RE: Critical hits (was Limits on armour?)

[John K Lerchey <lerchey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Another issue with directional damage, is that the system HAS to become 
more complex.  You either have to modify the SSD and start to approach 
Star Fleet Battles (ew!) or do something similar.  It's fine to say that 
the Mk 14 Pulselaser turret can be hit from the directions that it can 
fire through, but where's the fire con located?  How about the hyperdrive?

Another way to PSB the random damage is that the component doesn't have to 
be directly destroyed.  It could be a spike in the power conduits, sliced 
fire control link, or any other "collateral damage" explanation. 
Otherwise, how could the damage control parties repair things? ;)

J

John K. Lerchey
Assistant Director for Incident Response
Information Security Office
Carnegie Mellon University

On Fri, 7 Jul 2006, McCarthy, Tom (xwave) wrote:

> > I prefer any system damage done outside of thresholds to simply be
> > "leak" damage (i.e. not critical) of a random system here or there.
>
> Something like, for every DCP hull box eliminated, a single randomly
> chosen system takes a threshold check on 4+ (or 3-) ?  Just an even
> salting throughout the damage track of points where a system might or
> might not go away.
>
>
> > One thing that bugs me about Full Thrust is the fact that you can be
> > attacked primarily from one direction and lose the weapons on the
> > other side of the ship. I know people have PSB to cover it, and I know
>
> > there is no easy fix to the problem.
>
> For directional damage, you'd start getting into the old supership
> builds, with separate quadrants of the ship having separate damage
> tracks and separate systems.
>
> I suppose one could get by with separate damage tracks for quadrants,
> and then threshold checks on a track would be more likely to affect
> nearby systems.  Losing the second row on the port damage track means a
> check on 3+ for port-bearing weapons and 5+ for other systems, for
> example.
>
> Yeah, I'd have to say the game plays better as is.