- Joined
- Jun 22, 2013
- Messages
- 1,183
- Reaction score
- 614
Theoretical cores
Each main ship component would have a “core” (not an actual block (except weapon computers), but more of a gui health indicator) with health equal to that component’s mass. When an element that belongs to a certain core is destroyed, that core is damaged and once the core reaches 0 health, the system functions at 10% efficiency unless it is further damaged, totally destroyed, or repaired. Every block represents 2 health (50% of a system has to be destroyed to get its health to 0).
The main core’s original health is 50% of the average heath of the component cores. The main core would still exist and would change colors to show the ships health (use an overlay). The Main core would also have 100% armor to all projectiles but not to disintegrators and collision damage. This will prevent players from using it as a shield while no longer having it be such a weak point.
A ships health is reset once it docks to a station (also works if it is docked to a ship which is docked to a station).
Types of cores:
-Main core
-Thruster core
-Power regeneration core
-Power storage core
-Weapon cores (computers)
Components automatically connect to the “cores”.
Why? Allows players more than one way to destroy enemy ships. Can't just attack one system but have to use tactics to wear down then destroy a ship. Encourages destroying the ship versus drilling.
New ways to destroy ship:
ex: Suppose you had a 10,000 block ship with every component and two weapon systems. Lets say that each system had 1,000 blocks. This would mean that each component core has 1,000 health, with the main core/ overall ship having 3,000 (all 6 core's health * together then / by 2). This would therefore mean that 3,000 blocks of the 10,000 block ship would have to be destroyed for it to no longer function (33.33%).
Each main ship component would have a “core” (not an actual block (except weapon computers), but more of a gui health indicator) with health equal to that component’s mass. When an element that belongs to a certain core is destroyed, that core is damaged and once the core reaches 0 health, the system functions at 10% efficiency unless it is further damaged, totally destroyed, or repaired. Every block represents 2 health (50% of a system has to be destroyed to get its health to 0).
The main core’s original health is 50% of the average heath of the component cores. The main core would still exist and would change colors to show the ships health (use an overlay). The Main core would also have 100% armor to all projectiles but not to disintegrators and collision damage. This will prevent players from using it as a shield while no longer having it be such a weak point.
A ships health is reset once it docks to a station (also works if it is docked to a ship which is docked to a station).
Types of cores:
-Main core
-Thruster core
-Power regeneration core
-Power storage core
-Weapon cores (computers)
Components automatically connect to the “cores”.
Why? Allows players more than one way to destroy enemy ships. Can't just attack one system but have to use tactics to wear down then destroy a ship. Encourages destroying the ship versus drilling.
New ways to destroy ship:
- Partially destroy multiple "cores”
- Completely destroy a few "cores"
Overhaul of Ship-Core
TLDR AT BOTTOM
I have a suggestion that I think many of you would agree with. But let me first say that I love this game, I'm new to it but I've learned a lot this week and I'm fascinated by all the innovation here.
So, I only have one main gripe with this game, and that's the Ship Core.
I think it's silly that if you lose your ship core, your ship is done and you've lost the fight. It encourages some wonky setups when you build your own ship in mind of defending your core, and kind of detracts from the combat.
Now, I have something different in mind for how the ship core functions when destroyed, but I'll get to that later.
I think it's really freaking cool that if you lose your weapons computer, your weapons can no longer fire. This is awesome! I think that if your engines start taking damage, it's pretty neat that you start losing thrust. I think when you start losing power generators, you suffer the super baller consequences of less power regeneration.
All that said, I think the ship-core should have a crippling effect but not be the end-all be-all thing to aim for as an attacker.
So, this will be a group effort to suggest different and less punishing mechanics for how the ship reacts to having the ship core overheat.
I would suggest that when your ship core is overheated, it starts to drain your power regeneration capacity by 2% every second, and once your capacity to regenerate power is depleted, you start losing your actual power reserves, assuming you have any, at 2% per second. (At 100 Power Regen/sec, after 1 second you are at 98% Power Regen/sec, and so on.) It's like a sort of shutdown sequence(LOR FRENDLI OMFG). This process can be averted by not taking damage to any part of your ship for a short period of time, 20 seconds for example. This would simulate that you have somehow removed the danger of your ship being damaged, and found it safe to divert "Manpower/Resources" to restoring power throughout the ship. Whether it be by escaping, destroying your enemy(Or their weapon CPU... SEE! Look at this, a reason to attack a weapon CPU!), or your enemy has a sudden change of heart for no apparent reason.
In this way, you have 100 seconds at most from the time your ship core overheated to either destroy your enemy or escape with what you have left. I think this would be a good thing because it would make players focus more on taking out other systems as they are revealed to them, rather it be weapon positions, CPU's, Engines, Power Generators, shields, etc.
NOTE: When you lose all power and the capacity to regenerate power, you die. So if the shutdown sequence completes, you have lost all capacity to regenerate power and all reserve power, the core explodes and your ship dies. If you are in the ship, you die too. This also means that it might be important for an attacker to target the power generators during a shutdown sequence to speed the shutdown sequence up as well as attack power tanks if you have reserves. If your core explodes, it should be a server option to have the wreckage persist after the core is destroyed.
This condition is only applied during the shutdown sequence, if your ship core is intact and you have no power generators, you are fine. This is because otherwise, you would explode when you spawn a ship core.
"But McDili, why is that good!?" Thanks for asking! It's good because it encourages you, the builder, to build your ship while spreading systems around. Maybe you'll use multiple weapons computers in case one gets destroyed. Maybe you'll spread your thrusters to multiple engine rooms. You could spend more hull protecting the bay you stored all your power and shields in, or maybe you'll build smaller reserve power bay's throughout your ship in case your main power bay is destroyed in battle. Maybe you'll actually have the option to exit your core and get into that emergency hatch you made with an escape pod to make it out alive.
Overall, the general concept here is that battles would be more interesting, and having your ship core being overheat wouldn't necessarily mean that you're done outright. And it wouldn't mean that killing an enemy's core is an instant victory either. It opens up more room for viable strategy instead of a simple brain process of "Shewt Powr Coor -> Shewt mor pwr cor -> shwt cor agan"
EDIT: It is important to note that I do not seek to prevent the ship-core from being a valid target in an attacker's perspective. I want to retain it's nature as being a vital system required to use your ship, but at the same time bring it down to a level that doesn't invalidate protection on other parts of your ship for other systems. It encourages more freedom and strategical thinking when it comes to building your ship, without taking away the importance of protecting your core.
Also, henceforth I will be referring to the process of "Power regeneration capacity drain" as the "Shutdown Sequence." Let's be honest, that sounds way cooler and fits the lore.
TL;DR: I suggest that when a ship core is overheated, you start to lose capacity to regenerate power, and then your actual reserve power. This is the shutdown sequence. When you lose the capacity to regenerate power and all reserve power during a shutdown sequence, the shutdown sequence is complete and the ship core explodes. If you are in the ship core when this happens, you as the pilot die too.
TLDR AT BOTTOM
I have a suggestion that I think many of you would agree with. But let me first say that I love this game, I'm new to it but I've learned a lot this week and I'm fascinated by all the innovation here.
So, I only have one main gripe with this game, and that's the Ship Core.
I think it's silly that if you lose your ship core, your ship is done and you've lost the fight. It encourages some wonky setups when you build your own ship in mind of defending your core, and kind of detracts from the combat.
Now, I have something different in mind for how the ship core functions when destroyed, but I'll get to that later.
I think it's really freaking cool that if you lose your weapons computer, your weapons can no longer fire. This is awesome! I think that if your engines start taking damage, it's pretty neat that you start losing thrust. I think when you start losing power generators, you suffer the super baller consequences of less power regeneration.
All that said, I think the ship-core should have a crippling effect but not be the end-all be-all thing to aim for as an attacker.
So, this will be a group effort to suggest different and less punishing mechanics for how the ship reacts to having the ship core overheat.
I would suggest that when your ship core is overheated, it starts to drain your power regeneration capacity by 2% every second, and once your capacity to regenerate power is depleted, you start losing your actual power reserves, assuming you have any, at 2% per second. (At 100 Power Regen/sec, after 1 second you are at 98% Power Regen/sec, and so on.) It's like a sort of shutdown sequence(LOR FRENDLI OMFG). This process can be averted by not taking damage to any part of your ship for a short period of time, 20 seconds for example. This would simulate that you have somehow removed the danger of your ship being damaged, and found it safe to divert "Manpower/Resources" to restoring power throughout the ship. Whether it be by escaping, destroying your enemy(Or their weapon CPU... SEE! Look at this, a reason to attack a weapon CPU!), or your enemy has a sudden change of heart for no apparent reason.
In this way, you have 100 seconds at most from the time your ship core overheated to either destroy your enemy or escape with what you have left. I think this would be a good thing because it would make players focus more on taking out other systems as they are revealed to them, rather it be weapon positions, CPU's, Engines, Power Generators, shields, etc.
NOTE: When you lose all power and the capacity to regenerate power, you die. So if the shutdown sequence completes, you have lost all capacity to regenerate power and all reserve power, the core explodes and your ship dies. If you are in the ship, you die too. This also means that it might be important for an attacker to target the power generators during a shutdown sequence to speed the shutdown sequence up as well as attack power tanks if you have reserves. If your core explodes, it should be a server option to have the wreckage persist after the core is destroyed.
This condition is only applied during the shutdown sequence, if your ship core is intact and you have no power generators, you are fine. This is because otherwise, you would explode when you spawn a ship core.
"But McDili, why is that good!?" Thanks for asking! It's good because it encourages you, the builder, to build your ship while spreading systems around. Maybe you'll use multiple weapons computers in case one gets destroyed. Maybe you'll spread your thrusters to multiple engine rooms. You could spend more hull protecting the bay you stored all your power and shields in, or maybe you'll build smaller reserve power bay's throughout your ship in case your main power bay is destroyed in battle. Maybe you'll actually have the option to exit your core and get into that emergency hatch you made with an escape pod to make it out alive.
Overall, the general concept here is that battles would be more interesting, and having your ship core being overheat wouldn't necessarily mean that you're done outright. And it wouldn't mean that killing an enemy's core is an instant victory either. It opens up more room for viable strategy instead of a simple brain process of "Shewt Powr Coor -> Shewt mor pwr cor -> shwt cor agan"
EDIT: It is important to note that I do not seek to prevent the ship-core from being a valid target in an attacker's perspective. I want to retain it's nature as being a vital system required to use your ship, but at the same time bring it down to a level that doesn't invalidate protection on other parts of your ship for other systems. It encourages more freedom and strategical thinking when it comes to building your ship, without taking away the importance of protecting your core.
Also, henceforth I will be referring to the process of "Power regeneration capacity drain" as the "Shutdown Sequence." Let's be honest, that sounds way cooler and fits the lore.
TL;DR: I suggest that when a ship core is overheated, you start to lose capacity to regenerate power, and then your actual reserve power. This is the shutdown sequence. When you lose the capacity to regenerate power and all reserve power during a shutdown sequence, the shutdown sequence is complete and the ship core explodes. If you are in the ship core when this happens, you as the pilot die too.
Hull Armor Absorption
I've seen many suggestions for fixing the "buttery hull" and core drilling issue so I thought I'd throw one out there myself
Impact distribution/ absorption:
When a hull block is hit by an AMC it will distribute the damage to all adjacent hull blocks. The initial hull that was hit could take majority of the damage itself and distribute the rest to all blocks in a specific radius. Hardened hull would distribute the damage over a wider area. The armor value of hull would also play it's part further reducing the damage.
I imaging regular hull would only absorb damage in a 3x3x3 box around the impact zone and hardened hull could absorb damage in a 5x5x5 box, or some spherical facsimile, with perhaps the further blocks absorbing less damage.
How Would this affect combat?
Instead of AMCs simply being able to drill a single hole to the core and destroying it, the amount of damage would be spread out and thus armor would be more effective. Having thicker even layers of armor would actually make sense.
Hull has an armor rating of 25 and 100 HP. This means every hit will be reduced 25%. You shoot at a flat square block of hull with a cannon dealing 100 damage. The hull damage is spread out across the hull, the impacted hull taking double damage, dealing 20 damage to the impacted block and 10 to the surrounding ones, the armor value now reduces the damage by 25% causing 15 and 7.5 damage to each piece of hull. That center hull piece instead of taking 2 shots to melt will now take 7 shots and there will be significant damage to surrounding hull as well. This will also help against the overwhelming penetration power of shotgun arrays.
Upsides:
With basic figuring a single layer of hardened hull would require a single AMC to deal 1600 damage in order to one shot a block.
While capital ships can pile on armor and get the biggest bonus fighters would benefit from this mechanic as well without being over buffed as a flat increase of hull armor would.
Downsides:
Repairing ships would become much more difficult because superficial hull damage could be internal as well. The Astro Technobeam should be given a "splash damage" effect as well to combat this. Or be alleviated by additional repair mechanics such as "repair to blueprint"
I've seen many suggestions for fixing the "buttery hull" and core drilling issue so I thought I'd throw one out there myself
Impact distribution/ absorption:
When a hull block is hit by an AMC it will distribute the damage to all adjacent hull blocks. The initial hull that was hit could take majority of the damage itself and distribute the rest to all blocks in a specific radius. Hardened hull would distribute the damage over a wider area. The armor value of hull would also play it's part further reducing the damage.
I imaging regular hull would only absorb damage in a 3x3x3 box around the impact zone and hardened hull could absorb damage in a 5x5x5 box, or some spherical facsimile, with perhaps the further blocks absorbing less damage.
How Would this affect combat?
Instead of AMCs simply being able to drill a single hole to the core and destroying it, the amount of damage would be spread out and thus armor would be more effective. Having thicker even layers of armor would actually make sense.
Hull has an armor rating of 25 and 100 HP. This means every hit will be reduced 25%. You shoot at a flat square block of hull with a cannon dealing 100 damage. The hull damage is spread out across the hull, the impacted hull taking double damage, dealing 20 damage to the impacted block and 10 to the surrounding ones, the armor value now reduces the damage by 25% causing 15 and 7.5 damage to each piece of hull. That center hull piece instead of taking 2 shots to melt will now take 7 shots and there will be significant damage to surrounding hull as well. This will also help against the overwhelming penetration power of shotgun arrays.
Upsides:
With basic figuring a single layer of hardened hull would require a single AMC to deal 1600 damage in order to one shot a block.
While capital ships can pile on armor and get the biggest bonus fighters would benefit from this mechanic as well without being over buffed as a flat increase of hull armor would.
Downsides:
Repairing ships would become much more difficult because superficial hull damage could be internal as well. The Astro Technobeam should be given a "splash damage" effect as well to combat this. Or be alleviated by additional repair mechanics such as "repair to blueprint"
Repair modules and "Ghost" blocks
This is a two part suggestion, the second part of which hinges on the first. It involves repairing damaged ships.
My first proposal is that blocks destroyed by incoming weapons fire get treated differently than blocks removed by the player. When a block is fired on, it gets progressively more damaged (just like it does already), and when it reaches zero hit points, it becomes a "ghost" block. It's still there and still attached to the ship, but it can't be seen, touched or interacted with. Destroyed weapon systems remain linked to the weapon computer and vice versa, likewise destroyed docking and turret modules remain linked to their enhancers, though they no longer work.
This allows ships to have a health meter. The undamaged blocks are represented as a green bar, the damaged blocks show up as a yellow bar and the destroyed blocks show up in red. A ship with a thousand blocks, 700 of which are fine, 200 of which are damaged and 100 of which are destroyed would have a health bar that's 70% green, 20% yellow and 10% red. That won't tell you what KIND of blocks you've lost, but it'll give you a general sense of how badly you're hurt.
As an addition to build mode, there would now be a checkbox that says "Repair mode". Checking this box makes ghost blocks visible as a red outline and highlights damaged blocks in yellow (kinda like how the game now highlights linked blocks in purple). Clicking on damaged or destroyed blocks repairs or replaces them, however any blocks you replace have to come from your inventory. Repairing still costs blocks, it just isn't tedious or time consuming, and weapons/docking blocks autoreconnect to their computers/enhancers.
The second part of my proposal is an autrepair module, which has a supporting block called a repair enhancer. Like a docking enhancer, you need repair enhancers linked in order to serve a larger ship.
Repairing would work like the weapon or cloaking systems; you assign a hotkey while in flight mode and hold down left click while the module is selected in order to use it. Autorepair takes time to work and draws power in proportion to the amount of damage healed and number of enhancers attached, meaning a large heavily damaged ship requires extra power compared to a small lightly damaged one. You obviously can't fire weapons while the module is working, as a play balancing feature.
You can link the autorepair module to a plex storage unit and have it draw blocks from storage to replace destroyed ones; a smart player might make sure they have a dedicated "spare parts locker" with all the same blocks they used to build the ship. If no plex storage unit is linked, the autorepair only repairs damaged blocks, it does not replace destroyed ones.
The same trick can be adapted to the astrotechbeam. If you link an astrotech computer to a plex storage unit, the beam can now replace damaged blocks. This upgrade would make the tech beams still useful in a team setting, even though autorepair would completely replace them solo.
This is a two part suggestion, the second part of which hinges on the first. It involves repairing damaged ships.
My first proposal is that blocks destroyed by incoming weapons fire get treated differently than blocks removed by the player. When a block is fired on, it gets progressively more damaged (just like it does already), and when it reaches zero hit points, it becomes a "ghost" block. It's still there and still attached to the ship, but it can't be seen, touched or interacted with. Destroyed weapon systems remain linked to the weapon computer and vice versa, likewise destroyed docking and turret modules remain linked to their enhancers, though they no longer work.
This allows ships to have a health meter. The undamaged blocks are represented as a green bar, the damaged blocks show up as a yellow bar and the destroyed blocks show up in red. A ship with a thousand blocks, 700 of which are fine, 200 of which are damaged and 100 of which are destroyed would have a health bar that's 70% green, 20% yellow and 10% red. That won't tell you what KIND of blocks you've lost, but it'll give you a general sense of how badly you're hurt.
As an addition to build mode, there would now be a checkbox that says "Repair mode". Checking this box makes ghost blocks visible as a red outline and highlights damaged blocks in yellow (kinda like how the game now highlights linked blocks in purple). Clicking on damaged or destroyed blocks repairs or replaces them, however any blocks you replace have to come from your inventory. Repairing still costs blocks, it just isn't tedious or time consuming, and weapons/docking blocks autoreconnect to their computers/enhancers.
The second part of my proposal is an autrepair module, which has a supporting block called a repair enhancer. Like a docking enhancer, you need repair enhancers linked in order to serve a larger ship.
Repairing would work like the weapon or cloaking systems; you assign a hotkey while in flight mode and hold down left click while the module is selected in order to use it. Autorepair takes time to work and draws power in proportion to the amount of damage healed and number of enhancers attached, meaning a large heavily damaged ship requires extra power compared to a small lightly damaged one. You obviously can't fire weapons while the module is working, as a play balancing feature.
You can link the autorepair module to a plex storage unit and have it draw blocks from storage to replace destroyed ones; a smart player might make sure they have a dedicated "spare parts locker" with all the same blocks they used to build the ship. If no plex storage unit is linked, the autorepair only repairs damaged blocks, it does not replace destroyed ones.
The same trick can be adapted to the astrotechbeam. If you link an astrotech computer to a plex storage unit, the beam can now replace damaged blocks. This upgrade would make the tech beams still useful in a team setting, even though autorepair would completely replace them solo.
ex: Suppose you had a 10,000 block ship with every component and two weapon systems. Lets say that each system had 1,000 blocks. This would mean that each component core has 1,000 health, with the main core/ overall ship having 3,000 (all 6 core's health * together then / by 2). This would therefore mean that 3,000 blocks of the 10,000 block ship would have to be destroyed for it to no longer function (33.33%).
Last edited:
