"Armor Penetration" abilities

odinforever20000 · June 2016

Some "Armor Penetration" abilities have undergone an under-the-hood change to the way they are applied to foes and will have zero impact on overall effectiveness of each ability, but does resolve an issue where each effect could sometimes stack momentarily:
[Pen] weapon mod (space + ground)
Armor Penetration Skill (space + ground)
Intelligence Fleet (R1 and R2)
Enhanced Armor Penetration (Delta Rep T2 Offensive)
Console - Tactical - Harmonic Resonance Relay
Subwarp Sheath (Pilot Starship Trait)

...o..hows it work now? If it doesnt stack does it renew? Or just take the highest number?

legendarylycan · June 2016

well, these are the relevant bits of info from the attribute thread, so...see if you can puzzle out the answer from the descriptions, because every time i think i've finally managed to figure out how AP is supposed to work, they go and change the rules

borticuscryptic wrote: »

2) Armor Penetration

As some of our more savvy players are no doubt already aware, Armor Penetration is effectively an instant Damage Resistance Rating reduction, applied to the target of your damage at the moment that damage is applied. For each source of Armor Penetration, this meant another negative-aspect Resistance modifier applied to the target, per source of damage. Imagine the number of 'damage floaters' flying above the ship you are firing on at any point in time... and now imagine an additional AttribMod being applied for each and every one, which is handling your Armor Penetration calculations.

That's a lot of AttribMods. But it doesn't stop there... Armor Pen's negative-aspect Resistance modifier is actually using the "All Damage" Attribute Set, previously mentioned. So it's not one Attrib, but 16. And even though this modifier exists only for the briefest fraction of a second on your target, the sheer volume of attachments being applied can easily cause the AttribMod Cap to be exceeded. Especially when multiple players, each using multiple sources of Armor Pen, are all firing on a single target. While part of this is going to be improved by tackling the Attribute Set issue mentioned above, it's by no means a complete solution. The core problem here is how Armor Penetration itself needs to fit into our mathematical damage calculations, and what we've been doing to make it work that way.

SOLUTION:

Instead of relying upon an outgoing effect that attaches to the target, to reduce that target's effective damage resistance, we have expanded the core damage formula to include a new aspect that can instead live on the Source of damage, as a passive effect. In other words, Armor Penetration effects will be rebuilt in the near future, so that they no longer attach to every source of outgoing damage and apply AttribMods to the target, but instead reference the damage source's "Resistance Ignore" aspect.

Using this new mathematical aspect, we will be able to ensure that the effectiveness of Armor Penetration remains completely unchanged, while at the same time drastically reducing the number of AttribMods applied by such effects, and subsequently reducing the impact that this modifier has on power performance.

borticuscryptic wrote: »

WITH ONE EXCEPTION.

We're aware of a bug that currently occurs, where Armor Pen mods will occasionally 'stack' effectiveness on a target, if you happen to land multiple effects within the same fraction of a second. This is a bug, and we've been considering ways to fix it for some time now.

After these changes, since Armor Pen will live on the SOURCE instead of the TARGET, this stacking behavior will finally be fixed. This will result in a slight decrease of damage output for high-end players using multiple sources of Armor Penetration, as they were likely benefiting from this bug.

r5e4w3q2 · June 2016

The formatting for the list is a bit off, This line applies to both the attributes sets change and the armor penetration change.

For more details, please visit the following forum thread for more details: http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline/#/discussion/1215741/powers-performance-update-may-16

borticuscryptic wrote: »

We're aware of a bug that currently occurs, where Armor Pen mods will occasionally 'stack' effectiveness on a target, if you happen to land multiple effects within the same fraction of a second. This is a bug, and we've been considering ways to fix it for some time now.

After these changes, since Armor Pen will live on the SOURCE instead of the TARGET, this stacking behavior will finally be fixed. This will result in a slight decrease of damage output for high-end players using multiple sources of Armor Penetration, as they were likely benefiting from this bug.

autumnturning · June 2016

Short answer:

[Pen] previously debuffed the target, now it is buffing the caster. This prevents synergy stacking of multiple hits in the same fraction of a second and reduces a cause of server performance issues.

welcome2earf · June 2016

How much does armor pen stack and how? For ground combat, you get the one trait from crafting "Penetrating Rounds" that gives you 5% armor pen and then there's the "Penetration" trait that gives you 10% armor pen. (Huhuhuh he said "penetration" huihuhuh"

So - do they stack? IS it really much of a diff between the two? Has anyone checked?

e30ernest · June 2016

I asked that same question in stobuilds and this was the answer I got.

https://redd.it/4jjxun

welcome2earf · June 2016

e30ernest wrote: »

I asked that same question in stobuilds and this was the answer I got.

https://redd.it/4jjxun

tl;dr. that thread was all about space. I know the dynamics/mechanics are similar, but was hoping for something a bit more succinct. lol

"Armor Penetration" abilities

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