Ship Systems

Design goals

• add more variety beyond "ships have hit points and sometimes also shield points"
• do not complicate game controls any further
• in general, find a nice balance between complexity and simplicity

Overview

Systems refer to built-in core systems every ship has. They may not be added or removed, although they may be affected by modifiers from ship upgrades or crew bonuses.

Every system can be temporarily damaged, which may lead to the loss off the related functionality until the system has been repaired. A system cannot be permanently destroyed.

Repairing a system does not require input from the player and should be somewhat fast (generally measured in seconds rather than minutes), which allows for harsher and more varied status effects.

Power

A reactor produces power, which other systems draw to function.

Todo: ask Brian for a simple design

Q: Should power be a known limiting factor when outfitting your ship?

Heat

Heat can be produced by the reactor, firing weapons and environmental factors. Possibly enemy fire, too. Too much heat leads to death.

Heat is reduced at a constant rate by the cooling system. The effectiveness can be increased by installing additional heat sinks.

Heat is presented as one general heat meter, with the exception of rapid-fire weapons which have their own additional heat meters to limit their effectiveness.

Todo: ask Brian for a simple design

Q: Should heat be a known limiting factor when outfitting your ship?

Repairs

The number of systems that can be repaired at a time is 1 + number of crew members (Q: only skilled crewmembers?)

A system has an internal health value (0-100), however for the player this may be presented with three status levels: green, yellow and red. Green is okay, yellow is functional but in need of repairs, red is disabled and in need of repairs.

Q: Does a yellow status change the power/heat contribution?

Q: should repairs start as soon as the internal health is reduced, or should it wait until yellow threshold is reduced? With latter, the initial damage is practically an increasing change of being damaged.

Core systems

Reactor: all systems draw power from this. Presumably well protected by hull. Ships are understood to have an auxiliary power source (batteries etc). for emergency power (which is not simulated in any way).

Sensors: provides targeting information. Damaged sensors may lead to:

• loss of radar/scanner
• loss of labels etc. targeting info
• complete loss of visuals (pretty harsh)

Thrusters: propulsion. Damage may lead to complete loss of input, which is probably the most distrupting damage effect there is (and thus should be quick to repair).

Cooling system: if damaged, risk of overheating is severe.

Hyperdrive: damage will lead to incapacity to jump.

Weapons: fire control system. Cannot fire anything without this.

Coffee maker: keeps the crew alert.

UI

The game HUD is not to be overloaded with information, but status for damaged systems can be shown (overall prefer hiding and showing information as needed).

A detailed full-screen info view is available. ("Systems" or "Engineering", note: avoid confusion with existing "System Info" view...)

Q: From the engineering screen, should it be allowed to toggle a system on/off, with the appropriate heat/power effect? If so, it must not be required to enjoy the game.

Q: Similarly, from the engineering screen, should it be allowed to reprioritize repairs? Same requirement as above.

Locational damage

This is to be kept to a minimum, since defining system locations on every ship is not going to happen.

Option 1: Damage distributed randomly on hit ("random" can include per system probabilities).

Option 2: Damage distributed based on the direction or overall area of the ship (shot in the butt would be always more likely to damage propulsion, or something like that). Front/Rear directional damage might be simple enough to work, it would reward positioning yourself behind an opponent (presumably challenging since they are trying to face and shoot you). "Space backstab".

Shields

Todo: move this to a more general combat design page, or make this page concern those mechanics too.

A ship can have at maximum one shield.

Q: are shields the reason energy weapon damage is greatly reduced with distance?

Q: can a shield mechanic be implemented completely without "hit points" (e.g. does it always have to be just additional health bar that needs to be chipped away first)?

A shot either goes through or not OR damage is reduced OR damage is spread across hull and systems

Basic shield types

Combat shield: good against energy weapons.

Environmental shield: good against all environmental effects (replaces atmospheric shield)

Mining shield: good against all collisions, perhaps missiles as well.

Ideas to be explored

Idea from Brian: incapacitated crew. How does this work?