The Damage Model – and why I want more!

Firstly; I love Elite Dangerous in all its forms, and as it develops I'm sure it will only get better. But a subject I'd like to bring up is the damage and collision models.
We all love our shiny ships - be they chuffing great battle wagons to a sneaky Sidewinder. They are the stars of the game - so why don't they show their hard earned scars?

Currently, using hundreds of tons of unshielded metal as a battering ram and being hit by massive explosive shells results in..... a slightly degraded paint job and a cracked windscreen. And when, after repeated combat, your beloved rust buckethas been reduced to a 2 percent scrap heap, everything still works? No failed thrusters making it fly like a brick, weapons sheared of their mounts, cargo holds trailing debris from massive rends in the hull, undercarriage hanging limp with hydraulic fluid spewing into space…..you get the picture.

And just as importantly, every time these wrecked hulks manage to crawl into some far flung, pirate operated outpost with a ‘repair’ facilty on 2% hull – they have all the bits to fix every piece of exotic machinery ever produced, every time. No new unpainted panels, no cannon hole patches, no components destroyed and need rebuying elsewhere….. (I know 3D printers are good now, but if they could replicate all the spares by having the plans in ED, they should also be able to sell all the new modules, n’est pas? :eek:) Not to mention fully repainting something the size of a 747 should be a bit more than a button click and carried out for free!!

So come on Frontier; we want these lumps to feel like the Millennium Falcon on a bad day - to really live and breathe.

Baby, hold together!
 
Thats one of those nice to have features. And its one of the things we should get later after the basic mechanics are implemented. it would then due to hardware advancement alos be of lesser negative impact for people who can barely run the game today.
 
I don't disagree, but it seems to be one of those things that is squarely on the 'Simulation' side of the house. Elite: Dangerous seems to be a bit bi-polar when it comes down to game v. simulation. It's something I would love to see if it was sim, but I would be hard pressed to call this game a sim IMHO.
 
Idk. I really like the sound of that being a thing. I like the idea of my Cobra looking like it's going to fly to pieces after a battle that took it to under 10 percent hull and the thrusters barely working making it handle like a wet paper airplane with a wing missing.

In my roleplay of the game my Cobra's 30 years old, it's older than I am. I want it my gameplay to at least be faked into making that feeling that it's old. We used to have the paint wear away and that's even gone now.

I don't know about repairs not getting the ship to 100 percent like what the OP said but what after awhile, parts just don't work as well because of poor maintaining of them, and weapons being blown off. Or at the very least if I choose not to touch the ship integrity then I start to see malfunctions as a result.
 
I don't disagree, but it seems to be one of those things that is squarely on the 'Simulation' side of the house. Elite: Dangerous seems to be a bit bi-polar when it comes down to game v. simulation. It's something I would love to see if it was sim, but I would be hard pressed to call this game a sim IMHO.

Depends, Elite are between SIM and RPG me thinks, some parts are more to the SIM side others not. Its a balance and if you look at the anaconda it has a pretty extensive damage model. I would like to see that on all the ships, however it can be down the road as we need more urgent feature done ATM.
 
Depends, Elite are between SIM and RPG me thinks, some parts are more to the SIM side others not. Its a balance and if you look at the anaconda it has a pretty extensive damage model. I would like to see that on all the ships, however it can be down the road as we need more urgent feature done ATM.

Sure, more cosmetic stuff like that would be great. What I would find a bit tedious though would be having to get repaired slowly or re-hunting down parts for repair. Again, if it was a sim, I would probably feel differently, but Elite feels pretty gamey to me to go though that kind of rigmarole every time I came back from a hunt.
 
Wait for crafting. What you spend crafting for two years, insurance company will reimburse for nothing. All the epic raid loot, insurance company has entire warehouses ready.
Firstly; I love Elite Dangerous in all its forms, and as it develops I'm sure it will only get better. But a subject I'd like to bring up is the damage and collision models.
We all love our shiny ships - be they chuffing great battle wagons to a sneaky Sidewinder. They are the stars of the game - so why don't they show their hard earned scars?

Currently, using hundreds of tons of unshielded metal as a battering ram and being hit by massive explosive shells results in..... a slightly degraded paint job and a cracked windscreen. And when, after repeated combat, your beloved rust buckethas been reduced to a 2 percent scrap heap, everything still works? No failed thrusters making it fly like a brick, weapons sheared of their mounts, cargo holds trailing debris from massive rends in the hull, undercarriage hanging limp with hydraulic fluid spewing into space…..you get the picture.

And just as importantly, every time these wrecked hulks manage to crawl into some far flung, pirate operated outpost with a ‘repair’ facilty on 2% hull – they have all the bits to fix every piece of exotic machinery ever produced, every time. No new unpainted panels, no cannon hole patches, no components destroyed and need rebuying elsewhere….. (I know 3D printers are good now, but if they could replicate all the spares by having the plans in ED, they should also be able to sell all the new modules, n’est pas? :eek:) Not to mention fully repainting something the size of a 747 should be a bit more than a button click and carried out for free!!

So come on Frontier; we want these lumps to feel like the Millennium Falcon on a bad day - to really live and breathe.

Baby, hold together!
 
Sure, more cosmetic stuff like that would be great. What I would find a bit tedious though would be having to get repaired slowly or re-hunting down parts for repair. Again, if it was a sim, I would probably feel differently, but Elite feels pretty gamey to me to go though that kind of rigmarole every time I came back from a hunt.

repairs should be done by robots, you just place your "credit card in the machine" and it get to work. However I would love to see some robotic arms doing something than just SLAM, and repair is done.
 
repairs should be done by robots, you just place your "credit card in the machine" and it get to work. However I would love to see some robotic arms doing something than just SLAM, and repair is done.

I agree that would be awesome to see...the first 10-15 times :D
 
Thank you for the comments - only just catching up again.

I deeply hope that the crafting aspects do indeed make our ships feel more organic and alive, and as Tarragon says that the current system of insurance doesn't devalue the effort into getting rare items - but as a large number of players seem quite happy with the more 'arcade game' gameplay (isn't that what Arena is for?), it'll be interesting to see the compromise.
 
There is cosmetic damage, last I checked it doesn't last once you change instances (ie enter SC)
They tested persistence for it in the Horizons or 1.5 beta, I forget which but there was issues if I recall correctly

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The Anaconda actually does have some pretty nice damage models that I think very few people actually appreciate. When your hull gets to a low % your armor buckles and tears open.

Right now there is the module damage mechanic that actually DOES play a role in competitive PvP. Having your FSD take damage and malfunction, canceling your jump; disabling an enemy's powerplant or drives leaving them helpless; having to reboot your ship in the middle of combat, leaving yourself completely vulnerable; those are all things that happen in PvP.

At the end of the day, people have been asking for a more complex repair system for a long time, but its clear that it would take a lot of effort to implement, and since FD has already planned out the rest of the season 2 content, its safe to say that the soonest it will get here is season 3.
 
And when, after repeated combat, your beloved rust buckethas been reduced to a 2 percent scrap heap, everything still works? No failed thrusters making it fly like a brick, weapons sheared of their mounts, cargo holds trailing debris from massive rends in the hull, undercarriage hanging limp with hydraulic fluid spewing into space…..you get the picture.

This is not true though. Yes, it doesn't show visually, except maybe on the Anaconda, but subsystems do go haywire and you do have a lot of problems. I've seen gimballed lasers go crazy and fire in every direction, the thrusters flickering between on and off (which makes planetary landings quite.. adventorous), the FSD failing on you at random, etc etc. Yes it currently doesn't show up, but the system failures are there.
 
I want my ships to age .... i want damage to never be 100% repairable .... slowly over time scars/dints etc accumulate etc...

Maybe then they can offer a 'hull refinishing' service at select 'Dealers' maybe like a home-base for each of the main ship builders in which they offer a more thorough service

My ship, after a year of hard work shouldn't look like the day it did i flew it out of the shipyard on the first day
 
The Anaconda actually does have some pretty nice damage models that I think very few people actually appreciate. When your hull gets to a low % your armor buckles and tears open.

This +1. There's pictures floating around the forums somewhere. The Anaconda damage model is amazing :)
 
More visible damage would add a lot to combat imo. Its not so bad with smaller ships but the lack of it is very noticeable on large ships. The Imperial Cutter frankly looks ridiculous atm: at 10% hull it still looks brand new. The light colour of Imperial ships makes the lake of damage more apparent.

Obviously advanced damage modelling takes time to implement properly but surely it wouldn't be difficult to add decent damage textures? The current textures are very basic and disappear once you enter supercruise. We did get better damage textures with either the 1.4 or 1.5 update (that also didn't disappear) but they were removed and never seen again.
 
I don't disagree, but it seems to be one of those things that is squarely on the 'Simulation' side of the house. Elite: Dangerous seems to be a bit bi-polar when it comes down to game v. simulation. It's something I would love to see if it was sim, but I would be hard pressed to call this game a sim IMHO.

Depends what part of the game you would like to call a SIM? I guess the Galaxy is simulated as close as we have seen in any SIM / game. The flight model is kind of simmy, but not hardcore. Some corners are cut for gameplay reasons (fine by me). The SRV is pretty much simulated. Elite is probably more to the SIM side than arcade side.

Like ArmA, that is a military SIM, however the airplanes and helicopters are not 100% sim like DCS. I think that there will always be grey areas due to gameplay reasons. If you take NMS, this is clearly not a "SIM" no matter what way you look at it. Where Rouge System is waaay more SIM than ED. So somewhere in the middle in my opinion.

And B.O.T, I would very much like to see a good damage model on all the ships, however not before the core of the game is ok.
 
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Good points all - have to agree with Lysander's points regarding the balance between sim/ arcade.

Don't have an Annie, so I wasn't aware of the damage model being a bit more detailed than others - just spend more time hugging them in particular :).

I've temporarily lost certain ship functions when uder fire too, but I'd like to see a weapon/ module shear off completely or need major dockside repair rather than a short puase then it works again, explosive decompressions taking a chuck of your cargo with it, etc.

And a further intriguing thought occurs; using limpets for attaching towing lines.....

How about capturing ships that have been abandoned/ unmanned, then towed to a 'chop shop' to recover modules/ hulls? Might need a big file to take all the serial numbers off......

Or reselling back to the Insurance company as salvage?
 
I don't disagree, but it seems to be one of those things that is squarely on the 'Simulation' side of the house. Elite: Dangerous seems to be a bit bi-polar when it comes down to game v. simulation. It's something I would love to see if it was sim, but I would be hard pressed to call this game a sim IMHO.

It's the one thing sort of driving me nuts as this game develops: is it a simulator or a game? It's touted as super realistic (once you give them the magic frame shift drive thing) which makes it slow: driving for hours in supercruise, expansive galaxy, manual landings and rotations for launch, etc. Then, it's a game: respawn after destruction instantly, repairs and refit instantly, now synthesizing ammo out of rocks (how would that work?), minutes of O2 on a ship the size of an aircraft carrier (really? For one person? It should be days of O2) etc.

So what is this going to be? Simulator or game? For shoot 'em up games, there are lots of titles already. Elite was (historically) an alternative to that but it may be that to keep the money flowing it has to become another EVE, just like how all the formerly smart TV channels (Discovery, History, Nat Geo, etc) went from documentary channels to reality TV tripe. Appealing to the masses.
 
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It's the one thing sort of driving me nuts as this game develops: is it a simulator or a game? It's touted as super realistic (once you give them the magic frame shift drive thing) which makes it slow: driving for hours in supercruise, expansive galaxy, manual landings and rotations for launch, etc. Then, it's a game: respawn after destruction instantly, repairs and refit instantly, now synthesizing ammo out of rocks (how would that work?), minutes of O2 on a ship the size of an aircraft carrier (really? For one person? It should be days of O2) etc.

So what is this going to be? Simulator or game? For shoot 'em up games, there are lots of titles already. Elite was (historically) an alternative to that but it may be that to keep the money flowing it has to become another EVE, just like how all the formerly smart TV channels (Discovery, History, Nat Geo, etc) went from documentary channels to reality TV tripe. Appealing to the masses.

Frontier need to find a red line between hardcore SIM and arcade. If you make it too much SIM you will lose the "casual" game, if you make it to much to the arcade side, the SIMMER will leave. It's here the, "easy to learn and difficult to master" comes in. As I am more a SIM person I would love to see as much SIM mechanics as possible in ED, however I do understand that this is not for everyone, and therefor ED need to be accesble for all types of people.

So we have FA-OFF as one of the more obvious SIM mechanics. Again the HUD is a mix of SIM and arcade. In my opinion some of the mechanics in the HUD should still be tweaked to the SIM part, as they are now to much leaning to the arcade part.

The problem with games today is that you can't make all people happy, if a DEVELOPER tries to please all, they will end up with nothing or a big blob of not working game codes. The SIMMERS will leave, and the "casual" gamer will jump in and out depending of new shinny stuff in the next patch. You need to have a "hardcore" player group who are playing the game for longer periods. We all know that playing 8 hours a day is not possible for all, but if you make a complex game, those are the group you need to make the game for. The game just need to be accessable for those who can't due to IRL issues.

BTW, I only play in weekends as per agreement with SWMBO (She Who Must Be Obeyed) Ms. Lysander.

[video=youtube;_LEAAy44wnQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LEAAy44wnQ[/video]
 
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