The idea of counters and how they work (now about armor)

Wouldn't heavy tanks be able to drive through light mechs practicaly unscathed just through the difference in health and damage output anyway?

The difference between physical and mathematical is that the physics based simulation of shots brings about hits and misses resulting in different damages. Mathematics differences are weapons dealing different damages dependent on their statistics.

And yeah, I'm not against micro, I'm against excessive micro. So i think about these things and whether they would add micro to the game and if that micro would be fun.

Lighter units would still have the same DPS as against a heavy unit as any other unit. A heavy unit surrounded by lighter units would take serious damage and would have to be a lot faster than the lighter units in order to be able to drive through without taking heavy damage.

And so would directional armor and armor penetration also work. Hit different sides at different ranges and you do different damage.

What is excessive micro? Subjective opinion.
Fun is subjective.
Anyway I don't want excessive micro either.
And I want the game to be fun.
I think that armor and armor penetration could be fun gamemechanics.
The game might also be fun and deep without them.

Case in point the core Reaper, its got about 3000 hp compared to a pee wee's what, 200 or so? giving it effectively massive armour for its cost.

sorry on the second point i miss implied, i meant effective damages not actual damages, any shot that hits can be relied to do consistent damage.

And you're right, at the end of the day my opinion will always be subjective. Thats why i kept coming up with explanations like micro and such to try and give justified reasons for my opinions.

I dug up the stats:http://taguide.tauniverse.com/taguide.html

Peewee
Build Cost Metal: 53
Max Damage: 250
Maximum Velocity: 1.8
Reload Time: 0.4
Default Damage: 8
Damage/Second: 60

Reaper
Build Cost Metal: 473
Max Damage: 2014
Maximum Velocity: 1.2
Reload Time: 1.3
Default Damage: 143
Damage/Second: 110

You can get almost 9 Peewees for the price of 1 Reaper. The Peewees got marginally more health for cost, about 5 times the damage for cost and they are faster.
A Reaper force has little to no chance to drive by the Peewees unless they kill them first.

Reapers also do splash damage, a longer range and such, similarly they wont take attrition until they are entirely dead. Furthermore as things begin to scale 1:9 doesn't work out the same way as 3:27. Things are already plenty complicated and it didn't even need armour or armour facings.

Case in point. Reapers are not able to drive past an army of Peewees which is what I wanted.
Directional armor doesn't make the general decision making more complex but it adds depth to the positioning and tactics deployed.
Turn back against the enemy = bad.
Simple rule.

I admit that i made a mistake because i couldn't quite find the site with all the numbers on it. However i have experienced being flanked plenty of times in TA and sup com, while depth is potentially added, it is also in many ways already there.

also i seem to be getting on the back foot of this discussion so lets also not forget all the other potential issues with having armour at all. small amounts of potential coolness at the cost of increasing micro management and such in ways that you are either forced to do or lose the battle. And they are things automation cant fix.

Turret turn rate is the only 'directional armour' I want.

Light tanks killing mammoth tanks for the win!

I'm not necessarily behind this as a concept, but flat armor does create quite a significant extra dimension for unit design above and beyond just HP.


Peewees & Reapers

As in the above example, the major difference between the Peewee' s weapon and the Reaper's weapon is that the Peewee fires much faster, and the unit itself is much cheaper, meaning you can make more Peewees and deal more damage through a greater quantity of guns.

For cost, you can get nine Peewees for one Reaper. Note that the Peewee has 60 damage per second, whereas one Reaper has only 110. This means nine Peewees is dealing 540 dps for the same metal cost as the single Reaper.

Each Reaper also has 2000 HP, representing how much tougher it is than the squishy Peewee. However once again, each Peewee has 250 HP, meaning nine of them together have a total HP of 2250.

Peewees are more efficient than Reapers. However, they also have the quite significant disadvantage of greater granularity. A single Peewee dies after it takes 250 damage, reducing the strength of the Peewee force. A Reaper is completely effective until its HP reaches zero, and its firepower cannot be reduced without destroying the entire unit. Also, it means Reapers concentrate more resources in less units, and less space. This means a force of Reapers is stronger than a force of Peewees in absolute terms, despite being less efficient. A force of Reapers might beat a force of Peewees, but its casualties and damage sustained will likely be worse in terms of resources lost, and the Peewees can just be replaced.


Flat Armor

Armor as damage mitigation creates a universal rule, no arbitrary damage types, which allows HP to vary in hardness between units.

Suppose a Reaper has 5 armor. Each Peewee shot does 8 damage, which the Reaper's armor reduces to 3 damage. This reduces each Peewee's effective dps from 540 down to 202.5. However in a Reaper vs Reaper battle, each Reaper's gun is significantly more powerful, so its armor only reduces its incoming damage from 143 to 138, reducing its dps from 110 to only 106.

Having the option of changing a unit's armor creates the possibility of designing armored units with less HP. These units will be resistant to small weaponry, but will die easily against higher damage shots. For example, a Peewee-like bot with 5 armor would be very difficult for Peewees to destroy, while still dying in a single shot from a weapon with 255 damage or more. Lighter weapons cost less, can be more numerous, and can be vastly more efficient sources of dps per cost, and lighter units can be vastly more efficient sources of HP per cost.

Units with more armor are "harder" as opposed to unarmored or lightly armored units. But they aren't unstoppable "HP stacks" where a unit is extremely difficult for any weapon to kill, and as long as it has HP it can do whatever it likes. A tank that can die to a hit or two of heavy anti-tank fire has to watch its positioning and scout ahead, even if it is armored against small arms fire. Very heavy armor might even provide good protection against lighter tank cannons, requiring specialized heavy firepower to take them down in a few hits.



If PA adopts a flat armor system in addition to a normal HP system, then it opens up the possibility of having cheaper, squishier units that are also resistant to weaker weaponry. You want heavier weapons against heavier armor, which is a quite reasonable requirement, and fairly simple to understand.

Armor may be unnecessary, since it is quite possible to create an interesting system using only HP. But armor does add some depth; the question is whether it is worth the additional complexity of having each unit have an armor value in addition to an HP value.

I'm in the same boat Ledarsi - i like the extra detail armor could add to the game, but I'm really not convinced its necessary or will really add much to the gameplay.

It does not give the player anything. It gives the game more depth(isn't it totally unrealistic an infantarist does the same dmg vs other like vs tanks?), wich is still easy to understand and without using multiplier. However it gives the developer a tool wich makes it easier to create counters and balance.

What i also thought about, was like a pew wee with anti tank weapon, having 5 armorpenetration and 5 dmg. It would deal less damage to infantery, but more to tanks than normal pew wees.

TA managed to be fun without such mechanisms.

Directional armor sounds interesting.
It doesnt only count if you hit but also where.
Also interesting to look at different ways to deliver damage in real life:
Damage per impact:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum#Conservation_of_momentum
Damage per pressure: explosions, anti submarine bombs
Damage per heat: laser, microwaves, explosions
Damage per sonic: resonance

Some may happen simultaneously.

We should have stoped at ping pong then. No need to make new things, because it was allready fun.

Directional armor would increase the amount of micro some people are demanding (positioning of your units in relation to your opponents).

Don't strawman. It's a terrible argument technique.

at some point a complex set of variables is indistinguishable from a halfway sensible dice roll to the naked eye.
I'm all for game complexity, but it should offer usable player options, if it doesn't a summary heuristic will do.

I will ask a questions to try and clear up peoples positions, because this discussion feels like chaos to me.

Armor/Armor Piercing/Directional armor will be referred to as armor systems as a general concept for this post. If potentially vague concepts like 'depth'/'micro' come up in your response, please explain what you mean and why it's important, i.e. 'adds depth' or 'adds unnecessary micro' are insufficient responses as people will misunderstand what you mean.

How was TA hurt/benefited from armor systems?

What does a armor system add to PA?(please include both pros and cons you see)

Are there examples of good/bad armor system implementations we can draw on? (please limit it to existing games)

So yours is better?

I have created a new armor thread to continue this discussion about armor. This thread was intended by the OP to be about unit counters, not having arbitrary damage types, and about general unit design principles. I think that is quite an important topic, but the majority of this thread is about armor. Armor is related, but it's very much trying to shoehorn some players' RPS understanding into a non-RPS design system.

Units are designed around their features- properties like unit cost, weapon design, range, damage, rate of fire, etc. Counter relationships emerge based on roles.