I'm doubtful this will be a thing but after reading the new posts from 'Infallible Aether Oscillators' i thought it would be cool to have a different type of damage system compared to blast/pierce that almost all weapons could use, especially flamethrowers and laser beams.
Basically every material has a heat capacity right? Wood burns at X temperature and steel melts at Y temperature and i thought it would be cool to see all weapons (excluding rifles and other non-explody things) have a separate 'thermal' damage value that when enough of it is inflicted onto a module it will begin to melt/start on fire depending on what it is and take DOT as a result.
I think my ideas of this mechanic can be best explained through this example:
So pretend you have a heat ray in Airships for the sake of making this example simpler and lets pretend the ray does 1 blast and 1 pierce but it also does 15 thermal damage (its a heat ray).
When the ray is fired and hits a steel module and it takes the 1 blast and pierce damage normally, but it also gains 15 thermal and every subsequent hit increases it by another 15 thermal damage until it reaches say, 95 thermal damage which is its heat capacity. At this point the room turns bright orange, takes heavy damage over time and starts to kill crew because its melting and this goes on until the room either looses all of its HP and explodes or the thermal goes below 3/4ths of the capacity and stops melting.
Wooden rooms that take too much thermal just light on fire but can do it a lot easier instead of there being a chance to burn but luckily thermal damage will reduce over time no matter the module material and reduce faster in cold conditions like rain but uncontrolled fires on board ships can increase thermal and snowball damage to other rooms.
This means that thermal damage is very dangerous but can be avoided by cooling your ships down somehow (water stores) and when using it to you advantage you may need a weapon like a flamethrower and will probably have to constantly be on your opponent.
I think these example numbers are a bit unbalanced but it was just an example.
I'd really like to see this as a simple game mechanic probably mainly because i want to see steel ships melting and have less of a chance system for uncontrolled fires which can be annoying at times when the odds are stacked against you (Ie, because its chance every bullet burns my ships)..
Another thing i'd like to add is that rain/snow create a dampening effect that will do -1 thermal damage per sec on all modules or something similar and that when melting rooms cool some of the thermal damage seeps into adjacent rooms..
Well, in that case you would also want, in addition to thermal resistance (-X from [damage]) it would have a "conductance" capacity, being the rate at which the part cools. This would also mean that any adjoining part would receive heat damage from an overly hot part next to it. of course, a portion of every part's temperature would just radiator into the air, and being negated.
Yeah that makes sense, and smaller rooms cooling less than larger ones with bigger surface area but im sure flame-throwers can easily overheat rooms at minimum. (also sorry if the paragraphs i spewed forth are disorganized)
(They're OK.) also, some rooms (mainly suspendium systems) would probably have a higher minimum heat, because they're running on steam, which means boilers, which tend to be very hot. It would also mean if you got a suspendium chamber to melting/fire temp, you would get free lift without the cost of coal, at least until the boiler explodes.
Moral of the story: set yourself on fire for free gas mileage.
That would make sense, and coal stores might get a negative to the cooldown effect on them once they alight since its a room full of coal..
This could mean better strategic advantages for ships that space out rooms/use less flammable hallways or something so low heat capacity rooms don't bleed into others and burn them too.
Also if the room was on fire i would be more worried about cracking/exploding suspendium crystals..
This sounds like a really cool (or would that be hot?) concept! It would make flamethrowers much more devastating, since it seems like they don't catch modules on fire too often at this point.
Same. It's hard to control heat from the wall melting/burning. In general, I think this would make there be an Interesting mechanic of having to decide between fire safety or logistical efficiency. on coal and diesel once It gets added stores, they would passively cool like everything else until they get caught on fire, then (naturally) their heat would shoot up and probably melt/burn everything around them. Some parts with greater heat storage would be able to stand more heat, like struts, keels, and everything without sensitive parts, while others fail easily.
Sounds like this is shaping to be a really good concept that would benefit the game as opposed to the basic 'heat' system right now since it follows a better mechanic in my opinion (better than x chance to burn).
Maybe we could also have the ability for when ships 'focus on firefighting' that they watch heat capacity and turn off modules within reason to stop them from catching fire as easily..
Heavy cannons/machineguns may also need to pause between shots on normal fire to avoid overheating or can be ordered to go 'all out' with rapid fire until they get too hot!
How about every weapon, when fired receives some heat, but if it gets too hot, the operators will stand off and wait for It to cool, unless if there is a water tank directly connected to it, in which case the operators would use small amounts of water to cool off the weapon. Why this would occur is that if the fire point is that close It is probably put there for the cannon and at that distance you could probably use a hose instead of a Bucket, making it very efficient to do as such.
I could see weapons just having small water tanks that are only for the weapon and get occasionally refilled by fire points. The guns could also use the smallest unit of water to cool just so they don't guzzle down every drop used in firefighting
That's sort of what I was thinking. I do like the "built in tank" idea, but I feel gating guns would probably have automatic cooling, because they fire to fast for the crew to manually cool it. everything else, makes sense. I can't think of much more to add.
Would be cool to have (Gasp! Another one?) layer for 'lines' Ie.
Water for automatic fire extinguishers/Boost ROF for weapons(?)
Diesel/Fuel for Advanced/Alternative Lift/Propulsion systems
Power for Increased crew travel speed/Spotlights/Computers/Optics
With each being a bit more costly to make, and also making the game a tad more complex, depending on the way you look at it...
(Using Diesel instead of carting coal to suspendium chambers/props = less crew, but more cost?)
It would be cool if some supply rooms like fire points and diesel generators (anyone?) would have automatic 'lines' kind of like how you can place generators and large wire segments in Prison Architect and there is also small auto-wires that connect to everything that's needed so you don't need to have double the crew just to cart around buckets of liquids and portable batteries.
Using this for the diesel fuel system gives it a great advantage as opposed to moving coal like WolvrNZ said.
Havnt played Prison Achitect, but I think Manual line making would be potentially beneficial if lines are made flammable (Ie, with such weapons on Flak, Flammethrowers causing them to burst into flames, setting fire to surrounding sections)
So, you could route fuel lines to be closer to firepoints, go over keels instead of ammo stores etc...
I think he means the fuel lines would be invisible unless you pressed a certain button, then only them and things that interact with the fuel lines would be visible. Also, if a part with a fuel line got too hot, I would expect the fuel line to burst, covering everything with burning/boiling oil.
Makes sense. Parts that need fuel lines should always have a pre placed fuel line on top of them to serve as a landmark for placing fuel lines. (or just show the ship's interior instead of its exterior.
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
I'm doubtful this will be a thing but after reading the new posts from 'Infallible Aether Oscillators' i thought it would be cool to have a different type of damage system compared to blast/pierce that almost all weapons could use, especially flamethrowers and laser beams.
Basically every material has a heat capacity right? Wood burns at X temperature and steel melts at Y temperature and i thought it would be cool to see all weapons (excluding rifles and other non-explody things) have a separate 'thermal' damage value that when enough of it is inflicted onto a module it will begin to melt/start on fire depending on what it is and take DOT as a result.
I think my ideas of this mechanic can be best explained through this example:
So pretend you have a heat ray in Airships for the sake of making this example simpler and lets pretend the ray does 1 blast and 1 pierce but it also does 15 thermal damage (its a heat ray).
When the ray is fired and hits a steel module and it takes the 1 blast and pierce damage normally, but it also gains 15 thermal and every subsequent hit increases it by another 15 thermal damage until it reaches say, 95 thermal damage which is its heat capacity. At this point the room turns bright orange, takes heavy damage over time and starts to kill crew because its melting and this goes on until the room either looses all of its HP and explodes or the thermal goes below 3/4ths of the capacity and stops melting.
Wooden rooms that take too much thermal just light on fire but can do it a lot easier instead of there being a chance to burn but luckily thermal damage will reduce over time no matter the module material and reduce faster in cold conditions like rain but uncontrolled fires on board ships can increase thermal and snowball damage to other rooms.
This means that thermal damage is very dangerous but can be avoided by cooling your ships down somehow (water stores) and when using it to you advantage you may need a weapon like a flamethrower and will probably have to constantly be on your opponent.
I think these example numbers are a bit unbalanced but it was just an example.
I'd really like to see this as a simple game mechanic probably mainly because i want to see steel ships melting and have less of a chance system for uncontrolled fires which can be annoying at times when the odds are stacked against you (Ie, because its chance every bullet burns my ships)..
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
Another thing i'd like to add is that rain/snow create a dampening effect that will do -1 thermal damage per sec on all modules or something similar and that when melting rooms cool some of the thermal damage seeps into adjacent rooms..
Commander
Well, in that case you would also want, in addition to thermal resistance (-X from [damage]) it would have a "conductance" capacity, being the rate at which the part cools. This would also mean that any adjoining part would receive heat damage from an overly hot part next to it. of course, a portion of every part's temperature would just radiator into the air, and being negated.
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
Yeah that makes sense, and smaller rooms cooling less than larger ones with bigger surface area but im sure flame-throwers can easily overheat rooms at minimum. (also sorry if the paragraphs i spewed forth are disorganized)
Commander
(They're OK.) also, some rooms (mainly suspendium systems) would probably have a higher minimum heat, because they're running on steam, which means boilers, which tend to be very hot. It would also mean if you got a suspendium chamber to melting/fire temp, you would get free lift without the cost of coal, at least until the boiler explodes.
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
Moral of the story: set yourself on fire for free gas mileage.
That would make sense, and coal stores might get a negative to the cooldown effect on them once they alight since its a room full of coal..
This could mean better strategic advantages for ships that space out rooms/use less flammable hallways or something so low heat capacity rooms don't bleed into others and burn them too.
Also if the room was on fire i would be more worried about cracking/exploding suspendium crystals..
Captain
This sounds like a really cool (or would that be hot?) concept! It would make flamethrowers much more devastating, since it seems like they don't catch modules on fire too often at this point.
Commander
Same. It's hard to control heat from the wall melting/burning. In general, I think this would make there be an Interesting mechanic of having to decide between fire safety or logistical efficiency. on coal and diesel once It gets added stores, they would passively cool like everything else until they get caught on fire, then (naturally) their heat would shoot up and probably melt/burn everything around them. Some parts with greater heat storage would be able to stand more heat, like struts, keels, and everything without sensitive parts, while others fail easily.
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
Sounds like this is shaping to be a really good concept that would benefit the game as opposed to the basic 'heat' system right now since it follows a better mechanic in my opinion (better than x chance to burn).
Maybe we could also have the ability for when ships 'focus on firefighting' that they watch heat capacity and turn off modules within reason to stop them from catching fire as easily..
Heavy cannons/machineguns may also need to pause between shots on normal fire to avoid overheating or can be ordered to go 'all out' with rapid fire until they get too hot!
Commander
How about every weapon, when fired receives some heat, but if it gets too hot, the operators will stand off and wait for It to cool, unless if there is a water tank directly connected to it, in which case the operators would use small amounts of water to cool off the weapon. Why this would occur is that if the fire point is that close It is probably put there for the cannon and at that distance you could probably use a hose instead of a Bucket, making it very efficient to do as such.
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
I could see weapons just having small water tanks that are only for the weapon and get occasionally refilled by fire points. The guns could also use the smallest unit of water to cool just so they don't guzzle down every drop used in firefighting
Commander
That's sort of what I was thinking. I do like the "built in tank" idea, but I feel gating guns would probably have automatic cooling, because they fire to fast for the crew to manually cool it. everything else, makes sense. I can't think of much more to add.
Commander, Engineering Corps
Would be cool to have (Gasp! Another one?) layer for 'lines' Ie.
Water for automatic fire extinguishers/Boost ROF for weapons(?)
Diesel/Fuel for Advanced/Alternative Lift/Propulsion systems
Power for Increased crew travel speed/Spotlights/Computers/Optics
With each being a bit more costly to make, and also making the game a tad more complex, depending on the way you look at it...
(Using Diesel instead of carting coal to suspendium chambers/props = less crew, but more cost?)
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
It would be cool if some supply rooms like fire points and diesel generators (anyone?) would have automatic 'lines' kind of like how you can place generators and large wire segments in Prison Architect and there is also small auto-wires that connect to everything that's needed so you don't need to have double the crew just to cart around buckets of liquids and portable batteries.
Using this for the diesel fuel system gives it a great advantage as opposed to moving coal like WolvrNZ said.
Commander, Engineering Corps
Havnt played Prison Achitect, but I think Manual line making would be potentially beneficial if lines are made flammable (Ie, with such weapons on Flak, Flammethrowers causing them to burst into flames, setting fire to surrounding sections)
So, you could route fuel lines to be closer to firepoints, go over keels instead of ammo stores etc...
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
Whoa! where did yo find the time for all of that!
It looks awesome!
When you mean manual do you suggest the lines are a part of backwall or something similar?
Commander
I think he means the fuel lines would be invisible unless you pressed a certain button, then only them and things that interact with the fuel lines would be visible. Also, if a part with a fuel line got too hot, I would expect the fuel line to burst, covering everything with burning/boiling oil.
Commander, Engineering Corps
As in the way we have differnt layers at the moment in the ship/building editor.
So lines could be placed in the same way armour/paint/decor is applied
Commander
Makes sense. Parts that need fuel lines should always have a pre placed fuel line on top of them to serve as a landmark for placing fuel lines. (or just show the ship's interior instead of its exterior.