The latest block HP and mass rebalance has made block HP proportional to the amount of space their shape takes compared to a cube. It is logical, however it introduced a problem with sloped armor. The small triangles (at least from what I've seen on the workshop) are rarely used alone. Most likely they are a part of a sloped surface. The new HP system for blocks introduces damage patterns like this: This is the result of a few shots from a rocket launcher. I wasn't aiming specifically at smaller blocks. You will get similar result whenever you use a weapon that cannot destroy a full cube in a single shot but deals enough AoE damage to destroy more fragile blocks. I thought about one of the two solutions: 1. Leave mass of the blocks the same, but set a lower limit (for example 50%) of block HP compared to the full cube. That means that half block and the little triangle would have the same amount of HP, but I believe it is still better than the current situation. 2. Set the lower limit, but scale the block HP from it to the maximum HP proportional to the space it occupies. For example, with the lower limit of 40% Hardened Steel Block L has the following HP values based on shape: Corner Long D - 475 HP (up from 125), Cube Half - 700 HP (up from 500), Corner B - 560 HP (up from 266) Cube - 1000 HP (as before) I prefer the second option, though both have their advantages and disadvantages.
This looks like it's working as intended. Yes, the low HP of the more sliver-like blocks will mean that they get blown off more easily, but that's what repair bays are for (to automate the restoration process). On the plus side, it's easy to tell where you got hit.
I'm not sure about working as intended part. When you look at undamaged surface, there are no slivers there. It looks solid, just sloped. What you are seeing here are just artifacts of a building system based on cubes simulating angled surfaces. These changes are a huge nerf to anything with sloped surfaces, I think. Building a cube makes your ship much more durable even if you use the same amount of armor blocks. That's not how it works in real life either, where sloped armor is often essential.
Well, yes, but that's unavoidable given the building system. But when facing threats in 3D (rather than in largely-2D as far as modern mobile armor is concerned), sloped surfaces are relative; the side of a cube is a sloped surface when approached from the right set of angles. The only consistent way to handle this would be to modify the collision handling code to take the angle to surface normal into account when computing damage; certainly doable, but the devs would have to decide to do it. The crux of the matter, I think, is this: That the same amount of material is consumed regardless of the size/shape of the resulting block is what I would argue is the real problem here.
Of course, this technique relies on predicting the most likely direction of attack. I'm not arguing that Empyrion should take angle into account when calculation damage. I'm arguing that you should not be penalized as much for trying to build a vessel that looks like it has sloped armor. Tanks for example often use sloped armor in real life and many designs of heavy combat vessels in the game try to do the same. Replicas also often use copious amount of these smaller blocks. For example, this vessel https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1619710813&searchtext= went from 365 795 HP to 276 447. That's 25% reduction. It's not an insignificant amount, and the ship is far from intricately unreasonable shape.
Counterpoint: HP was massively inflated for some blocks previously. The new values are what you would expect when considering the volume of material involved; if you build a rotated cube out of sloped blocks, it will have just as much HP as a non-rotated cube of the same dimensions. Ultimately, what matters is how much material there is between the vital parts of your ship and incoming damage, regardless of how that material is distributed onto a grid. As long as it costs the same per unit material to repair/replace a given block, I guess I don't see a problem (since that's not the case currently, that is, in my mind, the problem).
Actually, the composite rotated cube may have the same HP, but all weapons that deal AoE damage, i.e. most weapons designed against vehicles, deal increased damage to the rotated (composite) cube because they affect multiple blocks at once. Edit: so, sloped blocks are penalized twice. First, you need more materials with sloped armor to get the same HP, and then it is still more fragile than full cubes because most weapons that deal damage against vehicles also deal AoE damage.
Personally I think this looks pretty fine and dandy... pockmarks of damage. Divots. Craters. Not like that overall surface is completely weaker because the loss of the tiny bits... you still have to blast your way through the thicker blocks, as the tiny ones did not expose much of anything. Its just in general, a shaped ship will have less HP than a solid cube. I don't see the issue with this. If all you care about is HP, then make a fucking solid cube of a ship and stop whining. The issue is what geostar brought up, about resource cost for a tiny sliver is the same as a full on cube. But fixing that is an entirely different topic that we've had multiple times in the past.
