Which components get hit first?
 

The prevailing wisdom is that larger internal components and smaller armor components get damaged first during combat. I finally got an answer from Malfador about this. It's not precisly true. There is no intentional bias towards larger internals or smaller armor, but the way the damage is assigned can cause it to tend towards this, especially for the first few hits during a particular combat round.

What happens is that the total structure (not size) of the components is totaled up and the damage is applied randomly to some component in that total. So you can see that a component with a larger structure is going to have a larger percentage of the total and will tend to get hit more frequently. Of course the component will not be destroyed until the total damage applied is equal to it's structure, and unapplied damage goes back into an unassigned damage pool until the next shot lands.

Armor is done the same way, except that only the total structure of the armor components is addded together. All armor is totalled together, they are not damaged separatly.

I believe the reason it appears that smaller armor is destroyed first is that the same shot can destroy more of the lower structure armor components than it can larger armor components. This would cause a ship with both lighter and heavier armor to lose it's lighter armor faster even if the hits were applied randomly to either.

This also explains why the zero structure components aren't destroyed until everything else on the ship is gone. They don't show up in the matrix to be selected randomly when applying damage. In effect they are never destroyed, they just go when the hull finally does, which happens when a hit takes the total structure to zero.

Geoschmo

Re: Which components get hit first?
 

Thanks for the info! Maybe someone will put it into the newbie faq. I'll copy & paste this (with credit to you) into the post if that is ok.

Re: Which components get hit first?
 

Just wanted to take a second and thank Geo for his continued diligence in uncovering the answers to our SE technical issues....

Re: Which components get hit first?
 

I thought someone just noticed though that if you mod a component to have zero structure, that a ship or base with it will never be destroyed.

No?

PvK

Re: Which components get hit first?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Ah yes. I stand corrected. The ship with a zero structure comp will not be destroyed. No doubt for the same reason I stated below. I just had the result wrong.

Geoschmo

Re: Which components get hit first?
 

No a ship with a total of 0 hit points causes a division by zero error.

Re: Which components get hit first?
 

geoschmo said: "zero structure comp"
Andrés Lescano , "No a ship with a with total of 0 hit points"
Geo is refereeing to a component
Andrés seems to be refereeing to a Hull.
Is the differance between component and hull in this issue significant?
The reason I ask is I created a component with 0 "something" and it could not be destroyed.
Here is the components file,
http://www.windingstream.com/se/gryphin_components.htm
It was the 5kT supply bay.
(No popups or advertising.)
Hope this helps.

Re: Which components get hit first?
 

A hull has as many hitpoints as the intact components on it.

Re: Which components get hit first?
 

IIRC it was Erax who found that division by zero error with a troop with a single component that had 0kt structure, I just figure it must work the same way for ships.

My conjeture is that the 0kt-structure components will be the Last to be destroyed, but the ship will explode as soon as it's total structure drops to zero.
This of course would need to playtested to verify.

Re: Which components get hit first?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No, I play tested it before my Last post to be sure. I had a ship with normal components, and modded one of them to be zero structure. I got no errors in combat, but the zero structure comp was never hit and the ship was never destroyed. All the other comps were though.

Geoschmo

Re: Which components get hit first?
 

The description of the symptoms by geoschmo is exactly what I was getting when I used the 5kT Supply Bay.
Did I also read that it would be fixed in the next patch?

Re: Which components get hit first?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The Pirates & Nomads mod had working supply bays of 5 and 10 kT, Last I looked.

Re: Which components get hit first?
 

here is the component that caused the symptoms
Name := Supply Storage I 10kT
Description := Area on a starship to store supplies.
Pic Num := 117
Tonnage Space Taken := 10
Tonnage Structure := 0
Cost Minerals := 100

Did not matter what size ship it was in. Once all other components were gone, the ship could not be Hit. I did not try using the Talisman.

The full file:
http://www.windingstream.com/se/gryphin_components.htm

[ December 30, 2002, 23:42: Message edited by: Gryphin ]

Re: Which components get hit first?
 

P&N also has buckytube gel armor, which has 0kt tonnage structure, but er, xkt damage structure (x>0). I don't think he had any problems.

Are we talking about damage structure, or tonnage structure?

Re: Which components get hit first?
 

You are confusing the terms Dumbluck. There is Tonnage Space taken and Tonnage Structure. The issue we are talking about is with components that have a tonnage structure of zero. The PN Bucky armor has a structure greater than zero, it has a tonnage spcace taken that is zero though. As far as I know there is no problem with that as far as the game is concerned.

Geoschmo

[ December 31, 2002, 15:36: Message edited by: geoschmo ]