Does module destruction affect ship performance in real-time? For example, if I get a string of lucky hits and manage to blow off one of the weapons modules, will the ship stop shooting that weapon at me? If one of the engines is destroyed, does the ship’s movement speed get recalculated?
From experience it looked to me like the answer to both of the above is “yes”, but I wanted to be sure.
It looks to me like the answer is ‘yes’ to both of those questions.
How about this one: If the power supply components are all destroyed, but the ship still has weapons which require more power than the amount produced by the ship’s hull; do those weapons continue to fire anyway?
I have been wondering this one myself, cant find the answer anywhere in the forums. I was planning to test this one by dropping the hitpoints of a generator to 1 and see what happens.
Unless someone out there already knows the answer ?
weapons and engines lose their abilities if destroeyd and have them degraded if they are damaged, also true of repair modules, and most stuff. Crew and Power doesn’t make any difference though. You can blow up all the enemies crew modules and power modules and the ships will still work.
makes it uber-complex otherwise.
The ships have a hardwired control network supplied by Crap Automated Systems Inc when the ship takes critical damage.
Personally, I would not mind the increased complexity that comes with making damaged crew and power degrading the performance of the ship. It would increase the tactical importance of reinforced crew and power.
However, It would probally take a large amount of coding to impliment, not to mention the balancing required
Thank you very much for explaining this. A developer who is willing to explain their game gives me a lot more confidence than someone who prefers to keep their code “mystery meat”. It may not seem like a lot, but it means a lot to me.
Well, this has got the gears going in my head. If nothing else it seems like an argument for dual engines in fighters. Maybe even dual powerplants on the designs with more slots, since they add extra hitpoints, don’t suffer a stacking penalty, and if hit don’t degrade combat performance at all.
Congratulations! You’ve just described “Star Fleet Battles,” the Trek/TOS-themed tabletop wargame that did all that you alluded to - and much more - solely with pencil, paper and dice. SFB is an white-bearded great-granddad compared to GSB, coming on the scene in 1979 and still going today. Sadly, age does not always signify wisdom.
Imagine trying to play GSB on a solely analog basis, while doing what you had just mentioned - calculating energy balance due to damage - in realtime as that given turn of gametime progresses. The resulting mid-turn speed changes, juggling reserve power thru your batteries, shifts in shield-reinforcement power, and downrating of weapons took several minutes to do (at least), and when all was said and done you had just finished simulating a mere two seconds of realtime in crushing fanboi fidelity. I quit SFB eons ago, yet the memory of that sort “complexity for complexity’s sake” still makes me grind my teeth in frustration.
Understatement of the year; see above. I feel like the Ghost of Christmas Future as he shows Scrooge what will happen if he doesn’t turn aside from his chosen course. Turn back, darkstar076, lest you too would be consumed by the beast! 
Thank goodness Cliff has sensibly chosen various levels of conceptual abstraction so that all of us (Cliff included) can just leap over such soul-deadening work and still enjoy the game.
I have never heard of a TOS-themed table top war game. You don’t get trekies outside of the city limits round these parts.
While I still like tactical diversity, i should have defined an upper limit. I too detest “complexity for complexity’s sake”
A simple hit to performance would be more than enough for me. For example a simple suggestion might be:
I think its a rather fine line between tactical diversity and uber complexity and I would have Buckley’s chance on striking that balance.
Now that may have something to do with being a Hydrographer rather than a Game Designer but who’s to say.
I agree with you, it would take considerable more time to implement the complex power balances found in TOS wargame. (and frankly, that would be far too complex for this mere mortal). I still would like power/crew to play a slightly increased tactical role.
sorry for reviving this, but if having the crew live and the lights on is irrelevant, than what is the point of the ‘reinforced’ crew and power modules
From what i understand - only to give your ship more hitpoints . .
yep, it gives the ship more hitpoints. it’s a good idea to have reinforced modules.
Hitponts != Hardpoints
._.
Wouldn’t a module that gave you an additional module slot be sort of useless?
The HP of your ship is the sum of all modules in your ship. If your modules have more HP then your ship will have more HP overall, so it’ll take more of a beating before it explode.
Of course, there’s a downside to that: The way GSB calculates the strength of a fleet is the combined total of the HP of all the ships in the fleet. Now, there’s not a problem with that, but it subtracts out destroyed HP only when a ship, and not a module, is destroyed.
And you’re likely seeing what I see as the problem with that method: when you destroy a weaker (HP-wise) ship, it has less of an impact on the battle then a tougher ship going boom, even if the weaker ship is the more dangerous of the two. There’s also the possibility of having a ship almost totally destroyed, but not quite, and it’s HP still being added to the fleet strength.
I mean to say “hitpoints”
…what? I wrote that post at 3:00 A.M.!
just started trying hull heavy ships. suprisingly fun for a sheilds kind of guy