Correlate hit points of prop with its mass value
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I am not a fan of this idea either. In order to make this somewhat balanced you would have to really cut the hp/mass for the higher amounts (probably some log function) and then you lose the idea being intuitive in the first place. I believe that the current mechanic is quite solid, the less hp something has, the more explosive and vulnerable something is the easier it is to destroy its wreck.
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I gave this some thought long time ago, your idea Jip makes perfect sense. Mass is mass and should have HP that is consistent.
maudlin27 makes good points about the strategic nature of play, you would get players who just see the game as an eco race and would consider mass in the base better invested than sent out onto the field, and if you can always rebuild T3 arties or game enders at half cost or reclaim the wreck to make a new one then why would anyone risk donating mass into a heavily shielded base.CasterNumeroUno also makes good points too. If we consider that there are processes in manufacturing where you take materials and convert them into other products, often times it is uneconomic to recycle them into their base components. Using higher tech units with likely highly processed components we may have such a case where the amount that is recoverable is much less than the 81% standardized amount in the game. Unfortunately we only have mass and energy, but nothing in between such as tech'ed up mass. One would have to probably go ahead and make a judgment on whether to decrease the reclaimable mass amount through the tech levels to leave the reclaim with a consistent HP amount per reusable mass unit to get a better result (a lot of work based on personal judgement which will be cause for more infighting and hate :p).
The source of the current issue lies in the fact that the mass cost of a unit does not translate directly on a fixed ratio into the HP of the same unit. This is why a one size fits all approach does not work well across the spectrum of units.
To get a better outcome for the Fatboy, the easiest short term solution would be to increase mass and energy cost by 25% and raise HP from 12,500 to 40,000, because it is a big tank and doesn't reflect that in its stats.Also, you could always go through every wreckage stat of problematic units like radars, Fatboys, etc and change HealthMult = 0.9 to HealthMult=10 (radar) or 3(Fatboy) or to any other desired number that leave more HP on the wreck though for units where the logic of a huge clump of mass disappearing is very problematic.
Have you thought about how much HP 1 mass unit should have in your standardized solution?
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If mass has consistent hp why can’t I punch through a kg of steel but I can punch through a kg of feathers
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I don't understand why it is a problem that the hp of a wreck is correlated to the hp of the base unit instead of it's mass value. Right now you know that the damage of a bomber run or whatever other weapon that is sufficient to kill the target is also sufficient to kill the wreck. In my opinion it doesn't get any more intuitive than that.
Other people have already outlined that there are edge cases where the hp/mass varies so much that I doubt the new system would work without making it complicated.The only thing I would like to see is having the hp of reclaim correlated to the reclaim value as these don't have any straightforward way to know the hp and it is a bit ridiculous that big solid rocks die to a single bomber in the first pass.
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I agree with Jip; with following addendum. Non-Wreckage/Unit reclaimables should have their HP corallated (spelling) to their Mass Value
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I think it's funny when rocks get destroyed by bombers, so it should stay in the game. Who says a bomber from the 39th century dropping magic energy bombs can't take out a rock.
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The simplest solution is a compromise in the form that the calculation depends e.g. 50/50 on HP AND mass. If necessary, you can still change the proportions.
My biggest concerns, however, are the rebuilding (reclaim & rebuild) of game enders, which could lead to more turtling. -
If the goal is to simplify wreck health and make it more intuitive, such a compromise would be the worst solution as then you need to know both systems and do some math in your head to figure out the health.
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One disadvantage of the current system is that it's only predictable if you already know the health of every unit in the game, even if just roughly.
For the people in this thread that's trivial (fatboys and snipers are made of tissue paper, GCs and percies are thicc bois, etc.), but for a player starting out that's hugely unintuitive.
If I see a sniper on the field, I can hover my mouse over it to see that it's made of sticks and bubblegum, but once the sniper becomes a wreck, that information is lost entirely.
It becomes yet another "you just gotta know" part of the game. making the game harder to learn, without offering the experienced players anything.
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I think this overstates the importance of knowing the exact unit health. If you didn't care about the health of the alive unit you can just shoot the wreck until it disappears just as well.
A rough understanding of the mass cost and health of the units is required to make good decisions in this game. That's just a fact and it's important for much more than just wreck interactions. So changing them doesn't actually lessen the requirement to get to know the units.
Of course all of this is less important if you play in a more casual environment, but then we are back at "shoot the wreck until it's gone" being perfectly sufficient. -
When does anyone even deliberately shoot at wrecks anyway? Probably a small percentage of players even know it is a mechanic, and then they probably only make use of it in a small percentage of games. It is only a problem of programmers thinking the math isn't elegant enough, not a gameplay issue.
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I agree with Thomas, in 99,9% of games people don't shoot at the wrecks on purpose. It's realistically done with TML to snipe exp wrecks and with nukes to deny huge reclaim fields. The wrecks just naturally take damage when there are AoE attacks landing nearby. Casual players usually don't even realize that wrecks are there in the first place so making some obscure game mechanic that isn't used by them in theory more intuitive for them makes no sense.
Changing the amount of hp the wrecks have will have a huge impact on the game and personally, I believe the current system is intuitive, if a unit had lots of HP the wreck will do as well. Simple as that. I don't see much value added with this change while it being an absolute nightmare to balance especially for units that cost hundreds of thousands of mass and have very little hp. -
99.9% is not true, just look at the old babyrage that came from haven’s reef being in ladder and bombing the trucks.
Another map this happened all the time was the wonder version with an omni wreck in mid, was meta for every mid slot to send an arty to instantly kill it, or a lab to kill enemy arty followed by an engie.
