t would be nice to have system HP AND armor hp as two seperate things. What I mean by that is that armor contributes to a different pool of HP. Until that HP pool is depleted then armor can not be destroyed. However, the armor HP pool only contributes towards armor, meaning that system blocks can be destroyed, no matter what the armor HP value is. Armor or hull blocks should also not contribute any HP to the global ship HP (aka: structural integrity) proposed by
Calbiri. You want to destroy systems here, destroying armor/hull wouldn't and shouldn't disable a ship
. In my opinion, hull repair systems should be a lot less powerful than shield regen but should not be affected by a "combat regen" effect. So slow regen but always the same.
Imaginary scenario with the above system implemented ingame:
So, say you manage to deplete the hull hp of an enemy and make a nice hole in the hull, however, the enemy manages to retreat and regenerate some hull HP. You catch up to that enemy, two things could happen: You try to deplete the hull HP of the enemy again. OR, you fire at the hole created earlier, effectively bypassing the enemie's armor and dealing damage to systems directly.
That would also encourage intelligent ship design with layered armor inside systems and such. It would also make armor/hull that much more intuitive and useful. Also adds diversity to the game. You could see shield oriented ships that have no armor regen, instead relying on external repair ships to heal their hull HP. And then there would be armor tanked ships, heavier and no shields, instead favoring heavy armor and armor regen for defense (if this ever gets implemented standard and advanced armor should have higher mass than basic hull imho, armor ships need a disadvantage :p). Then there would be every hybrid in between.
This would do two things:
1) Armor as a whole would make much more sense, covering up systems with hull would be like a protective cocoon that needs to be breached. Armor tanking would also become viable as an additional form of defense and could even be used as standalone, something that could not be done with the proposed HP system (assuming that a way to replenish armor HP is implemented at the same time). It
2) It encourages people to actually cover up their systems.
Tbh, the more I think about it the more it makes sense. Just having the ship rebuild itself with blocks carried in inventory (the current proposed system) isn't armor tanking, it's f*cking active ship regeneration.
