Still resistant to resistance

[aReclusiveMind]

Would it be possible to get a more accurate description of what resistance actually does? I know that each type of resistance now informs us what types of weapons it protects against, but that only gets me a little closer to considering the use of resistance increasing items. With slots being as limited as they are, it can be difficult to justify without more data.

Resistance decreases damage taken... but how does it do this? Let's take an item that provides +20 Explosive Resistance for instance. Does it...

Reduce explosive damage by 20%
Reduce the chance to be hit by explosives by 20%
Reduce all explosive damage by 20pts of damage, potentially negating it entirely if the amount is less than 20
Some other system

Could this info be added to the ingame tooltip (similar to how defense shows your chance to be hit by ships) and to the manual as well please?

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by aReclusiveMind

Would it be possible to get a more accurate description of what resistance actually does? I know that each type of resistance now informs us what types of weapons it protects against, but that only gets me a little closer to considering the use of resistance increasing items. With slots being as limited as they are, it can be difficult to justify without more data.

Resistance decreases damage taken... but how does it do this? Let's take an item that provides +20 Explosive Resistance for instance. Does it...

Reduce explosive damage by 20%
Reduce the chance to be hit by explosives by 20%
Reduce all explosive damage by 20pts of damage, potentially negating it entirely if the amount is less than 20
Some other system

Could this info be added to the ingame tooltip (similar to how defense shows your chance to be hit by ships) and to the manual as well please?

I can tell you from knowledge of the previous games -- the system appears to be the same. It reduces the specific damage by a percentage that depends on the level of the enemy that attacks you. The formula is
% = resistance/(resistance + 6*(attacker level) + 12), with a maximum of 75% resistance. This means it's hard to easily give information on a per-item basis.

[Bluddy]

I've never equipped a resistance item though and I doubt anyone else has. I really have no idea which ship or weapon causes what damage -- it's just not relevant.

In fact, I haven't looked at my stats at all since starting to play Drox, and so opening up the stat sheet the other day was really strange and unfamiliar. I don't look at my DPS (other than when comparing items), I don't look at attack/defense (I just know I upgrade my attack/defense item) and I don't boost any of my attributes unless I need them for a certain item, so the stats seem really unimportant -- at least so far.

[RoboAV]

Actually equip resistance items? Hahahaha.

There's a light component spiral that I fall into with every ship.

Step 1: Equip crew because they cost nothing and I'm always conserving power load.

Step 2: Equip a gun that requires those stat bumps the crew provide.

Step 3: Never look at light equipment unless it's crew or an upgraded harvester.

Crew are simply far more powerful than just about any light component.

I've seen a lot of.... um, suggestions for crew specific spots. We have those. Just need somewhere to put the light components now.

[Chumpy]

Do we know why the equation works that way?

Would be nice if you could equip lighter items in heavier slots. Offhand, I wonder if doubling or tripling the resistance on all elemental items would help at all. I mean, this is stuff you're equipping instead of the all-important crew or energy regen.

[Bluddy]

Originally Posted by Chumpy

Do we know why the equation works that way?

Yes. It was brought in during the Demon War beta to replace the previous system from DoP. Actually, the big complaint was against the armor system, which in DoP rolls a random number between IIRC armor/20 and armor/40, and blocks that amount of damage. Resistance worked similarly (res/8 and res/4). This system was heavily biased against smaller, faster attacks (the kind thieves make) and made fighting against higher level enemies and bosses very hard. The new system calculates a set percentage of damage to absorb, so small attacks lose only a little of their damage. It's also very non-linear, with seriously diminishing returns for super-high armor.

Anyway, how relevant is any of this to Drox? Mmmm.... not very relevant I guess. I don't think Drox uses the armor formula at all since armor defends you completely until it's gone. As for resistance, in order for resistance components to be competitive, you have to be able to block serious amounts of damage in some element right away, and that doesn't seem to be the case since initially you only get a few points in resistance. In vanilla DC it's pretty tough to build up resistance -- you need to quickly get to the hundreds for it to be effective.

Also, with armor and shields blocking 100% damage, there isn't much of a need to block even more of it (especially to only block it partially). Your span of life is already much much longer than it is in DC or DoP because of those extra layers of protection. So I'd much rather get bigger or more armor rather than install some resistance item.

Resistance *could* factor into the game, but so far I haven't encountered any reason to resist a particular element or any monsters that are visibly resistant to certain elements. Part of this has to do with the fact that monsters are relatively easy to kill compared to race ships (at least in my levels), and part has to do with the fact that monsters move too fast for me to focus in on one of them and check their status effects. I do that very rarely.

If some elements ate away your shield/armor almost instantly while others didn't, I'd sit up and pay attention to elements. Right now, there's no reason to do so.

[Chumpy]

The only important resistances I've seen are Thermal (beams) and Explosion (bombs/missiles/mines).

I mean, I haven't found the items themselves worth equipping, but if they were a lot stronger I could see myself considering them over regen or crew.