[Feature Request]: Quantum Armor Rebalance

[MageInBlack]

Describe the Suggestion

Due to the very low energy drain of quantum armor, even with all upgrades equipped, the armor can be seen as one of the most powerful ones, in certain situations more powerful and less power hungry than a MekaSuit. After some calculations I suggest rebalancing the armor:

• Increase power draw of the armor per absorbed by ~10 times
• Increase passive and active draw of all the cards depending on the power and usefulness of it. Approximately by ~10 time as well.
• Possibly allow to change power draw of the modules/armor as well in the config, possibly make drain dependent on the settings value. As well as an ability to enable or disable armor entirely for packs that do not want ae2 with powerful armor but still want improved automation.

Simple change would be to simply increase the drain a lot, other balancing changes may come later.

The math below demonstrates why power draw needs to be adjusted by a lot

Screenshots and Videos

No response

Additional Context

The math

For the sake of easier calculations the next assumptions are made: armor holds 200Mae per armor piece for the sake of calculations for damage absorption and general power draw.

Current state:

Looking in the code I have noticed that:
Power draw per damage absorbed: 1000ae
Total power draw of all passive cards: <175ae/t

In comparison, quantum bridge in vanilla ae2 consumes 400ae/t

With the power draw of 20000 ae/t per armor piece, this armor can handle at full absorption 790 damage per half second (I-frames) while maintained by the ae2 system.

In comparison, MekaSuit needs 100kJ (20kae) per physical damage absorbed. Granted it absorbs physical damage that doesn't bypass armor fully and Mekanism features powerful energy generators.

Damage Values for default settings quantum armor

This armor was tested with HP Buffer card and Regeneration card for maximum survivability tests. It should be noted that results of the experiment show that Protection applies after quantum armor absorption, and therefore absorption drain does not rely on protection but on the total damage.

One-hit damage survival cap (left with half a heart from 40HP)
Default suit: 57 magic damage or 109 physical damage.
Suit Protection 4: 155 magic or 194 physical.
Suit Protection 5 (with mods, capped protection reduction): 285 magic or 350 physical.

In Current state armor can absorb approximately 800000 damage until it needs recharging if no charging card is installed. Or about 8000 instances of 100 damage absorbed (which happens on protection 5 test above). Which is, quite frankly, too much.

Passive drain values

With current passive drain, which is approximately 175ae/t (probably less cause it implies all cards are active at once), The time to fully discharge the suite are ~64 hours on a passive drain.

The suggested values and reasons behind them

This armor is clearly intended as an end-game armor. Or some kind of it. I appreciate that armor is still enchantable, this means that it scales with the size of the modpack. And i think enchantability of it should stay. However, the drain is too little. So the suggested drain is at least 10 times higher. The values would be as such:

• 10kae per damage absorbed. This will mean that together with other change to passive drain the armor will be able to handle 78 damage per half a second if the maximum drain stays at 20kae/t per armor piece. This will also handle 80000 absorbed damage from full charge.
• Rebalance card drain to be 10 times higher and reflect the usefulness of an upgrade. With 10 times the drain it would be ~1750 ae/t or less. The suggested value lies inbetween 4 or 5 full quantum bridges running, which is 1600-2000 ae/t. This will drain the armor fully in ~ 6 hours, which is decent amount of time.

To make it simpler, here is a list of suggested values and comparison (if possible) with similar MekaSuit upgrades (I assume listed values are ae/t or per use):

• Walk Speed 10 (always active). Suggested value: 100
• Sprint Speed 10 (seems to be active when sprinting). Suggested value: 100-200 (20 per 0.1 of sprint speed for MekaSuit)
• Step Assist 5 (seems to be draining per step assist? no passive drain and too little drain to see the drain on the network). Suggested value: 50-100 per assist.
• Jump Height 10 (drains per jump, so average drain is less than 10/s). Suggested value: 200-1000 per jump at least (MekaSuit 200 per 0.1 jump)
• Lava Immunity 10 (drains when in lava) Suggested value: 100-200 (rare circumstance, infrequent use)
• Flight 10 (active when flying). Suggested value: 400-800 (the most powerful upgrade, will be used often).
• Water Breathing 10 (always active?). Suggested value: 50-100 (more often, continuous drain, less needed cause of enchantments)
• Auto Feed 5 (active only when giving food i assume). Suggested value: 1000-4000 or more per feeding (done infrequently, drain is negligible) (4000 per half-food for mekasuit)
• Auto Stock 5 (assume drain is per stocking). Suggested value: at least a 100 per stocking operation?
• Magnet 5 (constant drain). Suggested value: 50-100. (MekaSuit 50 per tick of attraction of a single item)
• HP Buffer 10 (constant drain). Suggested value: 100 (powerful survivability)
• Evasion 10 (constant drain). Suggested value: 200 (very powerful survivability)
• Regeneration 10 (constant drain). Suggested value: 300 (insanely powerful survivability)
• Strength 10 (constant drain). Suggested value: 100 (very powerful)
• Attack Speed 10 (constant drain). Suggested value: 100-200 (powerful but only on slow weapons or if you spam click)
• Luck 10 (constant drain). Suggested value: 50-100 (it's good but many loot tables don't use it)
• Reach 10 (constant drain). Suggested value: 100-200 (good QoL for blocks and powerful fighting tool for mob reach)
• Swim Speed 5 (while in water). Suggested value: 50-100.
• Night Vision 10 (constant drain). Suggested value: 100-200 (good QoL)
• Flight Drift 10 (constant drain). Suggested value: 50 (small QoL)
• Portable Workbench 0 (idk). Suggested value: 100-1000 to open
• Pick Craft 1000. Suggested value: 1000-10000.
  Total passive drain: 1300-1850. With flight 1700-2250.
  The rest would be used infrequently therefore their drain is not consistent and should be calculated depending on frequency and usefulness.

Interesting thing about MekaSuit is that drain is dependent on the level of the settings (like 40fe per 0.1 of sprint speed), while here it is constant. MekaSuit approach is more realistic, however is not required, but probably is a good implementation detail if players want to overcharge their suits.

Conclusion

These changes will guarantee that while the armor qualifies as an end-game armor, it also requires players to back up its use with good power generation. (for reference, 64 vibration chambers produce 2560 ae/t, depending on configuration may require down to 64 lava buckets every 5 minutes (3 energy cards, most optimal), a lot of coal, or other mods' most often more profitable energy generation). In other words, without changes this armor can be sustained on just 6 vibration chambers or any other generator of 480fe/t.

These changes are not guaranteed to be the best. However basic power drain is so poor that increasing it 10-fold will make it reach the state when smaller balancing changes can be made and will put it alongside other end-game armors

[pedroksl]

Hey. Thanks for the very thorough investigation.

Addmittedly, I haven't gone through the values to balance them since release and, specially, haven't compared them with other mods or enchants. The armor was never meant to be better than MekSuit defensively, but it ended up winning, if enchanted. (Specially when mods like Apotheosis Enchanting are included).

Your suggestions look great and I will probably accept the majority of them, while adding a config somewhere for packs to be able to fine tune them (in blanket mode, not individually). Specially since, unlike Mekanism, AE2 doesn't have strong power generation, so it makes sense that it consumes less power when in that context, but it becomes unbalanced as soon as you include something like Powah.

Just a small note about the damage absorption part. I'm not sure how you tested that, but the quantum armor has a limit absorption of 30% (configurable for up to 100%) alongside the energy cost. This should make it so that high hitting damage will still kill the player even with maximum absorption. But I guess Protection enchantment just throws a wrench in that logic :D

[MageInBlack]

Unlike the MekaSuit, this armor has a bit more scalability IMO. Due to it being able to be enchanted and actually utilizing health as a resource (not having full absorption), This armor does scale with mods, unlike the MekaSuit which always stays the same.

This armor defensively is different from a MekaSuit because MekaSuit is able to absorb all damage, while this one cannot (by default). Therefore by default MekaSuit can handle Large Damage numbers at the cost of power. The Quantum Armor provides sustainable protection for all (unless someone makes a mod with crazy damage monsters) situations, because, unlike MekaSuit, can be remotely charged (haven't tested mek enough to know if it actually has remote charge). And the current charge limit can handle, as said before, about 78 damage absorbed every half a second at 80kae/t drain. Which should be plenty enough, increasing max charge rate will increase it by 4 (for every piece) for every 1000 AE/t.

The increase in power requirement is assuming it is end-game armor, so players should be able to handle the cost of 4-5 quantum bridges to maintain modules at max upgrades. Which is fairly possible with ae2 alone. The max charge speed equivalent of... 200 quantum bridges for 4 pieces does not have to be reached to maintain it unless players want to have maximum sustain on damage absorption. And most of the time not needed due to being tanky already and not needing such values in the modpack where you don't have any better energy gen than vibration chambers (or resonance generators if crafty enough). It is just a coincidence that both 10 times the current quantum drain and 4-5 bridges drain align.

And it is what I mostly wanted out of the rebalance, increase in drain and just a bit of differentiating between the modules by increasing drain for more powerful ones. Also compared to MekaSuit the energy cost is 2 times less for damage and varies for modules but also a bit less than Mek. However the numbers should be good enough for the rough rebalance. And Mek does throw the balance on its own armor charging away anyway with fusion reactors that can produce way more than Mek armor needs. The only thing Mek armor cannot do defensively is handle sustained damage over long periods because it is not remotely charged with mek by default iirc.

Also to note, I know it is 30% by default, I tested it with default configuration because I didn't want to change the damage absorption part (as many would want to a 100%) because I want health to be a resource for survivability too. Regen module will heal it back anyway lmao, this why it is one of the strongest survival modules that regens half a heart every tick I assume. Also regarding protection. As said in the main post of the request, reduction is applied in order: armor -> quantum armor absorb -> protection damage reduction. Therefore High amounts of damage will increase absorption drain because it goes before protection. In case if protection went first, by default maximum absorption would be 17 damage if dealt 56 damage past protection, which means the player would be left with half a heart. This would make it insanely more powerful, but I am actually glad it goes before protection as it is more balanced way to absorb high damage even with enchants and puts the limit to how high armor can sustainably scale.

Edit: also i didn't want to ask to remove enchants because there are a lot of utility enchants that cannot be applied on the MekaSuit, making it inferior to other enchantable armor used for utility purposes.

Edit 2: I didn't mean it to be the final rebalance but a rough one that brings the armor into actually being end-game. The values probably should be tweaked and balanced further if need arises

Oh, right, also thanks for the reply ^^