The ships should be made to have regional damage. I.e. if they get repeatedly shot in a wing, the wing falls off, the game already has some of that, but it wont affect performance, i.e. if your wing is detailed in red on your HUD as being ultra damaged, the weapon will still fire, nevermind that the wing has been all but obliterated according to the HUD. This way it can be easier to disable targets, without destroying them. You could also disable engines (but the ship could still maneuver on thrusters, how else does it turn? and it could fire weapons), or with a few good shots to the cockpit, take out the electronics equipment and have the entire thing shut down, besides the jettison function of course, so that you could disable a ship and take its cargo, and not have to actually kill the pilot, making them happy not to loose an expensive ship, and making the pirate happy because they now have cargo. This also might mean that repairing ships would no longer be free, except in home sectors, it should still be free there.

Some people argue that structural damage won't have an effect on flight dynamics. But then you gotta question where all the maneuvering thrusters are mounted. So yeah, I'd say losing a wing or tail fin or whatever would in fact limit the way you move. Perhaps not so extreme as to make you go out of control, but more like disabling single/multiple axes of movement so the player would need to compensate for the damaged ship.

On a less extreme side, you could dump the idea of physical damage and simply make it so the red spots on the damage indicator reduce the speed at which those thrusters specifically function. In other words you won't be able to turn towards that side as fast as the other side. We could assume there's additional maneuvering thrusters installed on the fuselage to make up for the lost ones on the damaged wing, which could explain why this occurs. If there's anything you learn about the space vessels/satellite systems of today, it's that everything is installed in a redundant fashion to reduce the chances of total system failure. This could be one of those cases.

To sum up the new and improved damage system:

-Damage indicated on left/right wings on the damage indicator could reduce the rate at which you turn left/right side respectively.

orange: 25% loss of speed of direction
amber: 50% loss of speed of direction
red: loss of axis control of direction

-Damage indicated on the nose cone of the damage indicator can disable your weapons and/or radar and/or HUD.

orange: loss of HUD
amber: loss of radar
red: loss of weapons

-Damage indicated on the fuselage of your damage indicator can slow down the retrorockets used for strafing.

orange: 25% loss of speed
amber: 50% loss of speed
red: loss of strafe control

-Damage indicated on the engines of the damage indicator can reduce your maximum boosting thrust.

orange: 10% loss of speed
amber: 20% loss of speed
red: 30% loss of speed

How 'bout it? Not as extreme as having parts of your ship fall off, but it's still better than what we have now, where the ships magically stay together until they reach 0% and explode. Kaboom!

Slow that loss of speed down. A lucky hit would be all that was needed to kill your opponent. As soon as you hit them the first time, their manuverabilty will be dropped by soo much that there is a very slim change your opponent has a chance to fairly fight back.

Arolte: yes! That's an awesome idea. Have system damaged based on the amount each part of the hull gets damaged.

"-Damage indicated on the nose cone of the damage indicator can disable your weapons and/or radar and/or HUD.

orange: loss of HUD
amber: loss of radar
red: loss of weapons"

Couple things: if you lose your HUD then wouldn't you also lose your radar? And total weapons loss seems a bit drastic, perhaps you could say R.O.F. is halved or only fires sporatically. The same actually goes for the hud and radar loss. This is what I would recommend:

orange: radar range halved
amber: HUD flickers in and out (no HUD for approx. half the time)
red: weapons fire sporatically (rate of fire effectively halved)

"Damage indicated on left/right wings on the damage indicator could reduce the rate at which you turn left/right side respectively.

orange: 25% loss of speed of direction..."

When you say loss of speed of direction, you are talking about torque, right? Why not just say torque is decreased by 25%? Again, I also think it would be a bad idea to kill the torque completely. If you lost both turning and strafe it could happen that you would never be able to get back to the station! How about:

orange: 25% decrease in torque
amber: 50% decrease in torque
red: 75% decrease in torque

"Damage indicated on the engines of the damage indicator can reduce your maximum boosting thrust.

orange: 10% loss of speed..."

This sounds great, but I would also include loss of non-boosting thrust under this. I was under the impression that the engines are used for both thrusting and turboing, since they light up even when you are not turboing. Also, I had another idea for fuselage damage... so here is what I would suggest:

orange: 10% decrease in turbo top speed, 10% loss of thrust
amber: 20% decrease in turbo top speed, 20% loss of thrust
red: 30% decrease in turbo top speed, 30% loss of thrust

The fuselage is presumably where the cargo is carried, right? I thought it would be cool if as the fuselage is damaged, maximum cargo capacity is decreased. Any widgets above the maximum cargo capacity would be automatically jettisoned into space as the fuselage was damaged.

orange: 33% loss in cargo capacity
amber: 66% loss in cargo capacity
red: 100% loss in cargo capacity

For a bus, this would mean it would lose 2 cargo when it's fuselage turned orange, 4 cargo when it turned amber, and all 6 cargo when it turned red. This may also decrease the number of fatal pirating incidents, if some of the cargo gets blown out into space before the ship dies.

Here's another idea: have the battery damaged as the fuselage is damaged.

orange: 10% loss of battery capacity, 10% decrease in recharge rate
amber: 20% loss of battery capacity, 20% decrease in recharge rate
red: 30% loss of battery capacity, 30% decrease in recharge rate

Of course it would have to be either the battery or the cargo that gets damaged as the fuselage gets hit, unless there is a separate component of the ship on the damage indicator that represents the battery.

Another idea would be to have a list of things that could go wrong, and depending on where the ship is hit, some things would be more likely to happen than others. Here's a number of possible things that could happen:

Engine:

Thrust could decrease
Torque could decrease
Engine top speed (non turbo) could decrease
Thrusters could fail in a particular direction
Turbo thrust could decrease
Turbo top speed could decrease
Turbo energy usage could increase
Turbo could fail


Weapons:

Weapons could fire sporatically (R.O.F. decreased)
Weapon energy usage could increase (energy weapons only)
Weapon ammo capacity could decrease (ammo weapons only)
A particular weapon port could get knocked out
Weapons could fail
Autoaim "cone of fire" could decrease
Autoaim could become erratic (firing anywhere within the cone)
Autoaim could fail

Radar/HUD:

Radar range could be decreased
Radar could flicker intermittently
Radar could fail to show particular objects (wh, or stations, or homers etc.)
Radar could fail
Targeting computer could fail (no target lock)
Homer warning could fail
"Hit Target" beep could fail
HUD could flicker intermittently
Particular HUD indicators could fail (lead target, or speed indicator, or crosshairs etc.)
HUD could fail


Battery:

Battery capacity could be decreased
Battery recharge rate could be decreased
Battery could fail (you would only be able to thrust and fire ammo weapons, no warp or turbo or energy weapons, would have to /explode if stranded)

Hull:

Cargo capacity could be decreased (excess cargo would be jettisoned)
Docking range could be decreased (would have to get closer to a dock before docking)
Hull could be breached (hull points would gradually drain)

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. Feel free to add to this list. Some of these items I know would spell doom for the player, leaving them no choice but to /explode. I'm not necessarily for these, I was just trying to think of *every* possible thing that could be made to go wrong.

Here's another point: if a system gets damaged, should it cost extra to repair that system, or should everything get automatically repaired just by repairing the hull?

edit: included Galorin's autoaim idea.

Keep in mind that red damage status rarely occurs on the damage indicator. It's when you're in a REAL big trouble, or at about 5% hull integrity. So it's not like your weapons or engines will fail on you every time you encounter an enemy and take the slightest bit of damage. It'll occur at times when you cheat death and escape with very little hull left, and assuming you get hit directly at the same region over and over. And because you rarely get hit at every single region as you take damage, your chances of having multiple system failures is also minimal.

Not only will this damage system look and feel cool, it could also be used tactically for people with lower autoaim weapons. Tired of watching your enemy run away at the last second? Simply knock out their engines and then finish 'em off while they struggle to escape. Stuff like that, you know, adds a lot more depth to the game than just pointing and shooting.

PS: You're right about the HUD and radar being connected. If they could make them separate entities it might work out. I'm not too sure about what else could be damaged. Maybe someone else can think of more things.

How about adding the autoaim to things that go wonky when the nosecone is hit? I figure it could become erratic, and get progressively worse (or not) until it stops operating completely. for some weapons this wouldn't be as big a deal, but it's an idea.

missile targeting, as well as that indicator for leading the target could also come under this as well. seems like the radar would play a part in all these, but that's just my thinking.

I still think that a few good shots to the nose cone would disable computers and electricity or something, and kill the weapons and engines...

If ships armor were raised (and weapon damage) then a good regional damage system could be developed. ALso, in the repair screen, you could choose to only repair part of your ship for cheaper (If repairs stop being free.)

It would be nice if say the right wing was damaged, to keep your left wing at the enemy and protect the damaged parts. As it is now my left wing can be at 100% and right wing at 10%...when I get hit in the left wing boom. I always found that annoying

So people want the high armor/weapon ratio and locational/critical hit systems of battletech?

Works for me.