Weapon Efficiency against Shields & Hull

[Spocks-cuddly-tribble]

Damage Multipliers vs Shield Level & Shield Penetration (beam weapons only)

In tevent.txt 'doing/taking X points of damage' means before ShieldLevel or DamageControl, so one must do the math based on 'Shields/Hull at X%'

Combat Damage against:

SHIELDS = (WeaponBaseDamage - [TargetShieldLevel - BeamShieldPenetration, min 0]) * WeaponMultiplier
HULL (if NOT destroyed by hit) = TotalDamage (ram or rest after shield depletion) * TargetHullDamageConductance % (damage control)

Thus no REAL Shield Penetration, it just lowers/bypasses the target's Shield Level vs this weapon, not the shields themselves.
Exception is the Ram feature ignoring shields i.e. a real shield penetration of 100%.

Damage Control reduces Hull damage after every hit i.e. the deadly blow isn't reduced (otherwise ram wouldn't work).
At 0x1956A0 (trek.exe) hull damage percentages (damage conductance) 100 (full damage, green level) to 25 (1/4 damage, legendary).
So torpedoes have an advantage against hull since stronger base damage, not reduced by distance, increases the chance to bypass damage control.


Star Trek weapons is strong fantasy stuff (torpedoes in particular). Impact/blasting power effect vs distance, shields and hull never made any sense (even by the figures of trek manuals). That being said, the popular belief is that:

The important thing to remember about nearly all torpedoes, is that the base damage is Kinetic. Shields are very effective against kinetic damage. Essentially only 25% of torpedo damage is applied against shields.

Shield Penetration (torpedo standard 10% or 5%, unless special) usually means "bleeds" through then faces what ever hull resistances are in place:

a torpedo attack that delivers 3000 damage looks like this against a standard shield facing. Shield takes 90% and 10% “bleeds” through, so 2700 to shield, 300 to hull. The shield shrugs off 75% of kinetic damage so only 675 is applied to shields

Romulan torpedoes also offer some extra shield penetration in the sense that the plasma fire does extra damage.
-> their torpedo base damage will be slightly higher to simulate this and to compensate that their surprise attack is somewhat weakened

Most games ship’s hulls will have around 50% resistance based on the crew and special ship features setup.
-> this would be Damage Control & stuff like ablative armor


Reduced Torpedo Efficiency against Shields (for realism and longer battles) 25% in Vanilla BotF (Romulan Plasma 40%)

Shield Level and Shield Penetration ought to be percentage values with a different functionality, which restricts us to intricate workarounds:

1.) Determining and setting the lowest useful Torpedo Base Damage values and Multipliers.

All vanilla card-kling & minor torpedo damage values are divisible by 4, rom by 5 (fits, they should do a bit better against shields, see above).

In shiplist.sst set e.g. fed 44 to damage 4 & multiplier 11 resp. rom 70 to damage 5 & multiplier 14 (in game display is still 44 resp. 70)
For 'special' torpedoes (more effective against shields) set higher base damage with lower multiplier.

2.) Shield Level (our range here is 0-3) default 3 = shields 'shrug off' 75% torpedo damage (resp. 60% vs romulan), SL 2 = 50% resp. 40% a.s.o.
SL 4 would be immune to torpedoes, except to romulan plasma with still 20%; SL 5 even to romulan torpedoes.

3.) Beam Shield Penetration 3+ means ignore/bypass the target Shield Level (desired behavior, remember it's not real shield penetration).

We can also modify lower beam efficiencies vs shields, even easier than torpedoes due to the extra Shield Penetration value.
E.g. for a primitive laser beam: Base damage 12 vs shield (level 3) 'shrugs off' 25% resp. 6 = 50% a.s.o.

4.) Monsters should NOT be modded due to game balance issues (defaults 'Shield Level' and 'Beam Shield Penetration' 0 and 'Torpedo Multiplier' 1).

The AI understands all of the features and will adapt to them



But of course this simple example barely scratches the surface of possibilities....

Joker's page refers to Beam/Torpedo multipliers to create different effects against shields and hull. Could be an interesting feature.

"Interesting" is a great understatement

It would be incredibly useful. There could be counter ships against certain ship types.

A real counter system for ships could probably be implemented with current state of knowledge, but would be a LOT of work, too much for the moment.

A counter system means that certain ships are designed to counter certain other ships. Think of it as an enhanced rock-paper-scissors game.

With such a system, players would be rewarded for adapting their fleet composition to that of their respective opponent.

EDIT: Sadly the vanilla code is out of sync due to pre-calculated, wrong total damage (after weapon multipliers).

Code: Select all

NAME: ECMS - Shield Level Fix Patch - Reduced Torpedo Efficiency against Shields for realism and longer battles
DESC: Workaround for semi-implemented, out of sync code inconsistencies (shield level, penetration and weapon multipliers).
AUTHOR: Spocks-cuddly-tribble
URL: https://www.armadafleetcommand.com/onscreen/botf/viewtopic.php?p=54617#p54617

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# Redeploy Screen - Torpedo Stats Fix

# 004FF9D7     8DB424 9C0A0000        LEA ESI,[ESP+A9C]
# 004FF9DE     8B46 FC                MOV EAX,[ESI-4]             //   topedo muliplier
# 004FF9E1     0FAF06                 IMUL EAX,[ESI]              // * torpedo base damage
# 004FF9E4     E9 A9020000            JMP 4FFC92

# 004FFC92     50                     PUSH EAX
# 004FFC93     68 40295800            PUSH 582940                ;  ASCII "%d"
# 004FFC98     B2 06                  MOV DL,6
# 004FFC9A    ^E9 4AFDFFFF            JMP 4FF9E9


# torpedo damage -> real

# 00529890     8D8424 84000000        LEA EAX,[ESP+84]
# 00529897     DC08                   FMUL QWORD [EAX]
# 00529899     DD18                   FSTP QWORD [EAX]
# 0052989B     8D95 F4010000          LEA EDX,[EBP+1F4]
# 005298A1     8B42 04                MOV EAX,[EDX+4]         // torpedo base damage
# 005298A4     85F6                   TEST ESI,ESI            // shields down?
# 005298A6     7E 0F                  JLE SHORT 5298B7        // go full torpedo damage
# 005298A8     837C24 04 00           CMP DWORD [ESP+4],0
# 005298AD     0F84 B6000000          JE 529969
# 005298B3     2B4424 08              SUB EAX,[ESP+8]         // - taregt shield level
# 005298B7     0FAF02                 IMUL EAX,[EDX]          // torpedo base base damage * weapon multiplier  
# 005298BA     898424 8C000000        MOV [ESP+8C],EAX        // torpedo damage total -> real
# 005298C1     90 90                  NOP

# 00529971    ^E9 3DFFFFFF            JMP 5298B3              // go old shield level


# Disable Default Shield Level Code & unfinished Beam Shield Penetration

# 0052B793     33FF           XOR EDI,EDI
# 0052B795     90             NOP

# 0052B7BA     33DB           XOR EBX,EBX

[Iceman]

It would be incredibly useful. There could be counter ships against certain ship types.

I don't honestly see how.
For this you need stuff like Agility/Maneuvrability, and/or ship type vs ship type modifier tables.

SL + SP is more suited for implementing the Dominion's polaron weapons effect.

[Spocks-cuddly-tribble]

Here is the draft for ECM Shield Level Fix (reduced torpedo efficiency against shields for realism and longer battles)

- Monsters -> Shield Level 0 (unedited for balance reasons; no beam shield penetration/no multipliers)
- Fast combat group (Scout/Destroyer) -> Shield Level 2 (exception Vulcans = 3 due to slow agility)
- Others (Stations, all sorts of Cruisers, Colony Ships & TTs) -> Shield Level 3
- Ships with extreme map speed for their type -> extra penalty to Shield Level (Defiant/Raider-II = 1, ferengi/klingon TT-II & K'Vort-II = 2)

I think that's the utmost possible tweaking while staying faithful to the ECM base concept.

It would be incredibly useful. There could be counter ships against certain ship types.

I don't honestly see how.
For this you need stuff like Agility/Maneuvrability, and/or ship type vs ship type modifier tables.

These quotes are thirteen resp. twelve years old, so a response from Gowron is unlikely.

Implementation is not an issue, the right question is not 'how', but 'why' should we/you want this?

BotF (maybe also Supremacy) is a pet-universe/escapism game. It is not a real strategy game, not even a real 4-X game, and (just between ourselves) there is no point in pretending otherwise.

Almost all special resources/features/abilities (requiring max developed special skills by today's standard) are unlocked by default and taken as granted (e.g. always 100% weapon efficiency).

Most players/modder wont tolerate remedy in this regard (see command-ship feature), some not even for ridiculous bug abilities (upgrade/scrap, phantom dilithium, insta-terraform, cheat reading unkown ship stats).

Gowron's project idea was inspired by real strategy games like Civilization I and the counter system from Age of Kings: TC "great strategical depth (different resource types, lots of useful units) and a nearly perfectly balanced counter system". But I was never really into playing computer games, so I'm not the right person to elaborate on this.

For BotF - by removing some 'granted' special ability defaults you can couple special abilities with special weaknesses, so depending on new/other factors the nominal yield won't always determine the outcome as in vanilla BotF.

E.g. frigate type ships (special phasers but no torpedoes), with a bit further tweaking (special shields vs torpedoes, phaser shield penetration) could be great againts torpedo cruisers, but easy to kill for regular cruisers. On the other hand regular cruisers could take higher losses against special torpedo cruisers a.s.o.

SL + SP is more suited for implementing the Dominion's polaron weapons effect.

That's exactly what the vanilla code cannot do, but sub_52B780 & sub_52B7E0 could be rewritten to support real shield penetration, special hull resitances/armor and even special modifier tables.

[Robbs]

Regarding shield level and penetration, would it be possible to have the values be defined by tech levels? Shield level = energy tech (if I recall correctly , energy tech level already modifies planetary shields) pen= weapons tech. It would make the dynamic defined by relative tech differences rather than just arbitrary numbers by ship type.

[Iceman]

Regarding shield level and penetration, would it be possible to have the values be defined by tech levels? Shield level = energy tech (if I recall correctly , energy tech level already modifies planetary shields) pen= weapons tech. It would make the dynamic defined by relative tech differences rather than just arbitrary numbers by ship type.

Wouldn't that make all ships have the same SL and SP?
Even if it's the ships' pre-req tech levels, instead of civs' current tech levels.

[Spocks-cuddly-tribble]

The knowledge is there, but it's quite some work. See info/elaboration here: viewtopic.php?p=31772#p31772

The Iceman has a valid point, however, one could influence the mechanics via a percentage bonus based on current tech levels (as hinted in the link).

In this case (SL/SP) I wouldn't do it. Vanilla values do not support any easy modification plus adjusting shiplist.sst is a pain and the game changing dynamics of this powerful feature are not well tested yet (eg. cardassian disadvantage due to bad shield strength/defense and best hull?).

[Robbs]

Wouldn't that make all ships have the same SL and SP?
Even if it's the ships' pre-req tech levels, instead of civs' current tech levels.

Yes, in the sense that a TT ans Starbase would have the same SL, but their total shield strength would still be ship model dependent. I kinda like the idea of an armor vs ap dynamic playing out in the tech race.

But to Tribble's point, it looks labor intensive and the impact would hard to predict. An empire that gets weapons level ahead of another would increasingly eat into its SL to the point where SP exceeds SL. In that case, would the result add to the weapon base value?

[Spocks-cuddly-tribble]

would the result add to the weapon base value?

By default not, but you're missing the point:

- by default torpedoes have no (fake) SP feature (only beam weapons), currently it's about changing torpedo base damage and multiplier

- there will be many special cases to take care of (no monster tech levels, stolen ships, acquired minor ships...)

- if the entire code has be be rewritten anyway, the defaults don't matter

[Robbs]

By default not, but you're missing the point:

- by default torpedoes have no (fake) SP feature (only beam weapons), currently it's about changing torpedo base damage and multiplier

- there will be many special cases to take care of (no monster tech levels, stolen ships, acquired minor ships...)

- if the entire code has be be rewritten anyway, the defaults don't matter

So by default, no torps have a SP feature, only beams. Out of curiosity, how does beam SP break down? Every race at a particular value, with the Klingons getting something higher? ( In a similar way that the Roms benefit from a higher torp base damage?)

Thanks in advance.

[Spocks-cuddly-tribble]

how does beam SP break down?

It's all explained in the first post.

- SL & SP is one of the many unused/unfinished features of BotF = vanilla defaults 0 for all ships (exception hidden/unfinished second beam weapon stats of the vanilla galaxy class 2 640 points beam bug)

- my ECM shield level option draft uses SP 3 to neurtalize any SL for beam weapons (except monsters)

More advanced (tech/race specific) features are up to the modder and require programming efforts.