Locational damage

[Meme Turtle]

X:Rebirth has greatly improved combat with surface elements and giving a player incentive to attack specific parts of a ship to gain tactical advantage. However, apart from the surface elements the main hull of a ship is still one giant blob with HP bar. It does not matter where you shoot an enemy ship, as your shot will always do the same amount of damage and cause no effects(provided it does not destroy any surface elements) to ship functionality.

As an example of one of the best space combat games with locational damage have a look at Star Trek: Bridge Commander. In this game damaging a hull in a particular section visually changes geometry of that section(procedurally). It is even possible to cut a ship in half or cut-out engine section with precise weapons like phasers. There are also functional components located beneath the hull and damaging the hull in that area also affects their operation. See this video for explanation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZdNnX104fc

So, are there any improvements to the combat mechanics in X4 in terms of modeling and visualizing ship damage? Have developers considered using voxels(or similar technology) to have more realistic ship destruction mechanics?

[Tomonor]

But then there was that case, when you collided with a romulan warbird, lost 3/4 of your ship and yet you could continue the fight with a broken husk and a single torpedo tube.

Anyway, STBC was revolutionary, and no other game even attempted on recreating its features so far. I do hope that sometime the X series will borrow from that gamr, big time. Especially the commanding bridge module.

[Meme Turtle]

STBC is by no means a perfect game but for a 2002 game the damage system was revolutionary. Star citizen seems to have similar damage model:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkAaLd0FdK0

I can hardly imagine the amount of work needed to implement something similar in an X game. Yet, even X:R has some partial destruction of ship's modules apart from surface elements. For example, Arawn nacelles or Rahanas cargo modules can be destroyed separately. I wonder if this mechanic is extended in X4 and we will be able to destroy ships individual modules similar to how you can destroy space stations in X:R.

[Skeeter]

I did hear u can shoot off guns off a ship for x4 so there's gona be some damage modeling but not extensive I think. Might be limited to M and above ships tho be interesting if S do too. And only to modules not the base hull frame.

Also star trek Starfleet academy also did great damage modeling as well as the Klingon academy game also but I read that the Devs had to do alot of work to pull it off but worth the experience I thought.

Yeah SC is doing it too but also alot of work but if done right is Gona make it really fun.

If X games did it also that would be cool to see all sorts of damage modeling even if it's the slightly quicker way with deformation modeling like dints and stuff like u see in car games where u can damage cars when they crash. It's more complex now but 10 year old car games say destruction derby 2 on psx1 did it and I'm betting it wasn't that time consuming to do or cost much for simple deformation methods that looked ok. But not 100% sure, just guessing.

Also no point doing it just for visual effect it has to have meaning, shoot at a engine it gets damaged, blow it away that ships permanently adrift with no propulsion till somehow it gets repaired at a shipyard. Shoot a gun a bit then that particular gun that's been shot is damaged and sparks so either less accurate or slow firing or both. Keep shooting it till it's destroyed that it will be destroyed too u get a shipyard. Shoot a docking platform then ships can't dock there till repaired etc.

[Hector0x]

X:Rebirth has greatly improved combat with surface elements

Has it really? For me it felt like cheesing the game by hiding in blind spots of capships was easier than ever. If you introduce even more systems the ai is unable to handle and that the player can abuse, immersion dies (imho)

It's like X3's evading enemy fire by strafing for the player only.

[Skeeter]

XR damage to cap ships say blasting the engines out etc was imo a bit too easy as in they should have been harder to disable/destroy by giving them triple the health points per module than what they had originally. That might have been better to avoid blindspots if a ship in question had blindspots created due to damaging modules like a gun placement or engine. Tho some ships had designs where they had natural blindspots and thats the fault of the designer i would reckon. Tho maybe they intentionally had them there so players who arnt very good at gaming could have a chance. Who knows.

[mr.WHO]

X:Rebirth has greatly improved combat with surface elements

Has it really? For me it felt like cheesing the game by hiding in blind spots of capships was easier than ever. If you introduce even more systems the ai is unable to handle and that the player can abuse, immersion dies (imho)

It's like X3's evading enemy fire by strafing for the player only.

It's the fault of ship design than the game feature. Both Fulmekron and Olmekron have tons of deadly turrets with great firing arcs. These ships have nearly no blind spots - unlike those crappy Albion ships they seems to be designed by someone competent in warfare.

[Hector0x]

unlike those crappy Albion ships

Those were ships from a mining corporation, nuff said

But the problem may have been increased by an op Skunk. I imaging this playership had to be tougher and more versatile because it was the only one and (with upgrades) had to be able to stand a chance against the biggest ships.

[Solflame]

Skunk was massively OP when fully upgraded. Flew as fast as an M5 w/o boosting (that applies to the new and old Discoverers btw), was shielded like an M6+, and could switch between armaments for fighter combat and capship combat quickly and easily.

That being said, you could disable a ship, some easily (the Sul series is laughably easy at end-game to completely knock out, and the Balor can be done in the mid-game), while others were a royal pain (Olmekron is bad enough even when you take out all the PLASMA/JET LR turrets, I don't even wanna know how hard the Fulmekron is).

You then either had a station or capship kill them or spend half an hour or more of real time sitting there pounding w/ plasma because you just don't have the firepower to take those things out solo unless it was a civ freighter. I haven't tried w/ fighter wings, but the free Taranis worked a treat.

Anyways, TL;DR: I would like to see surface elements return. It gives more reason to give fighter escort to capital ships, more possible gameplay (defend the freighter until the engineer gets engines back online), not to mention reasons to try and strike unescorted capital ships w/ fighter wings to wear it down or even disable it/destroy it with a well organized attack.

P.S. First post! Long time lurker though (started reading back when Wanton Nukes was still updating).

[Sandalpocalypse]

the early ship models in XR (such as the Arawn) had a degree of locational damage. They seemingly gave it up when they moved from prototyping to pushing content, since none of the later ships use the destructible subsections.

[mr.WHO]

Olmekron is bad enough even when you take out all the PLASMA/JET LR turrets, I don't even wanna know how hard the Fulmekron is).

Same as Olmekron...just more of everything: Jets, Hailstorms and countless pew pew pew HIT/MA - I tried to disable and disarm Fulmekron once, but I gave up half way because it was nightmarish mix of challenge and tediusness. Thank god it doesn't have the swarm missile launchers from Taranis - with those FUlmekron would be boarding invicible.


In the bright side I like Taranis - the only Albion ship that seems to be more or less competent design - pocket design with fewer weapons, but good configuratino with good firing arc cover and almost no blind spots (those swarm missile launchers were the best deterent when combined with JETs coverage) - Taranis is a sweet spot that is both fun and challenging to board.

Once I even stuck on pair of PMC Taranis that covered eachother (I made a mistake with disabling them close to eachother) - lots of fun & challenge.

...but Fulmekron boarding is seriously nighmare inducing...