Directional Damage Discussion

[Kana]

From another post...

Phoenix-D said:
No. SF had directional armor and (IIRC) shields.

Once SE5 lets you add new slot types (it was apparently supposed to, and MM thought it was working, but it isn't), you could make a limited fully directional hit system.

The problem is the shield "generators" would also be the shield "points", so when your shields fail, there goes the generator too.

..speaking of, I'm still trying to get a Langston Field type system into SE5. Perfect protection until the shield gets too low, then some penetration. And if the shield gets overwhelmed, BANG..no ship.

EDIT: by the way, I should point out SJ and I didn't mention damagetypes when we were explaining the damage system. Layers are a bit more important when complex damage types are involved, as you can have a weapon that is partially blocked by the shields and passes the rest through to the hull, for example.

Now I have to ask the question why didnt all of the Star Fury stuff get included in to SEV?

I kinda like the idea of the shield generator being damaged/destroyed, if it runs out of shield points. Directional armor and shield are a natural need for any form of directional damage. As for adding and modding slots, I do hope that this gets added/fixed in the future.

After thinking about it a bit...I guess all of the directional stuff was left out, because it would be to hard to take in that much information, and do something with it in a RTS battle like enviorment. If it was turn-based, and you could take as much time as you want to mull options over, and see which ship has its *** hanging out so to speak, then you could do something to protect it.

Now of course you could just slow the current combat engine down to 1 sec pause start pause thing, but is that what people really want? How would a completely directional system of damage (a la Star Fury) effect a mass combat engagment, and SEV currently? Other than the AI not being able to exploit and use this system.

It just hard to come from SE3 which I enjoyed, to SE4, which I accepted and enjoyed because of added modding possiblities, to basically being let down on how SE5 works. Yes I came in to SE3 and SE4 late in the game after it was polished abit, and I hope the same will eventually happen to SE5.

[Phoenix-D]

The SF stuff didn't get included IIRC because it was felt that what worked for a 1-ship controlled RPG wouldn't work for 50 ship tactical combat.

That and the AI doesn't handle it very well.

[Captain Kwok]

To be fair, SE:V damage is the same as SE:IV, except with the little embellishment of directional damage for internals.

One thing no one seems to mention is the vast improvement in balance for battles of equal forces.

[Suicide Junkie]

If you include "directional armor", then it would actually be pretty easy to include "directional shields" too... basically directional armor with less hitpoints and some organic regen.

The downside being that all the shields would have to be drained before the ship explodes. If you keep the hitpoints low and the regen high, that won't be a problem.

----

The main differences between SF and SE5 damage that I can think of:
- SE5 directional damage is snapped to the four main compass directions. This is a vast simplification and probably makes a difference in combat calculation time, especially with big fleets.
- SE5 dosen't have custom slots. SF didn't have custom slots for a long time either, so we may see these appear later.
- SE5 dosen't pro-rate ability amounts; it is either functioning or not. This is a very major savings for combat calculations.
- SE5 has way more flexibility in damage types and effects. Especially now that negatives and >100% penetration and damagefactor are allowed.
- SE5 drops the firing arcs. Between big fleet control and AI and shipsets not being under mod control, arcs would just be bad news.

[Kana]

Captain Kwok said:
To be fair, SE:V damage is the same as SE:IV, except with the little embellishment of directional damage for internals.

One thing no one seems to mention is the vast improvement in balance for battles of equal forces.

I dont really see how this is an improvement of SEIV. The directional damage isnt really directional, if I have to rip the skin (outer slots) of the ship off before I can get to the guts (inner slots). Unless I'm still not grasping the concept.

What I would like to see, is something PES mentioned in the other thread, was that basically the damage layers go something like this...

100 points of damage hitting the left side.

Say you shield soaks up 25 points.
Then your armor absorbs 25 more points, that leaves 50.
There are two outer rows of components. 1st row, component 1 soaks up 20 points. 2nd row, component 2 soaks up 10 points. This leave 30 points of damage, there are 2 inner rows. 1st inner row components absorbs 10. 2nd inner row component soaks up 10. This leaves 10 points of damage. Now the heading out of the middle of the ship to the right side outer row 2 component takes 10 and the damage is now zero. If there had been more damage, then it could have possibly destroyed something else in the right side outer row 1, then armor on the right side, then anything left would just blow threw the ship and cause no damage.

That is just one example.

[Phoenix-D]

I still want to know the point of an "inner hull" section if it gets hit in the same order as everything else.

[Kana]

Well basically...say these are the slots facing a certain direction.

Row 1 1-2-3-4-5-6
Row 2 1-2-3-4-5-6
Row 3 1-2-3-4-5-6

If slots 1 and 2 are inner, then in my previous example, you would have to destroy outer slots 3, 4, 5, and 6, and at least one armor component, and minus whatever is absorbed by the shield before slots 1 and 2 even take damage on in given row. This would be applied for each seperate shot, so eventually you will have no outer slots left to hit on that side, which would just leave internal slots.

As it stands now like I said, you would basically have to remove all of the outer slots before you could hurt the ship. Its like the difference between sticking a pencil into an orange as apposed to peeling the skin off before you can get to orange on the inside.

[President_Elect_Shang]

i don't know the point of it either. All I do know is having inner and outer slots allowed me to pull off the drive field trick in a canon manner. Flawed yes but every so sweet and handy for me. Honestly I don't know if I could make the SFTC or Lite work without it. How odd is that?

[Suicide Junkie]

It is very very simple.
If you want inner hull slots to be damaged right along with outer hull slots when the damage sweeps past, then change all the inner slots to outer slots in your layout!

Inner slots really don't make much sense the way stock uses them (but then again a lot of stock stuff has never made much sense)

What Inner hull slots are actually useful for are abilities which you want:
A) To look like they are built in to the hull. (And don't take damage except maybe from special weapons)
B) To be optional. (User can pick and choose without cluttering the vehicle list)

[Captain Kwok]

Kana said:I dont really see how this is an improvement of SEIV. The directional damage isnt really directional, if I have to rip the skin (outer slots) of the ship off before I can get to the guts (inner slots). Unless I'm still not grasping the concept.

I never said the damage allocation was an improvement, I said it was the ~same as SE:IV and so "to be let down" by it when you were happy enough with SE:IV was not really fair. The big improvement was with the everybody fires at the same time (aka real-time) combat.