Locational/item damage for vehicles

Saifoda · 2012-06-06, 02:53 PM

Concept is pretty simple for this I think. We're all excited and happy that PS2 will have hit boxes/locational damage for players and vics, but how about seeing some effects to that besides just armor/health damage effects?

I think this would really only work well for vehicles/air vehicles and not so much with infantry (maybe MAX, but I think that might be getting a bit picky and also make MAX's undesirable).

Vehicles (and air vehicles) all have certain components that make them function the way they do -- engines, turrets, weapons, tracks/grav(VS). I'm thinking that if you get, say for example, a direct hit with an AV weapon on the tracks of a vehicle it might damage those tracks directly, making it more difficult to drive (or even completely immobile with, say, two hits). Maybe destroying the gravity generator (or whatever) on a VS magrider would cause it crash to the ground, making it immobile. If you put a direct hit on the main cannon with an AV weapon on a Vanguard (or insert-vehicle-here) would cause that weapon to be immobilized.

Some good examples of this being implemented in other games would be Company of Heroes (damage can be done to engines, immobilizing them, killing gunners, destroying the main gun, etc...) and also Star Wars Empire at War (screenshot below for reference).

http://i2.listal.com/image/866082/93...screenshot.jpg

With the screenshot above you can see that there are several green icons on the super star destroyer (the big ass grey ship, for you non-star wars nerds). There are also some items in yellow and red; these signify damage that has been done to them (yellow being damage sustained and lowered efficiency/effectiveness, and red being destroyed/immobilized).

Also note that from the star wars example above, there are MANY points you can directly target, but obviously for Planetside 2 we're not dealing with any super star destroyers, so there would only be 2 or 3 spots you can damage/destroy on vehicles (and honestly, mostly probably through luck or very well placed shots). I think it would add a level of realism to the game and could balance the vehicles a bit more. For example if you've got a column of tanks moving towards a base, it would probably be better to destroy the tracks/wheels/grav before they get to the base (or the engine) rather than going for the gun; on the other hand if the vehicle is already on a ridge firing down onto a base, it doesn't do you much good to target the tracks/grav, but may be useful to take out the main gun. And obviously these could be repaired by engineers.

Any thoughts on this would be appreciated. And of course if SOE picks up this idea, I call dibs on royalties

Zekeen · 2012-06-06, 03:46 PM

This has been talked about a bit.

My thread on a similar thing, Destructible Vehicle Sections, is here

http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...ad.php?t=41325

Vehicles don't live to long is probably why they don't do too much on this. But I do gotta say, if they had it, it would mean that vehicles could have something disabled before being blasted down to dust.

It's always gonna be an interesting idea though, but could be difficult to add too much to it.

Saifoda · 2012-06-06, 04:14 PM

Thanks Zekkeen. dunno why that post didn't show up in my search

I agree that there could definitely be issues regarding the relative fragility of vehicles as they are (looks like 3 or 4 guys with grenades or heavy assault could do a lot of damage to a tank at this point).

One thought for balancing this out (yes, I know I preach about not talking about balancing when we're not even in beta yet, but this is hypothetical at this point so....) is to have the AV/AA stuff specifically cost resources. Is that part of the plan already? Basically this would help to limit people spamming tanks with rockets and what not, much like with the E3 alpha construction how everybody is just spamming grenades because they don't cost resources yet (ditto for MAX).

Maybe play test the idea with just a couple of things per vehicle -- engine, tracks, guns, etc....

Idk, just fishing for ideas on it at this point; still think the concept is cool and might be able to work.

Oh, and maybe also just beefing up the armor on the vics. Might help a bit too (but then of course we're getting into the vehicles-being-too-powerful debate).

Zekeen · 2012-06-06, 04:26 PM

Beta will help a lot with how strong a vehicle should be. I mostly just wanted to see aircraft able to have their engines blown out to force them to crash, or crash land, depending on location of impact and skill of the pilot. I also wanted the engine to be separate from the main body until destroyed, to give a better chance for crash survival when it hits the ground.

Rather than actually stopping something, I think vehicle sectional damage shouldn't just like, stop a tank, but injure it's turning rate and speed or such. Turret loses tracking speed instead of power or ability to fire, ect. Just a bit of real time changes to keep the drivers on their toes is best, in my opinion.

Saifoda · 2012-06-07, 08:17 AM

Yeah that's what I was thinking -- suppose it helps if I articulate that rather than assume everyone is telepathic. Another example could be the sunderer with the tires. obvi they'd be spec'd for combat (meaning run-flat) but if you take a few rounds into the tires it might decrease the vehicles max speed and acceleration. We don't want this to turn into "there's a tank! *pull out repeater pistol -- dakkadakkadakka.....* OK, main gun is destroyed!"