Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Deflection, Pass-Through and You

Looking over PvP Deflections


By: George Argyropoulos
a/k/a Dragon_Bane   



The community got an informative post about Pass-Through (aka Minimum Damage to some) dropped today by our Favorite Developer, GD Ramikan... er... I mean GD Raikan. Joking aside(he takes it in massive stride), it is a very, very good step towards the transparency the community has been clamoring for, for the past year or more. The post can be read here.

I would like to put this into a bit of context as well- I have been getting a few complaints about this 'Making things overly-complicated' and 'They Kixeye'd the armors', etc. This is a game developer trying to explain the mechanical functions of a piece of software. He is trying to explain the actual functioning of the program. We don't need all this information to play the game, but there are those of us that DO delve this far into the game mechanics and this is what allows us to come up with things that 'break' the game or solve puzzles presented to us in a more efficient manner than if we were not so familiar with these aspects of the game.

Does everyone need to know the inner workings to this much of a degree? Probably not. In fact, there is a TL;DNR version at the end for lazy pirates! Disclaimer: This is how I've read and understand the mechanic. ;)


Deflection and Pass-Through :

As we had always presumed, and eventually told, there is a pass-through (minimum damage) value associated with various items in the game. We have not had any clarification about anything but this so far. However, what we did learn today is that anything that has deflection attached to it in any way has a pass-through value associated with it and it is only applicable if the damage is reduced to 0 by that deflection.

"...any item that has [Damage Type] Deflection (e.g. - Ballistic Deflection) also has a stat known as Pass-through. Pass-through is the amount of damage that a hull will take if the damage of a single projectile would be less than the corresponding deflection value."

I want to repeat this because it bears repeating. The only time you will receive the pass-through damage (minimum damage) is if the damage is reduced to zero by that deflection. In that instance, when the damage hits zero, the minimum damage is applied. (Of note, if the projectile has less damage than the pass-through amount, you take the *lower* of the two amounts.)

Let's do some examples:


Ballistic Projectile damage : 2,500

Armor Ballistic Deflection : 5,000
Armor Minimum Damage : 200

Hull Ballistic Deflection : 0
Hull Ballistic Pass-Through Damage : 0

PT Damage : 200


In this instance, you are being shot with a ballistic projectile that does 2,500 damage and your armor has a ballistic deflection value of 5,000 and your hull has a ballistic deflection value of 0 for a total deflection of 5,000 damage against ballistic. The deflection reduces the amount of damage to 0 so you will receive 200 damage to the hull directly. There is no other modifier applied to this damage.


Ballistic Projectile damage : 5,500

Armor Ballistic Deflection : 5,000
Armor Minimum Damage : 200

Hull Ballistic Deflection : 1,000
Hull Ballistic Pass-Through Damage : 100

PT Damage : 200


In this instance, you are being shot with a ballistic projectile that does 5,500 damage, your armor has a ballistic deflection value of 5,000 and your hull has a ballistic deflection value of 1,000 for a total deflection of 6,000 damage against ballistic. The combined deflection reduces the amount of damage to 0, however, since you have 2 disparate minimum damage values, the greater of the two is used, so you will receive 200 damage to the hull directly. There is no other modifier applied to this damage.


Ballistic Projectile damage : 6,100

Armor Ballistic Deflection : 5,000
Armor Minimum Damage : 200

Hull Ballistic Deflection : 1,000
Hull Ballistic Pass-Through Damage : 100

PT Damage : 0 (100 damage remaining)


In this instance, you are being shot with a ballistic projectile that does 6,100 damage, your armor has a ballistic deflection value of 5,000 and your hull has a ballistic deflection value of 1,000 for a total deflection of 6,000 damage against ballistic. The deflection reduces the amount of damage to a remainder of 100 so you will receive 0 damage to the hull directly via pass-through, and the remaining 100 damage processes through any operation left in the order of operations before going to the hull directly.


Ballistic Projectile damage : 500

Armor Ballistic Deflection : 1,000
Armor Minimum Damage : 100

Hull Ballistic Deflection : 1,000
Hull Ballistic Pass-Through Damage : 300

PT Damage : 300

In this instance, you are being shot with a ballistic projectile that does 500 damage, your armor has a ballistic deflection value of 1,000 and your hull has a ballistic deflection value of 1,000 for a total deflection of 2,000 damage against ballistic. Again, the combined deflection reduces the amount of damage to 0, however, once again, since you have 2 disparate minimum damage values, the greater of the two is used, so you will receive the greater, 300 damage, to the hull directly. There is no other modifier applied to this damage.

This is why it matters with regard to the older hulls. The largest value is used to determine the pass-through value. We do not know their numbers as of yet, however, Kixeye is working on getting these values added to blueprints as an ongoing effort to get player-requested information into the blueprints. Will it make the blueprints larger/longer? Yes. Do I mind? No. I like having the info rather than guessing or trying to find 'alternative sources' of this information (information which I believe we should have already).

There is one caveat that has come up that does need to get mentioned here and it goes something like this;

Ballistic Projectile damage : 50

Armor Ballistic Deflection : 1,000
Armor Minimum Damage : 100

Hull Ballistic Deflection : 1,000
Hull Ballistic Pass-Through Damage : 300

PT Damage : 50

If the actual damage of the projectile does not originally exceed the pass-through value, the original damage value is used for the pass-through value. So say you are running one of the older Bypass chainguns or Torrent missiles, make sure your hull is designed in such a way that the per salvo value is higher than the deflection value of the new armor.

Of note: Remember - all damage values are halved after all this, while armor points are not, so when you're playing the pass-through game, you should keep that in mind.




TL;DNR : 

The new armors have a higher pass-through value for damage likely because of the massive amounts of deflection they provide. They work and are balanced for the new and planned T7 hulls, but care should be taken on older hulls as it may increase the pass-through values of native deflections on those hulls.

11 comments:

  1. thanks for the info, great article

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is all complicated and I'm waiting for builds before starting adding this new armour. I still need a week to get my Hydra fleet ready anyway.
    So what is best to add to the Bounty prizes ? Kings writ? HOPE? Courage ? etc

    ReplyDelete
  3. Cheers bro your the only person who has explained it in a way i can understand good article keep up the good work

    ReplyDelete
  4. easy explination.. like it
    but.. seriously.. they expect the everyday pirate to understand this? not gonna happen

    ReplyDelete
  5. So what happens to passthrough if you use 1 piece of armor? Is the passthrough for ALL damage types now set to 360 even though the armor affects 3 types (and not all 6)?

    ReplyDelete
  6. I really like your site and content so much,thanks for sharing the information keep updating, looking forward for more posts.

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  7. well I am not an engineer or a programer so this is all very complicated to me.....however if a ship has 100 total defflection "say ballistic" armor / hull combined and it gets hit with 105
    total damage from a ballistic salvo " the total damage taken could be 5" why do engineers need to complicate everything with mathlematics and equsion?

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