Structure, Damage, and Deformation

[wizardoftrash]

I'm curious about how damage is slated out to work with ships and structures. Is there a plan for voxel deformation? Will size/mass be central to this, or will structures and ships have health bars based on the polymers or materials they are built from? 

 

As someone who has spent a good chunk of time in Space Engineers and Rust, I'm interested how a combat system akin to Eve Online is going to work in a dynamic world.

[ATMLVE]

I'm interested as well! I don't think they've revealed many details about that yet. I know the combat system will work more like lock on and shoot type thing, which I think you were alluding to.

And yeah I don't know how they'd figure out ship shields, health, etc.. Like, when is a voxel ship dead if it doesn't get deformed? We'll just have to wait and see.

 

The problem with that no deformation I feel as that you wouldn't really be able to disable ships. In a game with dev-built ships, they can design each ship to have certain weak points, which when targeted and destroyed disable certain ship systems. But when you let the players design ships in any shape they want, that all goes away. What happens if you want to take out their power core, or cut off their gravity, or blow open their cargo hold to jack their goods and make off with a payout without having to fight the whole ship? I'm not sure what their plans are for that. Deformation of voxels is definitely something I'd like to see though.

[wizardoftrash]

I'm thinking any mechanical targetable area on a ship will likely be an element rather than a voxel, much like the pre-built elements for the cockpit and thrusters. We may even find that the overall shape od the ship itself may not matter at all aside from what material the voxels are made of, and the functional elements of the ships themselves. Much like Spore's vehicle creator, we might find that everything but the core elements are purely cosmetic, which sounds the easiest to code but also wouldn't dissapoint me.

 

In Space Engineers, players get rewarded for building hideous cubes of doom that don't really resemble spaceships. If the actual arrangement of the voxels doesn't impact performance, that would give people more room to focus on making the ships look near and deform in a fun way.

[Keyofdestiny]

I'm thinking any mechanical targetable area on a ship will likely be an element rather than a voxel, much like the pre-built elements for the cockpit and thrusters. We may even find that the overall shape od the ship itself may not matter at all aside from what material the voxels are made of, and the functional elements of the ships themselves. Much like Spore's vehicle creator, we might find that everything but the core elements are purely cosmetic, which sounds the easiest to code but also wouldn't dissapoint me.

In Space Engineers, players get rewarded for building hideous cubes of doom that don't really resemble spaceships. If the actual arrangement of the voxels doesn't impact performance, that would give people more room to focus on making the ships look near and deform in a fun way.

Well here I believe that ugly ships will be illegal. Maybe add drag and things for them in atmosphere. Now these ships actually could be done in space considering there is no drag, however, it won't be streamlined and MUCH easier to hit. So a small while fighter could easily destroy a death cube fighter. As for warships/larger ships: Borg cube anybody?

[Jeronimo]

we ve started multiple topics about damages already, stating voxel damages and elements mesh damages

 

voxels could certainly be reduce in volume upon damage/scratch

 

and elements meshes could have an abstract damage condition, detectable by an display element, and why not every elements could have different damages evolution meshes. at 100/75/50/25 % damage the element could switch to a more and more damaged mesh