more in depth thread here:
My ideas on System Design and Game Balancing
I like the direction, in which this is going. It would be really nice if you could compartmentalize your ship in regard to the systems, the ship uses, such that the function of a particular compartment would lead to a form, that nicely integrates systems design into interior ship design, so you dont need to build reactor room imitations for RP value and aesthetics, but as a natural consequence of the new block mechanis.
To broaden the picture abit:
At the moment, building and using ships doesn't feel like you are actually out in space. And that using a ship is a group effort, if systems are not adequately automatised. Thinks like central and controllable artificial gravity systems, life support systems, airlocks, which truly serve a purpose besides being a door, .... And ship to ship combat that is more subtle and less brute force, such that you could target specific systems, like thrusters, or weapons systems compartments, actual power conduits distributing the power within the ship, or life support. maybe you could trigger events, that would force you to leave the bridge and reboot or repair certain systems, so you don't need actual block damage or at least not alot of block damage for actual ship to ship combat, but an event based pattern as an extension. say you got hit by an ion beam, so you have to go to the shield system and use the consoles there to get the shields working again. EMP impacts could dissable main power, but maybe you have failsafe systems, that jump in, but those are only linked to some of your systems. you could even imagine all sorts of further logic based automatisations, that could be required, so you could built and use a console on the bridge or any other control room on the ship to control those automatisations and react to certain events. So you can make automatisations if you are short of a crew, but which by themselves could be a target again. but those events could give a crew an actual purpose onboard.
you could destroy the bridge of the ship, so you cant maneuvre the ship or fire weapons from there, but you can go straight to the engine room, where you can only use the thrusters and jump drive, but not weapons. vice versa, the weapons system could be controlled from the corresponding compartment. so maybe you built backup control rooms into your ship or different rooms, that could centrally control a specific subset of your systems. radar/jammer/cloaker room, weapons room, engine room, .... or/and all in one
., so you fly the ship and your friend controles the guns, ...
imagine a canon destroying a power conduit, such that you have to reroute power, or hitting single weapon systems, that would actually fail without the bigger part of the ship getting destroyed. cannons or beams hitting the reactor block, so the reactor needs attention, so it doesnt overheat and explode the whole ship. Weapons with small radius of damage could become alot more interesting, such that it would allow missiles to become way more expensive, so you dont have those shields down->missiles hit->ship gone-battles any more, but battles like: the shield generator got hit, but in the time i needed to fix it, one of my weapons systems got deactivated. I'm getting a FasterThenLight flash right now
but on star made steroids
Maybe this goes too far, but the new power core design somewhat touches all the other aspects aswell.
- bring systems design and interior design closer together
- event based extension for less brute force combat szenarios
- more out in space feeling
