Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

" 7. Fixed - Organic Armor was pre-regenerating itself before damage occurred
in combat."

Finally, MM fixed this bug. BUT, and I mean capital BUT, it makes OA very weak due to other, less known OA bugs/feature:

"regeneration" does not actually occur at the end of turn. Instead, "regenerated" points are stored in some invisible storage and will transfer to OA only, and only when a piece of OA is destroyed. Example: make a ship with one OA component. Now start to fire on it for several turns with some relatively week weapon, say DUC II. Check the ship damage - THERE IS NO REGENERATION AT ALL !!
Your OA will die as some primitive aluminium armor. It also means that in every ship, even one with several OA, the Last piece of OA will die without regenerating.

Second problem - but it may have been fixed, I'm not sure - the "renerated" armor does not add regenerating points after being destroyed. Hard to believe but it has been reported by sesveral people on this forum.

Together, "fixed" OA will become almost as bad as regular armor. I do not advocate reversing the fixed bug, but may be MM should increase OA regeneration by say, 5 points ???
OA was not unbalancing, nobody complained about it (PPB is REAL issue, IMHO), so please keep it as attractive ship defence.

[ October 11, 2002, 19:58: Message edited by: oleg ]

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

oleg, this fix you mentined is from Version 1.80. Last week the beta team got Version 1.79. One of the fixes on it was this:

5. Fixed - Ships with regnerating armor will regnerate all of their armor at the end of combat.

Does this sound like it clears up the problem with the bug you are talking about? I am not totally clear on what is the problem myself. I need to think about it a little bit.

There might still be some issues with OA in the curent beta patch related to the fixes made. But hopefully he'll get hem straightened out before a public release patch.

Geoschmo

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

It's a complicated fix, but if you mod the game to have 'special' ships for organic races with the Armor Regen ability on the hull itself the organic armor will regenerate even when completely destroyed. I'd say this should have been done in the original game setup, myself. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

But as Geo notes, the change to make armor regen completely replace armor after combat will make organic armor more resilient anyway.

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

You don't even need special ship hulls...

If you add the OA regen ability to every hull, only Organic races wouldbe able to make use of the OA points anyways!

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

Wait, ALL organic armor components will regnerate after combat?!? Even destroyed ones??? 'Cause it's already the case that damaged but not destroyed components will regenerate after combat (that's how the "colony ship as minesweeper" exploit worked)... so you're saying that if I have a base with 30 OA and they all get destroyed, then they will all come back after combat, just like shields?!? That, IMO, is a bit powerful!

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

No, Ed, he's saying how to mod that in. The current fix is that if you still have some OA remaining after a combat, it will heal up completely, but not if all the OA is destroyed.

Some folks would like it to heal up even when all destroyed, so adding regen to the hull would be a way to mod that.

PvK

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

Is this new change in organic armor repair balanced? Any reports from beta-testers? It sounds quite powerful to me, but the abolished pre-combat regeneration was of course also very potent.

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">In what way? The case could be made the changes made actually weaken organic armor. I don't see how anyone could say it makes them more potent.

Geoschmo

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

Well, you'd have a regenerating dreadnought that if not taken down in one battle, it keeps going and going and going and going...

Although I think that was the original point of organic armor.

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

Uff. I hate how Internet Explorer forgets input windows when the connection times out and I try to use the Back button.

I wrote a detailed reply, now lost, but the gist was this. No, the new healing after combat just plain makes sense, and isn't commonly occuring enough to be important for balance. After all, it used to be based on the number of turns between the organic ship got damaged and the end of the combat, since it would heal up quite quickly until the Last enemy ship was destroyed or the combat ended.

PvK

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No you won't. Unless you give the hull the organic armor ability itself, which has not been done in the stock game. If all the armor components are destroyed, none of them will regenerate.

I believe Q was asking about the actual changes that have been done in the beta patch, not some hypothetical change a modder might make on top of that.

Geoschmo

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

Ok, now I've lost all track of what the change is. I understand that the regen pool is gone but what are the other changes?

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

After combat, if the OA ship has any armor left, it all self heals.

Its the same as if you played tactical, left one severely crippled enemy ship alive, and wait for your ships to self-heal before finally killing it and ending the combat.

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

Let's see if I've got this right. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

I have a ship with five OA comps, four are destroyed in combat, but after the combat those four heal back because I had one left.

Is that how it works? If so, that's a big change.

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

So does Organic Armor still heal during combat like it always has, or is that gone, or what?

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

If you eliminate the storage of regeneration points when the armour is not damaged, then you are going to have to make all pieces about 150 to 300 kt stronger to make them worthwhile, as you can usually expect your ships to have at least 5 turns before the range closes, and it's currently not overpowered. Either that, or double or triple the regeneration rate. After all, it has to be at least as useful as shields are to be worthwhile, and the ability to repair after combat if the ship isn't destroyed is useless if the ship will always be destroyed.

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

Well no, organic armor is a useful piece of defense because of its regeneration rate- its a shield and shield regenerator, both in 30kT and it costs ORGANICS. I like the introduced change because it makes sense, and increasing regen instead would make it realy overpowering.
I though would like to see changes being made to its counterpart, Crystalline Armor which is realy underpowered in anything but its low cost.

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

Not only does OA have a good protection rate and use organics, but it doesn't even cost very many organics. They also don't suffer from bypassing via phased weapons, or lowering via depleters, or destruction via shield-destroying weapons. They do suffer to shard cannons, though those are expensive and low-damage.

Actually, OA was pretty darn over-powerful before this, but only IF and WHEN it was used in small battles, especially one-on-one battles. It was quite possible for say a cruiser with OA to avoid all damage from an entire 30-turn engagement with a single other cruiser, or certainly long enough to destroy the other cruiser.

However, what usually happens is a larger battle with more ships and more concentrated fire, so very frequently, all of the organic armor on one ship can be destroyed in one turn (by fire from multiple enemy ships), in which case it doesn't get a chance to heal.

PvK

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

I think the Baron was talking about in-combat damage, not post-combat damage. The fix to regenerate armor after combat is quite obviously the latter. If what he says is true, then Organic's armor regeneration ability is crippled because:

1) Armor only regenerates when a piece is destroyed, not when a piece is damaged or at the end of every combat turn.

2) Armor can only be regenerated by restoring a broken piece, not by removing partial damage.

3) Armor can only be regenerated once and/or once regenerated does not contribute to other regeneration (I'm not clear on this one).

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

Yes. before there were two bugs/features, one working in favor of OA (accumulating point before damage), second against (no partial healing).
More or less they balance each other - extra points from former were offset by lost points due to later. Now, OA will give you far less regenerating points than you can expect by just looking on OA numbers. There've been not many complaints about OA before and one can deduce people are more or less satisfied with play balance. Now, OA is weeker and hence need some modest boost, either more damage points or more regeneration - my favorite.

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

"Partial damage"? What is partial damage?

Every component in the game as far as I know gets partial damage restored at the end of combat. This is whether it's organic armor, or not. Unless you guys mean something else besides partial damage.

Organic armor is different in that instead of having ot go to a reapair bay or space yard to repaior COMPLETE destruction of the component, it can be repaired if there is at least one functional piece of organic armor left on the ship.

The bug was that if the destruction of that piece occured near the end of combat, it didn't have time to heal and wouldn't do so until sometime during the next combat. The fix is that now instead of that, at the end of combat all roganic armor will be repaired immedietly, IF there is a functioning organic armor component left. THere still has to be a functioning armo comp left. That much hasn't changed.

Geoschmo

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I think you need to take a look at the relative numbers for organic armour when compared to shields. Phased shields V give 9.4 shields per kiloton. Organic armour III gives 5 damage resistance per kiloton. With a shield regenerator V, you get 6.25 shields per kt, and a regeneration of 20. With Organic Armour III, you get a regeneration of 30.

The old style organic armour, which was not imbalanced, managed to build up a regeneration pool of around 150 - 300 kt per piece before weapons fire began. That put it on about an equal level with shielding. Now, if regeneration only happens once the armour is damaged, then stops once it is repaired, the armour needs to be made either stronger from the beginning, or have its regeneration rate increased so that it has a chance to regenerate once the firing has begun.

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

I think the point is that organic armor was not supposed to be equal to shields. It's got advantages to shields in some areas, and deficencies in others. This "advance regeneration" or whatever was pretty clearly a bug. It wasn't described in the description of the components. It wasn't totally clear for a while what exactly was happeneing. It took some smart people a lot of testing to figure it out. And it wasn't all that well docmented as "features" go. Most people that didn't play roganic races a lot had no idea, and I'll venture a lot that did play organic races weren't really aware that's what it was doing.

By all means if you want to mod in a higher regen rate, you are free to do so. But I disagree that a change should be made to the stock data files jsut to maintain the status quo. Organic armor still has quite a bit of value. It just might be a different value than what some people have grown accustomed to.

Geoschmo

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

The most important aspect of OA is that it costs you no minerals to build. Even without any regen ability whatsoever, it would still be amongst the most important tech (if not THE most important) that you get from choosing the Organic Racial trait.

Regenerating lost armor after battle is like icing on the cake...

-Spoon

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

Organic Armor is not supposed to be the best armor in the game, hence the low cost. Same as with crystalline. It is supposed to be something "different" and it is, only the regenerate-after-combat makes it worthwhile in my eyes. And for the defense/per/kT remember that in fact the armor is vulnurable only to two weapons - NSC and CSC while shields are vulnurable to Shield Sapper & Distruptor, NSC, PPB (normal), with a total of 4 - double. Shield Sapper is extremly powerful weapon if used against shields and one this makes the organic armor cost the racial points - remember that 30kT of organic armor ships would build at least 1 turn faster than those using normal armor, especially if it is some kind of more advanced scattering/stealth/emmisive armors. Crystallines are good here too because AFAIK they are the cheapest armor aviable, and the 15-to-shields works as good as emmisive armor if there are any shield regenerators.

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

Cheap Armor is not much of an advantage. The cost of the basics (bridge, life support, crew quarters, and engines) are just too high.

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

Pardon me for being slow, but what exactly is the change in OA?

Previously it worked by building a regen pool from the regen rates of all existing OA comps (originally until they were first destroyed but later fixed to continue adding regen points after being restored) that was then depleted for in-combat repair of OA comps while still being added to by all existing OA.

That was how it used to be. Now it sounds as if you're saying that the regen pool has been scrapped and damaged OA is only regenerated from the regen points of the remaining OA's. that would mean that a ship with 5 OA III's that has taken enough damage to destroy 4 would then take 5 turns to regenerate 1 OA comp, etc. (but with the capacity to repair all OA at the end of combat so long as one survives).

That is a huge shift!

And what is all this talk of regenerating partial damage? Currently there is no partial damage, any damage that doesn't destroy a component gets handed to the next shot as a bonus to damage (with rare exceptions). Is that sopposed to be changing too?

If not then OA is hosed even more, as smaller weapons can whittle away at OA without engaging the regen.

Is this depiction of the proposed changes accurate? If not then how?

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

Sounds like you about have it there. Except what do you mean by smaller weapons whittleing away without engaging the regen? As soon as a piece of OA is destroyed the other organic armor components will begin to repair it. It will no longer be "repaired" before it is destroyed, but it will repair as soon as it is destroyed (Assuming you have other functional OA components left)

Geo

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

Geo:

What I meant was that a weapon that inflicts relatively small amounts of damage (say, lower level wpns in the early game) that would take a couple/few turns to take out an OA comp are capable of accumulating this damage even though the it may be lower than the regan capacity of the individual OA.

It may sound petty but it can make a big difference, like in the early game, when you can only fit a few OA's on a ship.

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

I have been tempted in the past to increase the 'resolution' of OA by making the components smaller. 10kt components, even with the same proportional level of damage and regen ability, would cause a much quicker reaction and make OA more effective. With the 'pre-emptive' regeneration now removed, it might now actually be a necessary change to get the proper advantage from the special ability. I'm not sure there's any case where size is an advantage for armor, come to think of it. The ratio of space kt/damage kt is all that matters.

[ October 15, 2002, 00:29: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

Aye... The smaller the armors, the better the representation of how it's supposed to work. If you could have 10,000 armors of size 1T, that'd supposedly work better than 1 armor of size 10kT, but you have to break it off at some point for the purposes of avoiding some 50 clicks at 1kT a piece...

Re: Problems with "New" Organig Armour.
 

Just to illustrate once again what I mean as "partial damage" : make a ship with one OA. Put it against another ship with just one DUC 3. Fire DUC, watch the result : OA ship has damage 30. Next turn - there is no regeneration and never will, same 30 damage. Keep firing and after while you get destroyed OA that did not regenerated at all. To get regenerations you need 2 or more OA on ship but still, at the end some regeneration points will still be lost when Last OA dies