Future changes in the mechanics of resistances and structural parts

In the update 1.25, 2 major aspects of the game will be changed:

System of damage types and resistances to them
Structural parts in general and grilles in particular

These changes are intended to make the assembly of armoured cars more varied and meaningful. Structural parts will become more specialized — depending on the faction, the parts will have their own features.

The system of different damage types and resistance to them supports the idea of variety in faction parts.

With these two new systems, players will be able to create armoured vehicles that are well protected against, for example, plasma weapons. And their firepower, on the contrary, will be focused against players who are not protected from flamethrowers and lasers.

1. System of damage types and resistances to them

In order to better understand how the new system will work, let’s briefly review the current system. Currently, weapons can deal damage in four possible ways:

Direct damage. This is damage caused by a bullet, shell, plasma beam, etc. directly into the vehicle part. Saws also deal direct damage.
Blast damage. This is the damage from any explosion, be it a “Pulsar” or “Executioner” projectile’s explosion.
Melee damage. This damage is dealt when parts such as “Cleaver” and various bumpers collide with each other.
Damage dealt by perks and other special methods, such as lightning from the “Jubokko” mines.

For example, “Executioner” has two ways of dealing damage — direct, from a projectile hitting a part, and blast damage (from the explosion of a projectile). “Pulsar” also deals this type of damage. In terms of game mechanics, hits from these two weapons are not different in any way. We want to correct this situation.

In the new system, the damage type will be configured for each damage method for all weapons and perks. There will be 4 types of damage that will appear:

Kinetic — damage that is caused by a solid object hitting a part at high speed. It mainly applies to bullets, shells, bolts, nails, etc.
Energy — damage from lightning and plasma
Thermal — damage from flamethrowers, lasers and some special projectiles, like the projectiles of the “Jumbo” cannon.
Fragmentation — damage from regular explosions, such as self-destruction and explosions made by cannons.

As a result, we get these possible combinations of damage types and methods of dealing damage:

Explosions can be energetic, fragmentation, and thermal.
Direct hits can be kinetic, thermal and energetic.
Melee damage on collision has not been changed in any way — it has no damage type.

It’s important to note that the damage type of direct hit and an explosion can either be the same or different. For example, “Pulsar” deals energy damage from both a direct hit and an explosion. “Executioner” deals kinetic damage by a direct hit and fragmentation damage from an explosion.

With the introduction of new damage types, the damage resistance system will change as well. In the current system, the part can have resistance to explosions and direct hits. In the new system, there will be no resistance to the methods of inflicting damage. In the new system, the parts will be configured to resist one or more types of damage.

2. Changes in the balance of structural parts and grilles

Let’s also talk about the changes in the balance of structural parts. These changes are closely connected to the change in the damage type system. Two major issues we want to address with this change are:

The uselessness of small parts
Lack of distinctive features in parts of different factions

In the current state of in-game balance, there is a direct relationship between the size of the part and its durability. This leads to a situation which makes larger parts unconditionally better than smaller parts in terms of size. In general, this is logical — the larger the part, the greater its mass and durability, the higher its rarity. However, this is bad for gameplay variety. We'd like to ensure that the players want to use not only the large legendary parts, but make the smaller ones useful for assembling any kind of armoured car as well.

To fix this situation we will shift the durability to size ratio. Small parts will become slightly more durable, and large parts will have slightly less durability.

Also, the parts will be distributed among the in-game factions. Each faction will have its own distinctive features. The difference will be in the following parameters:

Part durability
Durability that is added to the cabin for the mounted part
Mass
A rate at how the part can be shot through
Protection from heating
Resistances to new damage types

For example, the parts of the Steppenwolfs will have a very high mass, but will be very durable and will provide a large increase in the durability of the cabin. The parts of the Steppenwolfs provide excellent protection against kinetic and fragmentation damage, but are very vulnerable to energy and thermal types of damage.

At the same time, the parts of the Lunatics are very light, but they are not very durable and provide small bonuses to the durability of the cabin. But almost all of the parts of the Lunatics are grilles that will have a large percentage at which they are shot through.

Another related change is a correction in the mechanics of the grilles. At the moment this mechanic doesn’t work quite as well as we would like it to, we are planning to improve it. We will share more details about the system changes with you with the release of the update.