I like the idea, I'd also like to see ship components return as well, at least on fighters. Makes things a bit more interesting when you see your wings fall off.
' Wrote:There were ships with destroyable components, or at least destroyable hull components. If memory serves it war removed due to lag issues and for balance purposes since 'community-made-ships' did not contain destroyable pieces. Freelancer engine screams rape when you introduce a rushed model.
To be honest, that's a quality control issue on the dev's part, then.
Not that I blame them, but there's nothing stopping them moving components to the exterior of the ships so they can be damaged.
It does, however, require a fair amount of balance work to get right, which is the main reason I think for why this wouldn't leave the hypothetical stage, at least for Discovery.
Hard to make and balance-
me going to make eagle with reduced mass-cutting its wings to pew you :rolleyes:
Or Titan with 4 codes and MR without wings. Vanilla ships preform better without some of their parts, so this is a bad idea.
The only way is Cannon magic and FLHook- when certain component loose certain amount of its health then some nerf. But it is hard to knock off components on smaller ships- it is easier to kill it actually then to strip its guns.
Missiles do good job in 4.86 however SNAC and some other components have really huge hit-points.
(10-09-2013, 10:51 AM)Knjaz Wrote: Official faction players that are often accused of elitism, never deploy them and have those weird, immersion killing "fair fight/dueling" suicidal hobbies. (yes, i've seen enough of those lolduels, where house military with overwhelming force on the field willingly loses a pilot in a duel. ffs.)
Well, I think leaving the current way of 'no more ship components being blasted off' is fine in terms of snubcraft, it makes things easier to balance which is welcome due to its sheer complexity.
The components in my mind are hidden when the damage is being calculated, just another set of numbers attached to your ship, instead of a set of numbers you can see in-game to shoot at.
' Wrote:Erm, we already have that. Just swarm the ship of your choice with novas or cruiser/battleship missiles, and then let him dock.
[facepalm] No, no not like that at all.
Yes, we can physically damage sub-systems and weapons as such, but what we cannot do at the moment is reflect the damage the ship has taken versus the efficiency of the sub-system. Meaning that the more damage you take, or a more well placed or lucky shot could damage a critical system of the ship, greatly reducing its combat efficiency.
Lemme try an example.
How do we stop a ship at the moment? We disrupt it right? Its a temporary stall to the engine, but overall nothing really lasting. With the system that I am attempting to explain (though poorly) you can actually damage the engine of an enemy vessel to the point where its efficiency drops, to the point the enemy vessel is so damaged by it, its nearly impossible to escape a combat situation. Because in some cases, you can just spam countermeasures and escape with a little luck, despite taking extreme hull damage.
I'll try to explain what we're talking about to the younger players who haven't played Wing Commander. Note: This will be a VERY long post. Also, I've only played Wing Commander: Privateer, but I would assume that the other Wing Commanders use a similar damage system.
While you were flying a ship, there were three screens you could access to view your ship's status. One was called "Damage Report." It listed several components such as "Engines," "Maneuvering Jets," "Afterburners," "Targeting," "Shields," "Thrusters," and maybe some other components that I can't remember. The second one showed your ship's weapons, including all guns and projectile launchers. The third one showed your shield strength, hull strength, and shield power level.
In the "Damage Report" screen, if each component was green, then they were fine. If yellow, they were damaged. If red, they were almost gone. If gray, they were destroyed. Similarly, components can be damaged and destroyed in Freelancer, but they have no real effect on you apart from giving you a massive repair bill. In Wing Commander, if components were damaged, they could actually severely cripple your ship. For example, if your engines were damaged, your ship would produce less power, making it harder to maintain your shields and causing guns and afterbuners to use up a larger portion of your ship's energy. Take note that unlike in Freelancer, your shields and afterburner thrusters are linked to your power core in Wing Commander. In Freelancer, your afterburner thrusters, guns, and shields had their own independent power sources. Also, the only way to damage the power core in Freelancer is to use EMP missiles rather than shooting at the engines, but unlike in Wing Commander, the maximum power output of the ship can never be reduced in Freelancer.
Now for maneuvering jets. These things were especially important. If they got damaged, you would start turning at a slower rate, making it very hard to fight off enemies. What's interesting too is that if you were more heavily damaged on one side of your ship (the armor/shield zones were split into the front, rear, port, and starboard sides), you would turn slower on that side, but the maneuvering jets on the undamaged sides would be fine. Freelancer lacks this, but if it were implemented, it would make battles MUCH more interesting.
Now let's look at afterburners. They function identically to Freelancer's thrusters, but when they get damaged, their maximum thrust speed reduces. The more damage they sustained, the more the afterburner speed decreased. Again, Freelancer lacks this. Either your thruster works at full power, even if it has only 1 health left, or it's destroyed.
In Freelancer, your scanners can't be damaged, meaning your radar will always detect enemies. In Wing Commander, this isn't the case. Scanners can be damaged and if they were damaged, your targeting screen would start flickering with static. The more damage they sustained, the more your screen flickered.
Then there's shields. In Freelancer, your shields always stay at their maximum efficiency regardless of how much damage the shields generators sustained. In Wing Commander, there were different levels of shield generators. Each higher level required more power from the engines to maintain and recharge the shields. Higher level shields could also be set at a lower level if necessary to make more power available for the weapons, but this made the shields easier to deplete. This is kind of like energy redirection in StarLancer. Anyway, if the shield generators were damaged enough, the shields levels would actually decrease and it would be impossible to raise the level back to the highest value unless the shield generators were repaired.
Last component that I can remember: Thusters (not afterburner thrusters). Basically, if these were damaged, your maximum impulse speed would decrease. In Freelancer, your impulse thrusters, which can't be damaged, always go at 80 m/s.
Now for Wing Commander's second screen: The weapons status. Like in Freelancer, your guns in Wing Commander take damage. However, unlike in Freelancer, if your guns are damaged in Wing Commander, they actually start firing at a lower rate. I can't recall how projectile launchers were affected by damage.
Last screen: The shield and hull screen. Like I said before, rather than having one meter for the shield and hull strength in Freelancer, you have four in Wing Commander. Each one measures the strength on the four sides of the ship (front, rear, port, and starboard). There was also a little indicator that told you what level your shield was. As I mentioned before, you could change your shield level to redirect energy to and from your weapons. Also, depending on where you were shot, different sub-systems would be damaged. If you were shot in the front or the sides, usually the scanner, maneuvering jets, and weapons would be damaged as well. If you were shot in the rear, you would be screwed since this was where the engines, shields, afterburners, and thrusters were, along with the rear maneuvering jets. The maximum strengths of the shields and hull were also different on each side. The front was usually the strongest, the sides were in the middle, and the rear was the weakest. Therefore, in Wing Commander, it was generally a good idea to shoot the rear of an enemy ship.
Extra thing: You could actually buy a Repair Droid to repair your ship's internal systems. It usually took a couple minutes for the Droid to finish repairs, and I'm not sure if this is the case, but I feel like it only started working after you were out of combat because when I played Wing Commander, my Droid never finished repairing anything until a few minutes after I was out of combat. However, the Droid couldn't repair external systems like scanners and weapons.
Basically, the original post was talking about possibly implementing some of the points mentioned above. I don't know how many of these points can be implemented, but if they can be implemented, they would definitely make combat much more interesting and fun.
Carlos Rivera: Corsair Brotherhood Pirate - Retired, shifted to Tripoli Shipyard's Research and Development engineering teams Anthony Cameron: Guild Core Bounty Hunter - Killed in Action, committed suicide after being trapped in Omicron Minor following its destruction Juan Ruiz: Outcast Ghost of Razgriz Pirate - Killed in Action, killed by the Sirius Coalition Revolutionary Army during Bretonian piracy raid Michael Winchester: Liberty Security Force Agent - Missing in Action, likely killed during Rheinland espionage mission or trapped in Rheinland Space Eric McCormick: Order Pilot - Retired, shifted to planetside training of new recruits
Aye, I think it would be both interesting, and at times frustrating to have such a system in place myself as combat would be greatly diversified. It could lead to new tactics if damage to such systems could be aimed at.
Imagine, bombers or fighters aiming for gunboat engines.
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