Problems with "New" Organig Armour.

[geoschmo]

"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

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Taera:
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.

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.

[geoschmo]

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

[spoon]

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

[Taera]

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.

[Wardad]

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

[QuarianRex]

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?

[geoschmo]

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

[QuarianRex]

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.

[Baron Munchausen]

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 ]