I think that this game should have a damage model, similar to games like war thunder and flight sims. Hitpoints seal your fate and are lazy. you are going to die the moment the hp runs out, even if the number of hp decreased is based on what part is hit. Instead, for a game based on vehicles, there should be modular damage. In war thunder, if your engine is hit, that doesn’t mean that you are dead, your weapons are still working and you can still score a kill going down. Your plane is only dead if the pilot is dead, the plane blows up or is torn into shreds.
The current plan is to have an actual damage model as you suggest. In the early days of alpha testing, for those who pledge that reward tier, we’ll likely just use hitpoints while we develop the more advanced damage models.
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And as was discussed in the old forum by the community, the Sci-Fi explanation for armor having hitpoints is that it gets decreased equally due to being made out of a liquid metal.
While other games explain it as how many hits an object can take, even if the last blow comes from a needle. 10000 needles, damn cactuar!
I remember a discussion like that on the old forums. I think instead the healthpoints of the liquid metal armor could be the ship’s power reserve for the armor, and if the power reserve for that section of the ship were down, the armor would be down for some time, for example if a lot of fire was concentrated on the armor covering the power reserves, the armor would lose power for a short time and allow the complete destruction of the ship. Kinda like tank armor, some different calibers can penetrate while calibers with penetration under the armor thickness would not pen. same for space combat, I guess. Better guns=more chance of penetration and also draws more from the power reserves. Obviously for bigger ships the fight is not over if the shield is down. They are made of an advanced futuristic alloy that could act as armor, but have a damage model. weapons resembling traditional cannons or machine guns (kinetic weapons) but carrying advanced ammo could be mounted to shred weak spots while armor is down.
Another way to do it is to add armor that acts like skin on knees, slam a shot into the armor, it heals with some power from the ship. This could bring up interesting situations where one section of the tiny armor plates is not healing, and you could easily send a missile into it.
Here goes a game with a very nice damage model: EVERSPACE (trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCxZyRpae6w)
And about the gameplay, the guy was panicking because he his UI to track enemy ships didn’t show up and had to fight enemies following them with the naked eye… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oifd_sAesbU#t=5m15s
But then https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oifd_sAesbU#t=7m15s he notices after fleeing that his sensor had been damaged! Quite interesting feature