hull mass, fighting, suggestions and ideas

[gernot66]

excerpt from a article on SSC of me

introduction,

...varying your speed often and clever maneuvres help also in Pioneer, i can make already THREE marks on my ship :lol: while none of them was a Eagle! the first and second was the "unofficial" Orion, it turned out to be a bad ship when it comes to a fight, funny how the design influences the strengths of a ship, i like it much. she didn't target's proper (the ship acts exactly like you remember flying saucers from old movies, she's steady correcting it's "horizon" and wobbles always a bit) so it's easy to hit the bottom or side of the ship. of course she's a real big target and easy to hit anyway, it only needs a lot of patience with a 1MW laser (a reason why i feel the bigger hull mass of the ship is a real handicap, it takes hours to scrap 50 tons of hull from a ship with a 1MW pulse gun. i always felt for pioneer and frontier that the hull mass represents only the mass of a complete empty ship or more precisely the mass the hull can loose until it breaks.

now my idea...

what about percentages, i mean a ship can perhaps have a "real" hull mass of 50 tons i.e. but the loss of hull is counted in percent relative to a value the ship designer chose, that would be a high value for a fighter and getting logarithmical lower with the amount of hull mass. the result would be perhaps that the 50ton ship get a hull break at 30tons as example. it should be left to the designer and no fixed stepping, because maybe i like to make the "Shift" to a real tank, heavy armed but low in acceleration.

more! a value for a possible upgrade of armor-plating, can you imagine? so it will left up to the player if he likes to arm the "Shift" to maximum or to use it unarmed as a carrier. this will not only influence the cargo or resisting of the ship, it changes acceleration values and behave completely. i'm aware that we have energetic shielding, but that won't help with the "i don't like to fight with one ship for hours". stronger effect of weapons or less hull mass! it's ok that a eagle hunts you down in three shots! but it's not ok that i have to fight for "hours" with one ship. imo chances for fighters should be better, you have a low firing capacity due to lack of space for a bigger weapon, but still it should be possible to crack up a "imp. explorer" with a 1MW gun in a acceptable timespan.

Some like heavy armed/shielded ships, others (like me) like little to medium sized fighters without shielding or plating.

[TheUncleBob]

I second this. Big ships currently need way too long to be destroyed. It would make sense to only count a fraction of the hull-mass as armor, with the ability to convert payload mass into further armor.

A compartmentalisation of armor would of course also be very welcome, with front, rear, left, right, bottom and top armor, with the ability to tweak these values individually. Probably a bit complex for the moment, but it would be much fun. Smaller ships could take advantage of that, only armoring their front and counting on their maneuverability to keep their weak parts away from enemy ships, while bulkier ships have to sacrifice more of their payload mass if they want to get into serious brawls to protect the ship all around.

[s20dan]

Yep our ship stats are basically dog shite. But really what is plausible? Is it plausible for a small gnat-like ship to take-down a beast like the Hammerhead? I think probably not. At least not without some big-ass missile weaponry. Think of the weak pulse/plasma gun like your machine-gun in WW2. Great against fellow small ships, but useless against anything with any real mass. (A hammerhead is approaching the size of a small frigate or destroyer, The eagle is like a small fighter-bomber like the Tornado or Blenheim). Of course we are making a game, but what is plausible should still count. And of course Im using ww2 as an example which is very bad for a space game ;) It is an example of Dog-fighting style though, which in itself is totally unbelievable for a space based combat engine, however its a game and dog-fighting is fun :)

So today, dogfighting only happens if: A: Both pilots are absolutely insane. B: Both pilots are out of ranged weaponry. C: Both pilots are willing to actually slow down to make this possible.

Do you know what the answer was to machinegun weaponry being useless against Armoured bombers in WW2? They stuck artillery cannons on the fighters :) That soon solved the problem of weak weaponry. A lot of fighters had much larger cannon than what a bomber would even carry. IIRc some just had explosive rounds though.

|what about percentages, i mean a ship can perhaps have a "real" hull mass of 50 tons i.e. but the loss of hull is |counted in percent relative to a value the ship designer chose, that would be a high value for a fighter and getting |logarithmical lower with the amount of hull mass. |the result would be perhaps that the 50ton ship get a hull break at 30tons as example. |it should be left to the designer and no fixed stepping, because maybe i like to make the "Shift" to a real tank, heavy |armed but low in acceleration.

A nice idea. I think this can be dealt with by taking the dice-rolling concepts and applying them to the combat side of things. So for example, if you fail a critical dice-roll, your hull might open into space and make things very difficult for you. This means every ship would explode at a different time, some might explode after one hit (You got very very lucky) and others take forever because your just totally unlucky :) (But when I say taking forever I mean it would just take the normal amount of time if you fail the checks)

|A compartmentalisation of armor would of course also be very welcome, with front, rear, left, right, bottom and top armor, with the ability to tweak these values individually. Probably a bit complex for the moment, but it would be much fun.

I like the idea, although its totally un-orioginal. But if it works... it works :) And like you say it would add to things... its something more to manage. Got damage on your port side? Then turn and keep the starboard quarter to the ship. I like managing things in these situations... Like power reserves, damage received ect ect.

One particular good example of damage and combat I can think of is Star Trek Bridge Commander:

You of course have your directional shields like all trek stuff, but also directional armour for some ships and components were targetable and had a physical position on the ship. So you might blast through your enemies Dorsal shields and armour to get to his power system. Destroying the power system was an instant kill. Another nice feature was if the enemy ships core was breached and you had no shields left, you would die too :) (Warp core explosion... radiation kills crew in an unshielded ship.)

I think I've gone on enough now :)

[Azimech]

Star Trek Bridge Commander is terrible compared to Star Trek Klingon Academy. If Pioneer wants to steer in the direction of micromanagement of damage and energy allocation, that title should be the prime example. Btw, with acting by Christopher Plummer, David Warner and voice acting by Micheal Dorn (as Commander Thok Mak). I still have the original Klingon Academy in box, all 7 CD-ROM's :-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCiKwZM622o

[Azimech]

Something else: Bombers in WW2 were hardly armoured because that reduced the useful bombload, range, speed or all of those; there was just more systems and more and heavier internal structure. The exception being specialized ground attack planes like the IL2 which used large amounts of armour plating. The reason bigger guns were introduced was to reduce the amount of ammo needed to bring down a plane and to reduce the amount of time fighters would be fired at by tail gunners because especially the germans were confronted with incredible vast amounts of bombers. The adoption of boom & zoom tactics increased diving speed over the course of the war and increased speed means a narrower window to fire. Even a B-17 or B-29 could be brought down with a single salvo if you killed the pilots though, otherwise using a well aimed combination of armor piercing, incendiary and solid rounds would be enough to set a fuel tank on fire and terminally damage a plane. Not every fighter pilot was an ace in aiming though.

I still feel that "hull integrity" is a huge simplification, in reality it does not exist anywhere in the world of nature OR man-made structures, except in soap bubbles.

[Brianetta]

and balloons...

[TheUncleBob]

I like the idea, although its totally un-orioginal.

It sure is! :lol:

It would give the player a bit of something to tweak, though. Currently we can exchange loadouts, but we have no tweaks that would allow us to change performance on a small level when needed (like for example X-wings (in)famous energy distribution).

But really what is plausible?

I think it's best to search for a solution that is fun and makes most sense combined with already existing mechanics. The whole thought of a dogfight in space is implausible, but it's a major premise of the gameplay, so it won't go away. The rest of the mechanics have to be tailored around it. As such, WW2 might not be such a bad inspiration. WW2 is where most inspiration for dogfights is coming from, after all, so what we take from there has a good chance to make sense with the base premise.

I don't mind having to pack missiles to take on the really big boys. But then we need missiles designed for the job. Even with missiles, combat against a large oponent is excruciatingly slow currently.

I don't even mind if some ships are simply not practical to fight with some ships. I don't want freelancer where I can destroy a battleship with a fighter if I just stack enough goodies into it. The current problem is that in general all combats tend to be too long.

[Luomu]

Looks like pure discussion and not something immediately actionable