Breakable Ships

posted on July 19th, 2012, 5:15 pm

I was thinking yesterday, and a thought came to mind. In Bridge Commander, you were able to slice a ship into 'small' pieces using your phasers and torpedoes, knocking Warp and Weapons offline or, worst case scenario, destroying the ship completely.

I propose that a code be made that would take a ship/station/object, and rip it apart as it takes damage. This would be purely visual and would have no effect on game play. (for this example, I'll use a ship) As the ship is repairing itself, you would see the small welding sprites as it rebuilds the hull. (You may need to assign several areas to a hardpoint, like areas where weapons are located)
If players don't want their ships to break apart, then the code that would enable this effect ('IsBreakable') would be off by default.

The damage shown would be dependent on the weapons codes, and the computer would automatically select a texture that fits it. Textures will be overlaid onto the ship. The first code would tell if the weapon is capable of breaking the ship. (if the ship has it enabled or not) The second will tell the actual damage type, so it doesn't give a burn texture to something that vaporizes the hull. A final code will let you put your own textures, but that isn't necessary.

The possible damage types are:
Projectile
Nadion
Antimatter
Plasma
Fire
Acid (Might be considered fire, but I'm not sure.

Back to ships, a code would tell the computer if a ship is organic or not, so it selects the right texture. Another would show how deep the damage goes in a single strike. This would be split into 2 codes, both of which can be set for each ship. 1 that indicates how far a weapon can go into the ship before being stopped, and another that will tell the chance of a beam piercing the hull. (Like the Dominion beams during the Dominion War, where they sliced through Miranda Class ships.) This chance is minimal by default.

I have been thinking about the names of the codes too. This isn't what they have to be, its just an idea.

(For ships)
IsBreakable = 1
HullType = "" //Metal, Organic
HullPierceChance = 0.05 //Overridden by codes below
ProjectileDamageDepth = 1.5 //In meters
NadionDamageDepth = 2.25 //In meters
AntiMatterDamageDepth = 5.1 //In meters
PlasmaDamageDepth = 2.7 //In meters
FireDamageDepth = 0.6 //In meters
AcidDamageDepth = 1.7 //In meters

(For Weapons)
CanBreakCraft = 1
DamageType = "" //Projectile, Nadion, Antimatter, Plasma, Fire, or Acid

All the textures will show the 'internals', and should have bump maps.

Comments?

posted on July 20th, 2012, 6:28 pm

I don't think so. There are too many technical barriers.

First off, I think the ships are too small in general to have that kind of detail, both in terms of on-screen size and model size. BC models have, at minimum, 2-3 times the poly count of an FO ship which means there's lots - I use "lots" relatively here - of geometry to break apart. And there are only a handful of ships on-screen at any one point in BC as opposed to hundreds in FO.

Secondly, that kind of procedural texturing and breakage takes a lot of coding work, more than may even be possible. Breakage models are the kind of thing which kind of have to be in there from the beginning. Not to mention that there would be a considerable memory usage increase as well as processing increase when dealing with large numbers of ships.

Third. I could be wrong, but I believe the breakage is actually predefined somehow in the BC models. That is, I don't think it's procedural, although I could be wrong. To get that into FO you might have to go so far as to create multiple versions of an SOD which would necessitate loading multiple files or doing it on the fly and switching data blocks out and...yeilch.

Trust me, it would get messy and that level of detail isn't really need in an RTS because it will largely go unnoticed.

Now, as I recall A2 did have some (rather lame) little damage effect which it would stick on ships. I also remember that when your engines were damaged, they would vent little plasma streams. Now if the devs could bring that back, that would be cool.

posted on July 20th, 2012, 6:44 pm

as I recall A2 did have some (rather lame) little damage effect which it would stick on ships. I also remember that when your engines were damaged, they would vent little plasma streams. Now if the devs could bring that back, that would be cool.

if they could replace those with ones that look decent like this that would be cool


however i dont think its possible to get something like this



way to much info for each ship considering its an rts, all those ships would need way more polys and hidden textures (i assume, from what iv read about such things anywho)

posted on July 20th, 2012, 6:55 pm

I don't think so. There are too many technical barriers.
Now, as I recall A2 did have some (rather lame) little damage effect which it would stick on ships. I also remember that when your engines were damaged, they would vent little plasma streams. Now if the devs could bring that back, that would be cool.

first off: The hull-damage on ships visually applied by crew-loss. yellow crew-status gave some small damage-effects and red-crew-status (or crewless) did display several of these texture-overlays.

The devs already plan to bring visual ship-damage into FO, but in a way that is more logical. Until then, we will always have visibly untouched objects on screen, wether or not they're damaged or not.

posted on July 20th, 2012, 6:57 pm

here is a pic of equinox venting to refer back to the a2 venting



would be nice for the assimilated bits to look abit more like also

posted on July 20th, 2012, 7:04 pm

Hull damage can also be set to show depending on what systems have been destroyed, but this can oddities when something is temporarily disabled by, say, a nebula.

I think the best thing to do would be to figure out how to get the crew damage tears changed to reflect the hull health instead and just ignore sub-system damage sprites. This would take some more engine changes, but it would help with porting ships back and forth and be a bit more logical than the stock system.

posted on July 21st, 2012, 3:13 am

Atlantisbase, your right. When I first thought about this, I knew there would be a lot of coding involved, and I wasn't sure if that would work.

However, I don't think that the ships in BC actually have break models. The ships, when damaged, actually have another geometry made beneath the damaged area that gets progressively larger as its hit. When it reaches the other side, and the section is completely open, it will create a new entity using the piece ripped off, removing it from the model and making it an object that other ships can slam into, damaging them. When the ships explode, the same happens, but on a much larger scale, leaving smaller sections behind. (This is just my observation. It may, or may not, be the case.)

I think the best thing to do would be to figure out how to get the crew damage tears changed to reflect the hull health instead and just ignore sub-system damage sprites.

I think something similar can be added. Several separate textures that the computer can overlay if a subsystem is 'destroyed'. These can be as simple as the picture hellodean showed, the Defiant's damaged nacelle, that would make it easier and might be better then what I proposed. Disabled systems should have an electric effect around them.

posted on July 22nd, 2012, 3:43 am

Alright, been thinking about the overlay idea proposed above. To show it, I made a simple texture remake for the Sovereign.

Here, the weapons system is 'destroyed', and it shows it with a burning area on the phaser array.

According to the idea, several overlay textures could be made that the computer could set on the hull when a system is 'destroyed'. I don't know what 'disabled' would look like.

It's not my best work, but it works.

Comments?

Attachments

Armada2 2012-07-21 20-06-14-43.jpg (67.36 KiB) Viewed 1216 times

posted on July 22nd, 2012, 4:39 am

I don't know what 'disabled' would look like.

Unfortunately, the engine does not currently differentiate between disabled and destroyed for those things. I don't think it distinguishes disabled/destroyed from not even present either, but I don't feel like checking right now. (if you want to test that last bit you can tweak a stock install so that the Akira or something doesn't have engines then build one; there should be an emitter going off on the nacelle)

Anyway, if it could be set up, simply having sparks or something else fairly subtle, compared to chunks of hull missing anyway, could make for a good disabled effect. A little bit of electricity arcing across a phaser strip could be a good disabled weapons effect, or the interior lights from quarters and things going out or changing a different color (red maybe?) could work for disabled life support.

posted on July 22nd, 2012, 6:25 am

Maybe the engine could be coded to use sparks as a disabling feature. It can already tell the difference between disabled and destroyed, so why cant it be told to use a spacific effect when disabled and the overlays when destroyed.

A little bit of electricity arcing across a phaser strip could be a good disabled weapons effect, or the interior lights from quarters and things going out or changing a different color (red maybe?) could work for disabled life support.

That would look cool. Disable engines, see sparks fly from the nacelles. Destroy weapons, see the charred remains of the phasers and torpedoes until they're repaired. That would look sweet.

posted on July 27th, 2012, 9:52 pm

I played Armada 1 yesterday, and I missed a couple of things, the module system for the borg in fleet ops, and the minor, but visible damage effects for the engines is nice and I wish we still had it in fleet ops

posted on August 2nd, 2012, 9:02 am

We have talk about this already.

viewtopic.php?t=4251

posted on August 2nd, 2012, 2:39 pm

We have talk about this already.

I just read it. Very interesting. I hadn't seen it , and some of it is exactly what I suggested, or a work around.

I hope the Dev Team is capable of making it work. That would be cool to see it work, even if you dont leave debris.

Also, in it, there was the mention of husks you can scavenge. I figured out how to make them, but I dont have any destroyed models, so husks look like they are brand new. I could post how to do it, on request, in my Help with Mod forum.

posted on August 2nd, 2012, 2:55 pm

The easiest thing to do would be to add vents for system damage. Just needs some tweaking with the emitters. But I gather that something fancier is in the works

It is possible to give ships some serious damage effects with the original engine, but I can personally attest that this is enormously labour intensive and time consuming.. lol

I little shameless plug. With bump mapping and proper glow support in A2, this would look much better:

posted on August 2nd, 2012, 3:13 pm

Sounds good for when a Life Support or Engines are disabled. Manually venting plasma should also be added so it looks like your ship is dead in the water.

Anyone find the old Armada vents annoying. Atmosphere was a blue-white. Shouldn't it be more like ice crystals? Plasma was an orange-red color. Not complaining about that much.