Mass to HP

[DraLUSAD]

At the moment, The Core is the most Valuble Block on any ship, and usually, bigger ships means more of a Pounding to reach, some times, people go out there way to making awesome ships, ships from Si-Fi movies, or just ships they enjoy building, and usually, after a fight, and one comes out victorious, there ship is left as a Wreak, ugly holes, too much damage to fix, people could tend in destroying the damage ship and simply, just buying a new one, but what if, the ship is a Full entitie, rather taking hull damage, the ship actually response to "HP", you could say "Mass" could Reflect on this "HP" Code, the more Mass you have, the more HP the ship has too, this way, the ship will still look as new when you first built/bought it.

• The Core
  
  
  we know that once the core takes enough Damage, the Pilot dies, thus, leaving a well banged up ship, waiting to blow up/salvaged, and we all know if you win, you pretty much are left with a banged up ship after, As a Heart, its a Primary block to getting in and out of any ship

• Hit Points (HP)
  
  
  Instead of a banged up ship, you either have to, Repair, Destroy and buy a new one, the ship should be left in one peice, the Mass should reflect on Total HP the ship has, as 1 block is worth 0.1 Mass, then you could times that by 4, which would be as (in 0.1 mass) would be 0.4 HP, or higher

• How it could work
  
  
  this way, it leaves the ships hull/weapons intact and keeps the ship its original state, thus, makes the ship availble to fight again, when hit with a Repair gun, will recharge the HP of the Ship (Or a Module which could repair the ship over time) Unlike Turrets however, once the ships HP is depleted, the ships core overheats, killing the Pilot, and all AI controlled Turrets becomes None Functional (plus killing any Turret controlled Pilots)

• Does the ship dies Completely?
  
  
  When the Ships Core Overheats, it comes to the Spoils of war, when hit with a Repair gun, the ships Core will cool down, depening on mass, means how long it takes to cool, once cooled off, the ship, weapons and Compononet will be Operatinal again, and can be taken over

• Could this work for Stationary turrets as well?
  
  
  If it uses mass, then yes

Thats pretty much it, At least the ship stays the same after combat, and thus, doesnt waste time on Repairs, or buying a new one, all it needs to be Externally Repaird back to full HP, and its ready to fight again.

 

[Charlie_]

...I\'d like to have a Repair ability. Of course, you need the ship\'s blueprint. Then, at a shop, you could \"regenerate\" lost blocks and repair damaged ones by paying the cost of each of those blocks.

Of course I\'m pretty sure such a feature would be buggy in the begining and for the worst (or the better haha) some frankenships would be born.

As for your idea, it\'s very well constructed and you obviously thought about it more than the people throwing demands in the suggestions board. One thing is immensely flawed in the thinking. If HP were really fetched from mass, and ships considered a unique, single HP entity; then a ship made of DIRT and LEAVES could easily hold out in a fight because of its mass (let\'s assume it\'d be pretty big to fight big ships). Hulls would have the same protective values no matter reinforced or not. Glass would be as tough as metal. A canon made out of ONE LINE of blocks (so extremely easy to destroy and/or disable) would be completely INDESTRUCTIBLE ?

In that sense, I think local damage shouldn\'t vanish at all. It\'s an actual game mechanic:

• You make a pretty and flashy ship with guns the size of a friggin space train. That\'s all good and nice but what if your design leaves the guns narrow and exposed? A good tactician would target the part where the guns are the weakest, and attempt to cut them in two. They\'d still work. And you\'d have 2 guns now instead of one. But they\'d be radically less powerful.
• That huge hull is all gorgeous and intricate, but it\'s thin as skin. So I\'ll focus on what I assume would be the power generators or thrusters as soon as shields come down, and potentially cripple my enemy.
• DAMNIIT! It was a feint! Those huge \"thruster\" looking things were actually empty/full of dirt. In the meantime my shields are down and oh shit i just lost cockpit #1!!

See... Destruction is part of the combat. If anything, it also makes you care a lot more for your ship. Right now it\'s not hard to amass money, but once the game goes into beta and heavy balancing comes in, it\'ll be probably really hard to buy back those 700+ million $ ships.

If people are ready to salavage a victorious ship and buy a new one, then that means they don\'t care for the ship as much as for its specs/look.

I\'m gonna get a little weird and idealistic here, but I think that the harder work you\'ve put in a ship, the harder you should work to maintain it. What gives armors their glory? What gives castles their impressiveness? Part is in their look, but it\'s also in what they\'ve whitstanded, the scars they bare.

Unless a ship is a complete loss, I know I\'d work hard to patch it up. It\'s my ship! I worked on it, you won\'t take it away from me! Where are the holes? I\'ll patch it, make it stronger there and in similar spots. The generators were hit? What kind of weaponry was it. How can I further protect them, if I can. This ship just won, it got beat up, but it proved victor. What reason is there to terminate it? It\'s done great! It deserves the work and care. That\'s what in the long run makes it yours, and more than some run-off-the-mill design of premade hulls and bays.

Scars tell stories! (really liked the idea of someone repairing his ship with darker hulls of same color after battles) Stories are interesting! Make your ship a living piece of art of war. An art forged through fire and hell, but that proudly claims it\'s there to stay.

I\'d be far more cautious facing such a \"patched\" ship, because I\'d know this rich guy didn\'t just get it at the shop, but he\'s actually used it. And obviously won. With experience he\'s learned his ship\'s weakness and how to get the most out of it.

Sure, the guy in the new ship could be the same. But it wouldn\'t especially look like it.

It\'s extremely frustating to lose a ship that you\'ve worked hours on, or to see gaping holes spread across the bow. But. That\'s part of the game. It makes you care for that particular design. It makes you freak out when vital parts start coming off.

....well I got really carried away there..

It\'s not that I think your idea is bad, it\'s good and pretty fair. But I personnaly don\'t think it\'s necessary. Many will differ though, I\'m sure. Some might be on my side, but I don\'t think there\'ll be too much.

 

[therimmer96]

Perhaps a good way of doing the automated repairs are to fly to a spacedock (like in star trek), upload the blueprint and you pay for your ship to be repaired, costing more and taking longer the more blocks destroyed. And if you dont have the blueprint for the ship, you clearly dont care for it that much, as you would get the blueprint incase it is stolen or destroyed.

 

[Zer0t3ch]

Looks very interesting. I hope schema gets a chance to see this.

 

[Trinova]

I feel like this is the exact opposite way i\'d like to see. The problem atm is that the only thing worth attacking is the core of a ship. There is no reason for trying to attack his thrusters to render him unmaneouverable. Or attacking his weapons systems or shield cores. The time to destroy the core is a fraction of the time you need to kill one subsystem.

The fact that ships look after combat as if they fought... hull damage, broken parts and stuff is one of the most awesome features of this game. The problem atm is that often the only damage is a thin canal right to the core of the ship. I sympathize much more with Charlie_ at this point (you are not alone!).

Thats why my suggestion would be to remove the concept of the core beeing the \"heart\" of the ship. You have too damage the ship seriously to destroy it. I would imagine a concept like the following:

The core becomes an invincible block with the only purpose beeing mechanics like docking and building ships. It should no longer be a cockpit.

Pilots enter ships via cockpits. The moment a ship lost every cockpit the pilot gets ejected and can\'t enter the ship for a decent amount of time (perhaps 5 minutes).

The advantage for fights would be as following:

• You have to decide which part of the ship you want to attack.
• Fire at his weapons to split up the systems into much weaker weapons?
• Try to attack the power generators to break a gap into the big cross, deviding it in 2 much weaker generators stealing him the ability to fire and manoeuver at the same time?
• Attack his Thrusters to make him imobile?
• Or try to snipe all cockpits to eject the pilot and kill him to salvage the ship later.

TL/DR: Having only HP and removing the possibility to shoot ships to junk would be the worst design decision schema could ever make. Bringing havoc to others ships is one of the best parts of the game and should be encouraged (why? read the full post)

 

[Charlie_]

The problem atm is that the only thing worth attacking is the core of a ship. There is no reason for trying to attack his thrusters to render him unmaneouverable. Or attacking his weapons systems or shield cores. The time to destroy the core is a fraction of the time you need to kill one subsystem.


On the contrary. Some of those ridiculous big ships have cores hidden far inside, and that\'s why you should then focus on the cockpits!

From a tactical view, that may seem odd especially when facing a mastodon, but here\'s the deal: The time you\'d need to FIND, let alone reach the core hidden away inside one of those giant ships (assuming you don\'t have a similar size ship with 2 times the weapons) would be too long and leave you quite exposed as you focus to find the core. What you can more efficiently focus on are the enemy\'s eyes! Having a core so secured means you can\'t possibly view anything from it. What do you do? Cockpits! And you can\'t afford to have those too far inside, since you actually need to see something, right? In the event all cockpits are taken out, controlling and firing the main weapons of that huge behemoth will become quite the chore, even from a 3rd person perspective behind the ship.

See, what I wanted to illustrate was that destruction mechanics allow for case-by-case tactical ability. You can adapt your strategy to what you\'re facing.
I don\'t think making the core invincible would in anyway encourage more to target the ship\'s other systems. In a sense, those systems exist for one purpose: keeping the core intact, much like the brain and body share a strange relationship (brain\'s purpose is to control body and keep it alive, while body\'s purpose is essentially to provide to the brain and keep it alive. It\'s kinda silly in a way).

I feel I\'m making another long one again so I\'ll try and cut it short.
The very fact the core is vulnerable and weak is exactly why you\'d want to target the other ship\'s systems first. By crippling its abilities, you not only make reaching his core easier and safer, you also hinders the enemy\'s ability to reach yours! Win-Win!

Cores offer an obviously critical mechanic to the combat: a weakpoint. A critically important component of the ship, one the ship cannot function with. It\'s the ship\'s brain. It\'s normal for it to be the most vulnerable part, because it\'s the most vital. If there wasn\'t any core, then combat strategy itself would lose its point. Fighting every ship would end up generally being the same: peirce shields, destroy thrusters/main weapons, destory weapons >> [when crippled] >> commence general destruction of hull.

The core adds an objective to both sides: You must get the enemy\'s core, but you must also make sure he doesn\'t get yours! There\'s bound to be a far larger variety of strategies evolved from this mechanic than from a system where no part of the ship is really vital.

 

[kregeth]

a way to make cockpits more of a vital spot would be to render the blocks around the ship core while in flight so that unless the core is exposed or behind glass you can\'t see without a cockpit, as it is now you just fill your hull with blocks so you can look out through the hull itsself, ofc 3rd person should be removed from the ship core aswell so there is no way to look out without windows.

 

[Hierarch]

These ideas are amazing, but how about instead we have a repair ship ore repair station were the ship comes and docks and depending on how well stocked the repair ship is depends on the rate of repair and the foulness of the repair

 

[Charlie_]

Whe nI said 3rd person from core, I meant shift+scroll all the way behind the ship. Your crosshair and what\'s actually in front of you is hidden mostly by your ship.
Apart from that, I myself see the interior of my ship when I enter the core... But then again the blocks are not directly next to it.

I like using the 3rd person when just moving around in some of my smaller ships, I\'d be really sad if that were to disapear.
What needs to be done with cockpits is to SEE in the direction the cockpit is FACING. Please!

 

[Jim-Dandy]

Ship core hard to find?

Ship core is where the blue/red/green square is

 

[Jim-Dandy]

Responding to the original topic

How about NOOOOOOOOOO!

 

[Charlie_]

The man (honest assumption) was sharing his opinion and idea with us, and did so in a much more detailed and complete way than most of the things thrown repeatedly on the suggestions\' board.

There\'s ways to express your disagreement without looking like a major ass.

 

[Zxaber]

I gotta say, I disagree with this idea. If you\'ve ever played Banjo-Kazooie:Nuts and Bolts, you might know why.

N&B was actually pretty similar in concept. You build a vehicle with weapons and engines and methods of movement, in a block-placing style, and then use this vehicle to further your goals. In singleplayer, your vehicle could become shattered and destroyed piece by piece. Explosions would blow off a chuck, certain enemies could latch on and steal a block, and damage from impacts would eventually make parts fall off. Granted, you could reattach the pieces, and there was no punishment for losing a piece in the long run. But you\'d still sometimes end up trying to finish the last stretch of a race with two missing wheels or get the final kill with half your weapons gone. It also encouraged using the hull pieces, since your important inner parts like engines or ammo crates couldn\'t be damaged until the outer shell was removed.

In mutiplayer, for whatever reason, they apparently couldn\'t get loose objects working correctly. Instead of falling apart, your vehicle would simply take damage. The total HP was equal to what blocks you were built out of, but there was no real downside to simply building a vehicle out of fuel tanks and engines. You couldn\'t take out an enemy\'s missile launcher, or shoot off a wing and make them spiral out of control. And because of the way weight affected movement, unless you were building a tank you\'d be better off not using any hull pieces. All vehicles were static and combat was no where near as fun as it could have been (ignoring the other main issue that plagued mutiplater, which was overpowered parts).

I can see where this idea was coming from, but I\'d much rather be able to blow holes in capital ships and try to pick off parts in dogfights. I would like to see a way to repair a ship at a shop using blueprints, though. That\'s a neat idea.

 

[Trinova]

Like the one before me said... i don\'t have to search for the core... there is a funny rectangle that tells my exactly where the core is. And once the shields are down i kill that core within 2 seconds since it needs only one hit. Why should i EVER aim for anything else if i could kill the pilot within the same time.

 

[Trinova]

There is another thread that suggests a hybrid of the current system and the one DraLUSAD suggest:

Awesome Hyperlink through the internet!

 

[Belone]

OK I couldn\'t be bothered to read the great long walls of text, but I did read the first post, and I just have this to say. I like the big holes left over from fire fights! Don\'t get me wrong I like the HP idea, as it\'s rather silly that there is one block that you need to find and destroy to KO a massive capital class ship, but leave the massive great gaping holes!