Semi-Proper Explosions

[Blaza612]

Something that really bugs me whenever playing Starmade, is that the missiles don't feel natural. At the moment they just leave a giant spherical hole in the hull, this massively breaks immersion as it doesn't look natural or "realistic" (I know you all hate that word, that's why I put it in quotes, to shame it. :P)

I propose a change to the missile AOE effect. instead of having a giant sphere that destroys everything, there should be a resistance against surfaces. If a nuke goes off at ground level, sure, there'll be a decent sized dent in the ground, but 95% of all of the damage will happen above the surface, the buildings, the trees, the humans, the animals etc. and the same principle applies for standard missiles.

I'll use this image to explain it. The Grey and Light Green represent buildings and trees, with the Dark Green representing the ground. The Blue represents the point of impact, with the Orange lines being where the explosion would effect, and the Red represents underground structures. When the explosion impacts the ground, the force is absorbed by the ground, yet it still creates a hole around the impact area. The explosion moves out and up, throwing anything into the air and away from the impact zone. The Red buildings will not be damaged at all since the are under the object that absorbs the force, everything above the ground, where the force can hit, is torn apart and thrown away.

This would make dumb-fire missiles useful, as if you aim your shot just right, you could expose a lot of the ship as well as cripple some of the inner hull, this would also allow for skill to be more involved with missiles and make multiple layers of armour useful, as well as destroying a ship with missiles so much more amazing.

 

[kiraen]

throwing anything into the air and away from the impact zone

The key word here is 'air'. The shock wave does not propagate in a vaccuum.

Planetside, things should be different. It is my understanding that planets and atmosphere are still In Progress anyway.

 

[Blaza612]

There are other types of misiles more than a nuke, that explode in the air, not in the surface, check these videos:



And now an anti bunker misile explosion:


Misiles are "realistic" as they are now at the explosion thing.

All of those missiles act as I depicted a new missile system. The first one was just a standard missile that exploded just before impact, the second one had a big enough explosive that the entire ship was obliterated, and the third would be a missile with punch-through, still acted the same.

I am aware of the fact that nukes aren't the only type of missile, it is just the explosive which resembles what I'm trying to explain the easiest.

The key word here is 'air'. The shock wave does not propagate in a vaccuum.

Planetside, things should be different. It is my understanding that planets and atmosphere are still In Progress anyway.

I see where you coming at, but you cannot say a giant sphere of nothing looks even half-decent, the positives of this massively outweighs lack of hyper-realistic physics. :P

 

[Winterhome]

Using superheated gas and metal fragments as shrapnel, with radiation damage as an added bonus for nukes pls

 

[CyberTao]

I honestly can't see a shockwave being something that SM can do without being laggy as shit, and the shallow crater would be hard as well.

In case you didn't know, SM currently handles missiles with Pulse spheres, to reduce lag mostly. Something like this would probably involve some form of ray tracing (I think that is the word? Drawing lines to the blocks) that repeats a couple times. Could be interesting, but possibly laggy.

 

[Reilly Reese]

Anything that has any chance of adding MORE lag is currently...

 

[Groovrider]

The key word here is 'air'. The shock wave does not propagate in a vaccuum.

Planetside, things should be different. It is my understanding that planets and atmosphere are still In Progress anyway.

Go look at a few Hubble supernova pics and tell me there are no shockwaves in space. Remember, terrestrial explosives don't have to be as powerful because the atmosphere does a lot of the work. There is still a shockwave in space but it would photonic in nature rather than compressional...sort of like a photon torpedo.

 

[Blaza612]

I honestly can't see a shockwave being something that SM can do without being laggy as shit, and the shallow crater would be hard as well.

In case you didn't know, SM currently handles missiles with Pulse spheres, to reduce lag mostly. Something like this would probably involve some form of ray tracing (I think that is the word? Drawing lines to the blocks) that repeats a couple times. Could be interesting, but possibly laggy.

Raycasting isn't something that kills performance, if done right. The parts that blown off don't have to fly away, if lag does indeed become a problem then just having them be destroyed into the shards they do now would be fine. However, figuring out which blocks would actually be affected would only require a few raycasts, I've had raycasts firing infinitely every frame before in my own experiments, and that didn't cause any extra lag issues, so they would be the way to go for this.

Anything that has any chance of adding MORE lag is currently...

Unless it has the chance of not causing lag. :P

 

[CyberTao]

Raycasting isn't something that kills performance, if done right. The parts that blown off don't have to fly away, if lag does indeed become a problem then just having them be destroyed into the shards they do now would be fine. However, figuring out which blocks would actually be affected would only require a few raycasts, I've had raycasts firing infinitely every frame before in my own experiments, and that didn't cause any extra lag issues, so they would be the way to go for this.

If that is the case, summon the Megacrafter127 , who knows the most of the engine in the council. See what his opinion is on the lag or no lag debate.

I would actually kind of like it if we could get the casting method over the pulse spheres. Have each casting do a set damage and set a maximum casting distance (radius) and number of castings and it could work? Maybe?

 

[Megacrafter127]

It really depends on how it is done.
However, I don't really recommend using raycasting, as the radii of the craters can be relatively large, meaning many raycasts will have to be performed to make them look smooth-ish. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL1swlfzXzo&t=6m50s [I know the video uses minecraft, but it illustrates my point])

 

[jayman38]

I would recommend smaller explosion radiuses with a few cannonshots sent out from the point of impact, with a random angle perpendicular to the missile vector. Maybe the shots could be entirely random, not perpendicular to the vector, but then the firing ship would risk blowback at close range. Cannonshots as shrapnel would take advantage of the engine's existing mechanics, and spread the calculations out over time by virtue of the cannonshot travel speed.

I made such a change in one of my Quake 2 mods once upon a time. Too much shrapnel (the cannonshots) created lag, but half-a-dozen shrapnel pieces created a nice secondary damage effect with minimal lag.

 

[Valiant70]

As others have stated, space missiles cannot use normal explosives, as explosives rely on the atmosphere to transfer a shockwave. These are obviously some kind of photon, plasma, or particle warhead. That's not to say a similar effect doesn't make sense. At any given angle, the spherically emitted radation would go through a given thickness of stuff. If the surface is armored, the effect would be similar. An unarmored surface would still probably act like what you in the game now.

Go look at a few Hubble supernova pics and tell me there are no shockwaves in space. Remember, terrestrial explosives don't have to be as powerful because the atmosphere does a lot of the work. There is still a shockwave in space but it would photonic in nature rather than compressional...sort of like a photon torpedo.

This is right on the money. The energy cannot be a conventional explosive.

On another note, we need to rename the explosive effect to "blast" or something because "explosive" is a specific technical term. The devs have expressed that they want all weapon names to be very generic. You might as well call the effect "thermal detonator" as "explosive" as both point to specific technologies. "Blast" is just a generic term.