Sectioned Hull

posted on January 23rd, 2014, 2:21 pm

I am sure that in other games this may have been the case, but I have only seen it in Star Trek: Dominion Wars.

The main thing I would like is to have sectional hull. A good example would be the Galaxy Class. You had four major sections of the ship (however other ships had more sections than others). Some sections such as the Nacelles were directly tied to the performance of the ship as well as engine systems. When you loose a nacelle you loose warp capability. If you loose the saucer section of the galaxy you lost your forward phaser capability.

This could be applicable to almost all ships. A ship can still be operable with certain sections intact, but say if you take out the Stardrive of the Galaxy, you destroy the entire ship as the warp core was there. Same would be true in FO. You wouldn't have to take out all of a ships health in order to cripple it. Only hit the right places.

If we were to take the Sabre for instance, while it has a "hull" that comes off of the saucer, the saucer would be the critical section that the ship's survival is dependent on. If this feature were to be added it would add a lot to the reality of the game.

posted on January 24th, 2014, 12:21 am

I thought of this too, and I had two ways to do it.

The first is simple. Make the Galaxy's stardrive section, and add 'pod' hardpoints. The separate sections, dish and nacelles, provide modifiers to the stardrive section, though the dish has a weapon as well, providing the forward phasers. If the nacelles are destroyed, then the speed modifier is lost, where as the loss of the dish destroys the only forward phaser you have. This is the easiest way, but does have its own complications, which may include the parts turning to face the enemy.

The second one requires the devs to take one of my suggestions in mind. See my earlier posts for details.

posted on January 24th, 2014, 6:12 pm

It would probably require an overhaul of the physics and a redo how the 3D models are laid out having the polygons sectioned off into clusters named according to the part they are representing. It'd be complicated, but it would make the game much more realistic. The different sections would have their own hp that contributes to the complete hp of the ship. Each system is tied to certain parts of the ship meaning if you loose a section of your hull you'll loose the function of those systems until you go to a shipyard. (You may be able to repair the intact sections with your crew but not the crippled sections.)

posted on February 23rd, 2014, 3:05 pm

If you loose the saucer section of the galaxy you lost your forward phaser capability.

"It's only a flesh wound!"

I would think such a loss would be a little more drastic than that, but it does make sense.


It does kind of suck that all the ships do is explode. I believe there's a request somewhere for ships to display battle damage on the hull. It would be really, really, really nice if that damage reflected a failed system. But then, how do you display failed sensors? Maybe a greyed or flickering deflector?

If you're thinking of making something for the player to target, it might be a bit much. People can only take so much micromanaging.

posted on February 24th, 2014, 6:27 am

It does kind of suck that all the ships do is explode. I believe there's a request somewhere for ships to display battle damage on the hull. It would be really, really, really nice if that damage reflected a failed system. But then, how do you display failed sensors? Maybe a greyed or flickering deflector?

In stock Armada 2, ships had cheezy-looking little orange spots on their hull when they were damaged, and the more damaged a ship was, the more spots it had. A ship with inoperable engines would shoot blue or red gas out of the warp engines. I think it's likely that code could be changed to give some kind of special effect to other parts of the ship when damaged, too, like the deflector as you said.

1337 64M3R, I like your ideas. One thing I always thought was unrealistic about Armada 2 compared to the shows, is that in the game a ship's shields need to be completely down (except for shield piercing weapons) for hull damage to be dealt, when in the shows this is usually not the case. But as many people have said before, fleet ops is just an RTS, not a 100% realistic spaceship simulator but I think realism adds to the game.

posted on February 28th, 2014, 3:55 pm

1337 64M3R, I like your ideas. One thing I always thought was unrealistic about Armada 2 compared to the shows, is that in the game a ship's shields need to be completely down (except for shield piercing weapons) for hull damage to be dealt, when in the shows this is usually not the case. But as many people have said before, fleet ops is just an RTS, not a 100% realistic spaceship simulator but I think realism adds to the game.

Actually, the Stock Armada 2 did have damage go through shields. This was done with damagevariance and damagethreshold. Essentially, the damagethreshold was a set number, which, if the damage matched, or went beyond this, the extra damage would damage the hull rather then the shields. There was a code in the configs that set it so shields absorbed 100% of the damage, but it was left at about 40%-60% by default. (Damagevariance was just to add randomization.)

posted on February 28th, 2014, 3:59 pm

Actually a minor correction, its the ShieldProtection Code.

By default Fleet Ops has it set to 1.0 (aka 100% protection) probably for balancing reasons. However this can be changed. 0.8 being 80%, 0.5 50%, and so on.

posted on February 28th, 2014, 6:00 pm

64M3R is right. SHIELD_DAMAGE_PROTECTION in RTS_CFG.h determines what percentage of damage bleeds through the shields and hits the hull. The A2 default is 80% blocked, 20% bleeds. Damage that goes over the damageThreshold value is supposed to cause crew damage, which it did in A1, but I haven't seen it work in FO for some reason.

posted on March 1st, 2014, 1:24 am

Like 1137Gamer said,

By default Fleet Ops has it set to 1.0 (aka 100% protection) probably for balancing reasons. However this can be changed. 0.8 being 80%, 0.5 50%, and so on.

This means that the damagethreshold code is nullified, as the shields absorb everything, and its use is nothing more then a necessity to have the ODF work...I think.

For all I know, we could remove that code and it would work just fine.

posted on March 1st, 2014, 3:21 am

the code in RTS_CFG is more or less a default when its absent in the odf. If you want to have specific ship protection value use the following code.

ShieldProtection = "X"

posted on March 19th, 2014, 10:02 am

Actually, a good addition would be to have the AI tend to ignore disabled or critically damaged ships.

That would leave the battlefield feeling a bit more like a battlefield, with wrecks.

A ship with weapons and engines down is no immediate threat.