Structural Integrity

[LordChicken]

Hello again,

After my last hull Idea I went back to the drawing board, had a nice bowl of chilli, and started work on my next idea.

Now, from what I was able to gather people want hull blocks life to connect to each other, or a group health bar for your ship, or some other way to make it so a single well placed sniper shell will automatically kill you.

Now, the problem I have seen, and I am positive most of you have seen it as well, is that even with a massive health bar that is the sum of all the hull on your ship, your ship can still go down to a single, well placed high damage sniper shell.

So an idea hit me, and this is it:

Structural Integrity

Structural Integrity is a ships health bar, it should appear were your health bar is normally on the hud. Every ship, no matter how small or how large, as long as they posses a single plex door, glass or hull has 100.00% Structural Integrity.

Structural Integrity is not based on the health of the hull, doors, and glass of your ship, but the combined total of them to equal its total health. Structural Integrity is lost after the shield has gone down, and the ship's hull is being attacked. Hull, doors and glass can not be destroyed as long as you have Structural Integrity. Attacks against hull, doors, and glass damage Structural Integrity, but not based off the damage of the attacks. Instead Structural Integrity is lost by the number of blocks being attacked, rather then the amount of damage being dealt to any individual block. Integrity is not lost per attack, but lost per second a individual block is attacked(Just so machine guns are not OP).

Your ship is under attack, your opponent has a single, 'death beam' that hits for 1,000,000,000,000 damage, and melted your ships shield off instantly when he shot you from behind. Your ship has a sum total of 1000 hulls, doors, and glass. His death beam hits 1 block at a time(aimed at your core, because were else would you aim?). Your Structural Integrity is at 100%, 1 block to you is 0.1% of your ships Structural Integrity. meaning that his death ray, for taking down shields at least is a superb weapon, but in only hitting 1 block, your ship loses only 0.1% structural integrity every second he fires.

If however you were a small fighter craft with only 20 total hull, door, and glass blocks. His beam would still instantly melt off your shield, but only 5% of your Structural Integrity would be lost a second.(because 5% is 1 of 20 and he only hits 1 block at a time.)

If he had 3 death beams(hitting 3 blocks) going against your 20 hull fighter, you would lose 15% a second, if he had 10 then you would be losing 50%, etc.
​

When Structural Integrity is gone, everything is breakable, replacing blocks dos nothing, unless you add more hull(+the other 2) then you had before. Only a repair beam can restore structural integrity, finally giving value to that near worthless item.

Wrapping Up​

The goal of Structural Integrity would be a strait nerf to core sniping, a nerf that needs to happen. The problem I had with most peoples idea's for a combined HP bar was that it was effectively another shield bar, one that like the first, would fall instantly to a sniper, enforcing the meta that all you need is bigger guns.

With this, when the shield gos down, its all about hitting as much of the ship as possible. Hopefully this means you can launch the fighters after the shield gos down so you can attack it from all sides and rip off its Structural Integrity, allowing the big ship a quick kill.

So, hopefully a nerf to snipers and a buff to people who can attack from all sides*Cough* fighters *Cough*!

Take it with a grain of salt, and thank your for reading.

 

[rece ktore leczo]

Some suggestions for HP system depend on health value of destroyed blocks, so there wouldn't be lucky "1 shot - 1 kill" shots, because to destroy ship, players would need to destroy, i.e. 50% of total blocks.

Loosing structural integrity based on how many blocks are being damaged is bad idea, it would make shotgun type weapons OP. In the next update we will get weapon combination allowing to shoot spreaded projectiles from one gun.
Also if i have a death ray beam, it should do massive damage. Either piercing multiple blocks or making splash damage (possible with effects system), not just make 0.1% of damage to 1000 block ship. It doesn't make sense.

Your suggestion is basically "shields after shields are down" I like the idea of not being able to destroy any blocks if i haven't delivered some damage before, but we already have this.
But just to be clear - hulls should actually defend ship's systems. Not only add some HP value for the total ship's HP, but also effectively defend from loosing blocks.

It's a nice idea, but i don't think it's the best way to make hulls useful, or even make fighters meaningful

 

[LordChicken]

Some suggestions for HP system depend on health value of destroyed blocks, so there wouldn't be lucky "1 shot - 1 kill" shots, because to destroy ship, players would need to destroy, i.e. 50% of total blocks.

Loosing structural integrity based on how many blocks are being damaged is bad idea, it would make shotgun type weapons OP. In the next update we will get weapon combination allowing to shoot spreaded projectiles from one gun.
Also if i have a death ray beam, it should do massive damage. Either piercing multiple blocks or making splash damage (possible with effects system), not just make 0.1% of damage to 1000 block ship. It doesn't make sense.

Your suggestion is basically "shields after shields are down" I like the idea of not being able to destroy any blocks if i haven't delivered some damage before, but we already have this.
But just to be clear - hulls should actually defend ship's systems. Not only add some HP value for the total ship's HP, but also effectively defend from loosing blocks.

It's a nice idea, but i don't think it's the best way to make hulls useful, or even make fighters meaningful

The problem I see is that as it stands the 'sniper death ray' is the ultimate weapon. By dividing the means in which damage is dealt between 2 systems you can make some weapons better at certain points of a fight, while making others less effective.

In the example I gave the death ray instantly killed everyones shield, as it should with those levels of damage. However it only hits a very small surface area, 1-4 blocks(if aiming on a corner or something). Compared to a missile that hits a massive AOE its a lesser weapon, however the missile is harder to hit and has a longer cool down, compared to a beam. The beam, for the first half the fight is more effective, while the missile is for the second half.

But I want to have my death beam blow holes threw ships!​

It will, when the Structural Integrity is gone(Also the creator talked about a piercing add on in the new weapons system, so there is always that. A counter argument to the shotgun 'OP' idea is the shape of the ship your shooting at. A shot gun is most effective when its able to land all of its shots(remember its a spread), how often do you see ships that the front of the ship is the broad side? Sure you could argue that you could get really close to land all of your shots, but then your really close to your target, and your shots don't have the time to spread out so you hit a smaller cluster(hitting fewer blocks) and potently waste damage while being in your opponents face(a lot of people keep the big guns at the front of the ship).

The overall goal was a diversity in weapons, as well as making hulls effective. I don't know about you, but a guy with a single billion damage death beam just holding a beam on 1 point until it cuts threw a ship should not be considered the 'ultimate tactic'. I would like for people to use more then 1 gun, and have a practical reason for switching weapons. "Use the beam to tear down the shields, then streak it across the bow for maximum effectiveness!"

If the answer to every question is 'more damage' then the ones who can do the most damage are the only ones who will be playing.

I fancy the idea of bringing your friends (or automated drones when they get implemented) in your medium ship to gang up and take down a larger vessel, using the medium sized gun boat to keep the shields down while the fighters tear the ship apart.

But hey thats my opinion, take it with a grain of salt, and more importantly

Thank you for your time.

Fixed a misspelling

 

[rece ktore leczo]

You are trying to overbalance the weapons.
With spreaded weapons players have much higher chance to hit the enemy but each hit does less damage, missiles have long reload rate but have high splash damage, machine guns - much faster reload but at the cost of projectile damage. I don't know the drawbacks of the beam gun, but i guess there are some.

Your idea would promote using some types of the weapons, with making other completely useless.

If i make 1 mil blocks beam cannon, i want it to do more damage than simply 1/millionth of ship's integrity. I know i can connect next 1 million effect blocks to make my gun do splash or piercing damage but why should i care if i can just make 1000 beam weapons which mastered with other blocks would shoot few thousand beams, taking down enemy ship almost immediately.

And it doesn't only go for beam weapon, but for other types also, why should i make slow firing AMCs, missiles, pulsars if i can just make much more efficient (in Your system) fast-firing or spreaded weapons?


I'm not a big fan of vessels with 1 big gun being able to shoot down smaller vehicles in no time, but hey, if their gun is made from 1 000 times more blocks than my whole ship, then why should i even have a chance surviving this attack? The key is for smaller ships not to get hit rather than surviving the attack.
It could be achieved with making firing arcs for different weapons or slowing down the turrets, so smaller ships wouldn't be targeted by massive turrets with pin-point accuracy.


Plus customizable values of each weapons would lead to pretty balanced stats (no worries for OP beams), as i think nobody wants to have a choice - pick OP gun or choose poorly



Oh and i actually like the tactics to hold death beam, which can cut through enemy ships just think how awesome that would be combined with mechanism, which would make non-attached parts of ships fly away and count as a debris.

And to counter in advance - instead of placing thousands (millions) of blocks making this type of beam i could just simply place thousands of missiles or other weapon blocks and also make such powerful gun.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Structural integrity = shield. If there is a number that has to be reduced to zero before a ship can take damage then it is a shield regardless of what spin you put on it or how you name it. We have shields, we don't need another one.

I'm all for armor getting a buff but I'm more interested in a system that takes smart building into account instead of a system that rewards you just for being big. If hull got a buff from other hull around it, that would be a good system. it wouldn't matter if you ship was 100 meters or 10000 if your hull is one meter thick you get the same amount of protection.

 

[Ixalite]

I run a server that has some tweaks to the combat mechanisms of the game, and your idea presents some very good points. It would, however, complicate the game significantly. When it comes to large ships, I have always preferred to think of them having many notional crew, preforming many important tasks to the overall running of the ship. To that end, I suggest Three things.

1: Hide the core indicator box. Change lock-on and AI targeting systems to simply attack the hull as they see it.

2: Permit multiple core blocks on the same ship. Only when all are destroyed should the pilot be killed. This would represent other crew stepping forward to take control of the damaged ship. Every additional core block should increase in mass exponentially so that fighters can only carry one or two and ships with dozens will be slowed to a crawl.

3: Differentiated targeting parameters. Players should be able to install scanning blocks on their ships that will indicate various systems. These would function just like the cockpit (camera) block does now. Rather than simple visual data however, they could indicate the locations of shield blocks, power blocks, engines, and weapons; a different scanner for each. In this way, players can strategically aim their weapons against enemies to target systems of their choosing. Pirates can be made to systematically attack only the engines and weapons of ships. A special sensor jammer system could serve as a countermeasure.

Scanner blocks:
Livesigns: displays all crew and cores on a ship.
Power: displays power generator blocks and power storage in a different color.
Weapons: displays weapon blocks in different colors.
Shields: Displays shields.
Engines: Displays engines.

 

[ToyotaSupra]

You've been playing 7 days to die haven't you? Regardless, it might be a good idea but in the end doesn't really suit Starmade in my opinion.

 

[Ghost_Story]

Hello everyone this is my first post here.
Like many others I love playing minecraft and a friend pointed this game out to me and I have been playing around in single player since.

I like the Idea of "Hull integrity."

The reason I like it is because so far in my readings on this site and what i have seen in the new weapons development build a single high damage star wars like death star is the ultimate weapon. But unlike star wars a smaller craft would not even stand a chance at beating it.

And no one else from what I have seen has a answer to make PvP combat more interesting then "he / she who has bigger numbers wins"

 

[rece ktore leczo]

Ghost_Story But should single, smaller craft be able to destroy death star size vessel? Or even stand a chance against its weapons? IMO no.

 

[Vyor]

Hello everyone this is my first post here.
Like many others I love playing minecraft and a friend pointed this game out to me and I have been playing around in single player since.

I like the Idea of "Hull integrity."

The reason I like it is because so far in my readings on this site and what i have seen in the new weapons development build a single high damage star wars like death star is the ultimate weapon. But unlike star wars a smaller craft would not even stand a chance at beating it.

And no one else from what I have seen has a answer to make PvP combat more interesting then "he / she who has bigger numbers wins"

Actually... that isn't how the new health system will work at all... the blacks themselves will be the HP. The more blocks destroyed, the less HP you have... this completely negates this suggestion...

Also, I chose the last poll option... why? Because you didn't pay attention to any of the QA that talked about this, nor did you actually read the suggestions fully, and think you know what you are talking about.

 

[LordChicken]

Actually... that isn't how the new health system will work at all... the blacks themselves will be the HP. The more blocks destroyed, the less HP you have... this completely negates this suggestion...

Also, I chose the last poll option... why? Because you didn't pay attention to any of the QA that talked about this, nor did you actually read the suggestions fully, and think you know what you are talking about.

Thank you for the honesty.

Ill be working on new ideas, and will probably stay away from hull talks from now on.

Thats my opinion, take it with a grain of salt, and thank you for your time.