Damage States & Component Health
How Components Take Damage
Components can be damaged through various weapon fire penetrating hull/shields, collision impacts with other objects or terrain, Overheating when operating beyond thermal limits, and fire damage.
Health Percentage System
Each component has a health value from 0% to 100% which will degrade performance of the component the closer to 0% it becomes.
Keeping components repaired is essential to full ship performance.
Component health thresholds will quickly hinder your ship and keeping components repaired is essential to keep full ship performance.
- 100 and 75% health the components will be at full performance
- 75-50% health, minor performance degradation
- 50-25% health, significant performance reduction
- 25-10% health, Severely reduced performance
- 10-1% Near failure performance
- 0% Critically destroyed and non functional. Where power plants will go into critical state and thermal runaway
Hull Section Damage
Hull sections have their own health pools
Known Issues: Once hull sections turn red, they stop registering hit markers. Must damage entire ship to critical before destruction. This creates confusion about whether attacks are landing
Distortion Damage on Components
Distortion damage is a core damage type/behavior. Does not cause any physical damage or harm directly. Distortion shuts down powered entities. Components hit by Distortion-type weaponry, the Power Surge malfunction, etc. fill a Distortion pool, which decays over time. Distortion triggers if the pool fills completely, and disappears if the pool decays below a Recovery Ratio. Current behavior: Component shuts off
The Wear System
Understanding Damage vs. Wear
The Engineering system distinguishes between two types of degradation: Damage and Wear
Damage: Caused by combat, collisions, fires, and direct actions against the component. These can be repaired and restored to a pre-damage state using multi-tools and materials
Wear: Accumulated through normal use over time and will gradually degrade maximum component performance. Wear damage cannot be repaired through multi-tool use which means over time, the only way to restore functionality will be to replace the worn out component. Operating time, high-stress operations (combat, high power usage), and environmental exposure will all effect component wear.
Critical Wear System Issues: Cannot repair wear at any location (only damage). Forces component replacement loop without supporting systems.Fire & Hazard Management
Repair System
Along with the engineering screens, the primary tools an engineer will use is the multi-tools and repair attachments. Using Repair Material Composite (RMC), the player will be able to directly see the health and status of components, weapons, hulls, relays, and more.
An engineer can see component damage either by looking on the engineering screen or in person by aiming their repair tool at the component.
By aiming your repair tool at the damaged item such as a component or ship hull and holding the trigger the player will apply a repair beam that will take time based on component size. This could take quite a bit of time but multiple players working multiple repair tools together can combine their power to speed the process up.
There are however some current repair limitations:
- Jump Drives: Currently cannot be repaired (known bug)
- Unknown Parts: Some components appear on screen but cannot be located physically
