Fixing a ship close to death, the Movie Myth - suggestion to make it real?

[Stein]

There is already a mechanism for giving this "movie feel" when close to destruction. If your canopy is blown off and emergency life support kicks in, you have a few nail biting minutes to get your ship to safety. I could imagine the same effect being used on other components as well. For example, if your power plant integrity gets below a certain threshold (25%?), a message states that: "Warning! Power plant integrity critical! Nuclear meltdown will commence in 3 minutes!"

This would of course depend on you getting away from the fight. I don't think they should implement some sort of "hero's trick" (all power to shields and weapons!") to suddenly kill your opponent when you're on the brink of destruction, since that would prbably unbalance combat.

 

[drpaul]

There is already a mechanism for giving this "movie feel" when close to destruction. If your canopy is blown off and emergency life support kicks in, you have a few nail biting minutes to get your ship to safety. I could imagine the same effect being used on other components as well. For example, if your power plant integrity gets below a certain threshold (25%?), a message states that: "Warning! Power plant integrity critical! Nuclear meltdown will commence in 3 minutes!"

This would of course depend on you getting away from the fight. I don't think they should implement some sort of "hero's trick" (all power to shields and weapons!") to suddenly kill your opponent when you're on the brink of destruction, since that would prbably unbalance combat.

How about an 'emergency jump' which gets you to a random star within 500 light years but drains almost all your remaining fuel?

 

[Stein]

How about an 'emergency jump' which gets you to a random star within 500 light years but drains almost all your remaining fuel?

Not a bad idea. 500 ly is perhaps a bit excessive.

How about the classic Star Trek trick of "eject warp core"? You jettison your power plant for a mighty explosion that blinds an opponent and scramble his sensors long enough for you to get away.
Ship runs on residual power for a few minutes, barely enough to keep the essential components going. If you don't make it to port fast enough your ship dies completely. And you'd have to buy a new power plant if you make it home... That's an epic (and expensive) last line of defence

 

[Lowe1978]

It would be nice if ED could do a quick beta to test the concept:

When your hull hits zero - Your ship just turns off and not explode.

giving pirate a chance to fly and target your cargo hold without problem, and extract your cargo.

With no way to "escape" nore do you "die"
you are forced to scuttle your ship if you wish to deny them,
or attempt to repair it by canabolising modules as mentioned before
or let a field repair unit do the job, and let you limp back to a station for repairs (and a huge bill).

I think part of the problem with that is that most people know target the power plant rather than go for chewing the hull, especially on the bigger ships since it's the quickest way to take them out once the module fails. I know I certainly don't waste ammo on Anaconda hulls, I'm only ever aiming at the subsystems.

Perhaps the mechanic needs to be revisited and that a power plant failure isn't a guaranteed explosion? Gives the chance of 'fix/bodge'? Whereas a full on hull @ 0% is kabooom...

 

[WelshRambler]

I really loved one time when i was bounty hunting NPCs and an anaconda without shields was almost dead but not as dead as i thought ... managed to escape with 2% hull and no life support and I had fuel for one jump. 7 Minutes. So I go to the next system only to forget that it was one that was 1000ls from the jump point.
The seconds were counting down and as I pressed on, to reach the station, I realised that I was going too fast. My windows were broken too and couldn't see the AR data on my window , in a complete panic I managed to do a quick loop and drop supercruise near the station, I had a bit more than a minute left.
In a moment of despair I see that the station in question is a Coriolis that faces on the other side - red lights everywhere . I boost as much as I can, scratching the surface of the station as it rotates then a 180o turn and finally see the letterbox but my oxygen is going red - I know if I boost with my cobra I die so I just decide to pass the letterbox with full throttle. I am sure that I don't have the time to land properly but I still don't give up, I am ready for a crash landing with 90% chance to explode as I touch the dock

I press forward to pass the letterbox as I come diagonally approximately 30o misaligned in both axis ... bouncing mildly at the bottom first and then as I try to rotate and align the ship I bounce a bit harder at the side and top, I am waiting to loose control and see the explosion of death...but the hull took the crash. Oxygen is red but can't read the number in that speed ... last ten seconds.

I still spin a bit while trying to read the numbers, busy station, just to realise, for the first time, that inside the dock there is atmosphere! The counter stops.
In a moment of excitement and inaction because I was waiting to die, I lost at least one precious second just to realise that i was going with 300m/sec? to hit the back wall ... reverse thrusters - landing gear - parachutes - managed to stop just a few meters before the wall, I stopped there for a moment and landed in the slowest and safest manner.
So for those 'mature' players who played beck in the day 'Elite' that is as far as excitement can go without some heart condition start kicking in : )
I never attacked an Anaconda after that, let's call it a phobia : ) That was Das Boot for me ...

I had this too. In honesty I still had about 1min + air left so it wasn't quite so squeaky bum, but I too was impressed that the air came back on once I was in the station. And navigating in SC with half a HUD, nice touch. Probably my best ED moment so far, having said that, first thing I did was to upgrade my life support.

Would be nice though if the damage modelling at a systems level was looked at, such as redundant and back up systems, re-routing electrics, power etc., manually lowering the gear for example, as symmetric main thrust or a loss of comms docking procedure.

 

[Loskene]

I think part of the problem with that is that most people know target the power plant rather than go for chewing the hull, especially on the bigger ships since it's the quickest way to take them out once the module fails. I know I certainly don't waste ammo on Anaconda hulls, I'm only ever aiming at the subsystems.

Perhaps the mechanic needs to be revisited and that a power plant failure isn't a guaranteed explosion? Gives the chance of 'fix/bodge'? Whereas a full on hull @ 0% is kabooom...

I like that. When you destroy the power plant the ship should just shut down until auto repair or backup batteries can kick in some emergency power (maybe a minute or two delay to enable pirates to force the hatch). I mean these are cheap, practical and reliable (by 3300 standards) hydrogen fusion power plants right, they're not matter/antimatter reactors that absolutely have to stay online to prevent catastrophic annihilation. I can see losing the power plant maybe causing a hull rupture when it kicks off, maybe splash damage surrounding components a bit, but total chain reaction destruction of the entire spaceframe seems like a huge weakness built in to every ship.

It'd make anaconda fights much more interesting too if getting the power plant to 0% didn't mean a sigh of relief and a fireworks show, but a hurry to break the thing into pieces before it wakes up again.

 

[starman]

I had my shield and thrusters knocked out within seconds.. There is no way to repair thrusters and once they go you cant boost to go to frameshift. You are dead in the water while the rest of your systems collapse. This appears to happen relatively easily regardless of what shielding or hull i had military grade and shield cells. No chance of escaping total failure

 

[CMDR Generic EventHandler]

I had my shield and thrusters knocked out within seconds.. There is no way to repair thrusters and once they go you cant boost to go to frameshift. You are dead in the water while the rest of your systems collapse. This appears to happen relatively easily regardless of what shielding or hull i had military grade and shield cells. No chance of escaping total failure

Back in beta I had my thrusters knocked out in two hits, one to take the shield down and one took the thrusters out. I never even got chance to turn on my attacker (a python). I was left spinning, had to self destruct.

I also had a docking incident with my cobra and a commanders T9. That left me without sensors. I suicided into him when he came back out of the station. Revenge is a dish best served with mango chutney.