Here's a thought. We don't need stabilizers if we change the way SHP works so that
extra hull is desirable, because that already removes the disadvantage of interiors or irregularly-shaped exteriors.
In power 1.0, systems provided most of the SHP. If you had a large brick of systems, you had enough SHP to get by already. This means once you have a layer of armor on the outside, more hull doesn't necessarily help a whole heck of a lot. Minimizing the amount of armor needed to cover your ship and avoiding interior was a good way to keep your mass down.
I think we should separate SHP into separate pools for the hull, the reactor, and individual systems.
- Structure HP: Provided by hull and armor. If it's gone, the ship disintegrates.
- Reactor HP: If it's gone, the reactor starts overheating, causing damage to structure HP over time.
- Other system HP: Each system has an HP pool. If enough blocks of that system are destroyed, that system stops working. (e.g. engines, a weapon group, or shields.)
One argument is that this would make ships die too fast when they take hits to their hull. Either players must start building bulkheads between systems to provide more SHP, or build interiors, or both. If it still seems like ships are destroyed too easily, then the amount of SHP provided by hull and armor blocks is too low.
This also allows players to target and disable specific systems provided they know where to shoot, or have the scanning capability to find out.
This could work on its own, or be implemented alongside heat mechanics such as those in
this suggestion.
