Upgrade 1.3 Requests

[Nortius_Maximus]

My ships tend to have much better shields than armor. Twice now, I was cruising and destroying most ships without issues, only to carelessly run into an opponent that took several turns to work his way through my shields before in one volley punching through the last of my shields and all of my armor...

So, maybe an audible alert when 50% of the total of Shields + Armor is penetrated as opposed to the current system.

[Dubious]

Originally Posted by Nortius_Maximus

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So, maybe an audible alert when 50% of the total of Shields + Armor is penetrated as opposed to the current system.

I like this idea. But if feasible, rather than "defense percentage remaining" express it in terms of "turns of max damage remaining" where "max damage" is based upon the maximum total damage in a turn/round received so far. Because there is a random factor to each strike, but "Fire All" produces the strongest blow initially, while the "cooldown" varies on the various weapon slots and it can be a while before "all" will be firing in a full volley again. Then the random factor might make the second combined volley even more powerful than the first.

Logically it would be trivial for the computer on a warship to track the damage, interval, and energy signature (weapon id) of each strike on the shields, and update the "turn" max damage figure to a more precise value the longer the fight lasts. After the second full volley it would know how many weapons in the broadside total, and the cooldown intervals of each.

"50% of total defense" against two weapons might be survivable, but not against the third (longer cooldown) weapon by itself, and vice versa. "10% of total defense" might be enough against a more rapidly cycling weapon for enough rounds before the next weapon cycles online, but not expected to be survivable against that more damaging one if it comes online first.

This opens the possibility of adding "computing power" as an upgradable ship statistic or device affecting the accuracy of such damage reports. On second thought, this could be linked to/reflected in the "targeting" value in "Sensors".

If not feasible, but you do go with the idea of a "defense remaining" audible alert, please make the threshold configurable in the INI file. People have varying levels of tolerance to risk, and as you get progressively better defense, the threshold percentages may drop.

-Dubious-