Armor for the Power plant. Is it a good idea?

[NeilF]

If you're out to destroy a big ship you just do it out of habit, there's no alternatives, no reason to think.

...keep in mind though, a lot of people employing this approach have also just flown to a RES where wanteds are simply queuing up to be destroyed.... for seemingly no reason.

ie: Why would people want to "think" when they're sitting in a zone clearly designed for little more than farming credits under the guise of "bounty hunting". Why make this "farming" more difficult by requiring any real risk, thought or skill? I'm almost suprised you can target the cockpit directly and simply kill the pilot in a couple of shots

 

[Troa Barton]

We all go for the power plant now. Don´t we? I do, most of the time. Specially on the big ships like Python and Anaconda.
But shouldn´t there be a mod to armor the power plant so it doesn´t get targeted every time for easy kills. This would make the big ships more of a challenge. So lets say an Elite Anaconda interdicts you. You take up the fight and target its power plant, but to your surprise you find out its heavily modded with extra armor, and can now withstand heavy dmg. You have to find other ways to kill the Anaconda, this Anny wont go down easily. What do you think about such an option? Make it a very rare upgrade which may be obtained with certain rep or knowledge. Maybe an unique drop in a USS.

armor should reduce all incoming damage by a flat percentage, but I also like the idea of adding armor points to components of your choosing for a cost and added weight.

 

[Mephane]

Maybe gimballed should just not auto-target subsystems - then it would actually be a further downside because you can't reliably target subsystems anymore - so fixed gets damage and precision at the expense of time on target and aiming difficulties, while gimballed gets time on target and ease of use at the expense of precision and damage.

The thing is, gimballed weapons need to aim somewhere. Currently that location is probably a geometrically calculated center or the center of mass, something like that. When you are very close to a medium or big ship, you will see what I mean, the gimballed weapons will try to aim for a specific spot. That is without any subsystems targetted.

All NPCs seem to aim for that same spot, too, even when using fixed weapons.

Some ships have their power plant roughly in that very same location. The Asp is notorious for this, you need not even aim for the power plant, with gimballed weapons you are going to score a lot of accidental power plant kills. I hope this is eventually sorted out, for example by changing the position of the power plant on all affected ships so that this "center" point does not overlap with any module. This is in addition to, hopefully, making armour upgrades also protecting modules.

 

[W4rSkuLL]

When me and my brother go BH in a RES. We always go for the PP on Anacondas and Clippers. The big ships. And they usually pop with 30-40% hull. So its like the PP is the big ships hull in a way. But if we had targeted the PP and it was modified with extra armor it would make us think twice if its worth targeting that sub system and maybe target another subsystem. Which would make for some diversity and new game elements. These armors could vary in strength based on their construction method and what they are made of. It could say "Powerplant Modified" "Added 2 layers of titanium coating" Well, you see what I mean. You can modify the modules. Which could make even a Sidewinder unique and powerful in many ways.
But I think at least the PP needs some ways to be more protected. At least on big ships. Just POP the PP and the ship goes BOOM. To easy.