0% hull shouldn't destroy a ship

[Morbad]

I think it's far more plausible for sufficient damage to the hull/structure cause the ship to break apart than it is for the destruction of the ship's fusion reactor to do this.

Damage from a magnet quench and the resulting loss of containment really wouldn't be very catastrophic with any real or speculative fusion reactor design and that it even has a chance to totally destroy the ship in and of itself is almost pure fantasy. The power distributor module and ammunition magazines both likely have more energy to be liberated than the power plant itself. Then again, the power plant likely contains/controls the coolant system and destroying that would probably be as good a reason as any for the auto-ejection and scuttling mechanism to trigger.

Regardless, I don't see this change as being any better gameplay or plausibility wise and I'm not really in favor of it.

in Elite's system, you only hit a subsystem if you target it

As noted above, this is false.

Targeting a subsystem is only an aiming guide. Weapons hit whatever they hit, with penetration depths based on the weapon and the ship in question. You can disable your sensors entirely and use a fixed weapon to core out any module you so choose, if you know where they are and can land the shots. Conversely, you can have a module targeted, and be aiming directly at it, but not do any damage to it, while destroying other modules that are blocking the path to it.

 

[YinYin]

I think it's far more plausible for sufficient damage to the hull/structure cause the ship to break apart than it is for the destruction of the ship's fusion reactor to do this.

Agreed. But all our combat follows rule of cool fantasy. We need our explosive entertainment here.

Regardless, I don't see this change as being any better gameplay or plausibility wise and I'm not really in favor of it.

Do you like pirating a moving ship or risking it's destruction every time it reboots the power plant?
Do you like wailing on an immobile target at 0% power plant with a chance of destruction for every hit?
Do you like suicide ramming near stations being a problem the development team has to struggle with?

 

[EDanaII]

Well, shut mah mouth... then yer right, YinYin... 'cause how I described it is exactly how it feels. To be fair, I'm not that heavy into combat, exploration mostly, but when I have engaged, that's all it feels like to me. Just knocking down hit points until boom-time...

 

[DeathStroke]

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.

Heh, I forgot about the exposed station reactors. Proves my point on how non-explodey the reactors are though. Thargs shot them all to hell and they didn't blow.

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).

Or they could make a module/hardpoint to slow disabled ships. Harpoon, tractor beam (thargs have them, why not humans), deceleration limpets. The limpets would have to be faster and stronger though, so, not the best option.

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.

Same problem, ship would still fall apart.

SIZE=1](you may remember the Damocles video, where the imperial cruiser tilts a bit once defeated - same effect)[/SIZE]

I remember it. The only parts of that which made it into the game are the ship models, everything else just fell down a hole or something.

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.

What I got from ^, was: 'It's not random, but it might as well be random, because you can't tell the difference.'

 

[Bortas]

• 0% hull no longer destroys any ship. Instead, the thrusters will perform an emergency stop to prevent tearing the hull apart

Thrusters performing an emergency stop is much more likely to tear the hull apart, than just letting it float at whatever its current speed is, though.

 

[DeathStroke]

[/LIST]

Thrusters performing an emergency stop is much more likely to tear the hull apart, than just letting it float at whatever its current speed is, though.

 

[Raumfahrer Spiff]

What I got from ^, was: 'It's not random, but it might as well be random, because you can't tell the difference.'

When you jump into a system, you know what security level it is--in high sec, you know the response time is gonna be pretty quick. In the lower left corner of the HUD, you know whether you're in a shipping lane or not--also means a quicker response time.

Everywhere else might feel random, but there's no reason someone shouldn't be able to stick to high-sec and shipping lanes, and not be able to take advantage of that benefit. Except that it's not very likely currently, because exploding on hull=0% means death (for non-combat ships) is far too likely/inevitable before even the quickest of security response times in the many cases where PvP ships are targeting PvE ships, even in such systems.

 

[Drelthar]

This concept is great. Probably has kinks, but in general sounds like a great idea

 

[YinYin]

Heh, I forgot about the exposed station reactors. Proves my point on how non-explodey the reactors are though. Thargs shot them all to hell and they didn't blow.

I'd say those are at critical integrity (0%~5%) and we are either lucky or there was no intention to destroy them.
(they are abducting humans in other scenarios - maybe they are conserving live stock? or just not quite that cruel? all damaged stations are sitting ducks right now and could suffer further attacks - instead rescue and repair operations are allowed to proceed)

They are also larger than any of our ships or Thargoid interceptors. I think almost as large as a captial ship.
Hence it's not surprising to me that they do manage to continue operating in this state.

Or they could make a module/hardpoint to slow disabled ships. Harpoon, tractor beam (thargs have them, why not humans), deceleration limpets. The limpets would have to be faster and stronger though, so, not the best option.

The harpoon in particular is a really cool concept, but it's far more complex, puts additional demand on pirate build requirements and comes with less additional benefits. I wanna see the basics working better first.

Same problem, ship would still fall apart.

Sticking to what we have. Our ships never fall apart. They only blow apart.

Beyond that giant hull breaches are still a feature I actually want to see (as it's been planned during kickstarter) to make cargo spill more easily and not just through the hatch.
This could very well be a standard animation upon 0% hull, but still leaving the skeleton of the ship to potentially limp back to port.

What I got from ^, was: 'It's not random, but it might as well be random, because you can't tell the difference.'

What I got from this is that you aren't very perceptive

Any ideas on how to design feedback that allows even you to tell the difference? I can already tell the difference.

Thrusters performing an emergency stop is much more likely to tear the hull apart, than just letting it float at whatever its current speed is, though.

Very true, one reason for this gentle stopping approach:

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)

Apart from that there is no physical reason for things like scooping/limpets/fighters to have a speed limit to connect.
Only relative speed to the ship should matter, but that's not technically feasible because with increased speed physics simulations get less accurate.

Until there is a technical solution to make cargo extraction and collection at high speed just as easy as at low speed, broken down ships need to slow down.

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

I like some aspects of the concept presented by YinYin, particularly the reduction to collision damage negating explorers or kamikaze griefers at stations. However I see one immediate problem, in a CZ I pick a target, stick to their tail & blast away at them until hull = 0% and they make a pretty explosion... Under your suggestion when I get them to 0% hull they'll do an emergency stop I'll have to loop back and keep shooting the stationary ships powerplant to get the combat bond for them meaning I'd be either stationary or flying fairly predictable orbits around the now immobilised target to get the kill leaving me vulnerable to other enemies getting on my six and also immobilising me and in general it would make cz's feel particularly grindy...

To counter this I'd suggest a couple of alternatives as a small tweak to the proposed mechanic to negate the unintended consequence for CZ's, first off lets two new thresholds for damage, lets say at 10% hull it is "Dangerous" and change the lowest hull percentage % reading to "critical", and possibly consider moving critical up to 5%:

• when a ship gets to 5% hull it blacks out and slowly decelerates to a stop, it starts a gradual slowdown allowing a pirate to do their thing with it, but 0% hull still causes ship destruction
• when a ship gets to "critical" hull it starts the same slow down and black out procedure as mentioned above, but if it receives another a given amount of further sustained fire it explodes so you could take them to critical hull to cripple them to pirate them or keep blasting to kill them
• when a ship gets to "Dangerous" hull the hitboxes for modules increase in size, so instead of a powerplant on an anaconda being say 4m x 4m surface area on the hull it becomes 20m x 20m, but total hull damage only causes the ship to stop but not explode this would allow pilots to hack away at the hull using conventional tactics then which would knit in with yinyins proposal but pilots bounty hunting or CZ'ing would have a fairly large subtarget for the killshot should we want to go for the kill

 

[YinYin]

I've already addressed these concerns a little differently. The emergency stop is indeed supposed to be a gradual slow down, just like every other object (fragments/materials/canisters all come to a stop eventually).

The normal destruction is achieved by relaying all weapon/heat damage beyond 0% hull to the power plant at an increased rate (a similar thing already happens to the canopy). It wouldn't take any longer than the emergency stop or the explosion delay we already have upon reaching 0% hull.

I think additional thresholds make the whole thing unnecessarily complex and just increasing sub target volumes isn't enough to ensure the same experience as now. On an Anaconda for example the power plant likely already is near a 20 m radius and any increase only makes the front of the ship more vulnerable. You could still pointlessly hammer away on the ship center/rear.

 

[nathdixon92]

I miss the days where the Powerplant would blow at 0%...I mean we are talking hydrogen fusion reactors here so I'm fairly certain a containment failure would be incredibly bad news...

 

[IndigoWyrd]

I suppose, if you want to really delve into it, it IS possible to completely cripple a ship without destroying it.
As a matter of fact, I know it is, because I've done it.

While off doing my regular thing, I'd managed to irritate some faction or another, enough to warrant a bounty. This triggered NPC Bounty Hunters to begin to follow and harass me. One I simply shot dead in Anarchy space, because it was Anarchy space, and I don't like to be bothered, no matter who said I did what, where, or to the nubile daughter of whoever might claim to be in charge.

The next one was a woman with a pretty name, so I shot out her thrusters, weapons, power plant, distributor, FSD, and took her life support down to 1%, leaving her hull at a near-pristine 88%. Because I could, and because I liked the name. And because I was practicing my module-sniping skills. When I was done, I jumped out.

Of course, she picked up my trail again, 2 systems later, in a fully repaired and intact ship, and didn't even have the decency to say "Thanks for not killing me back there." or anything, so I ditched the interdiction attempt and went on my merry way.

But it's generally pretty tough to simply cripple a ship. Modules have small target areas, and unless they're external, some hull damage is required to get to them. You can't stab a turtle through the heart without piercing the shell, and most times weapons do far more damage to the hull than directly to modules - the new Flechette weapons being a notable exception.

 

[YinYin]

I suppose, if you want to really delve into it, it IS possible to completely cripple a ship without destroying it.

In some way this is only true for ships with no power priority. NPCs are stupid like that. And the smarter ones still reboot and repair again and again.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

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 guess other options would include more severe consecuences of very low module damage or just extending the time it takes to reboot/repair, this seems too many changes for a relatively simple issue.

 

[MickyG1982]

Actual footage of my cobra with 0% hull:

 

[xondk]

Pick some holes.

Well the whole idea of 'health' systems is imperfect from the get go, but it makes it easier to handle, then more complicated damage models that come with their own advantages and disadvantages.
Would it be cooler with better damage systems, definitely, but the health system as it is last I checked is supposed to indicate how close you are to total system failure which would also include the ship the destruction of the ship.

That there is the individual module damage in Elite, which is also part of the damage system, so shouldn't be discounted.

It could be cool with a kind of physical or semi physical damage though not just damage declares, actual holes in something that would if something is hit with that kind of damage, result in total loss of all functionality of said item, the idea could maybe be build over hull, so when a part of the ship reaches 0% hull or a module gets to 0%, other then being none functional these parts of the ship would also be susceptible to this kind of critical damage that cannot be repaired, essentially there would be nothing to 'protect' anything at 0% hull, so modules would take the direct damage instead (as long as actually hit) so say attacker is hitting nowhere near anything 'vital' that would cause explosion, then those things would be utterly destroyed and would need a repair shop to rebuild the modules.
Doing it this way could add another layer of interesting events, and they could maybe couple the damage decals together with, when in time the ships are totally modelled internally, and unless you'd afford a full retrofit, over time your ship would have battlescars that wouldn't simply have been able to be painted over.

Course that kind of complexity while cool would be likely impractical. Though the first part where 'death' doesn't happen at 0% hull and it instead means that every module is unprotected and you have no way of knowing when something vital will be damaged enough could be?