[jc4jc]

I was just working on one of the many mods I'm apart of using a new tbl created by a another team member. I used the new Debug version of Fred2Open, 3_6_5, and I got that annoying message that the hitpoint were collectively equal to or greater than the ships total hitpoints. IS there be anyway this can be removed?

[StratComm]

Have we ever gotten an explanation as to why having subsystems with more collective hitpoints than the ship was actually a problem?  With the subsystem damage modifier, it can be hard to balance turret and subsystem armor on a lighter ship and come in under the limit, and it shouldn't matter that their hitpoints are higher anyway.

[TopAce]

I don't think V added that limit only for fun. It must have a reason. I say let's try removing the limit and see how it works.

[Goober5000]

The limit was there before, but I added the warning to enforce it.  It's there basically because of the principle that the whole cannot be smaller than the sum of its parts.  Removing it would lead (and has lead) to strange behavior and potential crashes.  

The limit is not going to be removed.  Just do some more number crunching.

[Taristin]

It doesn't make any sense, to me, for the subsystems of a ship to take more damage than the ship itself. Am I missing something?

[Pnakotus]

If all hits were addressed to one or another system, it would make sense; the 'total' hp would just be all the systems added together.  But its not; most fire lands on 'neutral' or 'useless' parts of the ship, doing no system damage at all but eroding its health.  Oh, for a decent, wargame-style damage system...

[NGTM-1R]

Originally posted by Raa
It doesn't make any sense, to me, for the subsystems of a ship to take more damage than the ship itself. Am I missing something?

Some parts of the ship have thicker armor then the main hull. Perfect sense.

[Goober5000]

And those are represented by higher percentages.  But since all subsystem damage is also applied to the hull, the subsystem hitpoints have to be less than or equal to the hull hitpoints.

[StratComm]

But they are not necessarily applied to the hull at a 1:1 ratio.  I could easily load up with stilletos and disruptors and take out every subsystem on a ship without dropping its hull strength below 90%.

[Goober5000]

That's subsystem disruption/disabling.  Any actual damage (the sort of damage that would be caused by firing the Stiletto against a bare hull) is caused regardless of whether it hits a subsystem or not.

[WMCoolmon]

How would it crash the game, though? Or is it one of those 'it just does' things?

[NGTM-1R]

I'm not aware that it actually does crash the game. The GTE Vidar from Warzone has this, but I've never had it cause problems.

[Goober5000]

Originally posted by WMCoolmon
How would it crash the game, though? Or is it one of those 'it just does' things?

"It just does."  Volition has an Assert in their original code with no commenting.  I think I traced a problem back to this once, but I forget the details.  And the bug may not become readily apparent with subsystems that add up to between 100% and 110% of the hull.

I've tried to determine what this safeguards against, but it may be one of those things that only becomes apparent when it's removed.

I experienced that when I recoded something with the attack-subsystem code.  I changed the implementation of a flag so it would make more sense, but upon running the build I got several dozen errors from functions that "assumed" the flag would behave in a particular way.  It was simpler just to change it back.

[jc4jc]

Well I have had problems with getting ships that posess a large amount of turrets and the other "primary" systems lost a large amount of much needed hitpoints, ex. the Galaxy class. couldn't we find some way other than simply increasing the hitpoints of the ship in general. we could make a subsystem hardpoint pool or something.

[Bobboau]

well is there actualy code that you have found to have problems? subsystems have there hitpoints set up in a seperate plane than the rest of the ship hitpoints so the retorical summis more than the total argumant is BS. sence there are a lot of ships that have realy realy big (rotateing subobject, and soon to be animated subobjects) subsystems and if you set it up so these don't get destroyed easily then all the turrets and other subsystems are going to be 'bump into them and they explode' delicate. as far as I know there isn't anything wrong with this it was just assumed that there was and it was enforced as such, V did have a habbit about warning about things that didn't realy matter while ignoreing the realy big problems.

[Goober5000]

You forget that subsystem strength increases as hull strength increases.  A turret with 1% strength on a Fenris is much easier to destroy than a turret with 1% strength on a Colossus.  So while you need more turrets on the Colossus, you have more hull strength available to play with.  So you can set them to 0.125% and so forth.

If you want to fix this, go right ahead.  I'm not so sure it can be fixed.  But for the time being, it stays as it is.

[Gregster2k]

I believe however that it should be possible to include really tough turrets. Think about it: If you have a new ship with some ridiculously powerful superweapon you'd shield the superweapon with tougher armor than the ship itself, because its more than likely more expensive than the ship!

Building upon this idea, if it is perfected, I think we need to be able to define faces in a POF model itself or in ship data that are deemed "weak" or "strong" points in a ship's geometry. For example, the Hecate would have a weak point in its "neck" at the front.

The point is that ship designers could place the weak points where most of the defenses are and make it sorta like those oldschool games where the very place you need to fire to destroy the battle cruiser is the same spot where its energy weapons come out of.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Bobboau
subsystems have there hitpoints set up in a seperate plane than the rest of the ship hitpoints so the retorical summis more than the total argumant is BS. sence there are a lot of ships that have realy realy big (rotateing subobject, and soon to be animated subobjects) subsystems and if you set it up so these don't get destroyed easily then all the turrets and other subsystems are going to be 'bump into them and they explode' delicate.

Won't non-targetable subsystems largely solve this though? All you'd need was an event that blew the subsystem (or stopped it rotating) as soon as the ship had taken a certain amount of damage.

Not prefect but better than fragile turrets surely?

[StratComm]

Actually they'll make it worse, as there will be more things to have to divide hitpoints up among.  The common solution to large rotating things is the 0% special case IIRC, which means the part gets rendered all the time but flashes like its disabled when it gets targeted.

[TrashMan]

Originally posted by Goober5000
And those are represented by higher percentages.  But since all subsystem damage is also applied to the hull, the subsystem hitpoints have to be less than or equal to the hull hitpoints.

No..it makes no sense.. Currently, you are able to destroy EVERY single turet on a ship (with normal weaponry), save one and the ship is still in tact.

For instance, take a WW2 battleship - the armor on it's turrets was so thick, that there is no way you could have destroyed them without blasing the whole ship in the process...

That limit makes sense number-wise, but simulating armor with hitpoints doesn't make sense if done that way.