Problem is, there's no "Defense" upgrade. just attack and health.
So, how do you want to upgrade their defense?
You may use secondary triggers
ie
I have a upgrade that gives 6 increased stats
while normal upgrades only have 4
>Trigger detects when the upgrade is research
>Trigger auto researches the second upgrade, containg the extra 2 stats
Yes however % damage reduction suffers from increasing gain. Together the two cancel out to be linear.Yes I have read the discussions regarding the fact that diminishing returns are not actually real and you do get the same HP per armor point at each level. The effect in-game might be the same but technically you get less % of armour reduction per point of armor.
It is only diminishing if the reduction amount is larger than the minimum damage of 1 since then an infinite increase in armor does not increase toughness. Defend and other abilities should multiply the damage like damage type does.Also it might actually still be diminishing when taking into consideration other types of damage reduction (eg. Defend).
Armor does suffer diminishing returns. Or at least it appears to do so when hovering over a units armor. A unit with 1 armor will reduce all damage taken by 6%, a unit with 2 armor will reduce damage taken by 11%.
Yes I have read the discussions regarding the fact that diminishing returns are not actually real and you do get the same HP per armor point at each level. The effect in-game might be the same but technically you get less % of armour reduction per point of armor.
Also it might actually still be diminishing when taking into consideration other types of damage reduction (eg. Defend).
You could make it so that no unit would reach 15 + armor (which in melee games rarely happens).
I myself think that the armor system in basic Starcraft is the best, since it allows for some nice pros and cons to attack speed: fast attack units deal more damage to units with no armor but low damage to units with high armor (kind of how real life works, fast machine guns deal little damage to tanks).
But we are going off-topic here)
It has abysmal scaling though. Most RTS players pros agree such systems are bad.I myself think that the armor system in basic Starcraft is the best, since it allows for some nice pros and cons to attack speed: fast attack units deal more damage to units with no armor but low damage to units with high armor (kind of how real life works, fast machine guns deal little damage to tanks).
It has abysmal scaling though. Most RTS players pros agree such systems are bad.
Age of Empires 2 used the same armor scaling as StarCraft II. The result was where 1 research of arrow upgrade could double the damage a unit does to buildings (1->2) where as a research of armor upgrade could reduce the damage of other units by over 80% (5->1). This is why in Age of Mythology and Age of Empires 3 they changed to % damage reduction.
If you look at SC2 arcade you see many map, especially RPGs, suffering this problem. A tank hero becomes unkillable unless absolutely broken OHKO moves or impossible damage are added to bosses because their armor is so large everything does 0.5 damage (0.5 is the lowest damage from armor in SC2, not 1). On the other hand if you do not get armor everything melts your health in seconds dealing huge amounts to you which are impossible to regenerate. Most SC2 RPGs break around the 20 armor mark as a result since your HP vanish if you are not min-maxing armor otherwise you become pretty much un-killable.
WC3 armor scaling (also supported by SC2) scales far better. You can inflate enemy attack values to parallel your armor inflation so that the resulting damage you take is appropriate for your health.
Except this can be achieved with percentage based systems as seen in Age of Mythology and Age of Empires 3. You have your hard hitting units get massively reduced against some units while your soft hitting units are not and the opposite holds.I for one like this system more than a % one, since it allows for clean and clear differences between weapons and enemies. Enemies with high hit points but low armor are best killed with weapons that attack fast for a counter-example.
Except this can be achieved with percentage based systems as seen in Age of Mythology and Age of Empires 3. You have your hard hitting units get massively reduced against some units while your soft hitting units are not and the opposite holds.
WC3 already has this. SC2 also has limited support for it.
Except it raises the nonsense "boarder cases" I mentioned earlier where a single upgrade suddenly doubles or triples the damage a unit does to something.You can do it, but in a non-procentual reduction armor system this is can be done "naturally", there is no need to create unit types such as Heavy or Light, you just fiddle with their armor, attack speed, salvoes etc.
It is less clear since a unit can still hit hard, but if it does not hit hard enough it deals practically no damage. All RTS veterans agree the percentage based armor system is better in RTS games.Like I said, the advantage is that its clean and clear.
Easily solved by setting the constant to 0.01 instead of 0.06. Then armor means equvelant % more hp when taking weapon damage.Warcraft 3's current system is anything but clear, new players have the impression that armor reduction does have diminishing returns. Before I found out that this was not true my playstyle in regards to armor buffs was very different than it is today. If I had a high level devotion aura for example, I would often neglect researching additional armor upgrades, since I thought I get less with each consecutive upgrade.
The core players of Age of Empires 1,2 and 3, Empire Earth / Empires Dawn of the Modern World, Rise of Nations and Age of Mythology. Basically the true old-school RTS group."ALL" RTS veterans? I'm sorry, on what study or empyrical evidence is that statement based off? ALL
No it cannot be swapped out with health because armor does not reduce all damage, only attack damage. In WC3 abilities ignore armor completely. This means that a unit with insane armor and low health (1000 armor, 100 health) might be near unkillable by weapon damage but die easily to damaging abilities.The main issue with a percentage system is that armor upgrades can be just swapped with a health upgrade. Instead of plus 5% armor reduction you can have +5% maximum health. In a non-percentage system armor is a different layer of protection compared to health, which adds a new layer of complexity to the game.
You have no explained what those do exactly. If you give an example you should give an example, not reference an example which most people will not have played.Look at how games like Fallout New Vegas do it - this non-procentual system allows for Hollow Point and Full Metal Jacket Bullets to exist.
Damage reduction by itself is actually a exponential value. At 100% you become infinitely tough. People already gave examples to prove this.and a 1.5% further damage reduction as you equip that godly plate mail just doesn't cut it for me.
Diminishing returns is rarely a fun thing to experience in games.
The system was engineered for RPGs. Hence why it is in Diablo III as both Armor and Resistance formula.And I would also agree that the current WC3 system could be more honest, showing and explaining that it increases your health by 6%.