As suggested by Clangeddin

"
First- Crits should be reworked to something similar to a gemini cannon .. maybe do 5% damage of max hull+shields

Scan - obviously it is said it increases critical hit percentage.. but no one has any idea by how much.. but I suggest
.001% crit chance per scan point (1000 scan = 1% crit %)
20% of scan added to attack (5k scan = 1k attack)

Cloak
.001% crit chance reduced (1000 cloak = 1% crit % reduced)
20% of cloak added to defense (5k cloak = 1k defense)
"

Lets brainstorm this to its final form.
I would suggest that the scan and cloak only add to pvp attack/defence myself, though i dont think thats vital in any way.
I would suggest that there is a "base" critical rate that these modifiers add to. Probably about 2.5%.
I would suggest critical hits get a box up the top left like other alerts - but in blue box instead of red for the dealer, and the standard red box for the receiver.
I would suggest this is pvp only, and not vs npc's, even if they have cloak.
Obviously, as this is like a gemini cannon hit it ignores the damage cap.

Anything else?

That's not a balancing mechanic. First, max scan is way more than max cloak so attack/scan will be increased substantially more and be more more effective via crits than defense/cloak. Second, attack already has the ability to grow faster than defense. Assuming 1:60 chances for both Android Helmsmen and Rescued Prisoners, you are likely to get a 1:1 ratio over time of those particular artifacts. One Android Helmsman = 3 points of defense while one Rescued Prisoner can equal 6 points of attack.

What it means Darth, is that two maxed size ships will all modules will have about a 6.5% chance to crit on each other, assuming we put that 2.5% base in. We can easily change the base, but lets work with that number for a second as a theoretical. After all - we do not want anyone to be immune to critical hits from a similar powered ship. Luck is a factor always!

Thats a 6.5% chance to do a flat 5% of the ships total health in damage past the cap. Its not huge, but it WILL be noticed.

However, when hitting a weaker ship, that percentage noticably increases. Vs a ship with say, 3k standard cloak, they will now critical hit almost 10% of the time! Thats a noticable portion of damage cap avoiding blows.

Now vs a small ship build with NO cloak installed? its something like a 12.5% chance to critical hit, utterly avoiding the damage cap of the little ship and dealing catasrophic damage. Better yet, with no scan they will never pull this off, as the big ship will have a lot more cloak than the small ship has scan.

Adding a damage cap ignoring, hull percentage based attack into the core of the game looks like it solves a lot of problems of high end combat, and 'invincible' but tiny scan/cloak ships.

Short version of that is: Strong ships can kill weak ships even easier with this mechanic added.

Well.. yes.
Thats kind of the point - but you also have to run the percentages to see how little value it adds when fighting a ship that is weak.

Its a rare day that i do less than 1k damage a hit to anyone on the battle tab. If i was a big ship build, i have a, say, 10% chance of dealing 5% damage.
Vs a standard, 20k hull ship thats only 1000 damage.

So effectivly, i would have a one in ten chance of saving myself 5 energy per attack. It will make very little difference in the overall kill.

Its when you fight the "invincible" ships that it actually will begin to matter. Vs a strong player of 40k hull, you now have a chance of 2k damage. Vs a 80k hull monster, you now have a chance of 4k damage.

Now, hit me as a lazuli fixer, and instead of doing 300 damage, a crit will do 5-6k damage. Suddenly it has worth - but the damage done vs that little 500 guy is still exciting, despite it only representing less than a normal 5 energy hit.

Well, thats what i think anyway - I am fully aware the numbers need tweaking still.

Also - if you dont like the add 20% attack defence thing, thats cool. I honestly thought it was in there mainly to give a synergy bonus to massive ship builds, as opposed to it being vital like the crit thing.

EDIT: Just realised i ran these numbers assuming crit hits only took hull into account, which was my original suggestion. I tend to prefer that (Why would a critical hit do extra damage based on a projected shield?) but if you add shields in, add 50% damage to the critical hit total.

I obviously +1 this suggestion and fully stand behind Golg's math and reasoning

Honestly this is a interesting idea im no math wiz but anything that gives cloaking a use would be welcome and it would give more use to the artifacts that currently are rarely used in pvp for the scan and cloaking. As darth pointed out it would give the big powerful ships a reason to be big and powerful currently with the system as it is now a rank 100 could kill a rank 1000 if they had enough energy and emps/disarming bombs.

Reworking the crit system would add another layer of tactics open to pvp granted it would also require npcs to have a static cloak and scan rating.

To be honest, i just figured they would simply make it that you can not critical on npc ships.

My honest intent is to make scan and cloak useful, and have it actually effect combat in a meaninful way.

Heck, i can imagine high energy ships with maxed scan and little weapons, built around having the percision to critical enemies to death.
I can dream of zolazins and spies becoming viable pvp ships, due to their near immunity to critical hits.

I want scan and cloak to be something that isnt tacked onto your ship once defence, hull, and weapons are maxed, but another viable path for a growing ship.

I wholeheartedly agree that Scan and Cloak need to have more bearing on attacks. I mean, it SAYS they do, but.... I just feel that there needs to be a stabilizing factor comparing Scan vs Cloak. 1 to 1 is always going to be in favor of scan and that doesn't really fix anything.

I am aware of this - but if that was truely the problem, it would be easily enough fixed by simply making scan grant less of a bonus to your critical hit modifier.

Honesty, i feel that a roughly 5% chance to crit vs two maxed ships sounds about right - but if you feel otherwise, all that is needed is to reduce the default critical chance.

I may be stuck on the 5% due to dungeons and dragons - for me a natural 20 always deserves to be a critical hit, unless you have special powers (zolazin or spy) to prevent it.

I understand where you're coming from, I played the original D&D when I was a kid.

It just comes down to finding that "happy medium" to balance those stats.

This may just be a matter of perception difference between us.

I am imagining a critical hit system where equal ships have a small (natural 20) chance to critical vs each other. Explorers or buffed scan ships would have a 10% chance, roughly (19-20)
Debuffed ships or low scan ships would effectivly add one to the critical range (so 19-20 vs normal ships, or 18-20 vs high scan ships)

Those percent are a tiny bit off, but gives an idea about what i am imagining

I get the feeling you imagine a critical hit should only exist vs a weakness? I.e two equal ships should not critical, but an explorer would on a 20, etc?

EDIT: For those who do not play DnD, you use a twenty sided dice when attacking. On an attack roll, if the number 20 comes up, it is a critical hit. Certain weapons have a greater chance, so a 19-20 means rolling either a 19 or a 20, where a 18-20 means 18, 19, and 20 all can be critical hits. Each number is a 5% chance.

I agree with this, numbers might need some tweaking but overall +1

HAHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Yeah, that sums it up
Perfectly actually. Especially how i want to add more variety and depth to the different build choices!

It would be nice to see some use to cloak/scan that is actually visible. As a member of AU, we are known to have powerful ships, and while we're not exactly the rank 1000+ monsters of other legions, we have seen little to no effect of similar stat ships, where one had scan/cloak and the other did not.


It would be good to see what builds we can cook up in our elite shipyards, should the status quo change of ship stats and their balance.

So let them , they the weeklings can still shoot artys.

I dont have any super cocrete data, but i have run tests enough to know that crits can pack a rather mean punch. gemini cannon damage should be left at that, providing that on a crit would be way to powerful.

last time i did a crit test I used a control, and random BT hits

each test consisted of 10 shots, no buffs or debuffs, just switching gear around.

with my current ship build I tracked the damage I did the control target ( a rank 332 with reasonable stats for our rank range ), damage ranged from 220 - 497.

I sacrificed 4 cannons for 2 scannners : net loss -> 716 attack / net gain -> 1920 scan

damage ranged from 184 - 1139, crit 3/10, lowest crit was at 724 damage

random BT hits, I only used the scan heavy build, picked 4 random people, lowest shot was 882.

Remember, by the very nature of using the BT to find random ships, once you changed your scan score you were getting different ships.

To test it properly, you need to hit the same ship, again and again, in a variety of configurations.

Though very glad to see that others actually perform tests to find optimal builds

FOR SCIENCE!

I hate to be one to criticize your data gathering technique, but the calculation to determine damage done on an attack has a random number with a range of possible outputs. Your second round just had more "good karma" from the RNG.

Using math I shall prove you wrong.

okay so first to remind everyone the equation for the damage dealt is
defender's DC*tanh([0.6-1/.6]*Attacker's attack/[5*defender's defense])
Since he did not change mods during the attacks we can assume the only variable is the RNG part [0.6-1/.6] and reduce it to

damage dealt=DC*tanh([.6-1/.6]*x)

If the 184 is the lowest possible (not likely but to prove a point) and 724 is the highest (clearly wasn't but again proving a point).

we get the equations:

184=DC*tanh(.6x) and 724=DC*tanh(x/.6)
using system of equations to solve for the unknowns we can rearrange the equations to get rid of the DC variable.
724/tanh(x/.6)=184/tanh(.6x)
rearrange
724/184=tanh(x/.6)/tanh(.6x)

since tanh(x/.6)/tanh(.6x) is asymptotic (it never quiet reaches) 25/9 or 2.77777777777777777.... which is less than 724/184
thus no value of x works and the random part is not to blame it is critical hits.