I noticed that in combat when I'm destroying an enemy ship, I have to pretty much obliterate the thing before I make a sizable dent in the ship's hit points. When fighting AI enemies, there will often be little left other than an armor shell, but it still won't overheat even though it's sustained grievous damage and can't perform any of its basic functions anymore.
I think for starters, the total HP of the ship should be less than the added HP of every block in it, since it makes sense you don't need to destroy every last block to finish it off. (On some of the turrets, I HAVE had to finish off every last block before it overheated.) Perhaps the total HP needed to take the ship out could be listed in the ship's stats instead of its actual HP, such that its HP reaches zero when it overheats. Also, I think the amount should be reduced. Maybe having only half your armor left still counts as protection, but having half of your hull blocks actually obliterated basically means your ship is demolished and, if the shots against it were aimed well, it was probably dead a long time ago.
I also wanted to suggest another way to get damage onto a ship, to reduce the necessity of using missiles even further. This combines the old method of shooting the core with the new method of using ship hit points instead of just the core. If hitting the core applied damage to the ship's HP bar, you could focus your more accurate weaponry onto that specific block and continue damaging the ship even though there's not much else left to hit except for armor blocks. This would also bring back the necessity of protecting your ship core.
Repair Suggestion:
I wanted to end this with an idea for making ship repair easier. Perhaps shops could automatically replace the blocks you lost during combat, and you would pay for the blocks plus an extra amount based on the number of block replacements being made, as a repair fee. It should also fix damaged blocks, charging you the repair fee for the block without charging you the cost of the block. To save funds, you could repair at a player-owned shipyard and the repairs would progress at a sustained rate based on the total number of shipyard blocks or something, with an energy consumption during repairs also based on that. Then you simply provide the blocks from storage units and pay no repair fee except to the player owners if it's not your shipyard. That way it's a choice between time or money, with the time option being balanced to be generally better because it requires a player-built tool to assist.
I also thought it would be cool if shipyard projects all required the actual blocks, or if trade station repairs took blocks from the station inventory. It would make large battleships more of a burden because you may either have to go around to multiple different trade stations to repair, or need a large supply of building blocks in your shipyard. It would both increase the need for constant block farming (which promotes player trading) as well as make larger ships more cumbersome to operate which would make smaller ships more attractive especially for soloists.
I think for starters, the total HP of the ship should be less than the added HP of every block in it, since it makes sense you don't need to destroy every last block to finish it off. (On some of the turrets, I HAVE had to finish off every last block before it overheated.) Perhaps the total HP needed to take the ship out could be listed in the ship's stats instead of its actual HP, such that its HP reaches zero when it overheats. Also, I think the amount should be reduced. Maybe having only half your armor left still counts as protection, but having half of your hull blocks actually obliterated basically means your ship is demolished and, if the shots against it were aimed well, it was probably dead a long time ago.
I also wanted to suggest another way to get damage onto a ship, to reduce the necessity of using missiles even further. This combines the old method of shooting the core with the new method of using ship hit points instead of just the core. If hitting the core applied damage to the ship's HP bar, you could focus your more accurate weaponry onto that specific block and continue damaging the ship even though there's not much else left to hit except for armor blocks. This would also bring back the necessity of protecting your ship core.
Repair Suggestion:
I wanted to end this with an idea for making ship repair easier. Perhaps shops could automatically replace the blocks you lost during combat, and you would pay for the blocks plus an extra amount based on the number of block replacements being made, as a repair fee. It should also fix damaged blocks, charging you the repair fee for the block without charging you the cost of the block. To save funds, you could repair at a player-owned shipyard and the repairs would progress at a sustained rate based on the total number of shipyard blocks or something, with an energy consumption during repairs also based on that. Then you simply provide the blocks from storage units and pay no repair fee except to the player owners if it's not your shipyard. That way it's a choice between time or money, with the time option being balanced to be generally better because it requires a player-built tool to assist.
I also thought it would be cool if shipyard projects all required the actual blocks, or if trade station repairs took blocks from the station inventory. It would make large battleships more of a burden because you may either have to go around to multiple different trade stations to repair, or need a large supply of building blocks in your shipyard. It would both increase the need for constant block farming (which promotes player trading) as well as make larger ships more cumbersome to operate which would make smaller ships more attractive especially for soloists.
