Euthor
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Posted - 2006.08.11 23:17:00 -
[1]
This isn't exactly a priority thing. Ships balance and all that stuff is a bit more important than "Ooooh, look at my ship." But, I think that new graphics for combat would be great. When weapons impact shields, they should glisten. When a laser hits the shield, little energy ribbons the same color as the beam could dissapate around the area hit. When hybrid weapons hit, the same effect on the shield could occur but with a little plasma cloud around where the shield was hit. Projectile ammo has different damage types, but basically the effects should be:
Turret Damage:
EM: Energy ribbons
Explosive: Shield brightens at impact spot, sparks fly with small puffs of explosions.
Kinetic: Shield brighten at impact spots, and have an effect such as http://www.jeetglassindia.com/bulletshot.jpg (I will refer to this as the BPGE)
Thermic: Where bits of fire lick at shield, they brighten.
Missile Damage:
EM: Energy ribbons envelop all of the shield.
Explosion: Large explosion than brightens a large portion of the shield, and then has a small BPGE
Kinetic: Depends...If missile damage is pure impact damage, it would be similar to a really big Kinetic damage from above. If its more like a missile delivering a very large shot from a UT Flak Cannon, then the shield should be randomly pocked in a radius around the impact, with BPGE at each pock.
Thermic: Shield apears similar to the surface of boiling water, with the center of impact bubbling/distorting the most.
Next when armor starts to get damaged, can it be shown as scorched (Decals, I think its called?) It would also have certain effects (most are the same, just without shield reactions)
Turret Damage
EM: Armor might glow a little bit, and then appear to be scorched
Explosive: Puffs of explosions with particles flying out into space
Kinetic: Bits of armor flying off.
Thermic: Armor will apear to be hot, melting, then will cool off into scorched look.
Missile Damage: This would just be bigger versions of the above turret damage.
Structure Damage would be similar to Armor, but explosions blow out from the ship as it vents atmo etc.
On top of all this. I think turrets should rake across a ship, creating swaths of damage as they go. As the armor takes critical damage, I think parts of structure should appear, with fire. I like to think of Structure damage being the gridlike supports and chassis for the ship. I think that a ship with its armor being cut should be on fire before structure is being damaged.
I apologize in advance if players will have to run EvE through 3dMax just to have all these things rendered, I don't know how hard it would be to implement them.
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