So, code for it should still be sitting in the unstable branch. It won't be until WELL after 3.6.12 Final, and probably not until after 3.7.0 before it get's looked at being tested in Antipodes.
Woot. That looks great! ...Well, it did back then. I assume that all the given code did was to leave the debris model in one place without applying a velocity to it, or "them" for that matter. Assumably, the individual chuncks would still be destroyable, though having a random detonation time for each piece greater than the default debris explosion period would be desired. Intermittent burning of pieces would also be lovely for this condition.
...Ultimately, it would take a presumably long piece of code to make enough variety that the effect wouldn't have overly-predictable results. For instance, a consideration might be to add something along the lines of (in pseudocode): "If enough of a given hulk's debris has been destroyed, there will be an increasingly random chance of a shockwave/explosion happening at the last position of the ship which will propell the debris away from the central location." Also, the general debris quality of the HTL models would have to be improved.
I was actually thinking of an effect which would be really neat for hulks: A generic "hole" model which would be applied to various (by means of power) "lance" beams - slash beams wouldn't produce this affect. Essentially, the idea is that upon critical damage (in a similar fashion to how the new beam effects can shoot through hulls), the "tube" would be placed along the vector of the killing beam along the central axis of the given ship at the appriate altitude and angle. The tube is only visible from the inside - the normals thus point inward with the nice, glowing debris texture.
The general idea is that the outer limits of the "damage hole" would only be visible from the interior region of the ship - perhaps the outer limits of the "tube" could be disabled (made invisible) by a code which would recognize where to place the effect by means of noting where the "negative normals" of the target model's (ex.: FUBAR Orion) mesh were. Likewise, the tube would make those regions of the mesh on the destroyed (or near dead) ship which were within the target area (a) invisible and (b) not collidableable with - you'd see through the ship! ...Essentially, this would amount to an in-game boolean-like operation which would ultimately let you fly through a hulk! Obviously, upon the given debris piece being destroyed, the area affected by the effect would disappear.
For FSO 9000.
