Ship health/damage modelling

MikkoM · **Posted:** Thu Jun 26, 2008 8:01 pm

eleazar wrote:

Ships have 2 meters:
* shields, and
* structural-integrity, armor, hull or whatever you want to call it.

Without commenting other aspects of ship health modelling, this might be a better solution than to have just one health bar per ship. Since if we have these two meters/bars the player hopefully gets a little more detailed picture of how his/her new class XI shields or toughtium armour do in battle. And so he/she can hopefully really see the effects that new technology has.

Also if we will have shield piercing weapons it would probably be nice to see strait away that the enemy is using these weapons against you, instead of wondering why my ships with quality shields are getting destroyed so easily, and possibly even having to scan the enemy ships to find out.

And maybe we could still have just one health bar per ship, but that bar would be divided into two parts. One for shields and the other for structural-integrity.

marhawkman · **Posted:** Fri Jun 27, 2008 4:01 pm

Would the "bar" actually be two different meters?

Bigjoe5 · **Posted:** Fri Jun 27, 2008 9:29 pm

I'm pretty sure he means 2 meters, since that's what he's defending.

Though I don't think that having both armor and hull meters is redundant or overcomplicated.... It opens possibilities for things like armor piercing weapons, or weapons that ignore both shields and armor. Certain weapons in MoO2 were based around this principle, such as the Gyro Destabilizer and the Graviton Beam. There was even ship equipment related to it such as the Achilles Targeting Unit. For this reason, think having armor and hull separate would be a good idea. However, I don't think armor and hull strength should be increased by the same technology. Something like an architecture class of techs, distinct from alloys, or whatever increases armor strength. That opens up a whole wave of new possibilities for ship designs and strategies that would be very interesting to see in FO.

MikkoM · **Posted:** Sun Jun 29, 2008 1:15 pm

marhawkman wrote:

Would the "bar" actually be two different meters?

Well, yes I guess. That last part of my post was me thinking about various ways to present those two stats, shield strength and structural-integrity. The most obvious way to do this would probably be, to have two clearly separate bars, one for shields and the other for structural integrity. Another possibility might be to show just one bar to the player, which would have both of these stats in it and a borderline to separate them from each other.

However this would probably be just the same as having two different bars side by side. And maybe would also be more confusing than to have two clearly separate bars.

marhawkman · **Posted:** Sat Jul 05, 2008 5:13 pm

Yeah, multiple bars may take getting used to, but it's ultimately more productive than pretending there's only one bar.

Tsenzouken · **Joined:** Sun May 25, 2008 10:15 am **Posts:** 60

Also, other than UI formatting there is no compelling reason NOT to include multiple variables for different systems. The amount of memory needed to store all of the meters I mentioned for a gigantic, epic space battle is still probably less than 50% of the graphics memory used to actually render the the battle. Especially considering how much extra fun it would be for the ship design fiends.

Assuming meters are conglomerated per-fleet, unless you have a gigantic number of fleets there is no reason why knowing their status would be negative, especially if you had the option of reducing it to 3 bars. (Shields/Hull/Systems) And would be fun in small scale battles where individual ship damage could or would affect tactics.

Tsenzouken · **Joined:** Sun May 25, 2008 10:15 am **Posts:** 60

Something which just occurred to me:
Fighters should probably do more 'crippling' damage than missiles or beams.

Put in context:

Attachment:

Weapon Types.PNG [ 2.32 KiB | Viewed 1086 times ]

That is, fighters don't actually deal very much damage, but because they tend to get very close they're relatively accurate and can intelligently select targets which will actually cause systemic damage.
Missiles, by contrast, are highly accurate (a near-miss can still cause damage) and have a very high raw damage potential, but their destructive force is randomly spread across the target.
Beams are the average. They can be directed, which helps, but they rely on striking the target with a relatively small point of energy. So, moderate on all counts save for accuracy.

Thoughts?

Josh · **Posted:** Wed Aug 13, 2008 11:06 am

I like your idea very much. I also think it's important to have an idea that is versatile so that open source users can come up with their own stuff.

I'd like to submit an example of an idea that was inspired by that chart as well. It works something like this:

Josh wrote:

You have this weapon

Nuclear Missile
1(3) damage
0/0 penetration
Long Ranged (whatever that may mean)
Speed (If a modder wanted to modify how fast it travelled to the target)
Some Cost
Limited Ammo, blow-up-able with PD
It's a guided missile (a broad subset of other weapons it belongs to which guides its behavior)

Used against this ship

Freighter
1/1 Shield/Armor = 2 damage reduction
10 components onboard
+0 from manuevering thrusters
+0 from ECM
No PD weapons onboard
Not stealthy, no orders to be stealthy

The nuclear missile is a guided weapon, and it hits the freighter. Don't ask how, it's too drawn out for a short example and goes into very specific formulas. All I will say is that all weapons have 100-95% accuracy, which is modified by various things.
So it hits the freighter for 1(3) damage and no penetration. That means it will cause 1 damage across 3 randomly selected components and take the full penalty from damage reduction (armor + shields).
Ship has a damage reduction total of 2, which is what it divides incoming damage by, unless the weapon penetrated armor or had lost armor components previously.

So
1/2 = 0.5 damage (applied to 3 randomly selected components)

(0.5 damage just means "a 50% chance to kill", and represents a percentage chance to destroy a component that it "tags")

3 (undamaged) components get randomly selected, and maybe one gets selected twice by coincidence, and receive 0.5 damage, or "a 50% chance to kill". Component 1 has a 50-50 chance to survive the attack, and does. Component 2 has to survive two 50-50 chances (it was selected twice) and is not so lucky. This could be illustrated with a coin toss.

Heads is life. Tails is death.

Component 1 was selected for damage, we toss a coin, and it's heads, so it lives. Nothing happens, that's it. No further calculations are made.
Component 2 was selected for damage twice (conveniently), we toss a coin twice, but if one of them comes up tails, the damage gets through. One comes up tails. Component is now dead.

The ship we were talking about now has 9 components left. Once all it's components are gone, the ship is kaput.
Component 2 also just happens to be the on board shield giving it +1 to damage reduction. Now it's dead. The ship is short 1 damage reduction because of it. If you're still paying attention, you know that means the next incoming missile is as good as death on wheels because:

1 damage / 1 reduction point = 1.0 or "a 100% chance to kill" per tagged component

And a nuke tags 3 of them at a time. The ship will survive exactly 3 more hits before getting completely totaled. Before that happens, it's important components will be exploding all over the place, like cargo pods, engines, more armor getting dislodged, etc.

In this system, every hit matters, anything can be blown up, components are of utmost importance, and only avoiding a hit (through cunning, stealth, ECM and maneuvering) will truly save you.

The system appears fairly robust, but if you have your hearts set on the ever popular health bars and shield bars etc., that's fine, I just won't explain my system any further.

General_Zaber · **Posted:** Wed Aug 13, 2008 11:33 am

Just a quick question, How is damage recorded? Is it a HP system (in which case how much HP would an Escort, Cruiser, Dreadnought etc. roughly have?). Or will it be a simpler system like Integrity: High, Shields: Average, Laser: DMG:Low, RNG:5 etc.?

Josh · **Posted:** Wed Aug 13, 2008 1:03 pm

Damage is recorded by the components. The system checks for components damaged or not, and then tells you how many are still intact, given by a simple fraction. Once all components on board are damaged, the ship dies too.
Whether a component even gets damaged at all, however, depends on a percent chance, calculated by weapon damage + penetration divided by targets total damage reduction.

A large ship carries more components, and therefore can take more hits and carry better armor and shields. A small ship can't, but might avoid damage altogether because it is harder to hit than the large ship.

PERSONALLY, I'd rather have a much simpler system and forget about components altogether. There really is NO simple way to handle component damage, and it's not something that will be missed if other aspects are done well. It could even be roughly simulated by other means. Energy then, should be focused there, and not arcane nit-picky details. That's just me. Here's the system I prefer:

Josh wrote:

All ships have 2 color coded meter bars.
Shields & Hull
If it's really, really necessary, maybe a third bar can be added later. Maybe.
Shields are optional.
Crew doesn't exist. Systems don't exist. They are abstracted into hull integrity.

Further, all ships have base amount of hits that gets modified by armor and shield components as they get added in the design screen. Components can't be "blown up".
And lastly, all damage is measured in terms of hit points applied to these two meter bars.
This should look familiar:

Medium Ship
100/100 SP
100/100 HP

Weapons have only three or four things that need to be kept track of by players. (Programmers have more on their plate)

Damage (minimum and maximum damage)
Category (like the difference between a missile and beam weapon)
Special Traits (something that characterizes the weapon and makes it better than others in some cases)
And maybe modifications. Maybe.

Damage simply reduces Shield and Hull Points. Special characteristics may increase it's damage against unshielded targets. A category tells you how it behaves in combat (a beam is limited in range and a missile can be shot down)
Specific stuff is covered by category and special traits, the things players want to know about, rather than making a player juggle dozens of disparate numbers at a time. All beam weapons for example, are the same, except for damage and a special trait they may have.

General_Zaber · **Posted:** Wed Aug 13, 2008 11:50 pm

So... each ship has two meters (Sheilds and HP/Integrity/Structure etc.) and when a ship is damaged by something, the amount of damage is divided by the number of components included and applied to the sheilds, and then the integrity once the sheilds are disabled.

If that's it then it makes sense to me!

Josh · **Posted:** Wed Aug 20, 2008 8:02 pm

Ummm, yeah, not quite

But seriously, In a ship health/damage modeling scheme, I'd forget about rendering components, it's really just unnecessary.

Krikkitone · **Joined:** Sat Sep 13, 2003 6:52 pm **Posts:** 1274

Actually Josh's idea about handling components seems the best if components are to take damage

Each weapon has a chance to damage a certain number of components and defensive components reduce the chance that damage is done.

So basically a weapon has a Damage and a Spread

The chance of a component being damaged by a weapon is
[Weapon Damage/ Spread]/Armor Factor of enemy ship

The display would have three bars
1. Shield strength (which would probably just absorb damage)
2. Armor Factor level/max (this would decrease as Armor 'components' are destroyed)
3. Other non armor components, Functioning v. maximum

Josh · **Posted:** Fri Aug 22, 2008 4:15 pm

FO's v0.4 Roadmap wrote:

The player controls (at least) dozens of ships simultaneously... ... The level of detail of the ships design system should reflect this distinction.

Now I don't know if that means "per battle" or "per game", but I do know that more detail means less ships, and more ships means less detail. Whether something as involved as component damage is feasible depends on just how many ships a player has to juggle in an average battle, not an average game.

Ideally, I'd like to see a system that's scalable between large or small battles, for large and small galaxies respectively.

marhawkman · **Posted:** Tue Aug 26, 2008 3:59 pm

Well, SE5 managed to do it. It has things done where each individual component has a damage meter and the game still has the capability to track a thousand or more ships.

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Ship health/damage modelling

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