Make bulkheads more useful

FuzzySpider

FuzzySpider
Bulkheads! No, bulk isn't a vulgar euphemism and I'm not insulting you, it's an exasperated exclamation. Bulkheads! As I said to my girlfriend earlier, I want to talk about bulkheads. She abruptly left the house and went out with one of her mates, which leaves me discussing it with you lot.

So bulkheads, what's the deal with bulkheads? They're heavy, slow you down, inflate your insurance premium, reduce your hyperspace range, and are among the most expensive modules in the game. I think the Anacondas reactive bulkheads costs something like 3 times the price of the ship. If they were worth that much why isn't anyone using them?

We know what they're supposed to do - make the ships more durable. But the thing is they don't. Currently each ship, for some reason, has apparently been designed in such a way the highly explosive powerplant is on the outside of the ship. Presumably the companies who design the ships of Elite also designed the Death Star and enjoy potentially lethal design defects, but I digress. Anything from the Asp onwards is generally not taken down by hull attrition but by powerplant destruction. And bulkheads, as far as I am aware, do nothing to protect modules. This renders bulkheads something of a waste of time in the game.

So let's actually have bulkheads do useful things. Have them provide module protection for a start. And another thing they should do is provide a heat sink. It sort of makes sense that tougher bulkheads would soak up more heat before critical damage started to occur.

Is anyone in agreement, or does anyone have a differing view?
 
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bigian12

bigian12
I agree, from a naval perspective, reinforced thicker bulkheads would offer more protection then lightweight ones. I also think there should be another option, hull plating, it would work similar to bulkheads but bulkheads add internal rigidity( not a vulgar term) and help contain internal explosions( on larger vessels) while hull plating adds external rigidity and all in all prevents those pesky projectiles from getting at your modules and subsystems in the first place.
 

Twelvefield

Twelvefield
Assuming that Elite ships are analogous to fighter planes, especially the WWII types since ED doesn't do BVR warfare, those fighters mainly have two weak spots that sharpshooting enemies exploit: the engines and the pilot. You can empty your magazine into the fuselage and the enemy flies away. Or you expend ten shells into the pilot or the carburetor, and that fellow's day is done.

Of course, the skill to hit those points was learned in brutal aerial combat, not chosen from a menu. So I really don't know what Frontier was thinking regarding ship design philosophy, except that what worked in the 1980's ought to work today.
 

Loskene

L
Bulkheads are terrible, I'd like them to provide some level of module protection, they're just way too easy to snipe in a very short period of time and cripple or destroy a ship without thinking about it. I enjoy long, drawn out dogfights more than turkey shoots. If they don't want to change the bulkheads then I ask they at least make destroying a power plant disable the ship until rebooting, because come on now lads. Cop on will ye. Nothing will be scarier for a new player than an Anaconda they thought they'd destroyed rumbling back to life before their eyes after drifting silently through the void for a few seconds.

I understand frontier's position, they want people flying around with damaged modules. That's cool, but it's simply less likely to happen if you offer players a shortcut to ship death option. If you let people reboot their power plant and let armour offer some degree of actual protection, then people might die less and actually get the chance to fly around with damaged modules. Golly!
 
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