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- Aug 4, 2013
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We were talking about the ship HP system in chat and it got me thinking about how the game mechanics inform ship construction.
Now, my knowledge of the game's mechanics ain't up-to-date, understand, so any of the things I'm saying could be tossed aside as "entirely missing the point" and I'd deserve it.
So, right now, at the very least, the game's mechanics favor dealing massive damage to a small area. Take out the core, the ship is destroyed. The counter to this is ever-increasing pools of hp or layers of armor. The former scales far, far more efficiently than the latter, if only because you need to armor and shield your entire ship to protect it, while your opponent simply needs to have a sufficiently large gun to punch through a small fraction of it. Further, there is little reason for a ship to have any kind of interior. As long as a path to the ship's core exists, that's all that matters.
Changing to an HP system helps, I think. But I'd like to offer an alternative or, perhaps, complimentary way of modifying the mechanics to favor a less geometric, hyper-optimized approach. This means giving each ship multiple failure points, rather than just the core. How could we do that, if we think that's actually a good idea, at least in principle? Well, maybe like this:
We already have control blocks in the game. People are used to using them. We could expand on that a bit to influence how players deploy their weapons and how they build their ships considerably.
Control blocks would be standardized a bit and could all follow the same basic rules:
1) Systems need to be slaved to an appropriate control block in order to function.
2) Control blocks don't disappear when they reach 0 HP. Instead, they can linger for a time, allowing and encouraging players (or crew mobs) to repair them with a special repair tool.
3) Losing the control block effectively shuts down the system blocks tied to it.
4) Knocking a ship's core down to 0 HP kills anyone occupying it.
5) System blocks can be re-slaved to a different controller by someone using the build tools in the ship's core.
6) The ship's core can be used as a universal controller for shields/power/energy production
7) The ship's core can be knocked to 0 HP without automatically destroying the ship, allowing a window of opportunity for the crew to repair it.
This gives folks the option to distribute their ship's weak points around its structure and gives them reason to employ internal corridors. It also helps group play a bit by letting folks take over for dead comrades or let folks play as a dedicated repair guy. It also allows existing designs to continue on without alteration, though they will retain their single point of failure. For a single person operating a ship losing their core is horrible, but not an automatic loss, especially if they are occupying a cockpit block or the like.
A few alterations to some of the other systems could flesh it out considerably as well. Scanners might be required to locate an enemy ship's controller blocks. AI blocks could have a customizable targeting order and would require some sort of power-draining active scanner to aim at anything more specific than "at the ship, maybe". Active scanners could be countered by counter-measures systems that hide other controller blocks but show up as targets themselves instead.
Just some thoughts.
Now, my knowledge of the game's mechanics ain't up-to-date, understand, so any of the things I'm saying could be tossed aside as "entirely missing the point" and I'd deserve it.
So, right now, at the very least, the game's mechanics favor dealing massive damage to a small area. Take out the core, the ship is destroyed. The counter to this is ever-increasing pools of hp or layers of armor. The former scales far, far more efficiently than the latter, if only because you need to armor and shield your entire ship to protect it, while your opponent simply needs to have a sufficiently large gun to punch through a small fraction of it. Further, there is little reason for a ship to have any kind of interior. As long as a path to the ship's core exists, that's all that matters.
Changing to an HP system helps, I think. But I'd like to offer an alternative or, perhaps, complimentary way of modifying the mechanics to favor a less geometric, hyper-optimized approach. This means giving each ship multiple failure points, rather than just the core. How could we do that, if we think that's actually a good idea, at least in principle? Well, maybe like this:
We already have control blocks in the game. People are used to using them. We could expand on that a bit to influence how players deploy their weapons and how they build their ships considerably.
Control blocks would be standardized a bit and could all follow the same basic rules:
1) Systems need to be slaved to an appropriate control block in order to function.
2) Control blocks don't disappear when they reach 0 HP. Instead, they can linger for a time, allowing and encouraging players (or crew mobs) to repair them with a special repair tool.
3) Losing the control block effectively shuts down the system blocks tied to it.
4) Knocking a ship's core down to 0 HP kills anyone occupying it.
5) System blocks can be re-slaved to a different controller by someone using the build tools in the ship's core.
6) The ship's core can be used as a universal controller for shields/power/energy production
7) The ship's core can be knocked to 0 HP without automatically destroying the ship, allowing a window of opportunity for the crew to repair it.
This gives folks the option to distribute their ship's weak points around its structure and gives them reason to employ internal corridors. It also helps group play a bit by letting folks take over for dead comrades or let folks play as a dedicated repair guy. It also allows existing designs to continue on without alteration, though they will retain their single point of failure. For a single person operating a ship losing their core is horrible, but not an automatic loss, especially if they are occupying a cockpit block or the like.
A few alterations to some of the other systems could flesh it out considerably as well. Scanners might be required to locate an enemy ship's controller blocks. AI blocks could have a customizable targeting order and would require some sort of power-draining active scanner to aim at anything more specific than "at the ship, maybe". Active scanners could be countered by counter-measures systems that hide other controller blocks but show up as targets themselves instead.
Just some thoughts.
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