self destruct

posted on August 24th, 2009, 1:04 pm

Self Destruct is already capable of failing, since every race (I think) has abilities that can disable weapons.

posted on August 24th, 2009, 1:09 pm

Do the borg have one?

If not the borg, those who board most of all races would have huge trouble.

posted on August 24th, 2009, 1:15 pm

Well... the Self Destruction system was a prevention of capture. I personally remove it from ships in my mod so people will guard their valuable ships more often. But... the self Destruct caused a lot of problems with several things. For campaigns if you were to accidentally selfdestruct a mission critical ship you have to start over.

Yet I can imagine that maybe a reintroduction of the thing can be done. I personally believe that maybe instead of having a shockwave that causes rediculous damage, I was thinking of maybe some minor damage to low defense value ships as well as a 'push' effect literally throwing ships out of place.

posted on August 24th, 2009, 1:22 pm

Do the borg have one?

If not the borg, those who board most of all races would have huge trouble.

Self Destruct still neds to be activated, and has a countdown so it can be stopped by a skilled boader. A couple of the more Assimilation-heavy Assimilators could take the entire crew of quite a few ship too quickly to set the weapon, especially if they single out a member of a group.

Yet I can imagine that maybe a reintroduction of the thing can be done. I personally believe that maybe instead of having a shockwave that causes rediculous damage, I was thinking of maybe some minor damage to low defense value ships as well as a 'push' effect literally throwing ships out of place.

In my game, it does about 100 points of damage, with the range of the shockwave depending on the empire the built the ship. The shockwave of the largest is only about the size of a medium-ship explosion.

posted on August 24th, 2009, 1:53 pm

Well, what is the damage of a standard photon torpedo in FO. It consists of 1,5 kg Antimatter as far as i know. A starship has a store of many tons of condensed antideuterium. So we may assume that the shockwaves damage somwhere around 10000 times a photon torpedo. Nevertheless the energy-density and thus the damage is distributed over the whole angular sphere, and loosing strenght over distance by radius².

A warbird in medium distance covers in my rough estimation 1/1000 of all angular area, so the damage will probably be equal to 10 photon torpedos. In short range it would possibly be a damage of 40 photon torpedos, 160 or more in dogfight range and 5 in long range. The dmage scales directly proportional with the ships size (To be exact with the facing surface).

[Tyler]

posted on August 24th, 2009, 1:57 pm

Last edited by Tyler on August 24th, 2009, 2:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

FO torps usually tend to do between 20-30 damage, 10 times that would be a little heavy. 160 time that would rip a veteran Galaxy to shreads! And their defenses aren't exactly fragile.

[mimesot]

posted on August 24th, 2009, 2:08 pm

Last edited by mimesot on August 24th, 2009, 3:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I know i know... but that how it would be.

Well, we certainly need to des-realism it. But I would really live to see the damage decay over distance and actually see how deadly a ships explosion is.

Well, lets take my numbers and suggest modifying coefficients: Lets say we divide it all by 5. Do you think thats possible for gameplay?

CORRECTION: I'd suggest a value of 20 now!

posted on August 24th, 2009, 2:13 pm

Well, I think that an engine disable effect paired with the 'push' of the shockwave would be enough, plus I also would allow moderate damage such as 160-200 since it is a one shot deal.

But too much would be asking for a major tip of the scale, I DO NOT want to see damageBase = 1500 in the explosion odf.

posted on August 24th, 2009, 2:18 pm

Inbetween 20 and 30 is 25, so 160x25 then divide by 5? That would be 800. That would destroy a Galaxy's shields and cause a little damage to the hull, while taking about 50% off a veteran Galaxy's shields (if it's in range of the blast). Sounds reasonable.

It would still shred lower-end ships, but most of them are fast enough to outrun the wave if they are told to move fast enough.

Well, I think that an engine disable effect paired with the 'push' of the shockwave would be enough, plus I also would allow moderate damage such as 160-200 since it is a one shot deal.

But too much would be asking for a major tip of the scale, I DO NOT want to see damageBase = 1500 in the explosion odf.

Like the Klingon superweapon from stock?

posted on August 24th, 2009, 2:21 pm

Absolutely ridiculous. Why even use your ships in battle, when you can just blow them up and destroy 10x as many ships as normal!?

This is why self-destruct should stay out--for the same reason that the Bug's collision is being redone: a single unit should not have a superweapon type capability in a fleet based game.

posted on August 24th, 2009, 2:24 pm

Absolutely ridiculous. Why even use your ships in battle, when you can just blow them up and destroy 10x as many ships as normal!?

This is why self-destruct should stay out--for the same reason that the Bug's collision is being redone: a single unit should not have a superweapon type capability in a fleet based game.

There is a reason the one in my game only does 100 damage...I'm just discussing possibilities.

Speaking of possibilities, is there any way of assigning a different explosion file to a Self Destruct or is it limited to just the one the game comes with?

posted on August 24th, 2009, 3:23 pm

I love it when replies totally ignore my post.

>:( >:( >:(

Would somebody rather suggest another calig coefficient for balancing ?

posted on August 24th, 2009, 3:27 pm

It would still shred lower-end ships, but most of them are fast enough to outrun the wave if they are told to move fast enough.

As smaller ships has less facing surface they would not.

posted on August 24th, 2009, 3:28 pm

You're not being ignored Mimesot (I hope)... it would be cool though to implement our friendly radius[sup]2[/sup] for every explosion... that way you have to back away from exploding ships. If self destructing ships had a warning (aka, flashed red or something) then their ability to do a lot of damage could be balanced more readily. However, having them just spontaneously explode without warning and having large destructive properties (regardless of damage decay) could quite easily be abused.

posted on August 24th, 2009, 3:29 pm

if we will reintegrate self destruct, it will be for the sake of destroying YOUR ship, not for blowing up fleets with kamikaze ships.. thats neither star trek nor Federation like.. unlike the Dominion, which already have it