0% hull shouldn't destroy a ship

[YinYin]

Initial concepts were touting ships to not just go boom and disappear. They were supposed to be difficult to destroy and rather remain as badly damaged wrecks. This of course is a problem as long as you cannot board or otherwise interact with said wrecks. And even if you could, they would still start to clog up instances and impede the flow of activities not related to them (object count limit). Hence we do have ships exploding to make way for more. That's both good for normal combat and bad for piracy.

I think we can have the best of both and improve several related things along the way.

Fortunately there already are two triggers to destroy a ship:

• destroying the hull
• and continuously damaging a destroyed power plant.

The details on this changed with 1.4, where previously destroying the power plant meant destroying the ship right away.
I saw this as an effort to create this downed ship state, with the power plant "destroyed" and most of the ship systems shut down.

It was great for PvE piracy, because it allowed immobilising the target without the drift from blown out thrusters.
Until NPCs learned how to reboot and repair their power plant.
To me it just lengthened the kill time. It meant shooting a now immobile target for a bit longer. I have since started to favour raw damage.

I did like reduced power output with power plant damage, but I don't think a power plant should still have any output at 0%.
Offline thrusters stopping all ship motion doesn't make much sense to me either, even if it is a rather handy feature.

Swapping these two triggers around with some details on top can have a lot of benefits.

Here are a few design challenges while doing so:

• Without deliberate intent to destroy, most ship damage should eventually immobilise the ship first before destroying it. Including believable feedback to the pilot.
• Normal combat flow for both power plant sniping and raw damage attacks should remain or improve (no prolonged attacking an immobile target).
• A pirate should have a simple and reliable way to immobilise a target for a good amount of time. No drift and no squishy hulls popping by accident.
• There still needs to be some way for an immobilised target to get underway again.

Nice challenges? Let's give this a try:

• 0% power plant means instant destruction once more. Reduced power output only occurs due to damage/malfunctions before that (important feedback that the PP is attacked).
• 0% hull no longer destroys any ship. Instead, the thrusters will perform an emergency stop to prevent tearing the hull apart (with a big warning message to the pilot).
• Similar to security/ATR response, there is a repair response near inhabited space for broken down ships. ETA displayed to the pilot in the same fashion (always longer response time than security, if at all).
• Modules of a 0% hull ship will take increased damage from weapons fire (on top of no more hull hardness, resistances or module protection).
• All weapons will fully penetrate the volume of 0% hull ships and damage all modules in line. If there are no undamaged modules in line, the damage will be spread to remaining modules.

Power plant sniping becomes a quick and deliberate death instead of slow and random (right now it's a chance of destruction).
Normal hull damage always immobilises the ship first and gives the pilot clear feedback about their situation.
(I imagine a "emergency stop - ship hull critical" message upon reaching 0% and trying to move, just like the thrusters offline warning)
Hitting the power plant once is also necessary for destruction after only destroying the hull. With a lack of accuracy, raw damage will still reach it after tearing through everything else.
There is risk of just moving the prolonged attack of an immobile target from one approach to the other,
but I believe learning where to hit a 0% hull for instant destruction is more interesting than hammering away on a 0% power plant.

There are already some scenarios of NPC ships using fuel limpets to help commanders running on fumes. So adding in a repair variant makes sense to me.
Giving them a longer response time than security gives pirates more time to do their job properly.
They also no longer risk blowing their target up, because they no longer have to touch the power plant.
And to be perfectly safe, a pirate can deal the final immobilising blow to 0% hull with a good old ram. Yarrr!

This can also further improve the experience of getting pirated by an NPC. Your ship gets broken down, your cargo extracted, maybe you get to watch security chase the pirate off and eventually a repair ship helps you limp to a port. It becomes a more time rather than credit demanding experience. Most of all, there is more to experience.

The inability to destroy ships with a collision has more benefits.

Collisions can no longer directly result in murder. Be it an accident in a normal combat scenario or an ill intentioned suicide ram near a station. It will just cause a harmless ship breakdown instead.
(you now get to focus karma mechanics on combat logging!)

Additionally, out in the black, explorers now have a new way to get stranded instead of certain destruction. This elevates repair limpets to the same level of importance as fuel limpets. If your ship breaks down, these are the only thing that can get you running again.

Pick some holes.

 

[Raumfahrer Spiff]

Absolutely 100% agree with this concept.

I think it would instantly improve the gameplay feel of being on the wrong side of a fight in combat.

It doesn't mean you can never lose or never have consequences from your choices, but it does mean that there's less futility in engaging in risky behaviour against unknown elements.

The way it is now can make a lot of emergent combat situations feel outright demoralizing, which is very different from meanifully instilling a sense of genuine loss.

 

[Raumfahrer Spiff]

I'll post the thoughts I had on this topic from my post on reddit:

"This maybe wouldn't work for NPCs, because you wouldn't want to end up with a CZ just littered with disabled ships. Although, without NPCs having engineered ships, and with the default NPC loadouts, 'planting' them shouldn't be all that hard anyway, even by accident.
I've just always felt that our ships feel a little too fragile for what they are. To be clear, I don't want there to be less danger, I just kinda feel that our ships, by default, are cartoonishly explosive in a way that isn't very satisfying. This idea would mean that disabling players' ships would become more likely/easier than outright destroying it (if accurate subsystem targeting is not used/performed).


O% hull would/should still matter (prompting a total hull breach/failure that would depressurize the ship and kick on emergency life support as it does with canopy failure now), as well as a blown canopy or any number of other issues that would comes up as more and more modules start failing from a continued onslaught (which happens even faster at 0% hull since there is no extra protection). But with good outfitting, focused engineering, and responsive repairing you could theoretically make rupturing a power plant (taking it fully to 0%) a hefty chore.


If you have the mats to spare for life-support synthesis and AFMU repairs, you could theoretically survive long enough for system security, ATR, or even friendly player responders to arrive and give you time/support to limp away. But, for example, running out of oxygen would still trigger the same sequence it does now, and after your character "dies" (or more accurately to the lore "gets FSD'd to safety by the Remlock escape pod") then the ship auto self destructs, same as it does now.


Otherwise not too much would change. "Time-to-kill" would just become "time-to-disable." Killing other ships would still be plenty possible, and even common if that is the attackers specific goal, it would just less of a certainty depending on how well prepared and responsive the victim is (and how well the attacker can snipe out specific modules).


This would be a boon for pirates, I think. I could see it being more strategic, as well as giving them targets who aren't as terrified that they will 100% have to eat some huge rebuy just because a pirate might've been a little too trigger happy or sloppy. No more accidental/flippant murders."

This would make system security level, ATR, and shipping lane mechanics actually matter more. It would mean combat scenarios where someone is outclassed in non-combat ships against dedicated PvP ships would feel a lot less demoralizing. It would give us a chance to make better (imo, more fun) use of repair limpets, AFMU, wing beacons, with all sort of avenues for diversions and rescues that basically don't exist now in 99% of situations because ship destruction is so inevitable and swift.

 

[Iskariot]

Initial concepts were touting ships to not just go boom and disappear. They were supposed to be difficult to destroy and rather remain as badly damaged wrecks. This of course is a problem as long as you cannot board or otherwise interact with said wrecks. And even if you could, they would still start to clog up instances and impede the flow of activities not related to them (object count limit). Hence we do have ships exploding to make way for more. That's both good for normal combat and bad for piracy.

I think we can have the best of both and improve several related things along the way.

Fortunately there already are two triggers to destroy a ship:

• destroying the hull
• and continuously damaging a destroyed power plant.

The details on this changed with 1.4, where previously destroying the power plant meant destroying the ship right away.
I saw this as an effort to create this downed ship state, with the power plant "destroyed" and most of the ship systems shut down.

It was great for PvE piracy, because it allowed immobilising the target without the drift from blown out thrusters.
Until NPCs learned how to reboot and repair their power plant.
To me it just lengthened the kill time. It meant shooting a now immobile target for a bit longer. I have since started to favour raw damage.

I did like reduced power output with power plant damage, but I don't think a power plant should still have any output at 0%.
Offline thrusters stopping all ship motion doesn't make much sense to me either, even if it is a rather handy feature.

Swapping these two triggers around with some details on top can have a lot of benefits.

Here are a few design challenges while doing so:

• Without deliberate intent to destroy, most ship damage should eventually immobilise the ship first before destroying it. Including believable feedback to the pilot.
• Normal combat flow for both power plant sniping and raw damage attacks should remain or improve (no prolonged attacking an immobile target).
• A pirate should have a simple and reliable way to immobilise a target for a good amount of time. No drift and no squishy hulls popping by accident.
• There still needs to be some way for an immobilised target to get underway again.

Nice challenges? Let's give this a try:

• 0% power plant means instant destruction once more. Reduced power output only occurs due to damage/malfunctions before that (important feedback that the PP is attacked).
• 0% hull no longer destroys any ship. Instead, the thrusters will perform an emergency stop to prevent tearing the hull apart (with a big warning message to the pilot).
• Similar to security/ATR response, there is a repair response near inhabited space for broken down ships. ETA displayed to the pilot in the same fashion (always longer response time than security, if at all).
• Modules of a 0% hull ship will take increased damage from weapons fire (on top of no more hull hardness, resistances or module protection).
• All weapons will fully penetrate the volume of 0% hull ships and damage all modules in line. If there are no undamaged modules in line, the damage will be spread to remaining modules.

Power plant sniping becomes a quick and deliberate death instead of slow and random (right now it's a chance of destruction).
Normal hull damage always immobilises the ship first and gives the pilot clear feedback about their situation.
(I imagine a "emergency stop - ship hull critical" message upon reaching 0% and trying to move, just like the thrusters offline warning)
Hitting the power plant once is also necessary for destruction after only destroying the hull. With a lack of accuracy, raw damage will still reach it after tearing through everything else.
There is risk of just moving the prolonged attack of an immobile target from one approach to the other,
but I believe learning where to hit a 0% hull for instant destruction is more interesting than hammering away on a 0% power plant.

There are already some scenarios of NPC ships using fuel limpets to help commanders running on fumes. So adding in a repair variant makes sense to me.
Giving them a longer response time than security gives pirates more time to do their job properly.
They also no longer risk blowing their target up, because they no longer have to touch the power plant.
And to be perfectly safe, a pirate can deal the final immobilising blow to 0% hull with a good old ram. Yarrr!

This can also further improve the experience of getting pirated by an NPC. Your ship gets broken down, your cargo extracted, maybe you get to watch security chase the pirate off and eventually a repair ship helps you limp to a port. It becomes a more time rather than credit demanding experience. Most of all, there is more to experience.

The inability to destroy ships with a collision has more benefits.

Collisions can no longer directly result in murder. Be it an accident in a normal combat scenario or an ill intentioned suicide ram near a station. It will just cause a harmless ship breakdown instead.
(you now get to focus karma mechanics on combat logging!)

Additionally, out in the black, explorers now have a new way to get stranded instead of certain destruction. This elevates repair limpets to the same level of importance as fuel limpets. If your ship breaks down, these are the only thing that can get you running again.

Pick some holes.

I think this a very worthwhile concept for FDev to consider.
It enhance existing gameplay and adds new gameplay.
repped

Please post this in the suggestions forum.
I hope that maximizes the chance of a dev reading it.

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

so you want to seperate the ships "armor" from its "chassis" regarding damage.

or in other words, have 3 layers instead of 2: Shield -> Armor (Bulkheads) -> Chassis

 

[DeathStroke]

Initial concepts were touting ships to not just go boom and disappear. They were supposed to be difficult to destroy and rather remain as badly damaged wrecks. This of course is a problem as long as you cannot board or otherwise interact with said wrecks. And even if you could, they would still start to clog up instances and impede the flow of activities not related to them (object count limit). Hence we do have ships exploding to make way for more. That's both good for normal combat and bad for piracy.

That was starcitizen, not elite.

0% power plant means instant destruction once more. Reduced power output only occurs due to damage/malfunctions before that (important feedback that the PP is attacked).

That would depend on how safe the reactor is. Modern day molten salt reactors don't go boom if destroyed. In a thousand years, it's probable that safer fusion reactors have been created.

0% hull no longer destroys any ship. Instead, the thrusters will perform an emergency stop to prevent tearing the hull apart (with a big warning message to the pilot).

Performing an 'emergency stop' is 1. impossible due to being RELATIVE speed to your surroundings, 2. would in fact tear the ship apart if you were to come to 0m/s relative velocity.

Similar to security/ATR response, there is a repair response near inhabited space for broken down ships. ETA displayed to the pilot in the same fashion (always longer response time than security, if at all).

Being stuck until space RNGesus decides to rescue you is a GREAT gameplay idea. /s

Modules of a 0% hull ship will take increased damage from weapons fire (on top of no more hull hardness, resistances or module protection).
[*]All weapons will fully penetrate the volume of 0% hull ships and damage all modules in line. If there are no undamaged modules in line, the damage will be spread to remaining modules.

Completely unnecessary. If your hull is 0%, you die. Simple as.

Power plant sniping becomes a quick and deliberate death instead of slow and random (right now it's a chance of destruction).

Instant random death that the receiving player has no idea of what happened? Another great idea. /s


TL;DR The current system isn't great, but OP's idea is much worse.

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

forgot:
we actually had powerplant sniping instant destroying ships,
together with life support and forgot what the third subsystem was that would cause instagib.

it was horrible. because hitpoints didn't mean anything. a few cannon rounds and even an elite conda would explode at 50%+ hull remaining
these days, you need to fire a few more rounds, giving the remaining hitpoints a chance to do their work.

while i like the idea of "dying to npc pirates" giving you the choice to
- wait for someone with a "scroll of resurrection" comming to your help, or to
- instant-respawn with that huge rebuy and ship computer data lost

the rest of your post sounds to complicated and unnecessary...

 

[SAB380]

I’ll never support any suggestion that enables powerplant sniping of large ships.
It was ridiculous and badly thought out design to have powetplants accessible on large ships. (As is the large ships having blind spots when they have power to spare and could easily run rear turrets.). Thankfully Frontier realised that and changed it.

 

[YinYin]

off topic replies:

Spoiler

Please post this in the suggestions forum.
I hope that maximizes the chance of a dev reading it.

I will once I've discussed it enough and got it refined a bit. Still aware of several issues I didn't mention yet and am not happy with the text either.

Changing the title to something more provoking certainly has already helped get in some views/replies at least ;D

That was starcitizen, not elite.

More likely both, but I don't know SC very well.
Here is just one instance of David elaborating such things early on.

Completely unnecessary. If your hull is 0%, you die. Simple as.[...]
TL;DR The current system isn't great, but OP's idea is much worse.

You must've overlooked all the benefits ...

the rest of your post sounds to complicated and unnecessary...

I really need to phrase it better, as it is super simple.

I’ll never support any suggestion that enables powerplant sniping of large ships.
It was ridiculous and badly thought out design to have powetplants accessible on large ships. (As is the large ships having blind spots when they have power to spare and could easily run rear turrets.). Thankfully Frontier realised that and changed it.

I'm not sure we play the same game as power plants are still the fastest method to destroy large ships. Power plant sniping isn't gone.

so you want to seperate the ships "armor" from its "chassis" regarding damage.

No. A third layer would be too complex in my opinion. I simply decided that we do not have the weapons to destroy a ship chassis and destruction is always the result of a power plant explosion. The main goal of this is to have a more permanent broken down ship state that is easily attainable without blowing the ship up (compared to a 0% power plant, which still has a power output and can be repaired quite quickly via reboot). All without actually changing the current experience of blowing ships up.

That would depend on how safe the reactor is. Modern day molten salt reactors don't go boom if destroyed. In a thousand years, it's probable that safer fusion reactors have been created.

It's not that probable unless you can tell me how passive security might work for a fusion reactor ...? Seeing them exposed on damaged stations recently suggests that they are running tokamaks and the like, no cold fusion, which means much more extreme conditions than fission. The explosion wouldn't necessarily be a runaway, but simply disabled/destroyed containment.

Regardless, this is a design decision for now. Ships need to be cleared from an instance quickly and the best and most entertaining way to do that is with an explosion.

Performing an 'emergency stop' is 1. impossible due to being RELATIVE speed to your surroundings, 2. would in fact tear the ship apart if you were to come to 0m/s relative velocity.

Another design decision. Piracy needs target ships to come to a stop. Otherwise limpets cannot operate efficiently (not realistic either, but we have to roll with what we got).

I'd actually like the emergency stop to take a little while and not bring the ship to a perfect stop. With thrusters not firing anymore afterwards, flight assist would be offline and the ship may retain a tiny bit of drift and rotation.
Just enough so that it doesn't look as rigid as a thrusters offline ship now.
(you may remember the Damocles video, where the imperial cruiser tilts a bit once defeated - same effect)

Being stuck until space RNGesus decides to rescue you is a GREAT gameplay idea. /s

Response times are not random. They are fixed per security level and ship location (faster response on shipping lanes). Maybe reputation has influence as well, but I don't know about that. And with Beyond there is a notification with an estimated arrival. I just wouldn't send them out into the black so players get to do rescue operations as well.

Instant random death that the receiving player has no idea of what happened? Another great idea. /s

Very good point. I touched on it briefly, but I'll elaborate.

The 1.4 change to power plant death was precisely to address this, but in my opinion it doesn't do that very well.
You get the notification of reduced power output when it's already too late.
(also you may not equate that notification to near death)

So how should the game expose power plant status to the player? (this is a problem we have now as well - and they are onto it considering reduced output is relayed even to SRV and fighter)

I'd love to see and hear simple warning messages - not unlike integrity/fuel warnings in the SRV.

"power plant integrity at 50%"
"power plant integrity at 25%"
"power plant integrity critical"
"eject eject eject"

we actually had powerplant sniping instant destroying ships
[...]
it was horrible. because hitpoints didn't mean anything. a few cannon rounds and even an elite conda would explode at 50%+ hull remaining
these days, you need to fire a few more rounds, giving the remaining hitpoints a chance to do their work.

Power plants might generally need some more integrity to emulate the current chance-of-destruction time frame.

 

[CMDR Pugwash]

I was always expected that as your power plant took damage, its output would drop. Hence the reason for the energy priorities.

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

I was always expected that as your power plant took damage, its output would drop. Hence the reason for the energy priorities.

if your powerplant is destdroyed or fails due to other effects, your power drops down to 40% for a moment, and then back up to 50% if i remember it right.
you set your priorities so you can still manouver and eventually escape worst case (FSD+Thrusters)
PVP pilots may even set theire priorities to be able to fight in that condition

 

[YinYin]

I was always expected that as your power plant took damage, its output would drop. Hence the reason for the energy priorities.

That is exactly what happens, at 0% ...

Anyone worth their salt will continue flying with a broken power plant.

We may have actually gotten a few more output reduction levels between 0 and 100% damage since 1.4, but I haven't checked.

 

[Raumfahrer Spiff]

IMO, very simply, firing randomly at a ship should not result in a boom unless, very luckily, you happen to hit the PP enough to rupture it (bring it to 0%).

If someone is intent on destroying, and is able to selectively whittle away at specific modules, then yeah, boom away.

As it is currently ships just go boom way too easily by default (even when it's not intended.)

 

[smiths121]

Not really moved by the OPs proposal, not feeling a must have, but could live with it.....

As long as I get my bounty.

Simon

 

[EDanaII]

I'd argue for a voxel based model, myself. Much more interesting to me... then the damage you inflict is dependent on how far your weapons penetrate and what systems they strike. None of this silly hull (hit) point system.

 

[YinYin]

the damage you inflict is dependent on how far your weapons penetrate and what systems they strike.

That is exactly how sub targets work ... (no voxels though)

And keeping the ship around with a destroyed hull is one way to emphasise it.

 

[Vasious]

Being stuck until space RNGesus decides to rescue you is a GREAT gameplay idea. /s

Why would it be RNG?
Functions Panel -> beacon has a place for SOS.
The time taken might be a factor of system security and shipping lane, and there may be variables, but since it was "like the security response" you'd see a timer and know how long you will need to "hang in there" and synthesis life support

 

[EDanaII]

That is exactly how sub targets work ... (no voxels though)

And keeping the ship around with a destroyed hull is one way to emphasise it.

Nope. That's not exactly how sub-targets work.

In the Elite model, hull points are simply hit points. Hence, when you hit zero, queue explosion animation. Sub-targets are hit points for internal systems. Reduce them to zero and... queue whatever predetermined effect Frontier decides for them. Selecting a sub-system might reduce the chance of you hitting it, but you're still hitting it directly and reducing its hit points.

Voxels, on the other hand are just volumetric space. I throw a really hard rock at it and it will travel in a straight line until it hits the voxel. Then, depending on how hard I threw it, it will continue to travel destroying voxels until it runs out of momentum. As it travels, if it happens to hit parts of vital systems, it may take them out too depending on what it hits.

But targeting a sub-system in a voxel model does not mean you hit it. You would have a reduced chance of hitting that system based on the size of that system relative to your overall target. But here's the real difference: in Elite's system, you only hit a subsystem if you target it. In a voxel based system, you can hit a subsystem whether you target it or not. You can even hit a subsystem you didn't target. This is simply because you are modeling the path of your projectile as it passes through your target.

Finally, in a voxel based model -- done right, anyway -- you've modeled the entire ship and its systems and your ship reacts to that damage in accordance each systems relationship to each other. Damage to one system may cause it to fail, or it may simply reduce that system's effeciency but either case will affect the overall performance of the ship. In the hit point model, even Elite's sub-systems, simply fail when they are reduced to zero. With the voxel model, if, for example, we hit a cooling system, then your ship may begin to overheat relative to the ability of that system. If it hits a power line that, let's say, powers the ship's fusion reactor containment field, containment might fail, all that super-heated hydrogen plasma escapes and your ship explodes.

All that said, your proposal is more likely to be implemented than mine, because it's simpler to model. But, I expect that's why FDev modeled it the way the did, 'cause that's even simpler.

Nonetheless, I'd rather see a voxel based model but that's just me.

 

[Vasious]

Nope. That's not exactly how sub-targets work.

In the Elite model, hull points are simply hit points. Hence, when you hit zero, queue explosion animation. Sub-targets are hit points for internal systems. Reduce them to zero and... queue whatever predetermined effect Frontier decides for them. Selecting a sub-system might reduce the chance of you hitting it, but you're still hitting it directly and reducing its hit points.

Voxels, on the other hand are just volumetric space. I throw a really hard rock at it and it will travel in a straight line until it hits the voxel. Then, depending on how hard I threw it, it will continue to travel destroying voxels until it runs out of momentum. As it travels, if it happens to hit parts of vital systems, it may take them out too depending on what it hits.

But targeting a sub-system in a voxel model does not mean you hit it. You would have a reduced chance of hitting that system based on the size of that system relative to your overall target. But here's the real difference: in Elite's system, you only hit a subsystem if you target it. In a voxel based system, you can hit a subsystem whether you target it or not. You can even hit a subsystem you didn't target. This is simply because you are modeling the path of your projectile as it passes through your target.

Finally, in a voxel based model -- done right, anyway -- you've modeled the entire ship and its systems and your ship reacts to that damage in accordance each systems relationship to each other. Damage to one system may cause it to fail, or it may simply reduce that system's effeciency but either case will affect the overall performance of the ship. In the hit point model, even Elite's sub-systems, simply fail when they are reduced to zero. With the voxel model, if, for example, we hit a cooling system, then your ship may begin to overheat relative to the ability of that system. If it hits a power line that, let's say, powers the ship's fusion reactor containment field, containment might fail, all that super-heated hydrogen plasma escapes and your ship explodes.

All that said, your proposal is more likely to be implemented than mine, because it's simpler to model. But, I expect that's why FDev modeled it the way the did, 'cause that's even simpler.

Nonetheless, I'd rather see a voxel based model but that's just me.

Have a read here

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ussion-with-Mark-Allen-on-damage-and-defenses

 

[YinYin]

All that said, your proposal is more likely to be implemented than mine, because it's simpler to model.

You'll be pleased to read in the link Vasious found (before I had to spend time searching) that it already works the way you want. Modules have volume. Hits take penetration depth through the hull into account. And things get hit, whether you target them or not.

edit: also here is the image that was once linked inside that post