The illogical powerplant head-shot

[Red Kite]

There have been several threads and suggestions about the increasingly popular option of targeting the powerplant to take out anything from a Cobra upwards. Those of us who have spent money on expensive hull upgrades are getting frustrated at this tactic and my thoughts are based on two premises:

1. There is no reason why weapons fire should be able to bypass the hull and destroy an internal module, it simply is not logical.
2. There is no reason why destroying the power plant should make the ship explode. A fusion powerplant is basically some kind of containment vessel with hydrogen plasma in it. If you make a hole it will leak hot hydrogen: nasty, but not instantly fatal.

I would like to suggest the following:

Firstly a required level of hull damage before an internal module can be affected. The exact levels would have to be determined by trial, but, for example, if you target an Anaconda's power plant you might have to reduce the hull to 80% before the module takes damage.

Secondly reducing the powerplant to zero would not destroy the ship, but have the expected affect: the ship goes dead in the water, no weapons, no thrusters, no FSD, HUD blanks out and pilot goes on emergency life support. At this point a very few additional hits would destroy the ship so the pilot's chance of survival is very slim, but not zero. When the powerplant goes down the repair/reboot module is automatically activated using a dedicated battery supply. This brings the powerplant back after a short time at minimal power: HUD, thrusters and FSD only. If the pilot can jump away and get to a station before he suffocates he might still survive. Realistically the pilot will only have the time to do this if the attacker stops firing for some reason or wingmates and/or police ships provide a distraction.

In summary this idea would provide:

1. Some degree of protection for internal modules dependent on the ship's hull
2. A realistic scenario for powerplant failure
3. A small but finite chance of survival even from drastic module damage

 

[Thoris]

Instead of fixed hull damage percentages, they could also assign a new flag to each module: Internal (protected) or External (exposed). Internal modules would be powerplant and probably the FSD, while external modules would be drives, weapons, sensors and so on. Then you could make it so that external modules take full damage on hit, while internal modules always only take maybe 50% of hit damage or so.

In general, I think hull damage is accumulated too quickly vs. module damage. Usually the hull of a ship is destroyed long before you can take out a module (at least in my limited experience). I would like if fights were more strategic about disabling opponents before you can actually destroy them (for example, take out their drives/sensors first).

 

[raok]

Internal/External modules, something like this might be ok.

I think that more important is that why we always shoot the power plant? Maybe in some cases cargo hatch or thrusters.

Shooting other subsystems should be more useful. Maybe other subsystems should have less HP. Experience more situations where we lose a weapon or chaff, or something similar. At least I have never lost one, so I assume it is rather impossible atm.

 

[Goblin King]

The specific targeting of modules definitely could do with a bit of fine tuning, particularly on larger ships, but I am in a quandry about exactly how much. Hammering someone's cargo hatch on a small ship would potentially ruin the ship especially if you're using 4 or 5 medium to large weapons, but if you're targeting a Lakon 7 or 9 then I would expect that, as long as you're being very specific with your trageting then the ship should, in the main, survive intact - unless all the internals are grouped together on the outside.

However, on the other hand...

If you view most weapons as being fairly inacurate - you're firing a multi cannon, albiet at a ship the size of a barn door, whilst you're both maneauvering, and often 2 km apart and rarely at the most advantageous angle - then you would expect it to be quite difficult to target a specific area of the ship. It's how I've always rationalised the amount of damage necessary to ruin someone's powerplant. You probably wouldn't need to pour that amount of firepower into someone's powerplant to get it to stop functioning, but with the amount of your shots that would be hitting the ship but not your specific target or getting lodged in the armour/hull that is still covering parts of it then it does make more sense.

But in either case if I had a few million to spare I would be looking for a high tech station where I could get my powerplant bay replaced with something that is armoured up the wazzoo, rather than getting it built out of paper mache as appears to be the case with many anacondas. Though I guess papermache doesn't weigh much once it's dried so that propbably has a beneficial effect on your jump range.

 

[Pendra]

Aren't B type power plants better armored?

 

[x3nomorph]

From what ive gathered of 2000 kills so far, some ships are predispositioned to taking more damage to the power plant, and there are certain degress at which they take damage during combat it honestly feels like the more damage you have done to their hull the more damage the power plant takes.

Just what it feels like to me.

 

[vizvayu]

Red Kite, your suggestion sound good to me. However it's not clear (at least not to me) what does exactly represent the hull %. Is it the total hull "mass"? Or is hull penetration, even on a single spot? Imagine if I shot a ship many times always on the same spot and pierce the hull. Does that mean that the hull is at 0%? Or it's still at like 99% because I only hit a single spot? This should be more clear IMHO, because it could explain why a powerplant could be at 0% when the hull has a lot more % left.

Also agree the ship shouldn't blow up when the powerplant is destroyed. That would be great. Imagine being surrounded on a dead ship, desperately trying to reboot it while hearing the lasers and bullets hitting the hull

 

[Psycho Romeo]

Personally I don't like this approach to this fix. I'd rather see bulkheads that increase module integrity.

I do feel that some of the more multi-purpose weapons (lasers and multicannons) should have their armor piercing reduced a bit though.

 

[Aquamonkey]

There is no reason why destroying the power plant should make the ship explode. A fusion powerplant is basically some kind of containment vessel with hydrogen plasma in it. If you make a hole it will leak hot hydrogen: nasty, but not instantly fatal.

I think you're vastly underestimating the temperatures involved. The best temperatures is with deuterium-tritium and that's still 600 million Kelvin. That's more than just "nasty".

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

From what ive gathered of 2000 kills so far, some ships are predispositioned to taking more damage to the power plant, and there are certain degress at which they take damage during combat it honestly feels like the more damage you have done to their hull the more damage the power plant takes.

Just what it feels like to me.

It would help to hear the devs about that, or it would need a lot of testing. If armor reduces not only hull damage, but also internal module damage, and if better armor reduces it more, then I would be ok with it. I like the bit about the ship just going dead in the water instead of exploding when the powerplant goes down for purely graphical reasons. A ship drifting and spinning dead trailing leaking plasma should look awesome.

 

[Psycho Romeo]

I'm a little baffled that people are upset that their power plants are going. If your shields go down, you have a serious problem on your hands. That's just the reality of the situation. Maybe people's durable hull strength is just misleading them?

And second, why shouldn't a ship effectively die when its power plant goes? What will it do, fly back to port? No, there's no power. Field repair? No, there's no power. Emergency canabalize? No, there's no power.

 

[Broken_Wolf]

I'm a little baffled that people are upset that their power plants are going. If your shields go down, you have a serious problem on your hands. That's just the reality of the situation. Maybe people's durable hull strength is just misleading them?

And second, why shouldn't a ship effectively die when its power plant goes? What will it do, fly back to port? No, there's no power. Field repair? No, there's no power. Emergency canabalize? No, there's no power.

although i do feel the same in the fact destroying the power plant should kill things. it would be more likly to belive that ships in the distant future would all have emergency power cells as a redundant system in case of power plant failure.

 

[Broken_Wolf]

In general, I think hull damage is accumulated too quickly vs. module damage. Usually the hull of a ship is destroyed long before you can take out a module (at least in my limited experience). I would like if fights were more strategic about disabling opponents before you can actually destroy them (for example, take out their drives/sensors first).

have you been targeting the subsystems? cause smaller ship you will notice little, but the bigger ones you can bring down alot faster. i myself have brought down an anaconda using c3 beam when its hull was still at 79%

 

[Red Kite]

I think you're vastly underestimating the temperatures involved. The best temperatures is with deuterium-tritium and that's still 600 million Kelvin. That's more than just "nasty".

Fair point, the damage would be serious unless there were some kind of venting system to direct the hot stuff away. But that would need magnetic containment to channel the hydrogen plasma and there's no power! Catch-22.

I still think an actual explosion would be unlikely. Perhaps the ship should just melt!

 

[Red Kite]

Red Kite, your suggestion sound good to me. However it's not clear (at least not to me) what does exactly represent the hull %. Is it the total hull "mass"? Or is hull penetration, even on a single spot? Imagine if I shot a ship many times always on the same spot and pierce the hull. Does that mean that the hull is at 0%? Or it's still at like 99% because I only hit a single spot? This should be more clear IMHO, because it could explain why a powerplant could be at 0% when the hull has a lot more % left.

Also agree the ship shouldn't blow up when the powerplant is destroyed. That would be great. Imagine being surrounded on a dead ship, desperately trying to reboot it while hearing the lasers and bullets hitting the hull

I've always assumed that as you hit the hull you begin to knock holes in it, knock hull-plates off etc and that represents the reducing percentage. 0% is not a hole as such, but the point at which the integrity of the whole structure suffers catastrophic failure. Penetrating the hull at a single point explains how a module can be destroyed while the hull is still relatively intact.

 

[DocLooshkin]

Hmm... no. While it would definitely be cool to have dying ships spinning away leaving a trail of burning, radioactive plasma (and +1 for that idea from Cmdr Numa, as well as for extending ships' death-throes generally) it's a dirty great nuclear fusion reactor we're talking about - it has to explode at some point and it would be an unbelievable swizz if it doesn't. Frankly, the explosions we get now aren't nearly explodey enough, if anything.

Beyond just making sense, all the more populated areas of the game - the RESes, conflict-zones, nav-beacons and stations - will quickly fill up with rubbish that the servers and our computers will have to keep track of and render. I'm sure some of you will have seen the mess caused by someone jettisoning a cargo hold full of stuff into a space station - imagine that, but with burning Anacondas. There are ways of dealing with this, but FD would need to use every cheat it can come up with to stop something like the Battle of Lugh turning into a literally-unplayable mess.