What's the exact condition for a ship to be destroyed ?

[Anonymissimus]

In particular, what happens if the energy banks are drained to zero but the main shields are still in green condition, as in this typical situation
http://www.mediafire.com/view/ua9b9hbg8 ... energy.png
where my rear laser just killed an asp mark II asassin and I wonder whether I should use some fuel to inject away from some of the attackers or potential attackers.
In the tutorial it says the ship is destroyed, if energy banks are drained to zero but I assume that assumes the ship is also hit on the hull, which can't happen with shields intact ? This situation frequently happens once the military shield enhancement is installed.
It also certainly seems that the presence of cargo and equipment enhances the survivability of the ship when hit onto the hull by being damaged!?

[cim]

In particular, what happens if the energy banks are drained to zero but the main shields are still in green condition

Note that energy is a fractional value and it's quite possible for your ship to be just alive on 0.001 points of energy or less but this to be far too small to be drawn on the HUD so the bar appears empty. If it does actually reach zero you die.

Without installing OXPs I'm not sure there's any effect which would reduce energy to zero while both shields were healthy, though. Lasers, ECM, and other ship equipment which uses energy will automatically cut out if using it would reduce your energy to zero or below. Impact, energy and (perhaps oddly) heat damage has to go through the shields first - even a Q-mine has to get through your shields, though at around 10,000-100,000 damage per second that won't take long.

(To be extremely technical, since you asked for "exact", there are situations in which an OXP can set a ship's energy to exactly zero but not in doing so destroy it, if it does so in a way that doesn't count as "damage", because the ship regenerates a tiny bit of energy from its energy recharge before the destruction condition is checked, but that's a very unusual case)

It also certainly seems that the presence of cargo and equipment enhances the survivability of the ship when hit onto the hull by being damaged!?

It doesn't reduce the energy damage done by the attack, if that's what you mean.

[Anonymissimus]

It also certainly seems that the presence of cargo and equipment enhances the survivability of the ship when hit onto the hull by being damaged!?

It doesn't reduce the energy damage done by the attack, if that's what you mean.

I think that's what I meant. So the presence of cargo and/or equipment doesn't increase the ship's defence (other than defined equipment effects).
So the destruction condition is energy drained to zero by energy damage ? If and only if ? As far as combat/attacks by other ships are concerned at least.
Collisions seem to be far more dangerous, not so much with other ships, but I think I never ever scratched the dock while docking, instead there's always immediate death, no matter how slow I am. This looks buggy.
And sometimes I got destroyed without even knowing what it was as the ship was in good condition, can only assume it was a collision with another ship.

[cim]

Collisions do a lot of damage - especially high speed ones or ones with high mass objects. A Cobra III on full injectors ramming a station ... well, it's not a surprise that the Cobra is destroyed, but there's enough energy in the collision to almost destroy the station too. So you stand no chance if someone rams you at high speed...

Unless you're scraping the dock itself - rather than the station - the sheer mass of the station means you die. There probably should be a damage cap for extremely low speed collisions to make that sort of thing a little more forgiving.

[Anonymissimus]

It's more that low speed collisions mean instadeath. For instance, bounce with speed 10 against the station with a fresh Jameson.
Okay, I just managed to bounce against the dock walls by not adapting to the station's rotation while docking and actually survived it. But at low speed the shields should just bounce you back or something, for ships it works pretty well unless already too weak. On a usual bad docking approach the ship would rather hit the outer part of the station besides the dock with a wing or so and that means instadeath then I guess.
Collisions between ships at cruising speed, even at max for both, and strong shields in good condition are generally survived. Although I use that sometimes to take down a ship that's too hard to hit otherwise.

[Diziet Sma]

Sounds like the minor-docking-accident instadeath problem is still with us.. I miss the old days of (up to) a couple of terrifying seconds of seeing (and hearing!) your shields getting chewed up, before you either died or made it inside by the skin of your teeth.