[Miracinonyx100]

Can a WC FS2 mod in addition to having the whole ship take damage, have parts of the ship that can take a certain amount of damage (say the conning tower) before being blown off without necessarily having to blow the whole ship up?

An idea of mine is a mod that would combine WC-2 and WCP style damage... the ship takes a certain amount of damage cumulatively, but you could also blow off the bridge, knock out engines and stuff... can that be done?


Victoria Kent,
[email protected]

[karajorma]

It is possible but the model has to have been designed with that sort of thing in mind.

[Wanderer]

That was already in FreeSpace 1...

Subsystems and/or submodels can be shot off from the ships - that is assuming the ship in question in modeled and setup properly.

[--Steve-O--]

is there a way floating around to have parts be shot off a ship but not be deleted by the game engine? say you shoot off a panal, that panel then tumbles away like normal ship debris do post-destruction, but without the parent ship actually being destroyed. this would be cool for large objects, having to dodge junk falling of while flying through said object.

[Miracinonyx100]

But can you set it up that that part comes off the ship... after say 300 units of armor are destroyed... but also the ship additionally takes some damage too...  Hypothetically?

V Kent

[gevatter Lars]

If you are thinking about a system like in "StarTrek Bridge Commander" no its not possible. The closest you could do is to build a ship out of many small parts that can be damaged and blow off and so simulate damage to different areas of the ship.
Else you could make bigger chunks like only haveing each engine, tower and other bigger parts seperate objects that can be damaged.
As for blowing armor if...you could even go so far and create layers for armor models...but this goes so much into crazy modeling and could become a performance issue. Last one is a guess first one is for sure ^_^

In any case this would be quite some work to plan and model. Except for Bridge Commander I don't know of any engine that supports destructable ships or even objects in this kind of detail.

[Miracinonyx100]

The idea of having destructable engines, turrets, sounds like a good idea.  With the ships components, is it only a matter of the left-side, right side, top side, bottom side, front and back taking damage, or can you more accurately specify it? 

Additionally, can you design a mod so that when an engine's knocked off the ship's speed lowers to reflect the loss of thrust?


Victoria Kent

[ssmit132]

is there a way floating around to have parts be shot off a ship but not be deleted by the game engine? say you shoot off a panal, that panel then tumbles away like normal ship debris do post-destruction, but without the parent ship actually being destroyed. this would be cool for large objects, having to dodge junk falling of while flying through said object.

Doesn't the AWACs and Rahu do this?

[Miracinonyx100]

Dear Lars,

Regarding Bridge-Commander...  How would you judge it overall compared to FS2?

(And just a hypothetical...) Is it possible to re-program the Freespace 2 engine, in otherwords add features that would allow the Bridge Commander style of damage adding-up...  I'm not the most knowledgeable here, but how much programming would be needed to do that?


Victoria Kent 

[Wanderer]

The way the game works - unless specified otherwise - when you shoot at a target. If your shot hits the targets hull (ie. place where there is no subsystems (like engines, communications etc.) or submodeled subsystems (like rotating dish in Fenris, turrets etc.) then the shot damages only the targets hull. If there is a subsystem in the spot where the shot hit then both the subsystem and the hull take damage (unless otherwise specified). When the subsystem has been reduced to 0 hitpoint it is destroyed. With 'non-modeled' subsystems this means that there is a visible explosion effect as well as the other effects related to that particular subsystem. In case of modeled subsystems the same thing happens but in addition the 'working' subsystem model is removed from the game and replaced with 'destroyed' subsystem model (if such has been made and specified).

Also can't really remember off hand if engine subsystem damage slows the ship but full engine subsystem destruction certainly stops it. More complex behavior can ofcourse be added in mission design.

Doesn't the AWACs and Rahu do this?

Yep

[gevatter Lars]

Bridge Commander is made, as the name suggests, for a totaly different type of gameplay where you are standing at the bridge of a ship and command it. Its more a capship simulator. If you wanted to create a game where you could command a group of destroyers or so it would be my choise to try modding. The other game would be Klingon Academy since its similar in design but I can't get it running without crashing on my system.
Since you are searching for a fighter based game its not that kind of good option. Still it could be done to a degree to get bridge commander into a fighting game. I have used the Klingon Bird of prey in a kind of fighter style. With some stats modding and a smaller models you might be able to get fighters into it. You would also have kind of simple person models and animation to create cutscenes...that is if they are changeable.
Best thing is you would go and ask people who are modding the game what is possible...I can only theorise.

As for changeing the FS2 engine to create that kind of damage model...I guess it would be quite difficulte...maybe a coder can say something about it.

Still as Wanderer pointed out you could still simulate a Prophecy like damage model by creating submodels.

[Vasudan Admiral]

is there a way floating around to have parts be shot off a ship but not be deleted by the game engine? say you shoot off a panal, that panel then tumbles away like normal ship debris do post-destruction, but without the parent ship actually being destroyed. this would be cool for large objects, having to dodge junk falling of while flying through said object.

Yeah - you're referring to live debris and it is extensively used on the Boadicea. I've never looked into precisely how it works, but a quick check suggests you just name the debris parts after the subsystem you want them to be a part of. Ie:
"debris-<SubsystemName>##" where the ## denotes the number of that particular debris chunk of that non-destroyed submodel. (The boadicea has one subsystem with 7 chunks, so it looks like there's no real limit on the number you can have.)

I also don't know if you can define debris chunks for non-submodel subsystems. You might well be able to.

[--Steve-O--]

interesting... looks like i have a new set of experiments to embark on then.