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Ideas for collision damage


Shynras

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Since it was a discussed feature on youtube (April devdiary), I thought we could give some ideas for it:

 

Last official statements about the subject:

 

-We are currently considering different possibilities for collision physics. The defining factor in the choice will be how much stressful server-side it will be in a large scale situation with hundreds of constructs. For now, it's just a bumping effect.

-We are keeping in mind the "ramming-centric griefing" as an issue we want to avoid. We can understand that it could be something fun in a RTS game like planetary Annihilation. However, in a MMORPG, such gameplay could be really problematic because it's unbalanced. If we implement at some point (and that's a big "if") the collision damage, we will consider an idea that should prevent the abuse of such issue.

 

The objective of this topic is to discuss ways to have collisions without stressing too much the servers. A few basic ideas:

 

1)Collision damage requires works only after a certain speed threshold (like, only collision happening with a relative speed higher than X (fixed amount) generates damage). This would reduce by a lot the amount of collisions happening (lag, and so on), since X needs to be high enough so that only construct that are built by design for that purpose (high speed, so mostly small ships) can cause damage. This also prevents you from causing damage to the ground or other nearby construct when you land or when you move close to other entities (since most of those activities happens at slow speed)

 

2)A special voxel is able to cause damage, while other don't. This voxel has some drawback (like high weight or cost) so that it's not on every construct and doesn't start a demolition derby. Those specialized ships will just have some of those voxels on the front. When this block deal damage takes back a portion of it, so that you can crash a couple of time on your opponent before it becomes uneffective. 

 

3)A cooldown on each construct that prevent multiple collisions in a small amount of time to happen (when you crash into a ship, usually you hit that many times). But this requires collision to have a bigger effect, otherwise would get unconsistent. This would reduce the amount of collisions, so the load of the servers (not sure if it's enough), would work on any ship but it is kinda wierd: players would need an unimmersive cooldown counter, and what happens when your ship is on cooldown and your opponent's is not?

 

PS. sorry for the white quote, but it happens everytime i copypaste something

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Since it was a discussed feature on youtube (April devdiary), I thought we could give some ideas for it:

 

Last official statements about the subject:

 

-We are currently considering different possibilities for collision physics. The defining factor in the choice will be how much stressful server-side it will be in a large scale situation with hundreds of constructs. For now, it's just a bumping effect.

-We are keeping in mind the "ramming-centric griefing" as an issue we want to avoid. We can understand that it could be something fun in a RTS game like planetary Annihilation. However, in a MMORPG, such gameplay could be really problematic because it's unbalanced. If we implement at some point (and that's a big "if") the collision damage, we will consider an idea that should prevent the abuse of such issue.

 

The objective of this topic is to discuss ways to have collisions without stressing too much the servers. A few basic ideas:

 

1)Collision damage requires works only after a certain speed threshold (like, only collision happening with a relative speed higher than X (fixed amount) generates damage). This would reduce by a lot the amount of collisions happening (lag, and so on), since X needs to be high enough so that only construct that are built by design for that purpose (high speed, so mostly small ships) can cause damage. This also prevents you from causing damage to the ground or other nearby construct when you land or when you move close to other entities (since most of those activities happens at slow speed)

 

2)A special voxel is able to cause damage, while other don't. This voxel has some drawback (like high weight or cost) so that it's not on every construct and doesn't start a demolition derby. Those specialized ships will just have some of those voxels on the front. When this block deal damage takes back a portion of it, so that you can crash a couple of time on your opponent before it becomes uneffective. 

 

3)A cooldown on each construct that prevent multiple collisions in a small amount of time to happen (when you crash into a ship, usually you hit that many times). But this requires collision to have a bigger effect, otherwise would get unconsistent. This would reduce the amount of collisions, so the load of the servers (not sure if it's enough), would work on any ship but it is kinda wierd: players would need an unimmersive cooldown counter, and what happens when your ship is on cooldown and your opponent's is not?

 

PS. sorry for the white quote, but it happens everytime i copypaste something

The 2) is the reason they don't, absolutely want collisons to take int oaccount voxels in a per-case scenario.

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My thought was:

Random element damage after a large enough collision

Smaller ship always loses

I make a baloon ship, that's bigger than your battleship but has 1/100 of its mass. I win, cause baloon ship is bigger.

 

 

How about using things that make sense. Like Tensile Strength and Structural integrity. NQ already uses Pascals for the purposes of Aerodynamics, they can adapt the formula for Tensile Strength, which is Pascals over a Volume (G / m3 ), with the colliding objects taking into account their mass, volume and FORCE behind their speed.

 

Two ships collide? If they are of the same mass, with the same Tensile Strength (how many Gs they can take on a decceleration) and their Structural Integrity, they suffer capacitor overloads. IF they over-shot their Tensile Strength (By colliding with each other HEAD ON at maximum acceleration or a planet) their capacitors explode, POSSIBLY if the ship is built by a 4 yo, epxloding the fuel tanks as well, there fore making the ship go ka-boom.

 

Starfighters have their fuel tanks near their capacitors, and I wil lbet you they cna't take the same accelerations a Battleship can. 

 

 

 

P.S. : I will wait for all the peasants who will :

 

1) confuse maximum velocity with speed.

 

2) confuse acceleration with velocity

 

3) who will confuse COMBINED VELOCITIES on a COLLISION with inertia and what it means for this model

 

4) who will not understand that this model also means your ship can only reach enough acceleration depending on your quality of materials on it

 

4) who will scratch their heads "why is G  forces a thing in acceleration"

 

and of course

 

4) the people who will say "But what if I build a Starfighter able to have 5000 G / m3 Tensile Strength and a Mass of 100000 Tons having a lot of "HP" when colliding and winning?"

 

Well, in that case, you starfighter is literally made out of super-kerr materials and you deserve to be a living bullet that will never be able to steer once you reach a certain velocity.

 

 

 

P.S. #2 : This mean Tensile Strength is Collsion Damage Reduction or Acceleration Limit and Structural Integrity is Collsion Hit-Points and/or Overdrive Hit-Points

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I don't care about collision damage, but they said they're "considering different possibilities", this means that there's a chance they could implement that, so a thread to discuss it makes sense.

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I don't care about collision damage, but they said they're "considering different possibilities", this means that there's a chance they could implement that, so a thread to discuss it makes sense.

I did suggest my example.

 

It takes what NQ ALREADY HAS, and uses it in a neat wat. They have Pascals, they got Inertia, they got Momentum, they got G-Forces.

All they need is to put them in ap roepr formula, strain test them, tweak them for the servers and we got a collision model.

 

It's more orl ess "if you try to slow down or go really fast than what your ship can take, you will die".

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I'd say lets just have limited collision damage, but only for large constructs likes space stations and land. Personally, I'd only want it for immersion.

I wouldn't want to flying full speed into an asteroid or planet surface and just gently bump away with no damage.

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I'd say lets just have limited collision damage, but only for large constructs likes space stations and land. Personally, I'd only want it for immersion.

 

I wouldn't want to flying full speed into an asteroid or planet surface and just gently bump away with no damage.

Thing is, in apper this sounds logical, but the game engine doesn't disambiguate between constuct and planet, not at least as far as I can tell and what JC Baillie has said (lead creative director and CEO of NQ) .

 

It would be easy to say "Yeah, make the damage only for space staions" but it just can't be coded in that way. It has to be a construct to constrct collision.

 

I threw in my two cents for the mechanism to work, based on what NQ has already as of code and emulated physics in the game.Many others did as well pitched in ideas. If NQ decides to follow one of them after testing, cool. If not, well, tough luck I guess.

 

 

But at the very least, we DO need players taking fall damage when hit by a vehicle.

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What would be a countermeasure to a cheap ship which is basically an engine with lots of frontal armor?

My suggestion more or less. Structural integrity (Voxel total HP of a ship ) being "collsion HP" and Tensile STrength being "collision resistance".

 

IF a ship is blown to shit but still flies, it means it has very few voxels on it. Ramming that ship, would explode its fuel tanks and capacitors if the "Collision HP" reached zero.

 

A lightweifght "torpedo" ship, would shatter on impact o na staitonary ship, or even worse, a ship that has a lot more mass than it.

 

NQ can't afford voxel to voxel calculations or entity-to-entity collisions computation. That's the real issue, not collison mechanics per-se.

 

 

And yes, my system also means that aship can only accelerate as high as its Tensile strength allows for. A brittle ship won't be able to push beyond certain Gs. And sudden stops (collisions) are more or less BRUTAL negative accelerations - what the kids call decceleration these days.

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My suggestion more or less. Structural integrity (Voxel total HP of a ship ) being "collsion HP" and Tensile STrength being "collision resistance".

 

IF a ship is blown to shit but still flies, it means it has very little voxels on it. Ramming thats hip, would epxliode its fuel tanks and cpacitors if the "Collision HP" reached zero.

 

A lightweifght "torpedo" ship, would shatter on impact o na staitonary ship, or even worse, a ship that' has a lot more mass than it.

 

NQ can't afford voxel to voxel calculations or entity-to-entity collisions computation. That's the real issue, not collison mechanics per-se.

 

 

And yes, my system also means that aship can only accelerate as high as its Tensile strength allows for. A brittle ship won't be able to push beyond certain Gs. And sudden stops (collisions) are more or less BRUTAL negative accelerations - what the kids call decceleration these days.

True, that would be the technical side of the argument. And yes such a system would help larger ships somewhat because smaller ones wouldn't do much damage. But there's no countermeasure gameplay wise. Don't get me wrong, I would love to be able to ram ships. But it shouldn't really boil down to some geniuses building cheap ships with enough mass/strenght whatever you'll call it to kill other ships or take them out of battle with just one quick ram. That balance has to be maintained otherwise cvc won't be that much interesting

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True, that would be the technical side of the argument. And yes such a system would help larger ships somewhat because smaller ones wouldn't do much damage. But there's no countermeasure gameplay wise. Don't get me wrong, I would love to be able to ram ships. But it shouldn't really boil down to some geniuses building cheap ships with enough mass/strenght whatever you'll call it to kill other ships or take them out of battle with just one quick ram. That balance has to be maintained otherwise cvc won't be that much interesting

That's the point though.

 

If you build a ship with low HP for collisions ,it means the mateirila is lightweight and fragiel (can't take a lot of MPa, G / m3).

 

So a trollpedo ship, would shatter under the weight of its own propulsion

the only real way to cause a torpedo ship to function, would be to have a capital ship, let's call it a Drake, collide with another Drake.

 

Why Drake? I hate Drakes, it's that simple. (I know Cybrex is gonna probably walk me to the plank, but anyway).

 

The two ships to explode would need to collide HEAD ON., aka, having combined velocities that exceed what both can tolerate.

 

If one Drake was damaged a lot, having parts of it missing, it would have less HP that the other Drake voxel-wise.

BUT angular momentum changes G / m3 application (as we all know). Angular velocites mitigate collisions, therefore ,the collding Drakes, would be mitigating collisions even more by glancing off of each other via virtue of impulse.

 

 

 

It means that for at trollpedo ship to work, a faction ,would build a captial ship, with the "Troll-fit" we say from EVE, making it a racer.

 

But here's the point. F = m * a. The more heavy a ship and the more its velocity, the more its mass, so it's harder to steer.

 

And if a ship is staionary, it has FULL tesnilte strength to resist things collding ot it AND its inertia is stable enouigh to make it an immovable ojbect in comarison to the moving ships.

 

On a tecnhical side, this can work for the game's Actor based programming.  A ship of certain voxel HP otal and mass, and volume can only have a certian number of collisons happening to it (which is tied to an algorithm of coruse). And the syetem can be apleid on plaents. Planets = immovable thus infinite mass (on the side of the algorithm) therefore, any ship colliding with palent at Gs exceeding their TEsnile strength, thyey go boom on their fuel tanks and capacitors.

 

And let's be honest, if a leader of a faction built a trollpedo ship to sink ONE enemy battleship, that idiot just made a lot of miners happy, tanked their faction's economy by having the value of certain minerals rise, created public unrest cause "The boss is nutter", therefore making DAC easily availabe to newbros AND at the same time, that Leader lost their position. 

 

Nobody likes paying taxes for the leaders to do stupid shit with that money. Not IRL and certainlty not in a game where people can grief the leader till they quit the game.

 

As they said in Battlestar Galactica : "All of this happened before and all of this will happen again" . We all know what happens to EVE CEOs who buiuld "Troll fleets" that cost a hundred billions of ISK to try a troll fit :P

 

 

 

 

 

 

P.S. : NQ has things like Inertia, Momentum and Angular Velocites figured out, as showcased on their videos. All they need is having ships have Structural Integrity values depednign on their volume, which sohuld be frankly, Tensile STrength over a volume. So a ship made of gold, if it's spacious, it owuld have less G / m3 comapred to ashape made of the same exact materials but more compact.

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At least Twerk is using math, in terms of collisions that's the best solution I've seen yet without causing too much to handle on the server side. But i do want to see some poorly built ship that can't handle Gs bump into the ground at 3m/s and explode.

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At least Twerk is using math, in terms of collisions that's the best solution I've seen yet without causing too much to handle on the server side. But i do want to see some poorly built ship that can't handle Gs bump into the ground at 3m/s and explode.

Actor model is all about math. And if you make a ship out of plastic, even more tthan 1 G would shatter it to 1000000 pieces xD

 

 

 

P.S. : I ran the numbers for fun's sake, a ship to explode in this model, under a velocity of 3 m/s would have to be made of carton.

 

No really, the moment that thruster fires ,that thing would fold IRL xD

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thing is, in apper this sounds logical, but the game engine doesn't disambiguate between constuct and planet, not at least as far as I can tell and what JC Baillie has said (lead creative director and CEO of NQ) .

 

It would be easy to say "Yeah, make the damage only for space staions" but it just can't be coded in that way. It has to be a construct to constrct collision.

 

I threw in my two cents for the mechanism to work, based on what NQ has already as of code and emulated physics in the game.Many others did as well pitched in ideas. If NQ decides to follow one of them after testing, cool. If not, well, tough luck I guess.

 

 

But at the very least, we DO need players taking fall damage when hit by a vehicle.

But it can disambiguate between the size of the constructs.

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But it can disambiguate between the size of the constructs.

That's irrelevant, size and mass are not mutual. Mass is the real mechanism in question, in specifgc, mass differentials.

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In real life space warfare, almost all weapons tend to be nuclear, kinetic weapons of 2 varieties.

-Guns. They include the machine guns of the Salyute stations and the Gyro-Jets. 

-Missile-type weapons, such as Rod from Gods and ASAT weapons. 

 

Also in real life space warfare, ramming isn't that big of an issue because

-Getting things to space takes a lot of energy by the Rocket Equation.

-Perhaps because of the first issue, most warfare isn't in space(yet).

 

The ramming may have some interesting tactical applications such as creating debree clouds to block off spacecraft or large voxel guns.

 

The simplest way can be to have a max survivable velocity and make the voxels disappear above that. This tends to be abuseable

 

I suspect taking actual physics into account will have too much strain on the servers since they have to much more calculations. So, it come down to server-strain vs. abuseablity.

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In real life space warfare, almost all weapons tend to be nuclear, kinetic weapons of 2 varieties.

-Guns. They include the machine guns of the Salyute stations and the Gyro-Jets. 

-Missile-type weapons, such as Rod from Gods and ASAT weapons. 

 

Also in real life space warfare, ramming isn't that big of an issue because

-Getting things to space takes a lot of energy by the Rocket Equation.

-Perhaps because of the first issue, most warfare isn't in space(yet).

 

The ramming may have some interesting tactical applications such as creating debree clouds to block off spacecraft or large voxel guns.

 

The simplest way can be to have a max survivable velocity and make the voxels disappear above that. This tends to be abuseable

 

I suspect taking actual physics into account will have too much strain on the servers since they have to much more calculations. So, it come down to server-strain vs. abuseablity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty

 

There is no Space Warfare yet.

Thankfully.

 

It would not be fun to be sniped out from space with a laser.

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Well perhaps there are space travelling nuclear missiles but certainly not space vs space warfare.

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I love the fact people think nukes in vacuum work the same way as in atmosphere. A hydrogen bomb would have only a 500 meters radius of actual blast. Anything going faster than 500 mters a second (like almost anything would in combat - and those that won't are probably caying enough shields to rofl at the minute damage the nuke can do, as plasma is easily trapped by EM screens AKA shields.

The combat may be lock-on, but the algorithm takes into account "muzzle velocity" when trying to hit a target, if your weapon's projectile moves at less speed than the target's tranversal is, you will miss (depending on your weapon's tracking speed and your bonuses to it). Missiles may be "powerful" but guesswhat, they run out of fuel eventually. My small ship can outrun your silly nukes, or even better, I ciould have anti-missile defenses on my ship, thus blowing up your missiles in flight - something that CAN happen in EVE, but nobody does so, cause the game is broken when it comes to missiles..

Also hitting something from orbit, has the same levels of precognition to pull off in DU's rendering methods and combat, that you have more chances actually winning the lottery over hitting someone on the ground from orbit by guessing where they may be. Orbital strikes would only be pragmatic for demolishing targets, like buildings, not sniping a person and even when CALLED UPON to striek a fortified location, that only means someone on the ground coordinated the strike by letting the gunner he is talking with WHERE to strike down to - hopefully NQ will add tactical tools for people who train into Leadership skills, so field officers or snipers can call down orbital strikes by painting an area a gunner can see who are on the same group, like a fleet.

Please, people, start using pragmatical arguements. 



As for ramming, Ramming is not an issue because pretty much, space is big, REALLY big. However, landing like an idiot, SHOULD be punished - by virtue of explosions.

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@above but you forgot two things.

 

Inertia: Missiles will still be flying even when they run our of fuel, and small ships(in real life) will have tiny Delta-V to work with so they can't outrun things. Not sure how this will go in DU. Also, of course the nuclear explosion isn't stationary. The bomb would be aimed, and the explosion would have intertia(so it looks like a cone-shaped explosion to a observer stationary relative to the bomb.

 

Remote Control

Ramming missiles(Kinetic Kill Vehicles) and Rods from Gods will most likely have some sort of remote control if available. While space may be big, you can go to the target with your KKV like you do with your fighter or whatever.

 

P.S. Not sure if the "I love the fact people think nukes in vacuum work the same way as in atmosphere" was  directed at me, but I am aware that nukes don't behave like that. Atomic Rockets have been a great resources for me in the Hard-SF field.

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@above but you forgot two things.

 

Inertia: Missiles will still be flying even when they run our of fuel, and small ships(in real life) will have tiny Delta-V to work with so they can't outrun things. Not sure how this will go in DU. Also, of course the nuclear explosion isn't stationary. The bomb would be aimed, and the explosion would have intertia(so it looks like a cone-shaped explosion to a observer stationary relative to the bomb.

 

Remote Control

Ramming missiles(Kinetic Kill Vehicles) and Rods from Gods will most likely have some sort of remote control if available. While space may be big, you can go to the target with your KKV like you do with your fighter or whatever.

 

P.S. Not sure if the "I love the fact people think nukes in vacuum work the same way as in atmosphere" was  directed at me, but I am aware that nukes don't behave like that. Atomic Rockets have been a great resources for me in the Hard-SF field.

You are part of a majority of people who don't know how fission works in vacuum. It was not directed at you in a singular manner.

 

Missiles running out of fuel are left impossible to sitr. Rockets have a payload which IS their fuel, Missiles have a warhead. Big difference. An arrow is considered a missile, it has a warhead - its tip. A rocket propelled grenade, if it runs out of fuel, it runs out of a primer, tuhs it's a dud.

 

Do not confuse those two. 

 

Alspo, welcome to the realm of surface areas.

 

If your explosion is going at 500 meters per second (because the thermal energy released is gonan be dissipated in the background of 2.7 Kelivn VERY FAST) and if your explosion has enough payload to last for 2 seconds, it means that your explosion has a certain damage DEPENDING on the speed of an objest AND its profile at which you hit it from. Remember, this is THERMAL energy released, not kneitic, those plates on the ship will be heated, but guess what those ships are warships, they probably have plates that are meant to absorb thermal damage (or w/e kind of damage those missiles may do, for all you know, the missile's warhead may have  a 1000 iron balls in it and used as a n improvised grapeshot in space).

 

This also brings in our old friend, Inverse Square Law (this guy gets into EVERYTHING when it comes to space and lasers, which are guided explosions). If your explosion is huge in radius and has a semi-long explosion duration, then it means your explosion wave will pass by my ship and onyl a FRACTION of the energy unleased would actually scrape the smaller vessel, cause only a tiny fraction of the humongous explosio nactually touched my ship, as my ship is small in surface area.

 

Nukes are way more devastating on a planet, cause in a planet you got a kinetic shockwave, as the explosion displaces a lot of air and then of coruse causes a rapid implosion of air, not to mention linger radiation.

 

EVE online has a very VERY realistic model on missiles. The heavier the payload on missiles, the longer their distance , but the harder thy  compensate for fat moving targets. A cruise missile, for the duration of its flight, as an inertial modifier that limits it from hiting a target if the targets move X' amount of distance away from its original location, which is why Cruise Missiles in EVE, are used for capital ship to capital ship warfare, as well as torpedos, a more powerful, but closer range variant of a capital missile class weapon.  if I was to hit a frigate iwth a cruise missile, I would probably : a ) missi them entirely or b ) deal very little damge, even if was to hit them.

 

I know it's had to comprehend this, but it's actually a realistic model as far as missiles go. An explosion may be 4 TeraJoules of energy - a Kiloton nuke - but if your ship is exposed to only 0.01 % of that explosion, that means the damage is reduced dramatically. And guess what a ship won't have on it in DU, 1 kiloton nukes. And even the ones that will exist, they will be scaled for proper use. Light and fast missiles for dealing with smaller, less agile craft, rockets for dealing with faster targets, and then gradually the rockets / missiles getting bigger and bigger to deal with bigger sized ships.

 

But in DU, you got the added advantage, that if you punch a hole in a hull, it also enables you to fire a rocket right into the ship's itnerior, and even, killing crew, or hitting a fuel tank, or w/e. So, lighter and smaller payload missiles may be worth it.

 

Cheers.

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Well, I can see how collision damage would create a problem with people strapping an engine to a bunch of blocks, and yelling "allahu akbar" in the voice service of their choice.

 

BUT having said that, I'm also in full support of 'free' collision model - providing there is no server load and providing it's implemented well.

 

Now what I mean by "implemented well" - is in a way that specifically makes it ridiculously inefficient to attempt and do what the first sentence of this post stated. For instance, having to take out shields prior to "ramming", would mean that the ship that is trying to grief, would require to A: have enough firepower to break through the target's shields, and B: have enough of it's own shields to sustain the enemy firing upon them. That alone would force the later to invest above the bare minimum. Next there would be the mass of the ship - a small ship would make a small hole in a big ship, destroying the small ship and producing some minor damage on the big ship (to put it in the simplest terms). A ship would need to be big enough and going fast enough to do enough damage to it's target - meaning it would need to be more bulky, and have an equally bulky engine - which would likewise cost a bit more to make / fuel etc. Which would then need more power from bigger power cells (which would actively also power the bigger shields that this ship would now need)... well you get the idea - you are basically trying to nullify the cost discrepancy between the two constructs, so the ship trying to kamikaze would need to cost at least close to the amount it's target cost - possibly more, depending on how the damage ends up being calculated.

 

Insurance premiums can also play a big part here. Say you are a griefer who kamikazeed your current ten ships in a short span of time. You claim insurance on those ten ships, and want to build another few and insure them with the money you got from the insurance. Now if you did that in real life, I doubt your insurance company would want to have anything to do with you, and will likely tell you "sorry sir, I'm afraid we cannot do anything for you". In fact, after the third "accident" they will likely double your premiums, look very closely at your records, and possibly take you to court for insurance scam by the fifth one. Now obviously the later may be "too realistic" for a game like DU, but there's nothing stopping in having an algorithm that increases your insurance premiums based on how often you have had to make a "claim", based on certain variables (eg. within a certain amount of time / type of ship / system and area / type of damage - instant death or gradual module failure etc.) There is also nothing stopping an in game insurance "company" outright refusing to insure any further ships for certain people, until some condition(s) are met.

 

Lastly, reward good design. Basically, a ship that has it's critical systems damaged by a light bump from a small fighter, due to the location and proximity of those systems, is not a bad design. A ship that is a massive hunk of metal that floats in space, protecting all it's critical systems in it's centre, is also not a good design - due to the cost / power-weight ratio / maneuverability etc. A ship that is designed in a smart way, that tries to predict what are the most likely angles it may be hit from, what shape of the fuselage could be used to better absorb the shock, and where to put the components to maximise their efficiency even if the hull is breached in several places - is a good design.

 

And that last paragraph, is really why I would like to see such a mechanic in game. I would happily take the immersion that it would provide, over the potential of someone griefing me through ramming. Yes, it would certainly suck, but I would only consider it a problem if the game provided a "cheap" way for someone to destroy someone else's months worth of work, in mere seconds, with minimal effort and at nearly no cost to themselves. If they end up losing as much or more in game wealth as you do through their actions, there is really no reason to try and exclude such a mechanic from the game. Provided, like already mentioned, it doesn't directly impact on things like server performance.

 

EDIT: Also, I'm not a fan of the idea of having only "certain voxels" being able to collide. That makes it messy if anything - like what happens if those voxels hit voxels that are not designed for collision - and why would voxels not designed for collision not take damage when colliding in that sense? Because collision damage is not just about suicide bombing - if done well, that would be the very least of what it's used for. It would be more about things like doing crappy landings, or lading inside another construct in a dangerous (and deadly) manner, or taking risks around asteroids or dogfights etc. Collision is one of those mechanics that I want to see either done well, or not done at all. Not half arse it :P

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@volkier

I suggetsd a mathematical solution for "fall damage" when it comes to collisions.

More or less, the total voxel count of a ship contribute to a "Structural Integrity" value (the Collision HP) with the same voxels providing a "Tensile Strength" (threshold for when collsion damage is taken) as a value.

Now, how that works, it's simple, it's a ratio of damage depending on how many G the Tensile Strength can afford upon a collision.  Now,  a few thigns wen eed to discuss about here - things that NQ already has.

Inertia - the faster you go, depending on your initial mass, the harder it is to be stopped, hence, a natural "G resistance modfier", hence, speed + mass = more Inertia , whichm akes a heaby boat impossible to stop.

Momentum is also confirmed i nthe GDC stream.

Voxel-to-voxel destruction = that's the rreal HEAVY simualtion that NQ can't afford to run. This system takes care of this, by completely ignoring it. Call it space technology of cast-hull ships, with not multiple layers, that are a single piece hull, thus absrobing more on a collsion, same to the French tanks in WW2, which reprotedly coudl get hit repeatedly by Panzers without registrign a hit - when the thing rung like a bell afterwards, as cast-metals release those mechanical waves by vibrating but NOT breaking apart.

Now, Tensile Strength and Structural Integrity, make my ship able to accelerate (and deccelearte of coruse) within a certain range of G forces before suffering damage. Yes, that means a ship will suffer damage if it went from X m/s to 0 m/s by deccelerating at 50 Gs, and the damgage increases logarithmically in this model, the more you exceed a ship's Tensile STrength on its hull. That also means you can't accelrate past a certain rate - remember, it's not the fall that kills you, it's the abrupt stop, aka BRUTAL deccelerations and decceleratios, are nothing more than negative accelerations. So, with that, we also have a "speed limit" on a ship that a Lua scripter has to code in ivnerstions to kepep he ship fro mexceeding its safety G propulsion.

Now, Tensile Strength and Structural Integrity work in a ratio.  It's not an additive value, it has a diminishing return. You can't make a 1 Billion tHP (total HP) hull with a Tensile Strength of 500 Million G . If the hull is made of , let's say, titanium, it will have the same average G tolerance on its tensile strength, but just a lot more HP (depending on how many voxels there are left on the construct, yes it gets better :D ). But this also makes the need for HIGH Tensile Strength frames with low HP on them, to make a ship have MORE Tensile Strength than it would normally have, aka, building ships got serious - I mean, more serious. But it also means a small starfighter makde of Titanium, given its lack of weight, can take on MORE powerful accelerations, thus making it more nimble. If the player is to take "fall damage" when going beyond a certain speed, that's up to NQ. 

Now, the elephant in the room, TrollPedo ships. They can't happen in this model. You'd need a ship able to accelerate at INSANE SPEEDS , which means no warp in and BOOM 5000 m/s, the game's physics don't allow for it, remember inertia. And nobody will build a battleship sized torpedo to destroy an enemy battleship by blowing BOTH SHIPS UP. That is what in EVE costed many alliances their home system, aka, stupid fleet doctrines.

If your ship can accelerate super fast, it means that ship has very light armor, thus very little "punch" behind it to even dent a capital ship, let alone cause it damage, and if your ship is slowboating in vacuum towards its destination, guess what, it will be detected by anyone who's paid to watch the sky for stealth fleets approaching - NEWS FLASH to anyone who's not aware, DU has these kinds of jobs, or even better, AUTOMATED detectino of pseeds that move with a certai nspeed or havinga certain mass + speed + vector criteria, hello people Lua scripts are here.

And the cherry on top, this is also in accordance with the model NQ uses for programming, Actor based programming. Everything is just math, the server combines in a simple logic. Did your ship accelerate (positively or negatively) past its Tensile Strength? How much more it was? Eery second you are past that point you take a little bit of damage to your Collision HP (structural itnegrity).

It also takes into account how much "structural damage" the ship suffered, aka, how many voxels it's missing at this point, which reudce a ship's Collision HP. It then does the math and ssys "okay, you deccelerated 100% more than your Tensile Strength allows for, that means you lost 50000 HP out of your 30000 HP -- aw, sorry bro, go blow up now. And then the fuel tanks o nthe ship explode, along with the capacitors.


And the best thing of all.

You landed on a planet a bit too fast? You may or may not go boom. 

You made a bad manevuer with your starfighter and collided with a battleship's mast? BOOM. 

You tried to play chicken with your battlecruiser by trying to joust with ano ther battlecruiser but you forgot to enage your manvuvers and dodge AWAY fro mthe patho f the enemy battlecruiser? You both explode.

But hey, if anyone put a road rage ape to drive a CAPITAL SHIP they deserve to lose it in a huge firey explosion.

Inertia, Momentum, Accelerations and Voxel HP come together in one glorious mechanism this way. 

NQ may have a differnet reason as of not including such a mechanism, but they can't claim it's "technical limitation". This system ignores coxel-to-voxel grinding "collsion damage", like in Space Engineers. It's a pure mathemtaical model, based on how they already measure how maneuverable a ship is (April DevDiary) and even better, the Aerodynamic Profile they show, is basedo n PAsclas per Surface Area (Pa / m2). Tensile Strength is Pa / m3. So they can't also claim "we don't got the means for it". 

To be hones,I am the least interested person in spaceboats in the forums, I am in it for the ground pound, stealth and evil chicaneries with the market, but I would not want NQ in any way shape or form to cater to people who think "PILOTING? IT'S EASY, I PLAYZ SAAR CITIZEN., SPACEPLANES ARE AMAZING". I want piloting, like anything, to have a brutal conotation to tit.

You trusted the guy in the market that said "hey, I can double your quanta! But only if you send me even number of Quanta!!111" ? You are stupid, you should have known better, NQ should not ban the scammer for what he did to you.

You paid 20% more for that single item on the marekt due to an RMT Scam on the marketplace? It's your fault you did that, you should have asked someone who knew about prices. You play the game as a singleplayer, now you are the fool and mo, NQ should not ban people from RMT scamming you.

Did you try to mine in the territory of a large alliance and got caught? Well, risks don't always pay off, so don't whine you got ganked because a scout of theirs spotted you.

Did you crash you precious ship cause you went AFK and crashed on a freighter? You are to blame, not NQ's collision damage mechanics. You should have parekd your ship on a spot that would not interfere with the traffic out of a stargate.

But that's how I see things. I want people to have a reason to claim "I am a goood pilot, I know how to fly a ship" other than say "look how many miners I ganked, I have 500000000 Quanta efficiency" like the cancer EVE's "skill level" is, which is more or less "gank anything and everything, your money efficiency is what makes you a good player, not actually your input in actions".

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