New Blue Item - Hull Armor

Just read and supported a thread asking for turbo to go away. And i think it can and just include speed increases in with the hp and ship levels.

But we cannot just lose a blue item. Inspired by the new teal item, Bolster Armor, which is an active defense measure, I thought we needed something similar as a passive measure. Think duct tape is to bandage as bolster armor is to hull armor.

Hull Armor - Reduces % of incoming damage. I would like it to be a 1 point too, to replace turbo.

It is passive so it would be much weaker than Bolster Armor. Legendary Bolster is 40% so perhaps maximum of 15 for overall damage%. (similarly common might be 5% max, uncommon 8, rare 10, epic 12) However the twist is you can apply almost ANY perk to the armor and negate its effect.

For example, apply and epic 8% cannon perk to the hull armor and your ship will reduce all incoming cannon fire by an additional 8%. Apply four of those perks and you will negate a player who is using all 4 of those perks on their cannon.

Sounds OP? I don't think so. It just undoes what your unfriendly can buff their weapons by, so really its just a balance. It allows you to tailor your build to what you are most susceptible to. Unlike Bolster which is for all damage. You will only a small % of flat damage reduced but could be more robust vs mines, or torps, fire damage etc. If you applied 4 different perks you could be more well rounded. I also do not see why it could not stack with Bolster Armor. No different than repair bolt making you invincible for a few seconds.

Another discussion would be how it stacks with itself. So can you ditch a big shield and small shield and carry 3? No. The item would look at each item individually so you could not stack 8% cannons to 100%. You could run multiple and have one for torps and one for cannons, but you would lose a lot of hp.

I am not sure if the whole math works out as presented above as it is just off the top of my head, so don't be down on this because of that. I think the numbers could be worked so that it made sense. Enjoy!

 

I would like to look at the new armor, which will be better than a big shield, but such armor will slow the ship, or this armor will not be compatible with the turbo, i.e. annuls the turbo effect.

 

Be a good opportunity to redesign the defence perks which go unused and have them as Hull Armor perks instead.

 

I would really like variety in game and this perk systemsystem to reduce specific weaponweapon damage is awesome

 

This post is music to my ears. But I am ok with 42% on cannon damage. It is like Bolster armor running all the time BUT ONLY for cannons. Remember that each enemy's item can be boosted by 32%, so I feel it becomes a wash with that ONE type of weapon. Maybe it seems more OP because there are so many weapons under the cannon umbrella? I dislike adding yet more item specific perks. (Gattling has been out for months and I have 1 blue perk for it.) Remember too, if turbo went away everyone in the game would replace it with either a bandage or a small shield. And while this would seem more OP if your opponent is running only cannons, torps, mortars etc, would all do same damage. There are already in game situations where you have the wrong equipment for the challenge, like if you brought only big torps and your opponent was a speeder. Or if you have all mortars in Wayward. Or back in the old days, bringing a carronade to a Defender fight!

So definitely no new perks. There has to be lots of ways around that to soften it. For example, you could just cut existing perks by a flat rate, say 75% or 50% effective once inserted into Hull Armor. At 50% your cap becomes 27% for a cannon, with all 8% cannon perks. The cap would be that hull armors cannot stack. A cap would be fine, like turbos. It would know that you cannot exceed x with cannon perks and y with mortar perks etc. If you want to try to run 3 Hull Armors, you wont get any more global than 10.8% but you could have one for cannon, one for torps etc. I'd like to see how that balances with your shield hp you would lose.

Might need some tweaking so that max reduction is not achieved until max level. Otherwise everyone would level to 31 and apply 4 perks and forgo the last 19 levels. Perhaps each level equates to the effectiveness of the armor, each level adding 2%. So a level 50, regardless of rarity, would provide the max stats for the perks applied. This could be a second softening in addition to the 50% effectiveness of applied perks. Might be getting a bit too complicated though.

 

I'm ok with it being borderline OP with respect to one class of weapons. It has to compete with small shield and bandage which work for all weapons. And the Hull Armor can only be optimized for one weapon class.

Now that each weapon has its own weapon levels, you could reclassify weapons if the cannon umbrella was too wide.