Critical Hit System
Explosions, in space?
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---->Obligatory Wall of Text Warning<---- Hi, over the past couple weeks I've been slowly trying to flesh out a combat mod for SoaSE. To me the RTS standard "shoot unit X until HP == 0 and dies" is a little dated. I'm a big fan of Company of Heroes; and I know Frogboy is too thanks to the GFW podcast. I was looking for a way to add the variety of a CoH style critical hit system to SoaSE. For those of you unfamiliar with CoH it works this way. The units in CoH have a health pool. As that pool goes down the unit has an increasing chance of incurring a critical hit when it receives damage. The occurrence of a critical hit can do a number of things. For instance it can kill member of the squad, destroy the gun on a vehicle or finally destroy the squad/vehicle. Units in the game can only be killed on a critical hit but, once the unit's health is low it is very likely to happen. If your unit survives the fight it can then be repaired or healed/reinforced back to full health.
I feel a system like this applied to SoaSE would make combat vastly more interesting to experience. After fishing around the game files for a few days though, I realized there's no way I'd be able to add everything I'm envisioning. So in a desperate attempt for some community and hopefully developer attention I thought I'd share what I've been thinking about. Please keep in mind I just want a better game like the rest of you.
Down to the guts. The jist of the combat system I'd like to see implemented is very similar to CoH. Each shot would have a small chance to apply a critical hit to the unit receiving damage. In turn each critical hit has the ability, inversely related to the unit's HP/SP, to apply an effect. In other words the chance of a critical hit applying an effect at full HP/SP would be very near 0%. As the unit recieves damage the chance of an effect would scale upward; more so at the lower HP/SP levels. The chance for a shot to apply a critical hit would also have to be balanced on a per-ship basis due to differences in rate of fire. This would be to prevent ships with a high rate of fire from getting more criticals than slower firing ships. Certain critical hits would have a small front loaded chance of occurring; like shield criticals. Others would have a greater chance of occurring when a unit's HP/SP are low. For instance, the criticals that result in the death of a unit would only happen somewhat sparingly starting at X percent of total health. Their occurrance would then scale up as the unit approaches zero health. Units would only be killable on a critical hit. Also to help reinforced the idea of balanced fleets, I'd propose certain weapon types having slightly higher critical rates versus certain armor types. For example: Anti-Light weapons would have a higher critical hit rate vs Light Armor.
I'll now list and describe critical hits I've thought of for this game. Feel free to skip them. They're just ideas I've been brainstorming for my probably vaporware mod, but I think a few are neat.
The partial loss abilities would occur to a unit above X% of HP/SP, while the complete loss ones would occur to a unit below X% of HP/SP. They would both be on short timers.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have divided critical hit effects into six categories:
*Anti-Matter
+Anti-matter Implosion Deathblow ->Capital ship only
-Very, very rare (Like, single pretty/funny girl who likes videogames/cooking/cleaning rare)
-Creates a temporary small black hole that sucks in all sub-capital class ships in a certain radius below X% health.
-Units above X% health and within the radius will have a DOT effect applied to them while the blackhole is active.
+Anti-Matter Leak
-Anti-matter around the ship reacts, bathing it in plasma
-Causes hull and/or shield damage
+Complete loss in anti-matter regeneration
-Timed
+Partial loss in anti-matter regeneration
-Would be on a timer.
+Temporary Loss of use of abilities
-Also timed.
*Engines
+Engine Core Damage
-Reduction in effectiveness of all other systems
-Ability cool downs increased
-Timed
+Engine Overload Deathblow
-Ship accelerates randomly at a velocity greater than normal
-After a short time the engines overload and the ship explodes violently, dealing damage to the immediate area.
+Loss of linear speed
-Timed
+Reduction of linear speed
-Timed
+Temporary inability to phase jump
-Think of this as spellcast knockback but on the phase jump.
-Would have a maximum delay time to eliminate chaining.
*Hull
+Emergency Management System Failure
-Greatly increases the chance of *Catastrophic Systems Failure(down further)
-I see this ability not happening atleast until the unit is below around 25% health.
+Uncanny Construction
-Ship regenerates X amount of health over Y amount of time.
+Weakened Armor
-Ship's armor value decreased
-Timed
*Miscellaneous
+Bridge Crew Killed
-Command controls on the ship randomly blew up upon ship receiving fire.
-Ship temporarily inoperable while stations are being re manned.
-It's going to happen on spaceships, Star Trek proves it beyond any doubt.
+Catastrophic Systems Failure Deathblow
-Ship explodes at whatever health it's at currently
-Almost impossible at higher health but, chance of happening increases with hull damage. IE: Less than 10%
-Occurrence would be modified based on the cost of the ship. More expensive = less likely
+Command and Control Failure
-Ship is temporarily unable to be controled by the player.
-Unit defaults to AI control patterns
-Effect triggers a timer and wears off afterwards
+Defiance Deathblow
-Ship recieves a deathblow, continues to fight for X seconds then explodes
+Deflectors Down
-Differs from Shielding
-Applies a slow temporary DOT on the ship as space debris slowly works away the hull
+Life Support Failure Deathblow
-Ship continues to fight normally
-Ship becomes useless space junk after X amount of time.
*Shields
-Shield effects would be front loaded and happen toward the start of the fight or versus
targets with laden shield pools. Need to be modified to not unfairly punish Advent.
+No shield regeneration
-Timed
+Reduced shield regeneration
-Timed
+Shield Overload
-Ship's shields massively over energize causing them to expand very rapidly, generating an EMP pulse
-Deals EMP damage to surrounding area and leaves the effected ship with reduced shields.
*Weapons
+Computer Damage
-Greatly reduced weapon accuracy
-Timed
+Disabled Weapon
-Main weapon temporarily inoperable
-Can happen to each bank of weapons on the ship
-Timed
+Reduced rate of fire
-Timed
+Weapon System Overload Deathblow
-Ship starts to spin like a gyroscope while firing its guns faster than normal
-Weapons fire damages friend or foe
-After a short period of time the ship explodes violently, dealing damage to the surrounding area
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All of these effects would require an user interface adjustment in order to make the effects clearly distinguishable. I'd propose having some small pop-up text on screen when a critical happens, much like in CoH. One difference though; the text would be preceded by a slightly larger icon. This icon would allow immediate identification of what happened to the ship. My ideas for icons are:
*A rocket for an engine critical
*A bullet for a weapon critical
*A shield for a shield critical
*A plus sign for a hull critical
*An atom for an antimatter critical
*An exclamation point for a miscellaneous critical
These icons could also be used in the Empire Tree to help identify effected ships. I would also like to see the unit portrait be applied in a way that would show which part of the ship is effected. The unit portrait and mouse over text would specifically tell the player which parts of the ship are under duress and how they are effected.
On top of this critical hit system I would like to see a change in the mitigation system. IE: As you max out a ship's shield mitigation, it does less damage and/or moves slower. The reasons for this are that I see an individual ship only having so much power. It can go to weapons, propulsion or shielding. If one of these is being taxed heavily, the other two should suffer. I feel this change might add to the epic aura of fleet vs fleet battles. It would encourage against focus firing as the loss of a ship wouldn't be the only way to reduce the damage output of an opposing fleet. It would allow a player to spread their fleet's firepower around and effectively reduce the other fleet's damage output.
Anywho, this encompasses "my" ideas for combat changes. Once again, I believe the critical hit system and mitigation system would add a lot of variety and randomness to SoaSE combat. I really enjoy the game right now. I think something similar to these changes would make the game even better though. Hopefully all of this could be done without drastically raising system requirements.
Thanks for your time.
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