Just occurred to me today, remember in freespace, if you were too close to an enemy ship when it blew up, the blast would damage your ship? And if the enemy ship was huge, you literally had to scramble to get out of there, otherwise the blast could kill you. Sometimes if you were far enough but not too far the shock wave would jolt your ship and rock it a bit. Pretty immersive stuff. I can't remember but I think XWing did the same type of thing. It occurred to me as I was right next to an anaconda when it blew up today. It was a pretty graphic, but I thought it would be more realistic if the blast damaged my ship. Would any of you want to see this feature in Elite Dangerous?
Idea: if close, enemy ship explosions cause damage to your ship (like Freespace)
- Thread starter Rex Skylark
- Start date
Only massive ship explosions were able to damage you in freespace, so anything larger than annaconda/type 9
I doubt this would do anything to combat. While I do like this idea, I don't see the relevance. :/
Damn i thought they did. Well now I will be flying through the fireballs.
It could reduce the prevalence of ramming...
Logically a ship explosion can't cause damage by itself. In a vacuum there is no "shockwave" and nothing to propagate it. If damage does occur it can only be from two causes: a radiation burst from the exploding powerplant or flying debris. I've certainly suffered minor shield damage from a chunk of hull, but I've never noticed any radiation affect.
Edit: of course there is the cargo. Getting hit by a damaged canister of explosives might not be healthy!
Edit: of course there is the cargo. Getting hit by a damaged canister of explosives might not be healthy!
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Ian Phillips
Volunteer Moderator
Moved to suggestions forum.
It does seem a bit wrong that we can fly right through the middle of an exploding Anaconda and suffer no ill effects.
I can only guess at the reasons for this: too many pilots baking themselves to death seems a likely issue, as does the prospect of a bunch of trolls surrounding a real player with small ships, before self-destructing and taking their unfortunate victim with them.
On balance, it's probably best to avoid such things, even if the result isn't always terribly plausible. There's certainly a case to be made that the explosion itself wouldn't do much direct harm to a ship: we do go fuel-scooping in the coronae of stars, after all.
All that said, I would like the result to be a little bit beefier, just because it feels like it should be. An explosion might not cause damage, but it should exert some kind of force. Being knocked off course to some degree seems reasonable and should go largely unexploited, if it's not too heavy-handed - and as Lowe1978 suggests, a judicious amount of spin would seem like a good thing, if we're colliding at speed with an exploding ship in battle.
I can only guess at the reasons for this: too many pilots baking themselves to death seems a likely issue, as does the prospect of a bunch of trolls surrounding a real player with small ships, before self-destructing and taking their unfortunate victim with them.
On balance, it's probably best to avoid such things, even if the result isn't always terribly plausible. There's certainly a case to be made that the explosion itself wouldn't do much direct harm to a ship: we do go fuel-scooping in the coronae of stars, after all.
All that said, I would like the result to be a little bit beefier, just because it feels like it should be. An explosion might not cause damage, but it should exert some kind of force. Being knocked off course to some degree seems reasonable and should go largely unexploited, if it's not too heavy-handed - and as Lowe1978 suggests, a judicious amount of spin would seem like a good thing, if we're colliding at speed with an exploding ship in battle.
Debris should have more velocity to it, and be a little more threatening when collided with. Smashing through your enemy's debris is currently fun. It should be at least a little painful.
And I also think the visual effects for explosions still have a lot of potential for improvement.
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You can. Taking heavy fire leads to module malfunction, even when they're at 80-90% health. Your ship will go crazy for a moment and then stabilize.
Each piece of debris weighs relatively little. It thus makes sense that colliding with it will cause you less damage than ramming a stationary sidewinder(which weighs more than the debris).