Some general questions about shields, armor, and butts

For the exact formula for damage reductiond armor does, I do not know off top of my head. Its around on the fourms somewhere. But yes, its another percentage reduction.

Shield are a straight damage reduction. If it says 15% its 15%for example. They change to help foucs fire. It was added during the beta of SINS. Caps ships for example would go boom in one wave of fire. So they added as a ship takes more damage the value goes up. It helps but in the end with the ammount of ship you can have in SINS you can still have enough DPS to blow valuable targets in just a few waves of fire.

If you want certaint ships to be more effective against certanit ships. You need to match their armor type with the damage type. You can also change how each damage type is effective against all armor types by adjusting the damage multipliers.

If you look at Kortul's Dispruptive Strike you can get a base for a passive ability you want. Also look at Gravaty Bomb for you disrupt movement.

Each point of armor is around 5% effective hp. Someone graphed the approximate formula ages ago, but it'd be hard to find now.

Shield mitigation always drops at a constant rate, even while in combat, so the ship needs to keep taking damage in order for its mitigation to stay up.

About armor the gameplay.constant have the line HullPointPercentageIncreasePerArmorPoint 0.05. So I guess that hull damage reduction increases by 5% for each armor point (just a shot in the mist).

Also what did it deal those 200-300 damage to, hull or shield (mitigration could be the cause)?

For the ability the vasari capital siege ships assoult ability (forgot its ingame name xD) would be the best skabelon for it. The file names are AbilityBonusModuleDamage, BuffBonusModuleDamageSelf and BuffBonusModuleDamageTarget.  

Since you are new in this area I will give you a small guide

AbilityBonusModuleDamage:

TXT
entityType "Ability"
buffInstantActionType "ApplyBuffToSelf"
instantActionTriggerType "AlwaysPerform"
buffType "BuffBonusModuleDamageSelf" - change this to what you rename the file "BuffBonusModuleDamageSelf" to
effectInfo
 effectAttachInfo
  attachType "Invalid"
 smallEffectName ""
 largeEffectName ""
 soundID ""
needsToFaceTarget FALSE
canCollideWithTarget TRUE
moveThruTarget FALSE
isUltimateAbility FALSE
maxNumLevels 3
levelSourceType "Intrinsic" - change this if it is not for a capital ship
minExperienceLevelRequired
 Level:0 0.000000
 Level:1 2.000000
 Level:2 4.000000
aiUseTime "Invalid"
aiUseTargetCondition "Invalid"
isAutoCastAvailable FALSE
isAutoCastOnByDefault FALSE
pickRandomPlanetToExploreForAutoCastTarget FALSE
ignoreNonCombatShipsForAutoCastTarget TRUE
onlyAutoCastWhenDamageTakenExceedsPerc 0.000000
useCostType "Passive"
researchPrerequisites
 NumResearchPrerequisites 0
nameStringID "IDS_ABILITY_BONUSMODULEDAMAGE_NAME" - This refers to the string with the name (find in string file)
descStringID "IDS_ABILITY_BONUSMODULEDAMAGE_DESCRIPTION" - this refers to the string having the description
hudIcon "HUDICON_ABILITY_BONUSMODULEDAMAGE" - changes the icon
smallHudIcon "HUDICON_ABILITY_BONUSMODULEDAMAGE" - changes the icon
infoCardIcon ""

BuffBonusModuleDamageSelf:

TXT
entityType "Buff"
onReapplyDuplicateType "PrioritizeOldBuffs"
buffStackingLimitType "ForAllPlayers"
stackingLimit 1
allowFirstSpawnerToStack FALSE
buffExclusivityForAIType "ExclusiveForAllPlayers"
isInterruptable FALSE
isChannelling FALSE
numInstantActions 1
instantAction
 buffInstantActionType "ApplyBuffToTargetOnWeaponFired"
 instantActionTriggerType "OnWeaponFired"
 numWeaponClasses 1
 weaponClassForWeaponPassive "PHASEMISSILE" change this to the weaponClass for the weapon in the ships entity file
 passiveWeaponEffectChance
  Level:0 1.000000 - the chance of occurring, currently 100% 0.01 will be 1 %
  Level:1 1.000000
  Level:2 1.000000
 buffType "BuffBonusModuleDamageTarget" - same as before
 targetFilter
  numOwnerships 1 - remember to change if you add more, will cause minidumps if you don't
  ownership "Enemy" - what "type" of player can be targeted, can also be others are Friendly, Player and NoOwner
  numObjects 2
  object "PlanetModule" - what type of target, other targets are, SpaceMine, Fighter, Frigate and CapitalShip
  object "StarBase"
  numSpaces 1
  space "Normal" - the only other space is Phase (e.g. mines).
  numConstraints 0 - these are exceptions such as "NotSelf"
numPeriodicActions 0
numOverTimeActions 0
numEntityModifiers 1 - set to 0 and remove the below lines untill and not with numEntityBoolModifiers.
entityModifier
 buffEntityModifierType "PlanetBombingCooldown"
 value
  Level:0 -0.250000
  Level:1 -0.500000
  Level:2 -1.000000
numEntityBoolModifiers 0
numFinishConditions 0

BuffBonusModuleDamageTarget:

TXT
entityType "Buff"
onReapplyDuplicateType "PrioritizeNewBuffs"
buffStackingLimitType "ForAllPlayers"
stackingLimit -1 - -1 equals unlimited in this case
buffExclusivityForAIType "NotExclusive"
isInterruptable FALSE
isChannelling FALSE
numInstantActions 0 - I removed the instant action that is here, again remember these numbers.
numPeriodicActions 0
numOverTimeActions 0
numEntityModifiers 0 - changes the values of the entity that the buff is applyed on. Often in % where 1 = 100%
numEntityBoolModifiers 2 - Bool modifiers enable or disable certain things on the effected entity.
entityBoolModifier "DisableLinearEngines" - entity can't move forward (but still turn around, to disable this add a new Boolmodifier DisableAngularEngines)
entityBoolModifier "DisablePhaseJump" - entity can't phase jump.
numFinishConditions 1
finishCondition - changed the finishCondition for the buff to be based on a certain time period.
 finishConditionType "TimeElapsed"
 time
  Level:0 1.000000
  Level:1 2.000000
  Level:2 3.000000

I hope this helped getting an overview of abilities and helped you with atleast this ability. Oh, and btw, I didn't see any questions about butts.

Butts are what'll happen when the converter stops giving me extremely vague errors with my meshes.

Thanks for the guide, once I sort out this model problem I'll immediately put it to use! Yay for CXSIParser::Open.

Hull.

Aha, the pink text unveils one of the greatest mysteries of sins! So, it rises with focus fire. I'll have to be careful with high mitigation values then, since this could make a ship invulnerable? I was going to give the Great Knight a modified Kol shield that jacked up the mitigation, with reactivity this might go over 100%?

Alright, I saw that line too but I thought that was related to health for some reason. HullPoint seemed like another way of saying health, but I wanted an outside opinion on it before I started basing my balance calculations on that theory.

So, a Vindicator with 12 armor would be... *uses first-grade knowledge of math* 12x5... well, 10x5 is 50%, right? so 60%. 60% mitigation! Wow. That is pretty high, if that is indeed what that line does. I'll have to be really careful with armor.

Indeed, that is what I figured those lines did. I set them all to 1.0 for the time being so they're all flat, 100% damage with no other things going on. My universe has way too many damage and armor types to fit into sins, and some races exclusively use certain damage types. If I classified all Elemental weapons as simply Elemental, the Anahn would be the only race who largely used Kinetic weaponry. You can see how this could cause some issues in terms of balancing race vs race situations. Especially if I wanted to use canon representations (which is what I'm trying to achieve to a degree in terms of firepower). If that were the case, certain races would be absolutely hopeless against others. So I'm just basing raw damage values on canon attributes and trying to stay away from damage types, at least until I get everything sorted out and know what I want to do with them.

Thanks for the replies, this is the information I wanted to clear up. Once I get these these model issues sorted out I'll start messing with abilities.

/edit

Figured out the problem. Um... yeah, not gonna talk about it. It's awful. Even for me.

LOL, is my txt pink!?

Yeah, with Distant Stars mod we had the Advent mitigation 90-100%. Which made them invulerable. Really anything over 85% is near invulerable. So yeah your wise to be careful tweaking mitigation. Its easy to make ships near Godly.

Its not the text, its your inner monologue escaping into the real world!

Yep, the text is pink. I love it.

I got my Longbow into the game but the Knight is still throwing me extremely vague vertex checksum errors that don't actually seem to be a result of the mesh itself. I really wish there was documentation about this stuff, I've been trying to fix it for over 8 hours now.

/e

oh my godddd sins has a 50k tri limit dawg this is gonna ruin me I mean, on top of the smoothing getting ruined and the lighting always looking just a little bit quirky... some of my models are going to need to get totally demolished to get into the game.

Pink isnt what I was going for. So thought it was purple. Oh well, no reason to change it now! lol. And Im sure your not the only one who wishes for better support documentation for all modding.

Told ya!

The lighting looks... odd... like you exported it from Jans max tool which uses the UV map to define tangents which can totaly destroyzor the look of the model.

I found this out the hard way, eventually I fixed it by move the UV but it took me 20 hours going through his code before I worked it out. Really useful that I did though so I know the usefulness of having that second UV map for the tangents in my tool.

This is from XSI. It was modeled in max, but XSI doesn't read max smoothing groups. So... yeah. Kinda screwed there. Tangents are a bit of a mystery to us, so we just apply the texture uvs to the tangents. If we don't do that then it's even more smooth and looks absolutely dreadful. At least this way some of the hard edges are preserved.

Your getting the same effect then since its using the texture UV. I don't know how it does normals however... Wish I could see the code they use. I don't like XSI, but there must be something these strange XSI people use to get split normals along required edges.

In max its easy.

Yeah... that plugin with max takes over 13 hours to export a simple model for us - on a core 2 duo and an i7. Just not acceptable for us. So we have to use XSI. I absolutely despise XSI. I don't know what twit thought it would be a smart idea to program a modeling engine in Python, but they deserve a hard, bone-cracking slap. Not to mention its absolutely absurd mechanics. Cross formatting models between these two programs is like rubbing your face with a cheesegrater.

But if we want models in sins, we have to deal with it.

Really? ... Okay, that's really weird and kind of game-breaking imo. Does that mitigation stack with armor?

If so, a ship with 10 armor, 50% mitigation, and 50% shields, would have 100% mitigation. Unless you have something like phase missiles that penetrate shields, right?

Very, very silly.

I did some digging, and the equation for armor is

Percent Damage Received = 1/(1+0.05*X)

So armor can't give you invulnerable ships. I'm not sure what you mean by "50% shields." I *think* shields do something similar to armor, in that no matter how much shielding you have, it will never be invulnerable.

Also, all ships entity files have a line "maxmitigation". So barring research or abilities, it will never go over that number (I think by defualt TEC and Vasari max at 60% and Advent get 75% with research or somthing like that)

The min shieldmitigration is defined in the player race and how mutch it increases per damage taken. The ships define how mutch their max shieldmitigration. You can go over 100% (so basicly your shield heal from damage xD), though in the dev.exe it will give you a constant error message while you have selected the ship.

Also, if a ship's shield mitigation goes above 100% enemy ships simply stop firing at it.

Is the min shield mitigation the mitigation that remains after the shield goes down? Or is that simply the default mitigation % when the shield is active but not being attacked? I'm assuming it's the latter.

Aha, this explains why when the Sovereign was bugged in the star trek mod with its 125% mitigation the enemy ships stopped firing at it and just chased it around.

Oh god my first-grader knowledge of math just can't cope. By 50% I meant 50% damage reduction.

As far as I know the only way for a ship to be invulnerable is with shield mitigation that's at least 100%.  Otherwise I think it just does fractions of fractions of damage reduction.

And minimum shield mitigation is the minimum mitigation that a ship has when not being attacked.  The default mitigation is 15% so all Sins ships have essentially a 15% damage reduction always in place.  I have no clue why they did that.

Aaah. Okay, I was hoping for that to be the case. So I can set it to 0% and let the reactivity do its job when it needs to. I'll have to see how that works in small-scale battles to see if it will work the way I hope.

There's one small problem though, the game doesn't realize shield mitigation will ever be below 15%, so in-game on the infocards it will still show 15% mitigation, even though there isn't any.  Don't worry, the game itself will know there's no mitigation and will calculate damage accordingly, it just has problems displaying it on-screen.

I see. Thanks for letting me know - I would have probably flipped out if I saw 15% and I changed it and I wouldn't have any idea what's going on. Then I'd start screaming on vent and confuse poor HKS.