Give tyrant armor plating against ballistic weapons

[necessarily-equal]

Related Problem issues: Tyrant sucks — while the tyrant is capable of standing in a 1v1 fight, but that it can't do much against a base or several weaker opponents.

Humans in battlesuit with luci are really powerful against groups of dretch. Aliens Tyrant are quickly killed by groups of unequipped humans. They are likewise very lacking in base attack. To make tyrant more useful against bases and unarmored humans, I think we could give them some form of armor that makes them more resistant against SMG, shotgun, machine gun and MG turrets.

For a prototype, I did give them an armor that reduced the damage by 20% and it was quite appreciable https://github.com/necessarily-equal/Unvanquished/commit/acabf9518e0677aa4bd00cf2b0c171676f3e5570. After talking about this with Viech, we realized that the bullets could be deflected instead of just dealing less damage.

Disclaimer

Ideas without a related problem issue and lacking explanation or depth are closed after a certain time.

I'm putting some argumentation and some earlier discussion in the comments.

[necessarily-equal]

The discussion with Viech that proposed the "bullets bounce" variant of this question:

Sun, Aug 1 2021
Viech> freem: about the tyrant, I meant in its current form it is only really useful for defense and for trading 10 evos against a single problematic turret
afontain> I've got a commit to give the tyrant armor against ballistic weapons
(excluding the mass driver)
afontain> would it be appreciated in master?
afontain> I think it makes the tyrant more useful against the late game starving humans with smgs — those are numberful, hard to hit and have a pretty high dps
afontain> (so that's why it was needed, IMO)
afontain> the POC: https://github.com/necessarily-equal/Unvanquished/commit/acabf9518e0677aa4bd00cf2b0c171676f3e5570
Viech> hmm, I do prefer an actual redesign over number crunching, in particular if it makes the game a little harder to learn, but in the meantime why not
afontain> « The first encounter between humanity and the tyrant occurred during a boarding action, a battle from which only a single distress call survives. It is from the terrified words of the human captain that we learn shotguns and painsaws, standard fare among crewmen, were nothing against its toughened hide. A few loud stomps drowned out the captain’s screams, followed by a bloodcurdling roar and the sound of the ship’s computer being torn into shreds. »
afontain> ^ what gave the inspiration
Viech> he
Viech> yeah shotgun is actually already terrible, painsaw though
afontain> the problem is that those cheap weapons have a dps on the same order of magnitude as the others
afontain> the smg has the same dps as the lasgun
Viech> including reload times?
afontain> IIRC yes
afontain> freem did stats on these
afontain> I would be curious to compare pulse and smg to give an idea of the dps difference
afontain> but basically 2 with smg > 1 with pulse when defending a base
afontain> this makes the tyrant useless when dealing the final blow
Viech> alright, I have an idea that's maybe a bit more of a redesign; can you make a fraction of bullets reflect with audio and visual cues?
Viech> same effect, plus small chance to do team damage, but self-explaining
afontain> hmm
afontain> audio, I don't know
afontain> visual, yes
Viech> you would probably alter whatever impact event is sent and just use the metal-impact for reflection
Viech> *sound
afontain> it's probably hard, but cgame and sgame have a mechanism to share a seed for the bullet spread
afontain> so maybe we can use that to have the same random number generation for this
afontain> given how my last sound effect still doesn't work, this may end up as a //TODO: add sound
afontain> I think it's a bit out of reach of what I know-how right now, but I'll have it in my todolist
afontain> I don't think there is a sound for bullet-in-flesh
freem> I'm not sure you can make bullets bounce (especially with clues) without giving entities to them?
still, the bouncing idea seems a good one
afontain> yes, I really like it

[necessarily-equal]

A discussion with Gireen who also seemed to like the idea:

Thu, Nov 11 2021
afontain> What I had in mind for the tyrant was to give it a bounce chance for ballistic bullets
afontain> so that a SMG or a shotgun would be nerfed, but a lasgun or a pulse would be just as efficient
aontain> the mgturret would be less useful too
Gireen> so an armor against certain weapons?
afontain> basically yes
afontain> the idea was to help the tyrant face a horde of SMG
afontain> the SMG is damn useful for a 0 credits weapon, even in late game
[…discussion about Gireen's mod]
Gireen> i like the concept of having weapons deal different damage depending on target 
[…discussion about Gireen's mod]
afontain> well, if enemy decide to deny them the money by using only SMG, it works pretty well
it happens by accident when the armory is destroyed
[…discussion about Gireen's mod]
afontain> but let's put aside the credit thing
afontain> 3 SMG are as good DPS-wise than 2 pulse
lautre> Someone can stuck all tyrant just to stay on place. This prevent Tyrant to flee
afontain> and they cost 0
afontain> and they don't have the latency problem the pulse has
afontain> that's really powerful!
afontain> it's even quite precise (and you don't need to aim much to hit a tyrant anyway)
Gireen> so pulse needs buff or smg nerf? 
Gireen> as said. a system for different damages depending on target would be nice. that every weapon could have a strong and weak point.
Gireen> or armor against weapon types as you said. the endresult would be the same 😄
Gireen> the nice thing is that the damage is handled by the server so it would be easy to be configurable 🎉
afontain> I'd say the smg needs a nerf in late game
afontain> so well, a nerf against tyrant would be a good way to do that while making tyrant actually useful
Gireen> wouldn't that make humans camp? if they have no money and know they don't deal much damage the best option is to stay close to turrets
Gireen> especially late game we want teams to be more aggressive and able to attack the enemy base
afontain> well, if they are loosing, they should loose
afontain> because at some point, we want the loosing team to die off
afontain> humans have really powerful late-game weapons
afontain> I think aliens should too
afontain> I mean, humans have several weapons that can one-shot buildings
afontain> tyrant should probably have its use for base attacks
afontain> Gireen> wouldn't that make humans camp? if they have no money and know they don't deal much damage the best option is to stay close to turrets
afontain> I think if humans want to avoid having a tyrant in base, they shouldn't camp, they should keep a perimeter
afontain> maybe the reason human camp, is because it actually works, and maybe the solution is to give aliens a way to damage a human base despite having humans in it

[necessarily-equal]

Given Viech, Gireen, freem and me seem enthusiastic about it, I'm tempted to mark this "agreed upon".

[DolceTriade]

Sounds like a good idea.

[ghost]

Agree it would be nice. Not sure about the bouncing bullets... because technics might be annoying there. It has to be noted the game currently have 4 "types" of damages: kinetic/ballistic, energy, fire, poison/acid. If the idea is implemented well, it could open ideas not just for the tyrant.

Also, there are currently 3 energy weapons: lasgun, pulse rifle and lucifer cannon. Lasgun is tier 0, pulse rifle is tier 3. So giving tyrants a huge kinetic/ballistic resistance would not even prevent humans to effectively defend their base. It would only cost them a bit more.

[Viech]

I find the kinetic/energy distinction is not the best line. In particular, the chaingun is primarily a (Dragoon and) Tyrant killer and does not deserve this nerf. The mass driver is already very weak against the Tyrant. For the rifle and for turrets on the other hand, this makes more sense.

I'm in favor of such a distinction only if it is made more flavorful than just a damage modifier (e.g., as mentioned before, if bullets do visually deflect, or something in that direction). Another way of phrasing this is that the damage type distinction should be communicated well to the player.

[ghost]

Another way of phrasing this is that the damage type distinction should be communicated well to the player

I completely agree with that, unvanquished have already too many "secret mechanics" as it is.