I've noticed the code relating to armor.tbl and the ability to make certain ships more vulnerable to certain types of weapons. I can't really see too much point to this, aside from making the Lucifer invulnerable to bombs and lasers but vulnerable to beam weapons, easily enough done on a per-mission basis.
But, what if armor damage multipliers were done on a
per texture basis instead? Certain textures like the dark Sathanas scales or the grey Deimos plating could reduce damage while exposed superstructure or less armored parts like the dark Typhon squiggle texture or Orion lights texture can take more damage. Implementation need not be as complex as the armor table and weapon types; it could be along the lines of the subsystems entries in ships.tbl, where you specify the name of the texture and the damage multiplier associated with it. That wouldn't disrupt the retail campaign, but it would be a boon to ship designs that have a heavily armored section and a vulnerable underbelly (see my
Vasudan heavy cruiser for such an example.)
This would make tactics and ship combat even deeper than the usual turret and subsystem targeting. It would mean that it's more effective to deliberately search for and target the chinks in the armor, instead of simply hammering away at whatever part is nearest to you. Imagine flying assault on an installation, and finding just the right sport to plant your bomb that the outer armored carapace would be able to shrug off. As a bonus it's a more realistic method of handling the ambiguity of hitpoints.
I don't know if the code can figure out the texture of the poly that's currently taking damage and scale it accordingly, but if so, it would be a big step towards making combat more tactical and actually implementing model texturing and mapping into gameplay rather than simply aesthetics.
