This is a little something from the EC Discord Michael Chan - Today at 11:18 AM @Anvillior Wouldn't be completely out of the question (pen/toughness is not communicated well whatsoever right now). All I did to the mitigation when I rejoin the project (after helping on a Fallout 4 app for 8 month) was to make it into some more easily itemisable (with diminishing returns) rather than simply raw deduction from damage. Without looking into it in great detail, I would probably just have the mit on the armour portion and none on health - I worry that different two different mitigations and health/armour pools would add unnecessary complexity. Orks would have a lot more health in general vs armour pool/toughness. For Eldar you would need to consider their agility. If you want to let us know how you feel about the existing system, I would start with a good initial post on the forums. If your fellow community members want chime in with constructive criticism that would be great. I know how hard it is to keep things on topic! Then make some noise and refer to this thread. My higher ups are the ones that need to me made aware if it's an important issue for the community. They prioritise my work. Ok? /end wall of text And that was Michael Chan's personal opinions on the subject So I'd like to make the thread as he said. On-topic, opinions and discussions on how to fix Toughness, make it a community priority. Personally I agree with Michael Chan Neither Penetration nor toughness are well communicated, and that toughness should affect only armor. I also believe that there should be two differnt kinds of mitigation. One for health, one for armor. Low penetration weapons should be more effective against the health mitigation. I also think the base mitigations for marines should lean towards toughness and more armor while the base mitigations for eldar and orks should lean towards health mitigation and more health. Alternatively, have low penetration weapons do more damage but make that toughness take a decent bite out of their overall damage. Also played around with the idea of toughness being a straight percentage of damage mitigation for any amount over 100, thus penetration would subtract from that percentage. Ie: A 140 toughness rating is 40% mitigation but against a 115 pen weapon it is reduced to 25% since 40-15 is 25.
Two different mitigations? You mean like how Space Marine had weapons that were more effective vs one HP type than the other? eg: Plasma being more effective vs armour than health.
If you're going to limit Toughness to mitigating for only one hit-point type, make it health imo. Putting it on armor seems like overkill considering it already has the benefit of regenerating automatically.
Just some initial thoughts/questions: You say "fix toughness", but don't state what's wrong with it. What's the problem we're trying to fix here? From the TT, Toughness is a separate stat to Armour Save - its possible to have high toughness with low armour (may not actually be that way, but it's possible). Those who play or have played TT will expect that distinction, so Toughness only applying to armour will be counter-intuitive to many. If Toughness only applies to Armour, then we will need larger health pools, or the second type of mitigation you mention. But if you have mitigation for both Armour and Health, why not combine it into one Toughness stat for simplicity? If the effect of Toughness is poorly communicated now, how much harder is it going to be with two types of mitigation? One of the problems as I see it is that it's all or nothing: If you're getting penetrated (giggity), then Toughness is of 0 value. If you're getting mitigation, then Toughness is the best investment per point in increasing your TTK (LP efficiency aside).
Toughness works as a one-off value, creating two different types for health and armor would bloat the system, and just like the relationship that damage mods/pen mods have in the game now, one choice of type would always be better than the other. We don't need to go rewriting the system, just communicating the toughness/pen relationship, which is sensible enough on its own as-is. Simplicity in these systems makes for a better game.
So that would be toughness acting as your resilience after your armor is broken by fire before it can repair itself as a saving/fort roll?
I don't mean to sound insulting, but I can't follow this at all - can you break it down, and mention which comment you're replying to?
I didn't know pen/toughness was the problem. I thought it was the values that equipment were assigned. An example: Grab a power sword, get 140 pen, slice away.
Michael Chan needs to fix the plasma cannon before he starts making something bad worse. To say that it is poorly explained as is (how does one show a mathematical function as an in-game tooltip?), and then suggest that the solution is to make it affect armor and health pools differently - where are you even going with this I don't even.
