#Difficulty Damage Multiplier not for Shield Damage

72 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

sonic solstice
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I was wonderring if it would be possible to remove the effect of the combat difficulty for the shield damage dealt by non energy disorbing weapons.
Because this seems a bit broken even for vanilla difficulties, or is it just me? 😄
I mean the recharge rate / energy usage isn't effected / the same.

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Difficulty Damage Multiplier not for Shield Damage

shut estuary
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well thats the point isnt it?

sonic solstice
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for normal damage yeah. But for shield damage this is just kinda dumb I guess.
So when having for example just 50% normal damage most shields won't break against weapons they would normally break against.

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I have also tried this and can just confirm it I guess.
Would be a much appreciated change.
Should be a thing to have multiple playable diffculties which aren't gameplaywise broken.
Or at least having an option for editing this value would be very appreciated.
But I do feel like this is not how it should be.

clear silo
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maybe even 95%

tranquil iron
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why would armor get hit harder by modifiers

sonic solstice
tranquil iron
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proportionately, why should armor be affected more

sonic solstice
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well everything is simillar affected at first when it comes to damage.
But the energy transfer/generation/crew capacity stays the same so the shield can reg the damage easily when getting less damaged.
so for shields there is less energy damage if you want to call it like that. But the (reg)generation rate stays the same. WHich results in having compared to the armor ships an advantage and so on.

sonic solstice
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Are there any plans on addressing this issue? I feel like this is a bigger issue.

tranquil iron
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i don't think it's an issue

sonic solstice
tranquil iron
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i think it's just u

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sonic solstice
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But do you have arguments for your opinion? lol 😄

tranquil iron
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it makes sense and it makes the game harder in the way that it advertises and it is very simply

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*simple

shut estuary
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if you think its too hard you can turn it off

sonic solstice
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I do not have any issue with having different difficulties. I just wanted to point out that they do kinda break the game since they do interfere with the energy generation/delivery systems. As I tried to explain.
And I think it would be great to have that changed/working so the difficutlies do actually make sense I guess. Or is that intended? Then yeah ok I guess it is what it is.

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it even is irregular ballanced when you compare armored ships agains shielded then. Which is kinda weird or?

shut estuary
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at the same rate

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if your shields are drawing all your power/crew from other logistics and not allowing your ship to function, that is a building/crew priorities issue. lower the priorities on your shields or likely better just take less damage through kiting or dodging

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would be the same exact issue youd have if you were just fighting a ship with that much more damage output, and thats just a design flaw in your ship

sonic solstice
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and when shields sustain longer (when having less dmg applied) they still recharge the same amount of hp as they would normally. So it is much harder to get through them.
I think this is the more important aspect of having a rework there.
So for enemy ships which do get for example less damage at higher difficulties it results in just having much stronger shields as compared to the armor tho both should of course be a bit stronger but yeah not equally right now.
And yeah maybe less noticable for like 10% reduction. But when for example you would set it to 50% or higher it makes the game unplayable (at some situations) tho this might be a cool option for some players to be able to have a more custom difficulty experience.

shut estuary
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it being a separate modifier is probably fine gameplay wise, but devs dont want to add too much stuff for fear of content bloat

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more granular difficulty options will come with career 2.0 anyways

sonic solstice
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I think it just buffs/nerfs the bullet dmg? Not the armor /shield hp? But ofc I can't tell for sure. That question would most likely need to answer a dev.

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and thats why I am aussuming this could be easily fixed by not applying the buffed/nerfed value to the shield damage. Then it would 100% be fine

shut estuary
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it wouldnt, shields are already op in career, especially large shields

sonic solstice
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shields would then allways have the same strength tho. But I find this kind of ballance when just buffing armor/hp of parts better than having unbreakable shields

shut estuary
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letting them entirely ignore hard difficulty modifiers will be game breaking

sonic solstice
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I mean set each dmg for you and the ai at like 50% or even higher, or if you don't want to do it manuelly I can offer you testing it within the maltis core mod for example. Then you will most likely see what I mean. Idk I tried my best to explain the issue I guess.

sonic solstice
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Any news about that?
I think the overclock features for shields just made this worse?

sonic solstice
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🤦🏼‍♂️

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Then please at least inform the player that using different difficulties might break the game or at least the shield mechanics.
I feel like this is the minimum therefore.

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Or as said best solution is to disable the multiplier for shield damage. Because energy generation would prob hard to balance/rework.
So qualling out the damage for each difficulty would fix this issue.

tranquil iron
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it works fine for everyone else

shut estuary
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dude...

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this is entirely a hallucinated issue. its been explained to you multiple times how shields behaving this way is entirely consistent with game mechanics

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and oc doesnt make this any better or worse at all

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tanking sustained damage with shields WILL stress your crew and power generations. this is intended design, and always occurs regardless of difficulty settings. a higher damage difficulty makes this proportionally more of a problem, as should be expected by playing on a higher difficulty. shields are NOT meant to be used as an unbreakable defensive wall for this very reason. they can tank trickling amounts of damage that you fail to dodge/intercept/mitigate, but relying on them as your primary defense with no other tactics will always be suboptimal and inefficient

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this is completely regardless of what difficulty you are playing on. higher difficulties make disregarding this interaction that much more punishing, as it should.

olive sequoia
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But pointing out to OP, the difficulty slider changes inherently make the game "unfair". If you play on low difficulties you can resist more than you should be able to with less shields/armor, and the inverse on higher difficulties. This is by design with the difficulty sliders. This applies to all parts, fights of ship A vs AI ship B, etc. It gives newer players with less optimal logistics and setups the ability to defeat more optimal ships, and vice versa with higher difficulties. Higher diffivulties make you need to optimize your logistics, pilot that much better, etc than the opposing ship.

OP I think if you want a higher difficulty without these sliders you'll either have to wait for more advanced ai, fight Io, jump to higher level systems sooner, or engage in faction fights that summon higher level ships

sonic solstice
# shut estuary this is completely regardless of what difficulty you are playing on. higher diff...

as said what about having 50% damage reduction or less for everyone (you and enemys).
then shields are just much more stronger since the energy transfer/reload rate is the same but the incoming damage is about half or less.
So idk
It just feels wrong. Also with vanilla settings this can be weird.
I can understand when the devs say this was kinda on porpuse but at least having a seperate Prop to change that for shields (only) would be very usefull and would enable lots of new gameplay methods. Instead of how it is now with much limitations.

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The main problem:

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this is customizable: ResourceDrainVsEnemies
But not the ShieldDamage against enemys.

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idk if you could use the new setting to have the effect on shields only:
StatusFactorsVsEnemies
{
cosmoteer.fire = 80%
}

Maybe someone know that already?

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And yeah in vanilla this might be less noticable with like 20% more or less.
But when tweaking some values there this becomes very awfull soon.

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which is I think very sad

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And ofc if the current state is 100% intented then the vanilla game could also utilize the new setting to set up the same values again but others can also use it to offer some different game experiences.

olive sequoia
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For your concern about certain weapons breaking shields in some difficulties and not others, you'd also have to be able to set their damage outputs. The issue is this same argument would be made for everything affected by the sliders

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A certain rail ship might one shot npc ship b on easy difficulties but be one shot by it on harder ones, shields or no shields

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Also if the player is playing on easy (which is what youre fixated on based on your 50% danage reduction comments?) they should be powerful, that's the point

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It let's them make ships with insufficient shield coverage or suboptimal logistics and still win fights and/or come out with no or negligible damage

tranquil iron
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armor is disproportionately stronger in harder difficulties for the player due to overkill and the fact your shields will go down more

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therefore we should actually be only multiplying damage vs non-shields

sonic solstice
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I imagined a situation where for example with medium damage you can at least break through shields and then due lower overall damage slowly kill the enemy/make damage while the shields are down for a short time.

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to maybe be a bit clearer about that

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and currently the shield will just not break and yeah infinite battle

olive sequoia
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I mean that can happen regardless of difficulty setting. (I strongly recommend always having anti shield weapons and/or flanking ship(s))

But that also goes both ways. If the player is the one where the shield would break and they'd start taking expensive damage, then that's where low difficulty settings help the player.

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So I mean tbh I don't like the higher difficulty settings, cause it means you have to invest way more in defenses and thrust and/or kite everything than you would have to with an even fight, to avoid taking any expensive damage. But I think these difficulty sliders need to exist and should affect everything. Ideally later we can get increased difficulty through enemy AI improvements/etc, but those aren't easy to program

sonic solstice
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Yeah but I wanna have for example the normal defficulty or a harder one but with slower fights. Tho they should (if at least non infinite in vanilla / currently) then also be not infinite.
I am aware that shields might be a bit weaker then, but I kinda targeted that so yeah idk. Better than having endless fights in my opinion. And otherwise this isn't very easily done.

sonic solstice
sonic solstice
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and again I am completely fine with just an addition to the difficulty settings for the shield damage multiplier as it is already for the drain existant.
The base game then can ofc set the values so that there is no difference to how it is now. If that is intented etc. tbh there with just like 20% +- damage it isn't really noticable or not that much as if you set it to like +-80% for example.