heavier PAs. I would change the Camo PA to hit agility instead of athletics though.

Other than that I agree on all points.

[Chuck Norris]

offtopic and stupid... for some reason tank melee woc PA takes away athl not sure if thats intentional from the looks of pre-WoC Melee PA's

something that always drove me crazy

[Izeo]

Linked from another thread. Awesome work and valid improvements as far as I can tell.

• Smooth out existing resist calculation - currently, it is 'jumpy' (I also noticed a similar 'jumpy' graph when testing how CON and BodyHealth actually affects your health)
• Remove the location-based armor -- I agree as well, that it IS a neat idea, but it also makes trying to make setups really awkward.
• Make armor only STR-based, but then apply necessary changes to balance it out. I have been wishing this since NC1. It doesn't really make sense to make INT or PSI based armor anyway.

i agree on all points.

Edit: One minor note. Some of the armor pieces of matching sets don't all have the same color. Maybe it's fixed now. But I swear I remember some 'kevlar' pieces being green and some being brown, when it's supposed to be the same set, etc. easy fix lol.

Edit2: One more thing. I think the variety of armor sets could increase the LOWER the TL is. As an easy example, if there is only: a TL10 set, a TL30 set, a TL60 set, and a TL90 set, of course all spies would only use the TL30 set, regardless of what resistance type it is, because the TL10 set would most likely not be worth it anymore. Maybe there is already enough variety (I should look at the item database), but if not, there would have to be enough so all spies/monks would not potentially end up wanting exact same resist armor.

[Netphreak]

Tbh, I think belts should always be INT based and there should be no other belt requirement types. (limits what a tank can use and gives classes with low STR a way to get resists/compete)
It makes sense after all, they are technology based field protection belts so it would take Intelligence to be able to use such a device.

I think there's issues with the currently available STR based armor, (more simplified tiers and resist types for each tier maybe?) and PSI armor probably does need looking at.

[Deus Ex Machina]

Tbh, I think belts should always be INT based and there should be no other belt requirement types.

If thats the case then there should be equivalents for the Head and Feet Zones. The Int Belts made sense when armor counted for every Zone, but at the moment I find it problematic that with a Spy I could protect my middle Zone with a high energy Belt, but my Head and Feet Zones would have to be protected different.
Either the Int Belts go and the armor is balanced around that, or equivalents are added for the other zones - at least thats my take on the situation.

[Izeo]

If thats the case then there should be equivalents for the Head and Feet Zones. The Int Belts made sense when armor counted for every Zone, but at the moment I find it problematic that with a Spy I could protect my middle Zone with a high energy Belt, but my Head and Feet Zones would have to be protected different.
Either the Int Belts go and the armor is balanced around that, or equivalents are added for the other zones - at least thats my take on the situation.

Yes, I agree that it's really bad that for a spy my stomach is super-protected but my head and feet aren't.

But, remember that part of CMaster's suggestion was to remove the zone-based protection and revert to NC1 style - any piece of armor on you adds to your overall protection. For the way Neocron works, it would probably be better that way.

[Dribble Joy]

I'm personally a proponent of the three zones. It's not that much more complicated and the current armour system (despite it's flaws) does generally give an equal amount on each zone. The previous system made it far too easy to tailor a setup. An alteration to the way the belts work however might be an idea.

[Izeo]

I'm personally a proponent of the three zones. It's not that much more complicated and the current armour system (despite it's flaws) does generally give an equal amount on each zone. The previous system made it far too easy to tailor a setup.

It's not that it's complicated, it's just awkward for armor parts that boost a zone more than others, like INT belts, or unique armor like VK for tanks. It's "strange" to have an item that only protects you in something like "your crotch area to your chest", especially in a game like Neocron where we have to deal with aiming reticles, making it optimal to aim at people's knees when trying to lock on in third person. It's not really viable to try and aim at someone's head in Neocron, hoping/testing that they have a different helmet/shoulders than they do boots/legs. If the game worked like Counter-Strike, maybe I would support the zoned armor.

One question , you say the old system made it too easy to tailor a setup - what does that mean exactly/why is that a bad thing?

[Doc Holliday]

great opening post. Read the whole thing. very well worded and very thoughtful (4 hours sleep and im up to go to work so figured would come browse while i eat breakfast. it all made sense and im tired so that proved its good ) not sure bout some of the other suggestions in here though.

Getting rid of the 3 zones bullshit would probably help a heck of a lot in terms of finding balance/overhauling the armour system. Tailoring the set up was part of the fun in nc too. being able to play around with your set up and finetune it was a great part of nc1 and made me feel more attached to my guys. same with 2. I never understood why going to 3 zones was a great idea.

ps if you can get rid of fall damage and this leg breaking along with the 3 zones that would be very cool imo.

[Dribble Joy]

it's just awkward for armor parts that boost a zone more than others, like INT belts, or unique armor like VK for tanks.

Like I said, that's should thing that can be looked at, it's not indicative of the system itself.[/quote]

It's "strange" to have an item that only protects you in something like "your crotch area to your chest", especially in a game like Neocron where we have to deal with aiming reticles, making it optimal to aim at people's knees when trying to lock on in third person. It's not really viable to try and aim at someone's head in Neocron,

3rd person has serious issues with where you aim, just look at AoE. In 1st, you can quite easily place shots higher or lower. If that were to be fixed then leg or heads shots would be more viable.

One question , you say the old system made it too easy to tailor a setup - what does that mean exactly/why is that a bad thing?

It makes cookie cutting worse. There was pretty much only one way a PE's armour was set up previously.

I suppose personally it also has to do with realism (for what that's worth in an abstract game mechanic), but it was always jarring to have your boots protect your head and all you energy armour come from your belt.

[Izeo]

Yeah, maybe the "third person" part was a bad point, as that has a separate issue.

However.. it's too "risky" to aim at things' heads (in first person too), whether they be players or mobs, because of risk of losing the lock. I think it has to do with the angle from you to your target and mouse movement. I do know that I've always found it much easier to keep a constant lock on targets in Neocron by aiming at their lower halves, rather than their top halves, which is one reason I don't like the zoned armor.

In fact, I would be willing to bet that, if the Neocron server somehow tracked every single shot connected in PvP on a player target in a single day, that the majority of the shots would be to the legs, followed by chest, and lastly very rarely the head zone.

(Of course, if this was a different game, where headshots do more damage, and there was not a reticle-aiming system, that would be different.)

[Dribble Joy]

I think head shots do do more dmg than chest, though I'd need to check. Leg shots do less but affect run speed.