Disclaimers
I am not super familiar with the exact damage and armor system and what hardware limitations it aims to address, so please feel free to correct me where I am wrong. Also, if you are reading this near when it was first posted, the current future of development is unclear and may not happen and the features I am basing my views on might change dramatically in the future if development does restart.
Introduction: The Problem
Starbase has so many possibilities for ship designs, both for looks, and for function. Unfortunately, the current combat meta pretty much excludes the aesthetic side of the game in favor of ablative armor boxes. The best example of how this can be done with some creativity still would be Commando Doggo's mouse aim gunship. Even still, the armor on it requires bizarre arrangements of huge plates and railings used to stop rail shots. For more info on the current armor meta, I suggest you watch this video on it.
I am aware that every system will have at least one meta, but what I would like to see is a much less stable meta or many metas so that players have more options for how they build their ships and so that new or inexperienced players don't have such a huge disadvantage for not knowing what the current meta is. As a side goal, I would like to see the armor system be more intuitive and allow for more artistic creativity, while still giving engineers room to develop novel techniques for damage reduction. This system should not favor one size of ship (small ships should be about as fun and useful as large max-voxel bricks).
I won't be able to address all the mechanics that will make this change in the game work, power, thrust, and other new ideas are sure to play an important part in fleshing out this kind of change. This suggestion aims to just focus on how weapon damage is applied to armor and a little bit about armor destruction itself.
Weapon Damage
This section addresses how the damage that weapons inflict might be changed so that small ships have a chance and big ships need to be more creative about how they place their armor. The main theme is making damage apply differently to different geometries and arrangements, this theme will be continued in the following armor section.
Autocannons
Currently, auto cannons are not a huge part of the meta since their inaccuracy and slower fire rate makes them less viable than lasers for the same task. One role they could fill, while simultaneously becoming more "realistic" would be in the task of dealing internal damage.
The autocannon damage pattern looks like this right now:
This current pattern means that as the shot goes deeper into the target, it does less damage. favoring thick armor so that by the time it gets to the end, it doesn't do much voxel damage. If you look at how real bullets damage targets, they start with a small damage area, not much larger than their caliber, then expand as the bullet deforms and begins to spin. This would translate into a flipping of that damage triangle so that the ticker the armor, the more likely large areas will take voxel damage.
Small ships might be able to take a round of autocannon with less damage received than a laser shot despite the higher damage potential of the autocannon because the shot passes through the ship before increasing it's damage cone very wide.
Lasers
Lasers are a pretty well rounded weapon as they stand, however, they too easily encroach on the autocannon's niche. It might be better if they acted much more like the laser tool, that is, a low amount of damage, a very small diameter hole, but long duration (essentially a very very high fire rate) so that they can be used to pick apart particular enemy ship components, used in industrial settings for salvage, and still retain their use against light ships.
Another interesting line of thought when it comes to lasers is the possibility to use them to negate the giant blocks of glass that is the cockpit meta right now. It looks pretty ugly, doesn't allow for interesting cockpit designs, and makes visibility awful when multiple meters of glass are required to be competitive. Perhaps lasers, being light, could simply pass through glass. This could mean that you could armor the front of lasers with glass, but also that the only way to make your cockpit actually safe from laser-fire is to reduce your field of view. with armor plates.
I do worry that that would lead to glass not being used, or everyone bringing at least one laser to snipe pilots... Maybe it could be limited based on color, as in, colored glass that is the same or near the laser color (we would need different color lenses for the lasers, maybe the first pane of glass it passes through colors the laser) would block the beam but very different colors would let it pass. One could have a whole rainbow of colors as a cockpit, but then there would only be a couple layers of glass that actually block the laser.
Plasma Launcher/thrower
These weapons do a decent job of filling the "slow projectile, heavy hitter" role, but could be improved so that stopping them is not just a matter of covering your ship in lots of little bits to take advantage of the fracture damage only applying to the hit object.
One possibility would be to make the projectile damage the neighboring objects too, this could be done in two ways, area-of-effect (AoE) fracture damage, or corrosion. The AoE effect is simple enough to understand, when a plasma shot hits, it causes a small "explosion" that damages the object it hit and the surrounding ones in some sphere, this could result in the ablative armor growing to just the size of that AoE explosion, or it could mean that other, more interesting armor placements, like spaced armor would be necessary.
The corrosive idea is not new and as far as I know, was the initial plan for the plasma weapon. This damage would be kind of like a "poision" effect where first the initial damage would be applied, but then afterwards those that took corrosive damage could begin to decay until they are useless as armor. How this might look is one plate getting hit and fracturing from the hit, then the neighboring plates taking corrosive damage, if they take enough corrosive damage, then they become corroded and lose armor value over time. More on this in the armor section.
Rail Cannon
The rail cannon is a beast of a weapon, and should remain as such. However, it currently acts like a very powerful plasma launcher and doesn't have any unique damage system of its own. If you want a plasma launcher, you would want a rail cannon instead. It should not just be more powerful than other weapons, it should have its own niche that can add to the ship balance equation.
Currently the rail cannon damage pattern looks like this:
This is just a big fracture damage hole, not very interesting. Instead, the damage could look like this instead:
The volume of the total damaged area could remain the same, but the first few plates would just get punched right through until it explodes after some distance. If you've played a game like War Thunder, imagine an APHE shell. This would be extra powerful against large ships, while only being very damaging to small ships if a thick part (thrusters, generators, or just through the front) was hit. side shots would just pass right through.
This doesn't solve the problem of very tick armor exactly, but where the explosion happens could be controlled via spaced armor, or very strong plates that would be too heavy to carry on a light ship.
Rockets / Torpedoes
I'm not going to open that can of worms, they are too janky as they are now to comment on them. I hope that we can get useful and balanced rockets and torpedoes in the future to add to the variety of play styles and options for creation.
Armor
Personally, I would like to see all the damage be voxel if possible since I think it is the coolest, but I know that there are technical reasons that Frozenbyte wants to avoid that. That being said, I think there are other ways to make the damage system interesting while retaining the current system. This section is more of a grab-bag of ideas than a unified theory.
Slopes and Ricochets
Potentially the angle of the surface hit could impact the damage inflicted. This could give large ship makers the possibility to add interesting internal geometries that can divert incoming shots into stronger armor or away from sensitive parts. At the same time, it would allow more nimble ships to use their small size to bounce some shots and if they can get around to a flat side of an enemy, ensure maximum damage.
This could lead to bricks all becoming wedges, but those wedges would be vulnerable to damage from their flat sides still, not just a bullet sponge.
Spaced Armor
This isn't a new feature of armor itself, but a consequence of the aforementioned weapon changes. For the case of the rail and plasma, having gaps between armor, or very hard armor placed far away from the main body of the ship, could prevent more damage by taking on that corrosive damage away from sensitive parts of the ship or activating the rail cannon's explosion away from the main body.
One the flip-side, spaced armor could be more vulnerable to autocannons since the damage cone will have opened up before getting to the ship. Maybe that's a good thing for protection, though.
Armor Types
As mentioned in the plasma section, corrosion could be a factor of armor. Different materials already have corrosion resistance values, those could be used to make some weapons more or less resistant to plasma. However, maybe the density too could be a factor. Maybe the density could change the shape of the auto cannon damage cone and detonation distance of the rail cannon.
There was also the glass color idea about lasers, maybe there could be some materials that are semi-transparent to lasers.
Another possibility could be that some armor could be weak to direct hits but more likely to bounce a shot at lower angles than the more overall resistant materials.
Conclusion: Trying to wrap up this mess
This suggestion got a little out of hand as I was writing it. It could be more concise, more nuanced, and more realistic to how crafty players will be at exploiting any system. That being said, I'll try to wrap this up nicely with a bow.
The changes I propose aren't perfect, but changes to the weapons' damage models to depend on the target could help to diversify the combat landscape and increase the number of viable options. The changes also promote new players since they will likely have weaker ships with thin armor, if their shots do nothing and they instantly explode, that's not very fun. If they can take a few hits because they have so little armor, that would go a long way to making the experience feel more fair and intuitive.
The main theme of these changes, and what I would like to see overall, is a meta that is either just barely better than the options so that piloting skill can out-compete the building meta or multiple metas so that people can find one that fits their play style and aesthetic preferences.
I hope that as the possibility of restarting development seems to be more likely, that developers consider carefully how they can support multiple types of play styles, ship ideas, and interesting approaches to combat and distruction. Doom bricks is such a boring waste of the potential of this game.
Thanks for your constructive feedback and for correcting me where I am wrong in the comments.
See you around Eos.
I am not super familiar with the exact damage and armor system and what hardware limitations it aims to address, so please feel free to correct me where I am wrong. Also, if you are reading this near when it was first posted, the current future of development is unclear and may not happen and the features I am basing my views on might change dramatically in the future if development does restart.
Introduction: The Problem
Starbase has so many possibilities for ship designs, both for looks, and for function. Unfortunately, the current combat meta pretty much excludes the aesthetic side of the game in favor of ablative armor boxes. The best example of how this can be done with some creativity still would be Commando Doggo's mouse aim gunship. Even still, the armor on it requires bizarre arrangements of huge plates and railings used to stop rail shots. For more info on the current armor meta, I suggest you watch this video on it.
I am aware that every system will have at least one meta, but what I would like to see is a much less stable meta or many metas so that players have more options for how they build their ships and so that new or inexperienced players don't have such a huge disadvantage for not knowing what the current meta is. As a side goal, I would like to see the armor system be more intuitive and allow for more artistic creativity, while still giving engineers room to develop novel techniques for damage reduction. This system should not favor one size of ship (small ships should be about as fun and useful as large max-voxel bricks).
I won't be able to address all the mechanics that will make this change in the game work, power, thrust, and other new ideas are sure to play an important part in fleshing out this kind of change. This suggestion aims to just focus on how weapon damage is applied to armor and a little bit about armor destruction itself.
Weapon Damage
This section addresses how the damage that weapons inflict might be changed so that small ships have a chance and big ships need to be more creative about how they place their armor. The main theme is making damage apply differently to different geometries and arrangements, this theme will be continued in the following armor section.
Autocannons
Currently, auto cannons are not a huge part of the meta since their inaccuracy and slower fire rate makes them less viable than lasers for the same task. One role they could fill, while simultaneously becoming more "realistic" would be in the task of dealing internal damage.
The autocannon damage pattern looks like this right now:
This current pattern means that as the shot goes deeper into the target, it does less damage. favoring thick armor so that by the time it gets to the end, it doesn't do much voxel damage. If you look at how real bullets damage targets, they start with a small damage area, not much larger than their caliber, then expand as the bullet deforms and begins to spin. This would translate into a flipping of that damage triangle so that the ticker the armor, the more likely large areas will take voxel damage.
Small ships might be able to take a round of autocannon with less damage received than a laser shot despite the higher damage potential of the autocannon because the shot passes through the ship before increasing it's damage cone very wide.
Lasers
Lasers are a pretty well rounded weapon as they stand, however, they too easily encroach on the autocannon's niche. It might be better if they acted much more like the laser tool, that is, a low amount of damage, a very small diameter hole, but long duration (essentially a very very high fire rate) so that they can be used to pick apart particular enemy ship components, used in industrial settings for salvage, and still retain their use against light ships.
Another interesting line of thought when it comes to lasers is the possibility to use them to negate the giant blocks of glass that is the cockpit meta right now. It looks pretty ugly, doesn't allow for interesting cockpit designs, and makes visibility awful when multiple meters of glass are required to be competitive. Perhaps lasers, being light, could simply pass through glass. This could mean that you could armor the front of lasers with glass, but also that the only way to make your cockpit actually safe from laser-fire is to reduce your field of view. with armor plates.
I do worry that that would lead to glass not being used, or everyone bringing at least one laser to snipe pilots... Maybe it could be limited based on color, as in, colored glass that is the same or near the laser color (we would need different color lenses for the lasers, maybe the first pane of glass it passes through colors the laser) would block the beam but very different colors would let it pass. One could have a whole rainbow of colors as a cockpit, but then there would only be a couple layers of glass that actually block the laser.
Plasma Launcher/thrower
These weapons do a decent job of filling the "slow projectile, heavy hitter" role, but could be improved so that stopping them is not just a matter of covering your ship in lots of little bits to take advantage of the fracture damage only applying to the hit object.
One possibility would be to make the projectile damage the neighboring objects too, this could be done in two ways, area-of-effect (AoE) fracture damage, or corrosion. The AoE effect is simple enough to understand, when a plasma shot hits, it causes a small "explosion" that damages the object it hit and the surrounding ones in some sphere, this could result in the ablative armor growing to just the size of that AoE explosion, or it could mean that other, more interesting armor placements, like spaced armor would be necessary.
The corrosive idea is not new and as far as I know, was the initial plan for the plasma weapon. This damage would be kind of like a "poision" effect where first the initial damage would be applied, but then afterwards those that took corrosive damage could begin to decay until they are useless as armor. How this might look is one plate getting hit and fracturing from the hit, then the neighboring plates taking corrosive damage, if they take enough corrosive damage, then they become corroded and lose armor value over time. More on this in the armor section.
Rail Cannon
The rail cannon is a beast of a weapon, and should remain as such. However, it currently acts like a very powerful plasma launcher and doesn't have any unique damage system of its own. If you want a plasma launcher, you would want a rail cannon instead. It should not just be more powerful than other weapons, it should have its own niche that can add to the ship balance equation.
Currently the rail cannon damage pattern looks like this:
This is just a big fracture damage hole, not very interesting. Instead, the damage could look like this instead:
The volume of the total damaged area could remain the same, but the first few plates would just get punched right through until it explodes after some distance. If you've played a game like War Thunder, imagine an APHE shell. This would be extra powerful against large ships, while only being very damaging to small ships if a thick part (thrusters, generators, or just through the front) was hit. side shots would just pass right through.
This doesn't solve the problem of very tick armor exactly, but where the explosion happens could be controlled via spaced armor, or very strong plates that would be too heavy to carry on a light ship.
Rockets / Torpedoes
I'm not going to open that can of worms, they are too janky as they are now to comment on them. I hope that we can get useful and balanced rockets and torpedoes in the future to add to the variety of play styles and options for creation.
Armor
Personally, I would like to see all the damage be voxel if possible since I think it is the coolest, but I know that there are technical reasons that Frozenbyte wants to avoid that. That being said, I think there are other ways to make the damage system interesting while retaining the current system. This section is more of a grab-bag of ideas than a unified theory.
Slopes and Ricochets
Potentially the angle of the surface hit could impact the damage inflicted. This could give large ship makers the possibility to add interesting internal geometries that can divert incoming shots into stronger armor or away from sensitive parts. At the same time, it would allow more nimble ships to use their small size to bounce some shots and if they can get around to a flat side of an enemy, ensure maximum damage.
This could lead to bricks all becoming wedges, but those wedges would be vulnerable to damage from their flat sides still, not just a bullet sponge.
Spaced Armor
This isn't a new feature of armor itself, but a consequence of the aforementioned weapon changes. For the case of the rail and plasma, having gaps between armor, or very hard armor placed far away from the main body of the ship, could prevent more damage by taking on that corrosive damage away from sensitive parts of the ship or activating the rail cannon's explosion away from the main body.
One the flip-side, spaced armor could be more vulnerable to autocannons since the damage cone will have opened up before getting to the ship. Maybe that's a good thing for protection, though.
Armor Types
As mentioned in the plasma section, corrosion could be a factor of armor. Different materials already have corrosion resistance values, those could be used to make some weapons more or less resistant to plasma. However, maybe the density too could be a factor. Maybe the density could change the shape of the auto cannon damage cone and detonation distance of the rail cannon.
There was also the glass color idea about lasers, maybe there could be some materials that are semi-transparent to lasers.
Another possibility could be that some armor could be weak to direct hits but more likely to bounce a shot at lower angles than the more overall resistant materials.
Conclusion: Trying to wrap up this mess
This suggestion got a little out of hand as I was writing it. It could be more concise, more nuanced, and more realistic to how crafty players will be at exploiting any system. That being said, I'll try to wrap this up nicely with a bow.
The changes I propose aren't perfect, but changes to the weapons' damage models to depend on the target could help to diversify the combat landscape and increase the number of viable options. The changes also promote new players since they will likely have weaker ships with thin armor, if their shots do nothing and they instantly explode, that's not very fun. If they can take a few hits because they have so little armor, that would go a long way to making the experience feel more fair and intuitive.
The main theme of these changes, and what I would like to see overall, is a meta that is either just barely better than the options so that piloting skill can out-compete the building meta or multiple metas so that people can find one that fits their play style and aesthetic preferences.
I hope that as the possibility of restarting development seems to be more likely, that developers consider carefully how they can support multiple types of play styles, ship ideas, and interesting approaches to combat and distruction. Doom bricks is such a boring waste of the potential of this game.
Thanks for your constructive feedback and for correcting me where I am wrong in the comments.
See you around Eos.