Overhaul of Ship-Core

[McDili]

Okay I see what you mean now, this is a scenario I didn\'t think of when I made the original post, but it\'s okay because my suggestion already covers it.



Earlier I mentioned that I didn\'t make it clear that once the shutdown sequence is complete, the core explodes. If the pilot is in the core when that happens, he dies.



Now, since the \"Shutdown Sequence\" is essentially just a sequence in which the max capacity to regenerate power is drained, if you were to hit a small ship with a planetcracking missile, all the power gen blocks would be destroyed, essentially completing the shutdown sequence instantly. So, the core would straight up explode. So there\'s actually no issue here.



On a battlecruiser, if you nailed the core with a planetcracking missile, it starts the sequence. If you happened to destroy a lot of power gens in the attack, that sequence is already further along to completion.



Not only that, but it also gives you more options as an attacker. If you start the shutdown sequence on a ship-core, you have many new objectives to choose from. You could go for the engines, so they can\'t escape. You could go for the weapon CPU\'s, so they can\'t fire. Finally, you could go for the Power Generators, to speed the shutdown sequence along.



If you have no capacity to regenerate power, you die. This happens when you have no power generators, or the shutdown sequence completes. Either way, you need not worry about a small ship escaping after you nail it with a titan-class planetcracking missile



I will edit the OP to highlight this scenario.

 

[Kaelum]

The core should be extremely tough and take a lot of shooting to kill, making it more effective to knock out their power, then because they are dead in the complete lack of water or anything therof, you can fix your cannons on their core and pound it for a while. If you don\'t disable them first they could run, shoot, even win. So that is why you would attack the systems. I think your idea would make cores a bit too overpowered in the point that you could have a cheap unarmored fighter with a lot of guns and the effect of a core overheat would be miniscule in the fact that power lowers very slow, and you could make an army of those and lose nearly nothing. It would bring it to a point that there is no point because the only real way to kill someone it to kill all the potential loot, and make sure they still have hull on.

 

[McDili]

You should read my latest reply to you, I highlight how my suggestion already covers your concerns and how small fighters are still weak compared to bigger ships.

 

[McDili]

I made edits to the OP, covers more in depth how the shutdown sequence can be sped up.



Also added TLDR.

 

[Dogdard]

Agreed there needs to be a sense of consequences. But as i said if all thats left of your ship is the core? Is that not substantial?

 

[omelet]

so...at what point could you salvage the other person\'s ship, or you are wanting to remove that mechanic?

 

[McDili]

If the shutdown sequence is active and you lose all your power gens, then the shutdown sequence will complete early anyway because the capacity to regenerate power is depleted. When the shutdown sequence completes, the ship core is destroyed, so it can\'t just fly away if all the blocks are gone.

 

[McDili]

Well I figure it would work the same way. If the core is overheating, you could just start salvaging. Most of the time weapons are more powerful than salvage cannons when it comes to how fast they can remove blocks.



But depending on the ship, it might take good weapons to get to the core to overheat it anyway.



But no I didn\'t intend to change that mechanic at all, you would still be able to salvage a ship while the core is overheated, it could be effective if you dedicated part of your ship to salvaging but you just have to keep in mind that the enemy is still a functional ship for a little while longer. It would be cool though, as if you were devouring your enemy!

 

[Energy]

The OP idea still makes sense, or even more, after all the debate. The core is the hearth of the ship. A person with no hearth still keeps the brain working for some seconds (like a shutdown sequence).

The relation between mass/power/shutdown makes even more sence if you\'ve been shooted by a massive power of some kind, and your only block left is your core. (In the year 2013 planes wreackages still have most of their black boxes intact.) The only key factor here is the shutdown sequence time, which should be very low. As I said, tied to the ship mass. Core = 1 block = caboom in a couple of seconds, not in 100seconds as the OP suggested.

The core overheating time, as it is right now in the game, is defined by the mass of the ship. Bigger mass = bigger overheating time.

As it is right now, the overheating time grants the winner time to salvage the wreck. After the end of that given time the ships just evaporates in thin air (void?). WHAT IF, the overheating time was the time for the shutdown sequence, and after that time, the core only explodes leaving the wreck floating in space? It\'s not the weapons that kills the player, but his/her core self explosion. The explosion radius should be tied to the ship dimensions/mass or the ratio between hulls blocks and system blocks (weapons, shields, power, etc).

 

[Dogdard]

I see. I do have a question however, how would you propose to incorporate your idea into base destruction? Should it remain as is? In other words once the.last block is gone the base goes? Or should there be some system which uses this idea for bases?

 

[Dogdard]

Perhaps also while the core is overheating IF its owner leaves tje core and IF the attacker can get to it in time... the attacker can \"claim\" the ship somehow? So rather than destroy it outright they could take the ship and fix it up and use it?

 

[McDili]

I\'m actually not sure. Since bases don\'t use ship cores, this \"Shutdown Sequence\" doesn\'t really apply here. From what I understand, you don\'t need power for bases.



I think if I were to come up with something on bases, I would rather it be a capture mechanic to them instead of having some sort of meltdown when destroying a base. Similar to a suggestion in Kaelum\'s thread about faction funds/clearance, he talks about having a territory module on bases. I would think it would be cool to take over bases to gain territory rather than just outright destroy them.



But let\'s save the base discussion for another thread, as much as I\'d love to talk about it, we should focus on the ship core and the shutdown sequence in this thread. If you make a post about bases though, link it to me and I\'ll give my feedback there.

 

[Dogdard]

I wa. Just curious to see if you had planned on expanding on the idea and using a simliar concept for other entities. But yeah thats another topic for another day

 

[Kaelum]

The way you suggest it you would lose percentage of power gens second by second, but if your power gens are gone that doesn\'t mean you would die, because the percentage would be a variable that multiplies itself by your power gen. I could go deep into the coding side but I wont do that yet.

 

[Kaelum]

Still, if your cockpit gets hit by a missile when it is already beaten to hell... You have to eject fast, because cockpits aren\'t invincible.

 

[Kaelum]

I posted the wreck idea already, in a previous post. Also, I think the core should not be invincible even if it is going to die. A merging of our ideas might be interesting. Maybe the core can be destroyed as well as overheated. My idea, as I have said, involves making the core so hard to kill that it is better to just blow it\'s systems up. Maybe at a certain health percentage it can overheat and start losing power, and eventually die, or if the guy attacking pounds it hard enough after knocking out your thrusters it would explode.

I think this would be good for salvaging as it would no longer have a core, but still be drifting in space to salvage. Otherwise strike and salvage missions would be too easy as you could just overheat them and salvage them in a matter of seconds.

 

[Dogdard]

OWell yeah i wasnt attenpting to imply that the core CANT be killed. Just to develop some system which makes it so that systematically dismantling a ship is even more promoted and possibly more benneficial than it is atm. Which is why i think this is such a good idea. At least in theory it would give the game a more tactical feel than it has now.

 

[Energy]

That\'s harder to do. What do you mean by \"claim the ship somehow\"? Hows the faction block mechanics would work it that? I think this is another topic, that deserves a single thread just for it.

Also, I forgot to mention in my last reply that the option to destroy the ship and/or kill the player still persist. Like in EVE Online, when your ship gets destroyed, you\'re left in the space in you POD. The player killer have the option to let you live or kill you. In Starmade, with the option we\'re discussing here, we have the same options. Destroy the ship. If the player get off the ship somehow, it\'s up to you to kill him or not.

Also, don\'t you forget that now you can just leave your ship just seconds before the core overheat and still manage to survive.

 

[Dogdard]

Well i figured it was related to the topic but yeah it should get its own post. And by somehow? Honestly im not sure. I was brainstorming a bit there.

 

[McDili]

This is really good feedback, thanks!



This is a good idea, I\'d like to discuss it in depth.



When I first created this thread I actually thought about having the capacity to regenerate power drain at a rate based on the ratio of mass:power. But I thought, if you engage the shutdown sequence, and then start shooting up the ship, you decrease the mass of the ship while you lay into it, and this might cause you to actually slow down the rate of the shutdown sequence if your weapons are extremely powerful.



However, you\'re encouraged me to brainstorm about relating the regen capacity drain to ship class, based on http://starmade.wikia.com/wiki/Ship_Classification



I haven\'t thought up a good formula yet, but I\'ll work at it.



In the meantime, I just want to clarify that if you engage the shutdown sequence, it takes at most 100 seconds for the ship core to explode as long as the ship continues to take damage. But it\'s only going to take 100 seconds(1% per second) if you don\'t destroy any power generators while fighting the ship. But that probably won\'t happen, you\'ll probably destroy power generators by accident.



You could actually destroy a ship significantly quicker if you focus on destroying power generators once you engage the shutdown sequence, because not only are they losing 1% regen per second, but right alongside that you are destroying power generators which would drastically speed up the shutdown sequence. It also means you don\'t necessarily have to destroy all power gen blocks to win, you could destroy 80% of the power generators in 20 seconds, and because 1% drains every second, you would be left with 20% of the power generators to salvage for yourself. Alternatively you could just salvage the power gens during the shutdown sequence, but that would probably be slower than shooting them.



But yeah, if you destroyed 80% of the power generators in 20 seconds, then the ship you attacked only lasted 20 seconds from the point you triggered the shutdown sequence.



So really in a way it\'s already based on mass, as a small fighter would lose all their power gens to a cruiser really quickly, alternatively if a small fighter triggered the shutdown sequence on a cruiser, it would probably take them a long time to start killing power generators, and the cruiser would have plenty of time to retaliate and destroy the fighter quickly.