Ship Explosions: How we should handle dead ships

[tn44]

Ok so, after thinking about it and discussing it on the chat, I'm pretty sure I have a solid suggestion for handling dead ships, and I don't believe it would be too hard to implement it.

When a ship starts to overheat, during the duration of the overheat countdown random damage pulses would generate from areas with system blocks, with strength depending on the size of the system that caused the explosion. The explosions stop when the ship completes it's reboot and then things are back to normal. If the overheat countdown stops, the ship can do one of two things.

One, it could explode, causing a large damage pulse based on the size of the ship! BOOOOOM! This would happen if the ship passes another hp % barrier below the initial overheat %
Two, the ship dies and is left in space as a free floating object that can be salvaged for scrap, this is if it doesn't take enough damage to put it below the second % barrier.

The explosions could just look like an orange damage pulse.

 

[StormWing0]

As someone makes a ship specifically for nuking a whole sector or is the blast based on remaining blocks and size?

 

[tn44]

Yeah, good point, I think the explosion radius should be based on the total amount of system blocks remaining on the ship perhaps.

 

[terra mining corp.]

or the ship if it goes past the overheat mode without getting reset will implode heavily(or completely )damaging system blocks leaving external hull for salvaging.

 

[Mork2]

I would advise against the random damage pulses during overheat countdown. Your going to have a hard enough time trying to escape from your dying ship while someone is trying to kill you as it is. Also its even more unlikely for someone to then try to board a ship and reset it. As you have a chance of dying and leaving your own ship floating around unoccupied. I like the idea of the visual effect though. Maybe with 100% push instead of damage instead.

 

[Reilly Reese]

I would advise against the random damage pulses during overheat countdown. Your going to have a hard enough time trying to escape from your dying ship while someone is trying to kill you as it is. Also its even more unlikely for someone to then try to board a ship and reset it. As you have a chance of dying and leaving your own ship floating around unoccupied. I like the idea of the visual effect though. Maybe with 100% push instead of damage instead.

Perhaps we add a no astronaut damage to it?

 

[tn44]

Well damage pulse shouldn't hurt astronauts unless the system causing the explosion is exposed to the interior, right?

 

[Deveyus]

Ship in general being capturable or salvageable definitely leaves a lot of resources in the system, but it's not significant compared to the losses to damage and the like, leaving a definite sense of need for derelicts, capturing, and the like. However explosive decay of OLD ships might not be a bad idea to clean up things but it's far less dramatic.

 

[tn44]

Well, the idea is that you can leave less derelicts to clutter the server by blowing some of the ships up
There should still be a decent chance for them to survive and become salvage, though, but maybe they can just disappear after so long to keep the servers clean.
As far as capturing ships, you would want to do that either before the overheat timer finishes (not that hard on large ships) or before it's overheating xD

 

[alterintel]

I would advise against the random damage pulses during overheat countdown. Your going to have a hard enough time trying to escape from your dying ship while someone is trying to kill you as it is. Also its even more unlikely for someone to then try to board a ship and reset it. As you have a chance of dying and leaving your own ship floating around unoccupied. I like the idea of the visual effect though. Maybe with 100% push instead of damage instead.

This would be the exact reason to do it !. It makes salvaging all the much more dangerous and exciting Especially with undeathinators eventually making their way to ships (hopefully soon) this would lower the risk as well. So if you die trying to salvage a ship, then you would be able to re-spawn on your ship.

 

[Lecic]

Large orange damage pulse... like, say, this?

 

[tn44]

Yes, something like that! ^^

 

[jayman38]

It would also be great to see pieces (here, I am thinking of clusters of blocks, as opposed to "particle effect" pieces-of-blocks) get blown off, preferably with a particle trail. It would be really cool to someday watch planets get shot-gunned by an exploding ship the way you might expect. Until impact damage is optimized and activated by default, it might be good to have blown-off pieces attach to any static entity it contacts.

 

[MacThule]

I like the system-based explosions, but think a "final blast" is unnecessary and unrealistic. Few things actually totally blow and disintegrate - ever - outside of Hollywood. Just blow out a couple of more systems when the countdown completes and whatever remains at that point is debris: remove the core.

 

[EMC007]

I like the system-based explosions, but think a "final blast" is unnecessary and unrealistic. Few things actually totally blow and disintegrate - ever - outside of Hollywood. Just blow out a couple of more systems when the countdown completes and whatever remains at that point is debris: remove the core.

This is starmade! Not everything has to be realistic, like the fact that there are undeathinators or that there is an infinite power source in the form of a block.

And who doesn't like an explosion, right? I think it would be awesome to be running down the corridor to the back of your ship where the escape pods are, with explosions behind you the whole way.

And even if it is very Hollywood, is that always a bad thing? Cause most people word it like it is a bad thing, even though some pretty good movies can come out of it.

But I like this idea and I am all for explosions as the core blows up, I always thought it to be very anticlimactic as a ship just disappears when the countdown ends.

 

[GaeasSon]

Recalling a previous thread on this subject ( http://starmadedock.net/threads/make-ships-go-kaboom-instead-of-spawning.20670/)

OK, so how about this:

1. When the structure goes critical, the game does a simple random check for effect (Shutdown, Dereliction or Explosion)
   If Shutdown: The ship is repairable... It just needs a reboot, as though an astronaut had saved it before melt down.
   If Dereliction: The ship is scrap. The ship core disappears, but the systems are salvageable.
   If Explosion then execute the following steps...
2. the game engine notes the current power output of the structure.
3. Client then displays a solar flare effect at the ships core, size proportional to the total power output.
4. The game then removes the exploding ship from the game, saving its current structure (briefly).
5. The following transformations take place unrendered to save CPU.
   1. * The server engine removes a spherical area, including the core (proportional to the power output) from around where the core used to be.
   2. * The engine increases the radius by 1 removing and replacing all non-empty blocks on the edge of the vaporized sphere with "lava"
   3. * Any non-contiguous structures remaining are separated into individual "wreckage" entities.
6. Wreckage is re-spawned into the game where the exploding ship used to be.
7. A weapon effect: (Damage pulse+Push pulse+ Ion effect) Proportional to the power output of the exploding ship, is set off where the core used to be. (hopefully sending ship bits careening off in several directions, and smacking anyone who wandered too close.
8. Finally, the solar flare is removed.

Of course... all of the above should be optional and configurable in the server config.

 

[MacThule]

This is starmade! Not everything has to be realistic, like the fact that there are undeathinators or that there is an infinite power source in the form of a block.

And who doesn't like an explosion, right? I think it would be awesome to be running down the corridor to the back of your ship where the escape pods are, with explosions behind you the whole way.

And even if it is very Hollywood, is that always a bad thing? Cause most people word it like it is a bad thing, even though some pretty good movies can come out of it.

But I like this idea and I am all for explosions as the core blows up, I always thought it to be very anticlimactic as a ship just disappears when the countdown ends.

Well I totally agree. Making it more cinematic is great fun. I still stand by my opinion on this though. I think the random system explosions are great, but complete final destruction would be sad because there would be no salvage left. On the other hand, a few extra systems lost at the end would leave some salvage for the victor (to the victor go the spoils!), and eliminating the core in the final throws would mean the wreck could ONLY be salvaged, because you can't drop a new core on an existing structure. Just my take on it. I don't think cinematic total explosion is bad, just not as good.

Maybe the best compromise would be at final countdown the vessel could either lose a few additional systems OR explode - random chance of either. That would keep the big explosions fun because they wouldn't be predictable, and leave additional salvage as a potential that some pilots could still hope for when dominating enemies.

 

[tn44]

The idea of not leaving leftovers to salvage is to keep the system more manageable, it's easy to ask for debris left everywhere all the time, not so easy to expect servers to deal with that well. That's why earlier I said this.

"There should still be a decent chance for them to survive and become salvage, though, but maybe they can just disappear after so long to keep the servers clean.
As far as capturing ships, you would want to do that either before the overheat timer finishes (not that hard on large ships) or before it's overheating xD"

And this from the original post ^^

"One, it could explode, causing a large damage pulse based on the size of the ship! BOOOOOM! This would happen if the ship passes another hp % barrier below the initial overheat %
Two, the ship dies and is left in space as a free floating object that can be salvaged for scrap, this is if it doesn't take enough damage to put it below the second % barrier."

 

[Andem]

I would advise against the random damage pulses during overheat countdown. Your going to have a hard enough time trying to escape from your dying ship while someone is trying to kill you as it is. Also its even more unlikely for someone to then try to board a ship and reset it. As you have a chance of dying and leaving your own ship floating around unoccupied. I like the idea of the visual effect though. Maybe with 100% push instead of damage instead.

But think about it: Your ship is exploding all around you, you have limited options, i suggest a new block to make it easier to escape, like an escape pod block. You could have to, a male port and a female port, and you could build an escape pod. on board would be a computer, you would hit R and it would propel you until you got out of the sector. it would be attack proof, meaning that once you got into it you would be fine.

 

[Lecic]

But think about it: Your ship is exploding all around you, you have limited options, i suggest a new block to make it easier to escape, like an escape pod block. You could have to, a male port and a female port, and you could build an escape pod. on board would be a computer, you would hit R and it would propel you until you got out of the sector. it would be attack proof, meaning that once you got into it you would be fine.

Escape pods shouldn't be attack proof.