So this concept has been pretty successfully implemented in Star Citizen.. For those who don't know what it is, 'Soft Death' refers to ships not immediately exploding when their hull health reaches 0%, but rather they go into a fully disabled state (where self destruct does not even work). The ship could then slow down to a stop with all systems disabled (making decent life-support systems more relevant). Continuing to apply damage to the disabled ship will eventually make it explode as per normal..
This could be good for piracy and powerplay gameplay as it could give the player engaged in those activities more options than simply killing their target. Trying to disable subsystems of a target has always been a pretty messy affair in this game, and usually results in the death of the target or the target floating away at high speed, making piracy extremely difficult to pull-off.
Applying soft-death to Elite, we could have it so repair limpets from another ship restore the ship to a flyable state. This would encourage a fuel-rats style service gameplay pathway to open up for groups who wish to rescue and repair stranded players - who would then be able to avoid an unnecessary rebuy. It would also give more time for system security to react to hostility (player ships could have higher soft-death HP than NPCs for example). However in places like CZs we'd probably need NPC soft-death to be switched off so targets can be disposed of quickly.
Edit - The player who's ship is soft-deathed at 0% would have the option to rebuy immediately and save time. Their original ship would remain in the instance permanently disabled until all parties leave the instance.
Also logging out of a soft-death ship should take you to the rebuy screen immediately when logging back in. The 0% ship could remain in the instance even after the player logs out, as it is essentially a dead ship, allowing it to be looted (this would again help piracy and powerplay game-loops).
Also if we are to have any future ship-boarding gameplay for space legs, this mechanic would be more useful than say, disabling the targets thrusters which result in said drifting.
Thoughts?
This could be good for piracy and powerplay gameplay as it could give the player engaged in those activities more options than simply killing their target. Trying to disable subsystems of a target has always been a pretty messy affair in this game, and usually results in the death of the target or the target floating away at high speed, making piracy extremely difficult to pull-off.
Applying soft-death to Elite, we could have it so repair limpets from another ship restore the ship to a flyable state. This would encourage a fuel-rats style service gameplay pathway to open up for groups who wish to rescue and repair stranded players - who would then be able to avoid an unnecessary rebuy. It would also give more time for system security to react to hostility (player ships could have higher soft-death HP than NPCs for example). However in places like CZs we'd probably need NPC soft-death to be switched off so targets can be disposed of quickly.
Edit - The player who's ship is soft-deathed at 0% would have the option to rebuy immediately and save time. Their original ship would remain in the instance permanently disabled until all parties leave the instance.
Also logging out of a soft-death ship should take you to the rebuy screen immediately when logging back in. The 0% ship could remain in the instance even after the player logs out, as it is essentially a dead ship, allowing it to be looted (this would again help piracy and powerplay game-loops).
Also if we are to have any future ship-boarding gameplay for space legs, this mechanic would be more useful than say, disabling the targets thrusters which result in said drifting.
Thoughts?
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