Displaying enemy damage states

[BrutishVulgarian]

Crewmen hanging over the stern banging on the rudder with hammers and crowbars.    

[Chustler]

I would find it fun to try a no health bars option once damage becomes visible..

[Johny Reb]

At least no health bars for the enemy. I still need to see the condition of my ship.

[PIerrick de Badas]

I would say:

For the others ships, No Bar because as said before, when you see a ship sunking why spending time to finish it althought it's going to sunk anyway? So i would say colors indicator. Hull in green, ships is 75-100% ok, ship orange, armor is 50-75% ok, ship red, armor is 25-50% Black armor, there is 0-25%armor.

About hull, we may see it with water pomp or with the same color indicator

 

The goal is to no tell to muchabout ennemy.

 

About your ship, bar is ok, you are on the ship so you can kjnow exactly what damage it tages.

[Johny Reb]

Originally I could take or leave the battle damage but that opinion was biased towards my experience with potbs and its inability to zoom in on the targeted enemy. With NAs application of the spyglass it turns zooming into the enemy ship a common occurrence and I definately think battle damage could be shown in a meaningful way.

 

I also like Pierre's compromise of colors. No strict statistics on th eother ships health but color coded ranges of the other ships damage state.

[Alex Connor]

An Il2 Sturmovik style visual damage system would be perfect here (and main page says some team members of NA have worked on Il2 so really is perfect  ).

 

For people who haven't played Il2 I'll explain it.

 

The main body of the ship (aircraft) is broken down into a number of sections. I'd suggest left and right bow sections, left and right centre hull, left and right stern, and the stern gallery and deck each as one section. So the hull has 8 parts. Each part has several damage states, undamaged, lightly damaged, moderately damaged and heavily damaged, each stage showing an increasing amount of cannonball holes and other damage (stern gallery windows broken, bodies on deck to show crew damage etc). This could be done with simple textures or perhaps "real" 3D damage (although the latter would require more work).

 

Masts could just be broken into the 3 main mast sections and spars, no need for damage states, when a part is destroyed it falls or disappears, except maybe vertical mast pieces are replaced by a stump.

 

Cannon that are destroyed can be shown by swapping the normal cannon model for a dismounted one.

 

Il2 also had smoke and fire for engine and fuel tank damage, for NA fire could also be present (although it should be quite rare) and instead of smoke water being pumped. Last parts would be flooding makes the ship sit lower in the water (also affects motion in the water) and sails show holes from damage (simple transparent areas in the textures).

 

With this system you could look at a ship and see exactly how damaged it is, no need for any type of health bar.

[BungeeLemming]

 

tadaaaa there is one totally "realistic" damage model of a car. The engine calculates damage on a physic they coded.

pretty impressive but well..