An idea would be to gradually test higher-damages for collisions now, instead of when we're going to be zooming through dense astroid fields (As to not skew reality tests)

Indeed. I always did think it was silly how things crashed at relatively high speeds yet took maybe 100 damage...

agreed, maybe 5 x the speed of the ship, or in the case of ship to ship collisions...10 x the speed of both ships combined.

relative speed of course ryan, otherwise it makes no sense.
but you're telling me that if I'm going 65m/s... and I glaze a roid, I should get 325 damage? I'm not sure I agree.

there needs to be a way to distinguish glazes and full-on collisions. Maybe relative speed * % of forward surface area in collision * 5.

if my ship can handle something exploding on it (a flare), or a massive pulse of energy, it should be able to do much better against a roid...

Relative collision damage would make the racetracks far less deadly...

*skims the inside of a tube at 220 m/s*
*splode*

325 damage is nothing compared to even the weakest of ships- A cent has like 6000 hp, right?

Barely a scratch

Thing is, head on collisions do just about no damage at all, while scratching something (especially with a pointy ship part)
at high speed can deal massive amounts.
I think the latter is something of a sideeffect really.

Anyway, it'd be good to improve this.

let's back up a bit. each ship has mass. Let's do collision w/ Newtonian physics (which I bet is the current model).
a ship colliding will slow down a bit based on how big it is and (if it is colliding with a ship), how big the other ship is.

that time defines acceleration, which also defines force. force should define hull damage.

someone better at physics than I explain this please?

We already have the ability to "bounce" off one another, so the game must calculate an angle of attack on the impact.

Maybe we should just set the angle of attack damage to be relative to the severity of the impact.

Ex:
A "graze" or say, 15 degree or less difference in angle, would generate light damage. (1-25%)
(ex: To fighters pass head to head, bottom of Vulture 1, scrapes top of Vulture 2 at a 2 degree angle).

A "strike" or say, 60>x>15 does medium damage (26-69%)
(ex: Vulture dives on other Vulture, fails to completely recover, strikes at a 45 degree downwards dive)

An "Impact" or say, >60 degree difference would generate severe damage (say, 70-75% total)
(ex: Vulture dives on other Vulture, fails to pull up in time, strikes at a 60 degree downwards dive)

And a "Collision" or say, a direct, perpendicular (90 degree) meeting would cause instant fatal damage.
(Vulture dives directly into Vulture 2 forming a 90 degree angle where Vulture 1's nose is the X axis, and Vulture 2's fuselage is the Y axis)

I think the collision detection system/game physics needs to be fixed before we add more collision damage.

i wingbugged the heck out of retractile's centurion in one joust while he was at 100% and died. This happened today. I barely took any damage and i clipped him with my CV wing :P I was 76% after a few positron bolts and his explosion.

something is not right :P

So you are playing again. Time to bust out the ol' alt finder!

Perhaps a different matter, but if one crashes into another ship with a missle payload, perhaps the explosion and damage should be even greater as well. Make komakozi crashes possible.

While I don't dislike the idea of Kamikaze tactics in this game, my thinking is that the kamikaze should need some form of "arming" his weapons.

For realism's sake, I should note that since we can "salvage" weapons systems off destroyed ships, then it stands to reason the missiles are stored in a protective case that is more impervious to blasts than we recognize.

"Arming" the case to explode would in turn cause the detonation of missile payloads and the launcher, instead of merely allowing the launcher to be blown free of the explosion and sit to be collected by the next pilot along.

If your missiles can explode on your explosion, then it stands to reason that I can explode them with my exploding missiles, either via my explosion, or detonation, or through my explosion per se, assisted by exploding missiles, or as a result of the explosion of my missiles due to your exploding missile's detonation.

That's why missiles have protective casing by default.