What is the "HP system" I've heard about?

[MeepMoop]

I've heard people talk about an "HP system" a few times during discussions of how shields/hulls/shipcores should work and I just want to inquire into what exactly this means.

I've never seen anything specific said about it so I'm assuming I may be just as in the dark as everyone else is, but I'm mainly just a little concerned that someone said that with an "HP system" ship cores could be removed and the ship could be de-activated once it loses a certain percentage of its blocks.

The concerning part of this is that it would effectively mean that you have no reason to add extra armour to any specific part of your ship, meaning an effective ship would just be one with a ton of hull evenly distributed, and there would be no reason to specifically target anything other than "the mushy stuff", and hypothetically you could even shoot a chunk of hull and as long as you destroy 75% of the ship(even if it was non vital), the ship would deactivate.

I have been inactive for a long time and have just came back to starmade, so I don't know if talks of an HP system were scrapped, so I'm just asking what the current plan is, that's all.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Only a select few know any details on the plan for the HP system. I've inquired myself and was only told they could not discuss it. From what little I do understand it will not simply be a "remove X number of blocks to kill ship" feature and how much armor your ship has should be an important factor.

Also 75%!? Even at 50% the ship in question would no longer resemble a ship. My favorite aspect of Starmade is post battle wreckage. The only thing I am worried about the HP system will be having to destroy to much of a ship to kill it therefore leaving no amazing wreckage, just an indistinguishable mass of blocks.

The HP system will be a delicate balance between "Why did my ship die? It's still functional" and "Why won't this ship die? There's hardly any ship left."

 

[CyberTao]

The HP system is the system that will remove core drilling and make armour more valuable, that's more or less all we know.
My guess is something like a HP pool, with different blocks adding different amounts to the pool (Systems adding more), and the ship only overheating when the HP pool hits a certain threshold. That way, it's an indicator of how much of your ship was destroyed, and how much is still functional.

Part of the HP update will include a armour buff based on the amount of hull on your ship (To help keep pace with weapon scaling on larger ships). It won't be dependent on % of mass that is armour (like effects), just pure block count from what I heard, so large ships with many layers of armour will have quite the defense protecting those valuable insides.

 

[Criss]

The system as I know it is this:

Systems and regular hull will count towards the health pool of a ship in some way. Armor will not. This means breaking armor will not take away from your ships health. This is nice, considering armor servers no function other than protection.

At certain stages of destruction, detrimental effects will happen to a ship because of system failure / instability.

At a certain percentage of destruction, you target will be ejected/killed and/or the ship will blow up.

Weapons might be restricted in the future in order to balance hull, ship health, shields and weapons.

 

[Snk]

Wouldn't core drilling be impossible to remove? The player still has to be on the ship. Couldn't you just shoot him?

 

[CyberTao]

Wouldn't core drilling be impossible to remove? The player still has to be on the ship. Couldn't you just shoot him?

Not if the block that he's in could not be destroyed by weapons fire, but only by the HP dropping to a certain point.

 

[Criss]

The system is supposed to prevent core killing. It will not be possible to break a core before breaking any other part of the ship.

 

[Winterhome]

I wouldn't be opposed to making it possible to kill the pilot, but having a number of shipside respawn tickets based on the mass of the ship to semi-simulate "crew"

The big deal is to just make it impossible to tell where the pilot is sitting via pilots' seats and such. Right now, there's just this huge diamond indicator right on top of the chair, so that's one of the big issues with it right now.

 

[jayman38]

For a while, I was hoping that HP from the ship blocks would create a secondary, non-recharging "shield" that could be restored by astrotech repair beams, before blocks would be destroyed, but one of the dev team (Calibiri, I think) corrected me, saying that they probably weren't going to do a secondary shield system like that and it would probably be all about destroying blocks, as mentioned above.

I imagine there will be a server-config for how much of the ship has to be destroyed before it overheats to destruction. I could also imagine a server setting, choosing between number of blocks and HP. (75% of blocks and 75% of total HP are two very different values on a ship.)

 

[Mered4]

From what I heard, it's going to be a fairly simple system:

Systems and dec blocks will not offer any bonuses to the ship beyond what they already do.
Armor blocks will be buffed substantially, or given a level of importance beyond just a decorative block (as it is now).
The important part: The ship's core will remain invulnerable to weapon fire until a certain percentage of the ship is destroyed. There will be no extra *effects* to ships, because losing massive amounts of blocks is bad enough.

 

[CyberTao]

I highly doubt Hull will be the highlight of the HP system, you'd run into problems where a ship could be entirely gutted of systems but still count as being alive cause of the patches of hull (Caused by things like Damage pulse and Punch).

Having a HP pool based on systems (hull and deco excluded) would probably be the best way to do HP I think, since it would be a much better indicator of how functional the ship is. It would be as 'simple' as the weapon system is, lots of values and things to take into account, but still easy enough to use.
The HP system is more than just removing core drilling though, it`s potentially a system that makes systems more important and hull more valuable.

We actually went and planned an entire defensive system around the Armor blocks a ship has, to provide a layer of damage mitigation that behaves seperately from the shields, while giving its own unique feel and function. ... The short explanation is that your armor blocks (which are getting their own HP and armor rating buffed this very optimization patch) will count towards an overall ship armor rating, this rating will apply damage mitigation when and only if incoming fire hits an armor block. This will make placement of armor far more important that it was previously, as well as providing a level of protection more on par in its scaling with how shields and weapons work.

This more or less gives us the details about the Armour buff, or at least hints towards what it will do.

 

[Lord Daro]

The armor buff may not be the highlight, but to be honest it's the thing i am looking forward to the most.

I like to build vast interiors with the intention of giving the illusion of a ship that might be actual usable. (with engine room, crew quarters, ect.)
But i allways feel a little bad for not using some more "usefull blocks", like shields.
Since interiors are usually made of mostly hull type blocks they wouldn'd be dead weight anymore.

 

[EndoSkull]

Well that's a bummer.

I was really hoping you would designate compartments within your ship and would be sized according to the stats of your ship -Areas such as weapon - life support - engine room etc - these sections wouldn't show up for you to target directly unless you scanned the ship.

And while I don't like space engineers - I do like the idea of being systems being able to be destroyed.

Would also be nice to be able to route NPC crew to attempt to repair damaged systems ala FTL during a battle....

One can dream I guess...

 

[Gristle]

...And while I don't like space engineers - I do like the idea of being systems being able to be destroyed.

Would also be nice to be able to route NPC crew to attempt to repair damaged systems ala FTL during a battle....

One can dream I guess...

Isn't the loss of a weapons computer destruction of that weapons system? Same as the loss of all the modules connected to that system. This also applies to shields and power. If you lose all your shield caps then you have no shields.

 

[Thalanor]

The HP system is the system that will remove core drilling and make armour more valuable, that's more or less all we know.
My guess is something like a HP pool, with different blocks adding different amounts to the pool (Systems adding more), and the ship only overheating when the HP pool hits a certain threshold. That way, it's an indicator of how much of your ship was destroyed, and how much is still functional.

Part of the HP update will include a armour buff based on the amount of hull on your ship (To help keep pace with weapon scaling on larger ships). It won't be dependent on % of mass that is armour (like effects), just pure block count from what I heard, so large ships with many layers of armour will have quite the defense protecting those valuable insides.

Where did you hear that? I suggested exactly that some time before. Would be neat if it were true and armored capitals become viable that way.

 

[CyberTao]

Where did you hear that? I suggested exactly that some time before. Would be neat if it were true and armored capitals become viable that way.

In a later post, I added a quote from Calbiri;

Spoiler: Quoted

We actually went and planned an entire defensive system around the Armor blocks a ship has, to provide a layer of damage mitigation that behaves seperately from the shields, while giving its own unique feel and function. ... The short explanation is that your armor blocks (which are getting their own HP and armor rating buffed this very optimization patch) will count towards an overall ship armor rating, this rating will apply damage mitigation when and only if incoming fire hits an armor block. This will make placement of armor far more important that it was previously, as well as providing a level of protection more on par in its scaling with how shields and weapons work.

If you go to the other post, it's quoted properly and you can go to the thread I got it from.

 

[EndoSkull]

Isn't the loss of a weapons computer destruction of that weapons system? Same as the loss of all the modules connected to that system. This also applies to shields and power. If you lose all your shield caps then you have no shields.

Yes and no... I mean right now unless you're building for RolePlaying most ships are a bunch of blocks thrown in every which way... I kind of like the idea of designated rooms that have to be a certain size based on your hull size.

So a small ship would not require rooms - but a ship yay big would require defined rooms that could be damaged (basically a group of blocks that take of space that are invisible but can be damaged that have a min max size based on the x/y/z of a ships hull)

Kind of picture ship layouts like this game:

http://www.starshipcorporation.com/media/screenshots

I read somewhere why starmade is sticking to block weapon/power configs for a reason - but seems like requiring specific rooms based on size of a ship would be fun at least for me.

 

[CyberTao]

I read somewhere why starmade is sticking to block weapon/power configs for a reason - but seems like requiring specific rooms based on size of a ship would be fun at least for me.

Probably, because in the end just using blocks gives people more options. There are servers that demand interiors as part of RP, and with some config tweaking, you could make it so large ships would be mostly rooms.

There's also the issue of how to calculate rooms anyway. I believe it was said that starmade could not do filling of a room, because lag and whatnot.

I dunno, I just find more options in our current block-based setup. RP is always a viable option afterall.

 

[Auriga_Nexus]

I think cores should still be vulnerable to astronaut weapons but not ship weapons, to encourage boarding parties and other acts of piracy, especially if we end up getting improvements to out-of-ship movement and combat like some people are discussing.

In other words, we need to ensure that even if the ship itself won't overheat until it's got chunks blown in it, the pilot - as in the one controlling the ship - should still be vulnerable to attacks from the inside. I can see a small fleet of ships pinning an enemy down and stripping their shields with stop and ion weapons then using piercing weapons to drill a hole through the hull, only this time instead of drilling straight for the core they are drilling to allow their comrades to be able to enter the ship and attack it from the inside. They can disable key blocks such as control computers and if they find the core block they can shoot it to kill/eject the pilot. This effectively disables the ship without causing too much damage... after all the whole point of a hijacking is to steal the enemies ship and use it for your own so you want to minimize damage on the ship that you plan to make yours.