Later on in this thread, it was suggested and accepted that other ship statistics would decrease along with weapon power. After giving some thought to combat groupings and orders, I've decided that this system of battle math is too complicated.Geoff the Medio wrote:The health meter is the ship equivalent of what health is for living things. Damage to the ship reduces health. If a ship is damaged, the power of its weapons is decreased in proportion to the amount of lost health. So, if a ship is at 50% health, its weapons do 50% of full damage potential per turn. There are no other combat effects of damage before a ship is destroyed.
In my opinion, ships should either be fully functional, or at a defined level of limited functionality, i.e. Above 50% (or whatever threshold is appropriate, perhaps 75%) health, everything functions perfectly. Below 50% health, speed, weapon power, detection, stealth and/or whatever else is appropriate is reduced to 50% power (or whatever power level is appropriate).
This is significantly simpler in terms of gameplay - either the ship is functioning normally, or it's not, and there's no gradual degradation of functionality as the ship is damaged for the player to keep track of. If the player is in combat, it's much more reasonable and realistic to expect him to be able to decide what to do with his damaged ships if there is a clear distinction in functionality between "damaged" ships and "functional" ships. In addition, if the player is controlling a grouped amalgamation of ships, the player will certainly want to regroup his ships based on the amount of damage that has been taken. Frankly, I don't want to have to sort through lots of different ships of varying levels of functionality every time I regroup - damaged vs. functional is the only distinction the player should have to make in terms of his ships' functionality.