How does health and armor work?

[Rokiyo]

Am I correct in thinking that health is per module and armor is shipwide?

In other words, armor is shared between components (just like shields) but health is not?

If so, does that mean I only need to aim at specific components after both the shields and armor are completely depleted?

[Rokiyo]

Narlak why hast thou forsaken me?

[Narlak]

Health is your overall ships condition (red bar). If it goes to zero, you die. Only core parts take "health damage". Wings, noses, and engines take "armor damage" until they break off, exposing the core parts. Each part has different armor values, and some are better at keeping your soft core parts safer than others.

Hope this helps. I would never forsaken you!

[Rokiyo]

Ohhh.... So armor is each individual part's health.... So a part with high armor is harder to break off?

So if I had really high health but very little armor, parts would break off my ship quickly, but my ship would not blow up?

And if I had lots and lots of armor but no health then my parts would not break off but my ship would explode quickly if kept banking lots and exposing my cores that way?

[Narlak]

You got it :) Banking will expose your cores, but you can sometimes get your opposite side weapons to fire right over top of your frame, allowing you to fire a lot more of your weapons at once.

[Spaz]

Sorry to necro, but no need to create a new thread when one already exists with a dev response.

Ok. So, if the cores are the only thing that takes health damage,
why do all the individual componants always have a health stat on it?
How does health contribute to a part (Nose, Wings, Engine)?
If Parts already have an Armor Stat, and health plays no role for them, why do they also provide a Health stat?

Conversely, why do Cores show Armor stats if they have no Armor of their own - especially if they only take Health damage????

I need further explanation on this b/c my head is spinning.

Also, what is the difference between Hull and Armor?

[Blorf]

Hi,

First to explain the difference between health and armor think of armor as structural integrity. Once it reaches 0, the part will break off.

Health reaches 0 and your reactor explodes.

Every single part on the ship is feeding boosts into the root core. That one piece that you build everything off of. So if a wing has a health boost, it is all being fed to the root core.

We add up all the health boosts from every single part, multiply it by 100 or some other factor (I cant remember the exact number) and then that is your health value for the whole ship. BUT the important part here is that your health is really just 0..1 So say you lost a part contributing 10 health points. Like it broke right off. If your ship currently had 100 health points max, it now has 90 max. And if your health bar was at 50% your health was 50, but now it is 45 because that is 50% of the max.

The health needs to work this way so you can't kill yourself adding and removing parts.

But just think of all the health being on the root core. That is what matters. The other cores transmit their damage to the root as that is the piece that can never be removed.

Now the wings, noses and engines do not transmit damage in the same way. They are actual physical damage blockers. There is nothing "critical" to the ship's survival on those pieces. They take hit after hit and when they eventually break off, they leave an exposed core where they were attached. That is your target. It is important to remember that no cores have weapons, so the peripheral parts have their uses as well.

So armor can also be seen as local health whereas health is like reactor health.

The practical side of it all is pretty simple. Shoot at the enemy ship's cores when you can. Knock off the parts with the strongest weapons first. Disassembling an enemy strategically can let you take on much bigger foes.

If you have a heavily armored nose, it is great for ramming because ramming power is determines by the relative mass of the ships as well as the impact speed as well as the relative armor of the two parts that hit. Ramming is also fun.

Hopefully this helps.

[Obz3hL33t]

How does the armor value of cores contribute to the armor of the ship? Is core armor only useful for keeping cores from breaking off?

(Getting cores shot away is awful. You can tractor a broken wing back on, but good luck getting your cores back in place while enemy ships are shooting at you.)

[Blorf]

Yup core armor is for keeping them from breaking off as well, buuuut...

In the case of the cores it also works as a health damage blocker. So the higher the armor, the less damage gets through to the health, but as armor goes down, more and more health damage gets through.

[Stridswombat]

Originally posted by Blorf:

Yup core armor is for keeping them from breaking off as well, buuuut...

In the case of the cores it also works as a health damage blocker. So the higher the armor, the less damage gets through to the health, but as armor goes down, more and more health damage gets through.

I have to ask, did you draw inspiration from Starsector when you were making the game? I find a lot of the gameplay mechanics are extremely similar, although more simplified. Such as the way shields, armour and health works and the way you have to "reload" from time to time which also largely disables shields and weapons.

[Blorf]

Believe it or not, these systems actually stemmed from Mechwarrior Mercenaries (The old one from 1996)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MechWarrior_2:_Mercenaries

I played a ton of it online in my early twenties and it always stuck with me. This was back in the days on Kali. But I played through the built in peer to peer networking and dial up modems that you had to configure through batch files or somesuch. I don't remember the connection procedure, but I do remember even then we had to run something walled NAIS anti cheat. It was the first online game I ever played. I used to play it easily 6 hours a night. Joined a clan, the whole bit. I think that is where the term clans even evolved from for online games, since in Mechwarrior you had actual clans as part of the lore... Annnnnyway enough stroll down memory lane. But if [CDS] Maudib is still out there, this is [CDS] Baron :)

The reload mechanic works much like the heat in Mechwarrior where you need to stop firing every so often or blow up (in mechwarrior's case). It provides a system where you get pauses in the battle where you have time to think. Without the reload the ships would just spew gunfire forever until the capacitor slowly emptied, and then you would be firing that last 5% slowly forever and it sucked. The reload was a great thing. Weird for some people, but it made the battles feel right, to us at least.

Health/Armor wise its also a mechwarrior throwback. The mechs arms and legs are like our wings noses and engines. They can break off and they also hold most of the weapons and are highly configurable. Then the mech's core was the chest where the reactor was. Just like our cores, but we have more than one.

This post is making me feel a lot of nostalgia.

As for Starsector, I did play it for a few hours back in 2011 right after SPAZ 1 came out, but it was called Starfarer at that time. I have lost my key and have not played since then so I don't remember too much about it anymore. I took an interest at the time because it was the only other space game to come out at that time and we released right on top of each other which was an unhappy surprise, but in the end it worked out fine for us, and I think for the makers of Starsector since we both still seem to be around. :)

[Stridswombat]

Ahh that's interesting. It's possible you might both have drawn inspiration from the same source, maybe?

Starsector is still going strong btw. The game has come a long way since 2011.