New armor system?

I know a lot of forum goers here have a severe case of WYSIWYG and will argue that using armor values runs against that, but I'm really glad to see the change. Just existing gives it a lot of potential for mods, and if applied wisely it can do wonders for game balance.

I'm very curious exactly how the system is being implemented. do we have Weapon damage types and Damage type % resistances? Or do we have damage reduction per hit and weapon stats for minimum damage after reduction?

There are so many ways to handle armor and damage. I'm curious what approach was taken and what we might expect in the future.

The wording describes that the armour system is simply to balance a couple of edge cases. At the moment, I think it is only applied to the uber-cannon on building and commander targets (although that could be incorrect). That is an acceptable edge case an even TA had one or two edge cases balanced by an armour system. Although I would personally prefer it if it was entirely un-required. I believe that it would actually prove to be almost entirely unused if some of the weapon stats were pushed more to extremes in terms of moment speed, tracking ability and AOE, but I'm willing to wait and see.

From the post that's the impression I got too, but I'm curious about the mechanics behind it, not just where it is applied.

Yes, it's purely for edge cases. For example: In this new build all AA missiles do no damage to structures. So you can't cheese air factories anymore with fighters.

Would a pseudocode example look like ...

Weapon: AA Missile
Damage_type = AntiAir

Armor:Building
AntiAir = 0%

?

Zerohour used a system similar to this. Custom armors were great when modding, but the damage types were predefined by the engine and it created some heartache when using damage_types as workarounds to produce crazy unique behaviors.

Yes, something like that.
Every RTS I've worked on has a system like this.

And I also worked on Zero Hour.

Dare one ask which parts of Zero Hour?

As for the armor, even if it is just for edge cases I hope there is some transparency to it. Taking starcraft as an example, they cleaned up their act a lot in the second one, showing clearly exactly what type a unit has, and exactly what amount of bonus damage a weapon gets against that type, in clear linear numbers. But the first game is completely opaque, the information only exists on wikis, and even with a reference in front of you, you have to be under the influence of something or other to make any sense of it.

Hiding these kinds of systems away can't be good.

Armor system details:

Oh I know. I think I lost most of my adult life to modding that game. You mentioned it when it was first announced you were taking over the balancing. I'm still holding out hope that some of ZeroHours aircraft balance might sneak its way into Planetary Annihilation. Zerohour had amazing air combat, and with PA's area commands it could be made double amazing.




Have you ever had a chance to look inside the unit designs for Dawn of War? They have a very unique, great armor system.

They supported the usual % damage resistances, but they also had a damage reduction value and a minimum damage value. It allowed a very realistic handling of weapons vs armor, and also allowed weapons to have very customizable performance.

For example... Armor piercing bullets do significantly less damage than fragmentation bullets so they have a lower base damage, however, the minimum damage of the AP round is much higher than the frag round. The result is that frag rounds murderlate unprotected infantry, but do very little to full body armor while the AP round retains the same base performance against armored and unarmored targets.

Combined with Overkill damage on anti-tank weapons it creates a strong infantry vs tanks dynamic that keeps both pools of units valuable at all times because they are so poorly suited to engaging each other. Similar to how ZH's base infantry and basic tanks had trouble fighting each other, but with a more realistic approach than the 99% resistance to AP weapons.

Thank you sir! That's a most excellent reply. Now I just hope that both armor and damage types are fully customizable lists. When it comes to modding they have application that extends far beyond simply determining the damage inflicted. They can be used to allow specific target types for special abilities, as well as used to create special "unit replacement" behaviors by suiciding a unit with a specific damage type keyed to a death spawn to que a new object as a unit deployment, transformation, or even locomotor change. There's all sorts of interesting things you can do with damage types.

Damage values vs Armour can be modified, but based on other lists (like unit_types), new ones may not be able to be added (yet).

The other behaviours you mention are probably better off using unit_types rather than armor types.

I was a major part of the design of the 9 new Generals. I did the Toxin General's mission and I wrote the skirmish AI.

Ooh I love Dr Thrax he was so awesome to play

I wrote a bunch of his dialog too.

*sighs*

I'd rather see this as something organic that grows from interplay between the elements of the system rather than the heavy-handed kudgel of 'fixes' to a self-inflicted problem...

Very cool stuff. My own mod work was geared around making every general a distinct new faction with minimal overlap between them. They were still USA, GLA, and China, but each had unique unit roster all the way down to the workers and core buildings.

I miss working on it, but the game engine was frustrating. It didn't scale as large as my goals and the stability during long games became a major roadblock to a lot of what I wanted to do with it.

Self-inflicted problem? Heavy-handed kudgel of fixes'?

This kind of thing happens on every RTS. There are edge cases which you can either fix with something like this or spend weeks, yes weeks, of engineering time fixing it 'right'. We chose the former.
This is part of game development.

Do you ever plan to spend the weeks to fix it right and be the besterest game out there?

No, because we can spend weeks 'fixing' it and possibly end up with a dozen more edge cases. And even if we do 'fix' it, it'll play exactly like it does now and therefore just end up costing us a couple of weeks.

Not to mention, modders will want the armor system once we get the server anyway so putting that in the game was necessary whether you used it or not.

*Edit*
Why do people say "not to mention" right before we go ahead and mention it anyway?