Hey all.

More and more i see comments like 'nothing should destroy this, nothing should pierce that" and etc. It is hard for a mod maker to get critisized for mechanics with which players are not familiar with. Especially when they provide real-life examples of some steel battleships and modern weapons...

So, let me clarify how stuff is working in SE to avoid any further such comments.


Each block in SE has a cummulative integrity (hit pointsl) which is an integrity of used components multiplied by amounts of these still present in block. The more stuff the block has - the more durable it is. This is as simple as that.

Numbers
- A steel plate, the most basic one, has integrity of 100 points by default.
- A large grid light armor block has just 25 plates or 2500 integrity points.
- A gatling gun by default deals 180 damage per hit. In other words it destroys 1 steel plate and 80% of the other one in block per each hit. With a rate of fire of 600 rpm one gatling takes 14 hits to destroy 1 ligh arnor block in less than 2.5 seconds.

For large heavy armor block the math is the same. The difference is that heavy one uses more steel plates and some metal grids (each with integrity of 30 pts). Total integrity for HA is 16500 - 6 times more durable than light armor.

And that is all. There is nothing like damage resistance, no damade reduction, no deflection and such. Just more 'hit points'.

Every weapon in SE can deal damage to every block regardless of what its name states. 'Heavy' is just a name opposite of light. 'Blastdoor' is just a fancy name for the block. 'Bulletproof' is nothing more than an attempt to make a thick glass sound like durable.


Armor blocks type have another pool of hidden 'hit points' that is used in calculation of so called 'deformation'. When smth hits a block that is deformable (light and heavy armor blocks, internal wall block) it takes both integrity damage and this deformation one. While you can see how much integrity a block lost by simply pointing on it with welder/grinder - there is no way to see what deformation damage is.

And that is the problem - no one knows what exactly is used in calculation of it.

The other problem of deformation - the major one! - is that deformation potentially kills any balancing involved in modding. At certain damage per shot values it starts to ignore integrity and just kills the armor block outright with anything touching it. The greater the damage - the more blocks are wiped out per hit. At some point (above 25000 damage) deformation completelly wipes out 3x3x1 section of any armor regardless of integrity and anything that is touching it by size boundaries is wiped out regardless of own integrity!

Deformation can be 'swtiched off', but that requires all blocks to become invulnerable to it.
Coding this out is possible (and already in the mod). Even on some specific basis rather than globally (all blocks except for light armor, for example).


Each block can be assigned a certain damage modifer that increases / decreases the damage it receives. It can effectively simulate some special armor cover that resists damage or whatever else you may come up with (like making small grid armor much tougher to allow for fighters / tanks to survive longer in fights).