Subsystems taking damage from any angle

Yabba Addict

Yabba Addict
Thread cont. from here, due to vague title, in the hope we can get FDs attention on this long standing problem.

There seems to be a major problem with targeting subsystems where they are taking damage from any angle. While this problem is more obvious for the larger ships, it isn't restricted to them. In fact there are quite a few players that are looking forward to the maturation of stealth mechanics in the game, and this breaks that idea too. The way things are right now, it's a shields or nothing playstyle. And now that good ole Sarah Jane is advancing the AI enough to actively target subs, this problem is going to become even more apparent as it hits the pve crowd. Below is a video showing our hulls to be little more than holograms surrounding our subsystems.

[video=youtube;Fxydm-dWS-o]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxydm-dWS-o&feature=youtu.be[/video]
 
Last edited:

Yabba Addict

Yabba Addict
Yes, it is stupid and poor design imo. It also completely destroys any point of using hull upgrades. At least if this worked correctly you could try and keep your hitboxes away from the attacker, but as it stands there is no point at all in using hull upgrades or the hull reinforcement packages.
 

kapparomeo

K
I'll repeat what I said in the last thread that I've never liked being able to target internal subsystems from any angle. Things like the thrusters, the weapons, the cargo scoop - those are fair game for targeting as they're exposed on the surface, no problems there. You explicitly shouldn't be able to attack components like the power plant though, because the hull is in the way - why does it even exist otherwise?
 
Last edited:

ToniB

T
the problem with this is: The Hull % goes down much to fast, so when you "hide" the powerplant deeper in the ship and even take hull upgrade into account, you will never be faster targetting subsystem because the hull % will be zero way before it.

Targetting subsystem should ad more complexity to combat, but hull damage nearly nullifies all the thoughts and programming going into subystem targetting.

this all needs rebalance and rethinking, right now its just a complete hollow feature, just like silent running and energy signature became unfortunatly.
 
Last edited:

Ari Ben Zayn

Ari Ben Zayn
So that's why turning your ship "away" from the attackers does squat in avoiding damage to exposed systems (Hah, they're all exposed all the time!). Good to know, thanks :)
 

Yabba Addict

Yabba Addict
Yup, as it stands there is no point in evasive maneuvers unless have the agility to actually get out of your opponents fire arc. No point in any of the armour upgrades. No point in hull reinforcement. No point in anything that isn't shields.
 
Last edited:

ToniB

T
Yabba Addict said:
Yup, as it stands there is no point in evasive maneuvers unless have the agility to actually get out of your opponents fire arc. No point in any of the armour upgrades. No point in hull reinforcement. No point in anything that isn't shields.
Click to expand...

even worse: ignoring hull upgrades will make you much more agile, while your vulnerability doesnt change much. its quite a mess actually...
 

Mohrgan

Mohrgan
As I understand it, NPC's don't aim for sub systems. Armor of any sort is a benefit in PvE. The concern here is a purely PvP issue. I'd be willing to bet that most players would rather be able to down an anaconda by targeting sub systems, than have that apple cart knocked over.
 

Kirk-Fu

Banned
K
Mohrgan said:
As I understand it, NPC's don't aim for sub systems. Armor of any sort is a benefit in PvE. The concern here is a purely PvP issue. I'd be willing to bet that most players would rather be able to down an anaconda by targeting sub systems, than have that apple cart knocked over.
Click to expand...
NPCs do aim for subsystems, just not the powerplant. Yes, instead of fixing the silly powerplant headshot mechanic, making the hull out of not-paper, or making armour protect subsystems and leaving the NPC tactics up to their AI skill, the AI coder had to specifically add an exclusion to make the game playable against the NPCs. Design direction in this game is ridiculous.
 

Yabba Addict

Yabba Addict
Kirk-Fu said:
NPCs do aim for subsystems, just not the powerplant. Yes, instead of fixing the silly powerplant headshot mechanic, making the hull out of not-paper, or making armour protect subsystems and leaving the NPC tactics up to their AI skill, the AI coder had to specifically add an exclusion to make the game playable against the NPCs. Design direction in this game is ridiculous.
Click to expand...

Not yet, they don't, and by the way SJ is going on, I don't think she's actually aware of the problem, so don't start throwing accusations at our lovely lady, k?
 
Last edited:

RingoD123

R
The NPC's don't have to follow a single rule that real players do, just shows another poorly designed and implemented game system that isn't what we were lead to believe it would be.
Dropping out at stations etc at way above the safe speeds that we are made to adhere to.
Bypassing the main star when entering a system (they aren't just going from an instance into SC as they don't leave wakes).
Keeping an interdiction active while the player jumps to a new system.
Interdicting players at any angle and speed difference.
I'm sure there's more.
 

geoffrey.hdt

geoffrey.hdt
ToniB said:
the problem with this is: The Hull % goes down much to fast, so when you "hide" the powerplant deeper in the ship and even take hull upgrade into account, you will never be faster targetting subsystem because the hull % will be zero way before it.
Click to expand...
Anaconda, Python, Asp...I use to take down their powerplant from any angle, shooting 5 gimballed pulse lasers, and they pop with 60-70% hull left...
The only advantage of kinetic weapons is energy/heat management...and it's sad.
 

Bobo

B
ToniB said:
the problem with this is: The Hull % goes down much to fast, so when you "hide" the powerplant deeper in the ship and even take hull upgrade into account, you will never be faster targetting subsystem because the hull % will be zero way before it.
Click to expand...

I'd always assumed what we are shooting at, when targeting subs, is something like the exhaust or cooling part of the power plant.

I agree tho it is all a bit wonky right now. It should be really tricky to hit those small areas where the sub system needs an external part to it, with gimble or not and not all subs should be targetable from the exterior.

But saying that, I have noticed some ships power plants do actualy prove hard to hit and really dont seem to take damage when Im not facing it, like the clipper for example
 

Goose123

G
It's actually completely broken IMHO.

The only reason the targeted sub-system isn't taking direct damage from attack is because another sub-system is in the way.

Cobra, FDL, Clipper etc have a tight grouping of sub-systems which gives the effect of the targeted sub-system not taking damage.

On larger ships Anaconda, Python etc the sub-systems are spaced further apart which makes targeting them specifically and destroying them that much easier.
 

Hiten Bongz

Hiten Bongz
Going to copy/paste my post from the other thread since we have a discussion now in more than one forum about this (fine with me, lol, needs to be fixed ASAP!)
--
Agony_Aunt said:
Agree the damage model could do with some looking at. Also, if at the same time, hull reinforncement could be made useful with subsystems it would be super. At the moment there is little use in fitting hull reinforcement packages.
Click to expand...

I agree here for sure! Either that or add separate sub-system reinforcement packages. But really there is no need to have separate modules for both, as hull reinforcement modules should encompass both the hull and sub-systems. So let's not over-complicate things unless it's reaaaally necessary FD. :)

Also, I believe actual armor plating (reinforced, military, etc.) should behave the same, offering more resist (instead of straight HP like the hull reinforcement modules) to both hull and sub-systems. It really doesn't make sense why it does not...


SushiCW said:
One thing that would be helpful (going along with this, assuming it gets fixed) is some sort of visual indication of whether or not you have a workable LoS to the target subsystem. Plenty of prior art here (e.g. Freespace 2 has a big X through your targeting box if the subsystem is on the other side of the ship).
Click to expand...

Agree, the FS2 system of showing when the sub-system is within LOS would be really great! I don't imagine it would be too hard to implement either, just a check to see if the sub-system is within LOS - for damage reasons, this would be necessary anyways I would think - if "BLOCKED/NO LOS" then instead of the regular [ ] for a sub-system targeting reticule, it's an X. If check returns "OK" then display the normal [ ]. Simple enough, aye?

But I'm no programmer so I'm just guessing in the wind here... :)

I will throw my voice in and ask for a developer response on this issue though, because I feel it's either an oversight, a bug, or of course working as intended (but still improper mechanics and pretty cheesy, lol).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom