I have worked on these new features and gameplay changes for the past few months, and would like to hear your thoughts on the community discussion forum.
http://steamcommunity.com/app/685910/discussions/0/2595630410183931964/
To get the beta version: Right click on Battlefleet Engineer in the games list -> Properties -> Betas -> Select "development" from the dropdown and close the dialog.
What?
The new damage model significantly deepens simulation of projectile and beam weapon damage to ships, and removes many previous limitations in an effort to make the ship engineering aspect of the game more meaningful and detailed. Managing weak points and compromises in ship design, and leveraging those of the enemy in battles is now much more important.
- Modules now have separate armor plating, which is divided to small segments. Each segment takes damage independently. Previously there was only a simple armor hitpoints value for each module.
- Projectile hits first consider armor penetration and damage to the hit armor segment, then may penetrate and cause damage to the module.
- Projectiles can now penetrate into a ship, hit internal armor, ricochet internally, explode with a timed fuse, or pass through entire ship and still hit something else.
- Beams now lose energy according to distance traveled within enemy shields, can penetrate into ship and even pass through a ship.
- Internal and external explosions are now modeled in detail as well, with armor plating providing cover against damage.
- New damage overlay provides slowed-down animation of penetrating projectiles and explosions, shows armor plating state, and damage to enemy ships as well.
- Kinetic weapons can now fire both armor piercing and armor piercing explosive projectiles. Explosive projectiles have lower velocity and thus penetration, explosions damage armor plates and cause mostly functional area damage.
Balance changes:
Armor is now generally stronger but very heavy and expensive. Modules now get disabled much more often than outright destroyed.
- Armor is now much heavier and expensive.
- Weapon modules are now much more expensive.
- Kinetic projectiles (medium and super gauss) do lots of functional damage if they pass into a module, but very little structural damage. Functional damage makes modules disabled, structural destroys the module.
- Medium and heavy armor are very effective against kinetic projectiles.
- Plasma is especially effective at burning away armor plates and causes lots of structural damage, but doesn't penetrate armor or module to module. Shields are now more effective against plasma projectiles.
- Beam weapons do decent damage all-around and have some penetration. Shields are now more effective against beams, 2 overlapping shields can stop a beam completely.
- Beam weapons now use more energy.
- Medium gauss can now benefit from radiators, fire rate drops after 4 shots otherwise.
- Plasma and kinetic weapon ranges have been tuned. Projectile type affects kinetic weapon range to maintain same flight time.
- Chemical thruster and gas tank modules carry less fuel. The gas tanks are much less prone to chain-explosions but cause area damage when blown up.
Why?
As a niche indie game, Battlefleet Engineer needs to focus on its strengths and unique core features to make a compelling product. I don't have the resources or will to try and emulate all features of other "block ship building" games, so extending the simulation and ship engineering aspect further makes sense.
Balance changes such as module weight and cost increases are meant to drive the meta game towards more interesting ship designs and battles. These along with other game design choices aim to discourage trivial "a blob with 10 layers of armor all around and 1000 guns" designs I would consider generally boring.
Main ideas behind armor changes is to make single armor layer viable on most ships and medium armor actually useful. The weapon damage changes serve to make them more distinctive and give them different roles. Kinetic weapons are pretty much defeated by armor plating, but plasma and beam weapons can weaken that armor plating to let them through, yet shields can be used to defend against those.