[Iain Baker]

I’m assuming the answer is ”‘No, the engine can’t do it” and I’m assuming that people have probably asked about this already, but has that  ever stopped me before? 

What’s the possibility of increasing the visual battle damage on ships – cap ships in particular. I’m thinking decals similar to what we see in Homeworld Remastered, scorch marks from weapon impacts, paint scuffed and worn off, atmosphere venting like in Star Wars Squadrons etc? At the moment most weapon impacts just fizzle out and leave nary a scratch.

The temporary glowing marks left by beam raking is cool. If they cooled to leave scorch marks it would be even cooler. 

[ShivanSlayer]

That would make things more interesting, and it does look sort of silly when a large ship at 1% hull strength that seems fully intact other than electricity running over it breaks apart when a beam cannon grazes an antenna

[mjn.mixael]

FSO used to have damage decals. I can't remember if they just aren't used by anyone or if the feature wasn't very good as implemented and then removed. This was waaaay back in the 3.6.7(?) days.

[wookieejedi]

Part of this could be done with the new texture replace sexps. IE have a damaged texture version that gets replaced on ship when the ship's hull goes below a certain level. Impact Decals are a thing mentioned in more recent tables (>=19.0), but I have not played around with them much: https://wiki.hard-light.net/index.php/Weapons.tbl#.24Impact_decal:

[Trivial Psychic]

I've suggested that damage decals could be given deforming bumpmaps so to give the impression of a hole in the ship.  I've also suggested what I call persistent explosions, with fires that hug the hull, kinda like what we've seen on B5.

[Darius]

Damage decals were running into an assert when weapons fire was hitting debris (a "not a ship" error when trying to create decals on the debris) when i was playing around with them last year.

Hadn't managed to get the decal to show up either but that assert was a show stopper.

[Cyborg17]

If you have the energy or time to try again, that sounds like a bug I fixed.  If not, one of us can probably run it through the debugger and see what's going on.