Is this a bug? Bushido and Carbide Carapace

[erik dela cruz]

I'm playing 1.07a with the NW Devices, Excalibur Corp and the mod with scuttling and the Millenium Falcon.
I'm now at St. Kat's and I changed armor in the Bushido Arms with carbide carapace and found a quite puzzling change in armor hp after replacing it in the Arcology dock. Here's what I mean:

You see the armor has a 200 hp value and after after being attached to my ship without enhancement:

I'm not complaining for this is favorable for the player but is this normal?

[Atarlost]

That is how carbide carapace is supposed to work: If all your segments are carbide carapace it has 200 HP. If they aren't it has 150 HP.

[erik dela cruz]

That is how carbide carapace is supposed to work: If all your segments are carbide carapace it has 200 HP. If they aren't it has 150 HP.

I never thought of that but thanks Atarlost. You see I never tried using Carbide Carapace before so this is somewhat strange to me. Your mod sure has got loads of surprises. Awesome.

Thanks man.

[erik dela cruz]

....and next time I'll check the codes to find out the other surprises in it. Hehehe.

[Cirevam]

One bug I noticed with carbide carapace is that if it gets damaged, replacing and reinstalling a damaged segment brings it back up to full strength. I can't remember if it affected other damaged segments and I don't know if people know about this already, but hey, I never complained about spending half as many credits to repair my armour.

[digdug]

One bug I noticed with carbide carapace is that if it gets damaged, replacing and reinstalling a damaged segment brings it back up to full strength

this is definitely a bug. can someone confirm it ? and, if so, make a ticket ?

[PM]

I just tried this. If the armor takes 100 damage or less, the damage goes only to the bonus hp. (This is similar to how temporary hp works in other games.) Say armor is 225/300, then a carapace segment gets removed to break the set, it drops to 200/200 (300). Then if the set is restored, +100 gets added back to make the formerly damaged segment 300/300.

However, if the segment takes more than 100 damage, the damage above 100 remains. Say armor is 150/300, then a carapace segment gets removed to break the set, the max hp drops to 200, for 150/200 (300). Then if the set is restored, +100 gets added back to strengthen the armor to 250/300.

I have exploited this in my newest version of deflector shield armor in my Items Pack 912 mod. There, armor has 0 hp, until a set is complete, and the bonus hp serves as a psuedo-shield.

[Star Weaver]

I made a ticket for the issue starting at Cirevam's post here: http://wiki.neurohack.com/transcendence/trac/ticket/898

[PM]

Is this really a bug? After all, the player usually needs to spend money at a station to remove and install armor to complete or break an armor set. It may even be intended since this is exactly how temporary hp works in some games. In D&D, use vampiric touch to get more temporary hp, take a little damage but still have temporary hp left, then the leftover temporary hp disappears after a while.

The alternative I can think of is all damage stays after breaking an armor set. This leads to armor becoming more damaged when the set is broken. Say armor is 50/300, then a carapace segment gets removed to break the set. With all damage stays change, the armor with 50/300 drops to -50/200. What happens then? Does the ship spontaneously combust? Some games, such as the first Diablo game, really kill characters if the player removes life boosting equipment that lowers hit points to zero or less. Would this happen in Trancendence?

[digdug]

PM posts really make a point.

I support PM's point of view to not consider this as a bug.

[Atarlost]

What about doing it by the ratios? When a set breaks multiply the current HP of all segments by 3/4. (maxHP in set/maxHP out of set) When a set is formed multiply the current HP of all segments by 4/3. (maxHP out of set/maxHP in set)

You'll gain or lose 1hp in roundoff when currentHP and currentMax are mutually prime, but that's a lot better than the massive HP gain or loss with addition.

[PM]

If a ratio needs to divide something by maxHP, this will cause division-by-zero for armor with maxHP of zero, such as armor with a -90% HP malus or my custom psuedo-shield armor, which has 0 hp until a set is formed.

[Atarlost]

I'm a little more concerned with making the vanilla armor behave rationally. Giving your armor 1 base HP won't destroy the concept.

[PM]

I think the set bonus interaction as it works now in Transcendence is fine. It is also rational, as much as boosted 100+% health in other games. May or may not be realistic, but if not, it is still an acceptable break from reality.

For the shield armor, I prefer base maxHP of zero because hp% mods have no effect on them. Giving it 1 maxHP may not destroy the concept, but it will make it look sloppy, especially once maxHP% mods get involved.

It is not only the shield armor concept, but also any armor with less than 10 maxHP. Armor with 1 maxHP becomes zero with any hp% malus. Armor with less than 10 maxHP, such as ultra light titanium, can get 0 maxHP with a sufficiently large hp% malus.

Don't get me wrong, ratio is not a bad idea if you can prevent division-by-zero cases.

[Atarlost]

I don't believe -hp% mods are ever used on armor. There are no consumables that inflict them, random maluses do not appear in shops, nor have I seen them in loot, and ships are not generated with enhancements on armor unless specifically coded.

Bounds checking to set the return for a zero denominator is possible, but zero max HP armor is an edge case that does not come up in the normal game. It could be as easily be declared an invalid value at the xml parser.

1 hp armor would only be effected by % boosts greater than 90, which do not normally occur for armor. I believe the greatest possible armor enhancement without cheating or modding is +50%. I do not believe that there are to date any mods that allow further enhancing of armor beyond that. That your corner case exploiting mod might have a mostly cosmetic +1 hp when used with another not yet extant mod that permits twice as much armor enhancement as is possible in the unmodded game is not something that constitutes a reason to not fix exploitable and unrealistic behavior in a vanilla armor type.