Damage and armour types

[macemen]

I've been thinking about the damage and armour system of 0 A.D. EA.
Maybe this was discussed already in other topics or there are future plans that I'm unaware of. Feel free to enlighten/dismiss me. Anyway this is my two cents about the above mentioned damage and armour system in 0 A.D. EA (EA in the reminder of the post).

Currently there are three damage types:

• hack
• pierce
• crush

And, conversely three armour types (for each of the listed damage type). Each unit deals some damage in one or more of these damage types and has armour values for all three. The damage types dealt by the unit reflect some realistic approximation of the damage caused by the unit's weapon. This system, while it's more realistic, has some weaknesses. Some examples:

• Rams should be practically impregnable to range unit attacks. To achieve this its pierce armour is huge (99%). This achieves the desired effect as all ranged units have piercing attack (some have piercing and crush but the ram has very high defence against crush attacks as well so this doesn't cause a problem). But it also has an undesired effect: rams are practically invulnerable to spear wielding units, as those also have piercing attack, which is highly unrealistic as rams would be very vulnerable to all melee attacks. In real life attackers would not go and try to hack the wooden parts to pieces but attack the people moving it who would be vulnerable to attacks in the confined interior of the ram.
• Pikemen should be very hard to tackle in close-combat. To achieve this it has very high hack and piercing armour levels. But this also results in being very hard to kill via range units as well. While this is desirable to some extent its unlikely that real pikemen were as good at defending against range attacks as they were defending against melee attacks, due to having a smallish shield.

In general this system makes it very hard to implement a proper counter system, which in my opinion is highly desirable for an RTS . The reason is that a unit's ability to defend against range and melee attacks cannot be detached from each other. Increasing one, in some cases, will increase the other as well, also discriminating against particular weapon types, leading to absurd situations, like the tank-like ram that some civilizations simply cannot defend themselves against as they have very limited access to sword infantry/cavalry.

I think there are two ways to fix this:

1. Go all the way with the realistic system. Instead of units only having three armour levels, take other aspects of a unit into consideration: its shield (or the lack of it), its ability (skill) to defend itself from melee and ranged attacks.
   Pros: Can be very realistic. Fine-grained definition of unit's strength/weaknesses, units behave as you instinctly expect (knowing their historical role).
   Cons: Complicated system that is hard to implement and model mentally. Lots of numbers to juggle, one could say it doesn't really fit an RTS. Elite units tend to become strong all-rounders, prime candidates for mindless massing without any tactics or strategy.
2. Go the Age of * route. Units either have melee or ranged primary attack and have melee and range armour levels (maybe a third for siege/crush).
   Pros: Very few numbers to juggle. A unit has HP, speed, an attack and two armour levels. Easy to build a good counter system that forces players to carefully consider the composition of their armies. Easy to build a mental model of.
   Cons: Can be overly simplistic at cases.

I personally prefer option (2) for being simpler and for already being familiar to people coming from the Age of * universe (of which EA is member in some sense).

What do you guys think? Feel free to add additional options or add/dispute the pros/cons on the presented ones.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

This is all remedied by removing the pierce attack from spear units. "Hack" isn't supposed to represent some kind of difference between puncturing and slashing, it's supposed to represent "Melee" attacking. Remove the pierce attack from spear dudes and then you don't have to have highish pierce armor for pikemen. By removing the pierce attack you'd necessarily have to increase their hack attack to compensate and now they're better against battering rams.  

[macemen]

7 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

This is all remedied by removing the pierce attack from spear units. "Hack" isn't supposed to represent some kind of difference between puncturing and slashing, it's supposed to represent "Melee" attacking. Remove the pierce attack from spear dudes and then you don't have to have highish pierce armor for pikemen. By removing the pierce attack you'd necessarily have to increase their hack attack to compensate and now they're better against battering rams.  

This is very similar to option 2 (practically the same). Have all melee units deal hack attack and all ranged ones deal pierce attack, leaving crush for siege weapons.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

46 minutes ago, macemen said:

This is very similar to option 2 (practically the same). Have all melee units deal hack attack and all ranged ones deal pierce attack, leaving crush for siege weapons.

Indeed! It's what I did in DE.