This is in reference to the phenomenon of 'decorative railings' being an overpowered armour meta.
It's been mentioned somewhere on the steam forums that a combat rebalance is bound to happen sometime in the future.
In Discord, Conquester further elaborates "they want to make big plates more viable, and deco rails less viable."
Before you start digging into configs and making the already lopsided system of Magic HP even more aggressively ridiculous, you need to understand (assuming you already don't) what is actually the cause of this problem.
There is nothing inherently special about decorative railings that makes them overpowered against other voxel pieces. Every single object has its own armour rating (for magic hp) and density. IE there's nothing different about a 72cm charodium railing and a 72x12 charodium plate except a slight weight decrease due to shaved corners.
This issue is mostly prevalent where railguns/plasma cannons are involved. For the purposes of lasers/autocannons, flat sheets is just as, if not more effective.
This issue is simply an exploitation of the destruction engine, and there are 3 core problems that plague it. I'm assuming whoever created the destruction engine is long gone, and I suggest whoever decides to tinker with it study it carefully and actually understand the numerous issues that can create a very unbalanced meta. So this is a root issue, nothing to do with special unknown properties of some pieces.
1. Damage area of effect. (plasma/rails only)
The reason array's of railings or 12cm thick long plates are made is because it entirely negates the large area of effect that rail and plasma damage provides, which is the defining feature of these weapons. This is a simple issue, as the damage model only cares about the 1 piece its hitting at, at a time, which makes this easily exploitable. However, its not the worst issue, and can continue to be an issue without significant impact as long as the other two are dealt with.
2. Projectile energy reduction over distance across a single piece.
This issue is critical, and needs to be looked into. The longer a projectile has to travel through a single piece, the more energy (life) it loses. This sounds pretty reasonable, however the reduction of energy is exponential, and in starbase's case actually doesn't make logical sense.
Using exorium (the highest material density) a rail round can only penetrate 60cm of solid voxel. However, if you line up pieces the other way, a single rail shot will go through 294cm of 12cm segments. Considering the sandbox nature of the builder, and the face that are plates are only 12cm thick, this is an outrageous outcome.
Ideally, there would be no such thing as the exponential loss of energy through solid voxel. In starbase this makes 0 sense, as ships are comprised of many many many pieces, and is insanely unbalanced. Ideally, the depth of damage should be the same regardless of how many different pieces each test is made of (assuming magic HP bs is not accounted for).
3. Projectile termination on exit threshold.
This is also another critical issue, which is compounded by the last. Once a projectile has finished travelling through a single object, it meets another calculation. If the energy of the projectile has fallen below a certain threshold, the projectile is simply deleted. This issue is especially horrible for railguns, as a rail shot can still contain a huge amount of energy when it's deleted because it's less than some % of its original energy.
To exemplify what this means for railguns, a single 32cm piece of exorium is enough to delete the projectile entirely. If thats not insane balance, I don't know what is. so after the insanely high dropoff of energy from the exponentially reducing energy calc, the projectile sits below a certain threshold, and even though it still has enough energy to cause significant damage, it's simply deleted.
So a railshot with an enormous 21k~ energy per shot, is stopped dead in its tracks by a damage model that has a laser shot with 500 energy react the exact same way. These 3 issues are what plagues the damage model so awfully, not the fact that large plates simply aren't OP enough (which they are, because magic HP is another BS issue).
It's been mentioned somewhere on the steam forums that a combat rebalance is bound to happen sometime in the future.
In Discord, Conquester further elaborates "they want to make big plates more viable, and deco rails less viable."
Before you start digging into configs and making the already lopsided system of Magic HP even more aggressively ridiculous, you need to understand (assuming you already don't) what is actually the cause of this problem.
There is nothing inherently special about decorative railings that makes them overpowered against other voxel pieces. Every single object has its own armour rating (for magic hp) and density. IE there's nothing different about a 72cm charodium railing and a 72x12 charodium plate except a slight weight decrease due to shaved corners.
This issue is mostly prevalent where railguns/plasma cannons are involved. For the purposes of lasers/autocannons, flat sheets is just as, if not more effective.
This issue is simply an exploitation of the destruction engine, and there are 3 core problems that plague it. I'm assuming whoever created the destruction engine is long gone, and I suggest whoever decides to tinker with it study it carefully and actually understand the numerous issues that can create a very unbalanced meta. So this is a root issue, nothing to do with special unknown properties of some pieces.
1. Damage area of effect. (plasma/rails only)
The reason array's of railings or 12cm thick long plates are made is because it entirely negates the large area of effect that rail and plasma damage provides, which is the defining feature of these weapons. This is a simple issue, as the damage model only cares about the 1 piece its hitting at, at a time, which makes this easily exploitable. However, its not the worst issue, and can continue to be an issue without significant impact as long as the other two are dealt with.
2. Projectile energy reduction over distance across a single piece.
This issue is critical, and needs to be looked into. The longer a projectile has to travel through a single piece, the more energy (life) it loses. This sounds pretty reasonable, however the reduction of energy is exponential, and in starbase's case actually doesn't make logical sense.
Using exorium (the highest material density) a rail round can only penetrate 60cm of solid voxel. However, if you line up pieces the other way, a single rail shot will go through 294cm of 12cm segments. Considering the sandbox nature of the builder, and the face that are plates are only 12cm thick, this is an outrageous outcome.
Ideally, there would be no such thing as the exponential loss of energy through solid voxel. In starbase this makes 0 sense, as ships are comprised of many many many pieces, and is insanely unbalanced. Ideally, the depth of damage should be the same regardless of how many different pieces each test is made of (assuming magic HP bs is not accounted for).
3. Projectile termination on exit threshold.
This is also another critical issue, which is compounded by the last. Once a projectile has finished travelling through a single object, it meets another calculation. If the energy of the projectile has fallen below a certain threshold, the projectile is simply deleted. This issue is especially horrible for railguns, as a rail shot can still contain a huge amount of energy when it's deleted because it's less than some % of its original energy.
To exemplify what this means for railguns, a single 32cm piece of exorium is enough to delete the projectile entirely. If thats not insane balance, I don't know what is. so after the insanely high dropoff of energy from the exponentially reducing energy calc, the projectile sits below a certain threshold, and even though it still has enough energy to cause significant damage, it's simply deleted.
So a railshot with an enormous 21k~ energy per shot, is stopped dead in its tracks by a damage model that has a laser shot with 500 energy react the exact same way. These 3 issues are what plagues the damage model so awfully, not the fact that large plates simply aren't OP enough (which they are, because magic HP is another BS issue).
