Forums » Suggestions

Have badly damaged ships, *act* damaged

Oct 20, 2008 cspag link
This is not my idea, it comes from "some space game" I played years ago. I forget which game it was that had it (Wing Commander? Privateer?), but I thought that it really added a lot to gameplay when my badly shot-up ship was not only spewing smoke, but also vibrating and sputtering just a little bit. Just enough to make me have to occasionally correct the controls. It made running away from a fight when things were going quite badly just a little bit more of an adventure. And it made nursing the "smoking wreck" back to base and landing successfully feel like just a bit of an accomplishment (even though once I got away from whatever was shooting at me it was not really a big deal).

For example:
Ship health 50%-100%: no effect
ship health 25%-50%: ~5-25%/sec(scaling by damage 50%-0%) chance of your ship "wobbling" (flight destination slips about 5% of the screen size)
ship health 10%-25%: above, plus ~5-25%/sec(scaling by damage 25%-0%) chance of your engines faltering for a second
ship health 0%-10%: as above, plus ~10% chance/sec of any player action not occurring (weapon not firing, cargo not jettisoning, mining beam not getting ore, etc.

A (subtle) sound effect could also be associated with each of the three damage event types for added fun. A tearing-metal shriek with the "wobble". A second of eerie silence with the engine falter (and maybe a dim flashing damage indicator on the ship wireframe display). An ominous sputter-arcing with the "any action not occurring" (and maybe a second of static on the ship wireframe display). This will help both with the player "immersion", and the player being generally aware that "something bad" just happened.

The intention here is not to make a shot-up ship helpless, it is to add just a bit of realism to the feel of things. And to put a very small hurdle in the way of a badly damaged ship escaping, which right now is frankly too easy to do. On the plus side, the addition of semi-random course drift would under some circumstances probably help a fleeing ship avoid their attacker, even if they were slightly slowed from their peak speed.
Oct 20, 2008 upper case link
yeah. that's been suggested, but given it's not in the index, you score.

i remember posting something exactly like that a couple of years ago.