Strange commander power damage

rhonan

i've got a strange scenario

i've created a test scenario with pharos

he has capital missile, solar lance as heavy, and rail repeater as turret on a BC.  Nice of him to build one for me.
I was using a battleship with heavy+energised armor, dynamic+regenerative shielding (340% immunity to missile,+120% normal damage), advanced shielding (260% immunity to energy).  On top of this we have used a mix of commanders on my side, he has used his top commander.

In a battle against a ship like pharos, i should be pretty robust, and in battle after batlle, no damage is done to my ship

however in EVERY case, i have lost due to 100% commander damage in the first strike.  Sometimes it's the energy weapon, but using the rail-repeater gets me.  Now the rail-repeater is a turret weapon, attacking a ship with over 25K health.

How can I lose 100% commander energy every time?  is this a bug, or am i missing something.  I don't see this against NPCs, perhaps it's something to do with Pharos' commander.  I have no image as it always ends so fast.

so please
1) can you explain the equation or factors that cause commander damage
2) explain whether this is a bug from using the new shield items?  

Tir

Neminsis

@rohan

The new armor and shields only add a multiplier to the base resistance of the chassis type that it's placed on. There is no "immunity".

However, "damage taken" is an absolute multiplier when you do take damage.

So with Advanced shielding for example, you're increasing your base resistance to energy by 260% but also increasing the damage taken from projectiles by 70%

So even though you've increased your resistance to projectile damage by 340%, you have to ask 340% of what? And then add 70% to whatever damage is being dealt, plus any leader bonus (skills and tactics), plus any rank bonus, modifiers of combat tactics choice...

So with capital mil missiles its 2x(900+70%) or 3060 damage before any other multipliers are applied.

Also adding 120% to normal damage taken does this to those simple turret weapons 4x(10+120%)x3 or 264 damage before any other multipliers are applied.

And when you take damage of any kind a given amount is down converted into leader energy damage, ie. it can take 99% of a ships armor and the ship will not be destroyed but transfer enough energy damage to leader to put them out of commision.

Only armor itself reduces leader energy damage to my knowledge.

So effectively what is going on is that you're taking more damage than you think and the new armor is protecting your ship from being destroyed but increasing the damage taken, while your ships armor is still passing through the damage to your leader at it's normal rate or if this battle is taking place on a colony, then lance and missile base percentage is being applied to leaders energy before the battle even occurs.

Too many variables have been left out from your question to do the mathematics with any precision.

But this is not a bug even though  the descriptors in the build menu could be clearer when defining "resistance" and "damage taken" modfiers.

But I could be completely wrong about all of that. Maybe.

lovegaming

errr, long posts.....we will do a test as well to see what is wrong

Neminsis

@ lovegaming - Long perhaps but have I made any mistakes in my explanation?

rhonan

thanks Nem...  i figure something similar happened however i think you're incorrect on some points - to my limited knowledge.  I also think that 340% resistance divides damage by 3.4 before being taken off your health/armor value, whereas +140% damage = add +1.4 times damage (or 1.0 + 1.4).    The reduction occurs on one type of damage, the vulnerability is on another, it does not multiply the surviving damage by the vulnerability as you suggested.

however the main issue is that a ship that has less armor modules does not lose commander power so rapidy... so something has gone wrong.

what I'd really like to know is actually what impacts on commander power...  we're both guessing..  i know commander levels seem to have an impact, different weapons have different impacts.

PS: if i cant figure this out, or if this is the correct behaviour, then these new modules are useless.

Neminsis

@rohan - I've tested both the build that Pharos is using and the BC equivalent of yours pretty extensively and see nothing to suggest anything abnormal is happening. I would note that if he's UEO you can add another 10% to the missile damage as well.

The new armor works fine for me but I get a higher bonus than you're describing and the same negative modifier. So I may be past some critical point where the math goes wonky or it may just be my faction and rank armor bonus making it indecernable.

Are you testing with multiple BC/BS stacks or 1 ship vs 1 ship?

Not sure if you know but if you land on a colony with 100 lances and then return, it will say 100% energy but the next time you fight someone it will drop to 0 immediately. Have you ruled this out?

No other ways I can think to recreate this besides some variation of the same old bug that's been seeing tougher ships getting creamed by teensy ships for months now.

If you want to test this on Orion I can make myself available.

rhonan

i am testing this  1 vs 1.,.. I wonder if that is a problem.

i get great performance on this build against NPCs.  In the instance, it takes over 30K rocket fighters to kill 1 ship.  (even with low tactics on NPC commander, that's still nice)  and no commander damage there.

hadn't seen any 100 lances (don't think you'll find that on gemini as they nerfed them before they got built)

thanks for offer...  but I've not got the tech on orion.

what I'd really like to know is what's the relationship between commander and ship damage... are they linked?...  and how can you lose your commander when your ship takes no noticeable damage

Neminsis

@Rohan - "hadn't seen any 100 lances (don't think you'll find that on gemini as they nerfed them before they got built)"

Direct lance damage is nerfed but the damage by percent when occupying is still the same. 5 man fleet goes to occupy, lands with 0 energy a single shuttle comes up and sends them all home out of energy.

The only relationship between pass through damage  to leader  energy and anything else that I've been able to derive is literally only the amount of regular armor as compared to damage dealt.

The more I think about this the more it seems like you're actually taking multiple shots, like a packet burst because of connection.

I've had this happen with certain players on a regular basis. It's not as bad as it once was but since you're traveling you might be getting some sketchy connections and weird packet delays.

I would also like some clarification on the energy loss mechanic or any other information about the formula and/or order that calculations are made when it comes to combat or if damage done was ever accurately displayed it might be possible to work backwards with more confidence in the results.

As for a test on Orion, I could provide the target ships or bc equivalent (I can drop one armor module) and use some low leaders. You'd only need to build one ship mil missile, solar and repeaters.

Or devs could be nice and add a challenge feature to arena with no loss and no gain, so we could play around with this kind of stuff at our liesure...just throwing that out there again...lol