Oolite Bulletins

I have been looking at the code for taking damage, and it seems that taking energy damage causes player (but not npc) ship temperature to increase. I was thinking that I should add the same to npc (and to also take into account insulation).

I was also thinking that scrape damage should probably also give frictional heating.

Overall, I am not too sure about the implications of making temperature related changes. I already discovered that quite often during testing I get killed not by direct fire but by being superheated by energy damage and boiling alive.

As it stands (I think) is that any hull energy damage goes directly onto temperature, meaning that for any energy damage over about 200 this will start to incur thermal damage on top of the basic hit. I think this is only really interesting for high damage weapons like missiles.

Anyone got opinions on the subject? Should I make npc subject to the same thing? Thats not trivial as they dont have shields, so all hits are on the hull, maybe if they are at less than 75% energy i can assume a hull hit?

I think it makes sense to apply it to the NPCs too, taking into account the considerations you describe. I would also try to make sure that NPCs being actually destroyed by this is a rare case. It's OK if one knows that thermal damage can lead to destruction, but for a new player, seeing a ship blowing up for no apparent reason might seem strange and spoil their battle.

and a ship that overheats and dies probably will not count as a kill.

Cmdr James wrote:

and a ship that overheats and dies probably will not count as a kill.

The laser leads to instant temperature increase, if I observed it properly. If so, my idea would be as follows: the code that would add the temperature upon a hit should also check for ship-death by heat. That way the kill can be counted and a player killing by heat would probably not be able to tell if the kill comes from laser or heat. The heat drops pretty quick when no further shots are taken! I only noticed the heat effect because of trumbles screaming in pain...but none did die because of the heat...

Screet

Making the NPC ships suffer for their own heat damage makes a lot of sense.

I could see the situation where the crew is killed during battle and the ship goes rogue, flying in a straight line until it hits something or is destroyed. (Maybe introducing a new npc class, rogue star ship for a easy credit score but no kill ranking.) It's in keeping with the Dark Wheel novella too, if I remember correctly, as there is a battle scene where one ship is destroy in the flames of the sun.

It would certainly add another dimension to the game play.