Evaluating Systems Damage - Please Read and Respond

[Mobious]

So as Nite has been working on the Hull system and how damage will be dealt... this then leads into the question of how damage will be dealt out to the subsystems.

The general idea is that we want eventually 'hitboxes' on the model so that if you are hit in the front, maybe guns take damage, not engines... etc. These hitboxes could be defined in a bunch of ways but thats for another time.

I am looking to develop a method to determine what systems are affected by impact of a weapon on the surface of the ship.

First off, here is a ship we can use as an example...


All ships are square... so this can be a good approximation.
Lets also say the X's on the ship graphic are different subsystems, this could be weapons, engines, sensors, etc.

Now say we are hitting the ship with a weapon in the NE corner...


What should hitting the hull like this damage... just the system closest to it... a sphere (like the outline blue circle would illustrate), all systems? - Be based on the weapon / amount of damage it puts out....

What do we think... an initial though to get the ball rolling would be that weapons that hit the hull to the majority of damage to the local system and then this is passed to other nearby systems but falls off sharply.

Thoughts?

[NiteHawk]

Just adding more/ideas. the radius needs to be scaled with the image. It should be large enough that all parts of the ship can be hit though. I would honestly say the circle point be based on the actual weapon hit. So modules that are farther in will normally be prone to less damage then ones outside, unless the weapon is 'damage specific' (For example heat missiles always hit engines).

Just remember, the hitbox is the whole square right  now, and it won't be changed until I can find a fast solution to checking blank/bare pixels. Won't be for a bit. First I need to get a better/non FPS eating collision/target system. Then one day in the future can worry about changing it. So we are right now left with the square hitbox.

Your image is 100x100, so that would be the total hitbox. In general, lets say we'd want an 'inside' area of 30% wherever the gun has hit of the actual image. (Can be more/less then 30%, just an example, can be a ship 'settable' percentage value.).. The blue square is the actual image size.



This would be around 30% of the actual image. (Which is 60x60, but technically only half the circle actually is in the hitbox, so 30x30 ish) Three 'module' points are hit, one extremely close, so the damage can be distributed like this:



This is just a basic throw around, I'm sure it's going to be different, but it's a starting example to add. It might have to be a bit 'bigger (at least 50x50 hitting the target) in order to hit the whole image, otherwise that middle module in the dead center would never take damage. That's the issue I see atm. But I would be fine having 5-6 modules being damaged at once, mainly I would think 3-4 of them would normally be far away and take very minor damage.

88% damage to one module.
12% to the next closest.
8% to the last one.

This is the total damage depedent on the damage, it doesn't equal 100%. What I mean is, if I hit you with a weapon that hits for 100 damage, the module closest would hit for 88 damage, the next closest is 12 damage, and the 8% one is 8 damage. SUBSYSTEM hitpoints should be seen as different 'entities' rather then sharing/splitting the damage.

Edit: Fixed image values.

[Mars]

Well i really like the idea of damage to subsystems and this last post by moby.  The logic of any STRIKE is where damage is spread out,  in the high tech targeting world of sf,  sure a pin point strike to say, "Warf target his weapons" is not only logical but very correct.  speaking then from a pure physics point of view it would then also seem logical that some of the i.e plasma bolt that hits the weapons system would also spread out some and affect other areas to some smaller degree as well.

I think this is perfect in almost every way.   however i do have a question about the smaller ships

as of sure a smaller ship wont have as much hull or have the durability of say a carrier as stated, but would say a corvette be a ship to desire or wanted if it suddenly becomes very weak vs anything else?

also
i could see ships like carriers for sure,  but what would they carry?  

my idea would be a new ship but something robotic or seeking like a dart is and it be known as a fighter
such fighters would be much much smaller than a corvette and need very minimal graphics.   these fighters could then be targeted upon some craft as a swarm and have the ability to absorb more damage than a missile yet way way less than a corvette.    

thats just a idea.  


but as far as the damage and the way it works simpler is always better in the displays while the maths should be complicated as the way a strike really occurs.   I like the stig function and agree its correct with this application but mobys post on the damage is beyond brilliant and should be used.

since you will have some classes of types of captains or a engineer that say is very good,  subsystems should in those classes should heal faster after such a strike than ones that dont.  so as long as that is figured in to the repair process vs time then mobys idea is perfect.

and for the last comment about things being hard.   i am a expert coder in the old qbasic even having wrote a entire sf in it over 560 pages of code and altho old shit and all i know being im a virtual antique in the relm of coding i can easy see if one had the formulas for any statement it could easy be put in to make work and to do what your doing now in such a old language would be no easy feat.   this is why i voted for what would be easy to do,  ever try to debug a 560 page qbasic program? then you would understand.      that was just my angle on things as sometimes coding is already a knife edge and you can always cut what dont work.

anyway from what i see and understand the spread out type damage system in a targeted strike is perfect logic and should be used.  

Mars

[NiteHawk]

as of sure a smaller ship wont have as much hull or have the durability of say a carrier as stated, but would say a corvette be a ship to desire or wanted if it suddenly becomes very weak vs anything else?

Well we will need to balance speed/size/hull. Currently, large ships do not work well, even with large shields. Sure, they work with AI, but what if AI get beefed up too, aka smarter then going straight, and actually act like SMART AI. you'd probably stick in a corvette/frigate/destroyer because there FAST. I could see them being a bit faster even, if need be in the future.

The object of a small ships is to use its speed to avoid taking damage, and slowly pick at large objects until there done. I will be fixing the strafe keys so you can move left/right without turning the ship, and it will be alot more beneficial with smaller ships. There can even be 'fast engines' only accessible to small ships with grouping in the future/etc that give a good amount of ACCELERATION. Compared to the default that ALL ships have.

The object of a large ship is to use brute force over speed/agility. It will be ment to take a ton hits, because it cannot dodge much due to the sheer size and slowness, and defeat enemies with a large range of guns.

Those are the two basic ship styles for small vs large, and anything in between. If AI acted like human players, you'd never see a human in a large ship, ever. AI are purely dumb at the moment so its easy to kill with a large ship. but PVP, you hardly see the vet player use a large ship unless its just for kicks.

i could see ships like carriers for sure,  but what would they carry?  

my idea would be a new ship but something robotic or seeking like a dart is and it be known as a fighter
such fighters would be much much smaller than a corvette and need very minimal graphics.   these fighters could then be targeted upon some craft as a swarm and have the ability to absorb more damage than a missile yet way way less than a corvette.    

Carriers already have been planned for basic use, and they do carry fighters. Fighters are there own group, nothing to do with weapon defines/etc. A carrier will have a amount of 'slots' for fighters, can you can choose freely what you want to have. For example, I have 10 free slots. A fighter might take up 1 slot, a 'super fighter' might take up 3 slots, a bomber might take up 2 slots. etc. But this can be discussed another time.

since you will have some classes of types of captains or a engineer that say is very good,  subsystems should in those classes should heal faster after such a strike than ones that dont.  so as long as that is figured in to the repair process vs time then mobys idea is perfect.

Subsystem repair is going to be slowed down now since hulls are in effect. Right now without hulls, if I slow it down, it would make it rather painful. Currently, in 1.2 after you lost shields, you were basically dead. In 1.4, subsystem hull points were beefed up so you can take some vollies before blowing up. 2.0 will lower subsystem points and slow repair speed (Repair speed is determined by crew members, so more crew = faster. Will keep this most likely until we change it in the future) The only two things that might keep a good amount of hit points are your reactor (power) and engines. You have to remember if you have more hull, your subsystems won't take alot of damage, like it 'currently' is.

[Mars]

sounds very good indeed but in that i heard something that was even better.   


so its planned that AI become even smarter.. OMG YES> 

im not going to ask or expect a answer to how but yes OMG yes.