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- Aug 23, 2014
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Having played recently with the collision damage on, i had a lot of fun with the collision mechanics. I have written up an idea before on how i thought the damage should be distributed and i just want to make my reasoning clearer and more comprehensive.
The balance of damage occurring takes into account the mass of the ship and the velocity. It does not take into account connecting blocks, block type, or seemingly block strength.
I know you're going to say that collision damage isn't ready yet, but that doesn't matter. Seeing the dev's current thinking on the subject, i feel i should at least bring forward my logic.
let's start with my conclusion. Velocity should be the only factor deciding whether damage occurs. The reason being that if your flying a small ship in real life, you're using lighter materials, smaller struts, thinner metals, etc. Damage will occur with less force. Flying much larger ships, your materials become heavier, thicker, bigger springs. Material strength usually scales linearly, sometimes exponentially. The force added from the mass side of the equation only scales linearly. Velocity on the other hand, it scales exponentially. In theory, a large ship capable of landing on a planet should be able to contact the ground at roughly the same velocity as a small fighter. Why? Bigger springs, struts designed for the weight, etc.
One of the main problems i noticed when landing on the planet with damage turned on was that there would often be one single block contacting the ground first. In real life, this isn't a problem as the landing gear would flex and adjust until all the landing gears are sharing the load, but in the game, that first block is instantly vaporized because it's absorbing all the energy.
In real life you can engineer flexing bending struts, and use shock absorbing materials. That's not really plausible in the game. The solution, as stated above, only base the initial damage on velocity.
If you are going fast enough to have damage occur, mass will be a factor on how much occurs. You can do this by slowing the ship by say 200 thrust per block destroyed. Blocks will keep getting destroyed on impact until the velocity threshold is reached. In this way, larger ships will take larger amounts of damage than smaller ships at the same impact speeds, but still a lower percentage of damage.
I would personally set the damage threshold to occur at around 35 kph and higher.
Furthermore, it would be nice if the blocks instead of being vaporized, they were moved to the side and back until there's no room, and rendered non functional. Some blocks should also take damage over other blocks Under certain speeds. Eg. i crash land into a planet at 45 kph, the dirt blocks should give way before armored hull does. It would make for really cool crash landing craters.
The balance of damage occurring takes into account the mass of the ship and the velocity. It does not take into account connecting blocks, block type, or seemingly block strength.
I know you're going to say that collision damage isn't ready yet, but that doesn't matter. Seeing the dev's current thinking on the subject, i feel i should at least bring forward my logic.
let's start with my conclusion. Velocity should be the only factor deciding whether damage occurs. The reason being that if your flying a small ship in real life, you're using lighter materials, smaller struts, thinner metals, etc. Damage will occur with less force. Flying much larger ships, your materials become heavier, thicker, bigger springs. Material strength usually scales linearly, sometimes exponentially. The force added from the mass side of the equation only scales linearly. Velocity on the other hand, it scales exponentially. In theory, a large ship capable of landing on a planet should be able to contact the ground at roughly the same velocity as a small fighter. Why? Bigger springs, struts designed for the weight, etc.
One of the main problems i noticed when landing on the planet with damage turned on was that there would often be one single block contacting the ground first. In real life, this isn't a problem as the landing gear would flex and adjust until all the landing gears are sharing the load, but in the game, that first block is instantly vaporized because it's absorbing all the energy.
In real life you can engineer flexing bending struts, and use shock absorbing materials. That's not really plausible in the game. The solution, as stated above, only base the initial damage on velocity.
If you are going fast enough to have damage occur, mass will be a factor on how much occurs. You can do this by slowing the ship by say 200 thrust per block destroyed. Blocks will keep getting destroyed on impact until the velocity threshold is reached. In this way, larger ships will take larger amounts of damage than smaller ships at the same impact speeds, but still a lower percentage of damage.
I would personally set the damage threshold to occur at around 35 kph and higher.
Furthermore, it would be nice if the blocks instead of being vaporized, they were moved to the side and back until there's no room, and rendered non functional. Some blocks should also take damage over other blocks Under certain speeds. Eg. i crash land into a planet at 45 kph, the dirt blocks should give way before armored hull does. It would make for really cool crash landing craters.
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