EMP Damage, Boarding and Hull "repurposing"

[Hecter94]

Hello Everyone, just bought the game yesterday and according to Steam have clocked ~12 hours into it, so I guess you could say I'm hooked. 

I had an interesting idea as I was playing earlier today and thought I would share it with you all.
I'll write a short summary below, and if it interests you....I'll write a full explanation a little lower for you to check out.

Short Summary
The addition of new weapon types that deal EMP damage instead of conventional damage, EMP damage would disable ships instead of destroying them, allowing you to board them to receive more and better loot (as opposed to destroying them) or even drag the now-empty hull back to the nearest station to sell for a decent profit.

Full Explanation
Overview

The basic premise behind this idea is the addition of 6-10 new weapons.
Energy EMP I
Energy EMP II
Energy EMP III

Ballistic EMP I
Ballistic EMP II
Ballistic EMP III

Missile EMP I
Missile EMP II
Missile EMP III
(names subject to change)

Mines have not been included as they are primarily defensive weapons carried by miners and traders which would generally not be used in such an offensive manner.

These new weapons, as the name implies, would deal EMP damage to enemy ships instead of conventional damage.
EMP damage would damage the shield as normal, but upon impacting the hull would not damage it but instead fill up a secondary "EMP Bar" on the target ship.
This "EMP Bar" would range from 0%-100% and represents what majority of the ship's electronics have been fried by the EMP.
Every 10% of the bar that gets filled would cause a certain system on the target ship to cease functioning...starting with the least important system first.

10%: Grappler ceases to function entirely.
20%: RCS ceases to function
30%: Devices no longer work
40%: Radar loses tracking ability and is reduced to 30% range
50%: Fuel intake fails, remaining parts must be run off energy
60%: Weapon systems fail
70%: Shield no longer recharges
80%: Engine functions at 15% total power
90%: Generator no longer produces energy
100%: Life support systems fail
(Again, subject to change as balancing requires.
Included only as an example.)

As the ship sustains progressively more EMP damage, it becomes more and more crippled, until ultimately.....life support fails.
At this stage, the target ship would be considered "dead", unable to do anything besides float aimlessly in space.
Now the ship may be approached and grappled on to, allowing you to open it's inventory similar to a crate and take whatever cargo it may have had as well as any weapons or other parts you can scavenge off of it.

The final action that the player may take at this point, is to grapple on to the enemy ship and manually drag it back to a friendly space station. A journey that could potentially be very long and very tedious without a good grapple (which creates more incentive to upgrade the more or less useless part)1 where the hull may be sold to the station at a reduced price...considering that the majority of electronic systems on the ship would need to be replaced before it could be made usable again.

This adds a new, unique element to gameplay2 and possibly solves the issue of pure fighter builds requiring much more effort to gain money when compared to miners or traders.3

Skills4
The skill requirements would be two-fold, requiring a new branch in the engineering submenu dealing with EMP weapons in general as well as the existing combat branches for the differing weapon types.

For example, a medium missile based EMP would require both Medium EMP weapons from the engineering skill tree and medium missiles from the combat skill tree.
This is to prevent miners or traders from easily adding a couple of EMP weapons to their ships and reaping all of the benefits of them in addition to the mining or trading benefits they already have.

In addition to that, EMP weapons would benefit from any perks chosen in both the Engineering EMP branch and the Combat branch unique to that weapon.
For example, a missile based EMP would benefit from Missile Casing in the combat tree and also whatever specialized perks the Engineering EMP branch might have.

Defense
Ships could defend themselves from EMP based attacks in a variety of ways.
The simplest being a good shield, as all shields would inherently block a large portion of EMP damage.
This requires players to use combined arms and advanced tactics to successfully pull of an EMP attack5
Such as lowering a targets shields with a conventional weapon before targeting the hull with their EMP weapons.

In addition to this, each and every hull would have a unique "EMP Defense" stat, higher percentages would block a higher value of EMP damage, while lower percentages would block less.
This means that a high-level hull with good EMP defense combined with a high-level shield would make EMP attacks virtually useless, but very rewarding if successful.6

Additional boosters could also be added, such as an EMP Dampener.
+xx% EMP Defense
-xx% EMP Damage
(Included only as an example)

Finally, any tactics that work against conventional weapons would also work to defend against EMP weapons.
Such as shooting down missiles before they hit you, dodging ballistic weapons or staying out of range of energy weapons.

Conclusion
The addition of EMP weapons:

   
• An incentive to upgrade the grappler.
• Provides a new and interesting gameplay mechanic.
• Allows pure fighter builds to compete with traders and miners in income.
• New skills, weapons and other items.
• Requires advanced tactics to generate better rewards.
• Optional difficulty increase for better rewards.
• New mission possibilities. (ie: Disable this freighter and bring it's cargo back to me.)
• Possibly more

As such, I believe it is an idea that is at least worthy of some consideration.
If implementing such an idea would simply not be possible at this stage in devolpment, it is my hope that an aspiring modder might see this thread and be intrigued enough to work on it.


Well, if you've made it this far, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to read through my topic and ask that you leave any questions, comments or concerns you may have had below and I will do my best to get back to you in a timely manner. 
Regards, Hecter94

[Hellwarlord]

Greetings.

A new brain has arrived! Incredibly nice idea(gamechanger here!!), well written, tons of explanations & you even thought about almost every game aspect. +Good addition to PvP. Nice! I hope your EMP system will be implemented so many players could enjoy it.

Regards,

Hellwarlord.

[Hammish]

I like this idea as well!

Some of the aspects of it are even possible within the game as it is now, I think.  (Don't quote me on that.)  You'd just need to create a script to produce the effects.  Basically, create a new attribute called 'current_emp_charge' or the like, and have it range from 0-100.  Then have the various pieces of equipment that you want affected do a check in the script; for example, the grappler would need a new status check to see if current_emp_charge is < 100.  Same basic theory as modules that require X energy to activate and will fail if you don't have it.

Not sure how the interactions work for 'innate' modules like RCS, though, or with a 'partial disable' like was mentioned for the radar.  Worth looking into, though!  The only major hurdles I could see would be figuring out a way for EMP charge to bleed off gradually on its own and getting the EMP to interact with NPCs correctly; they don't have as many attributes as players and some aspects can be tricky, in my experience.

One suggestion that I would add as well, especially for PVP, would be a new consumable as a means of clearing some EMP charge.

[Hecter94]

Greetings.

A new brain has arrived! Incredibly nice idea(gamechanger here!!), well written, tons of explanations & you even thought about almost every game aspect. +Good addition to PvP. Nice! I hope your EMP system will be implemented so many players could enjoy it.

Regards,

Hellwarlord.

Thanks for the kind words!
This is mainly all information I had while brainstorming during one of my longer play sessions, I tried my best to condense it all down into a readable format while stripping off all the extra unnecessary "fluff"
I'm still not quite happy with the way it eventually turned out, but any attempts I've made to make it look better have made it worse.


Oh well, I'm glad you like the idea as it's presented, I too think it could be a potential gamechanger....and am happy that you noticed the effort I put in to cover all the different gameplay elements that would be needed to make such a system work.


I hadn't actually considered how it would work in PvP since I'm primarily a PvE player myself, but I do see how it could make for some very interesting PvP gameplay.
I presume, that once your ship reaches 100% EMP charge, it would simply trigger the usual game over, with your body being recreated for a price and your ship being restored by an insurance agency.
Seems interesting! I like it.

I like this idea as well!

It's good to hear from an aspiring modder, I'm glad you like it!

Some of the aspects of it are even possible within the game as it is now, I think.  (Don't quote me on that.)  You'd just need to create a script to produce the effects.  Basically, create a new attribute called 'current_emp_charge' or the like, and have it range from 0-100.  Then have the various pieces of equipment that you want affected do a check in the script; for example, the grappler would need a new status check to see if current_emp_charge is < 100.  Same basic theory as modules that require X energy to activate and will fail if you don't have it.

Wow, it's good to know that even this early in development, the game already has the basic support for my idea to be possible.
It seems likely that it could even be implemented entirely in a later version.

Not sure how the interactions work for 'innate' modules like RCS, though, or with a 'partial disable' like was mentioned for the radar.  Worth looking into, though!

I know that different effects can be applied to certain hulls already, such as the "Fang" having bonuses to targeting range and speed or whatever.
Would it then be possible to apply a conditional negative modifier?
Such as, when current_emp_charge > 20 apply a modifier that applies a -80% effect to maneuverability.
It wouldn't be a perfect solution, but seems like it would simulate the effects of a malfunctioning RCS quite accurately.

The only major hurdles I could see would be figuring out a way for EMP charge to bleed off gradually on its own

Right now the hull repair consumable works in a way similar to how the EMP charge bleed off would have to work, no?
I presume that upon activating this consumable, it applies an "effect" to your ship which gradually increases the hull health variable.
If so, would it not be then possible to apply a constant condition to every ship that simply slowly lowers the current_emp_charge variable over time?

and getting the EMP to interact with NPCs correctly; they don't have as many attributes as players and some aspects can be tricky, in my experience.

That's unfortunate.....for now just having it work in PvP would be more than enough though!

One suggestion that I would add as well, especially for PVP, would be a new consumable as a means of clearing some EMP charge.

Definitely, I completely agree.
Several tiers would be nice, with lower tiers simply accelerating the rate of natural EMP bleed off.
With higher tiers instantly removing a level EMP-charge.
and the highest tiers instantly removing a level of EMP-charge as well as accelerating the rate of natural EMP bleed off for a while.


I've got some more stuff I want to add too, but it might end up being a lot so I think I'm going to split this post up and double post.
Shame on me.

[Hammish]

I know that different effects can be applied to certain hulls already, such as the "Fang" having bonuses to targeting range and speed or whatever.  Would it then be possible to apply a conditional negative modifier?  Such as, when current_emp_charge > 20 apply a modifier that applies a -80% effect to maneuverability. It wouldn't be a perfect solution, but seems like it would simulate the effects of a malfunctioning RCS quite accurately.

Right now the hull repair consumable works in a way similar to how the EMP charge bleed off would have to work, no?  I presume that upon activating this consumable, it applies an "effect" to your ship which gradually increases the hull health variable.  If so, would it not be then possible to apply a constant condition to every ship that simply slowly lowers the current_emp_charge variable over time?That's unfortunate.....for now just having it work in PvP would be more than enough though!

It's possible, though I'm not entirely sure.  I was thinking about it from what I know so far as the current coding goes, versus what I suspect is possible.

Anything that relies already relies on a .js file in the game would be the easier ones; anything else would have to be included in a script that was constantly being checked, such as the calcs for shield regeneration and the like... and that's an area I haven't delved into yet.  Some of them are scary levels of math/variables, and I'm even fairly good at math.

Looking at some of the scripts included but not used, though, it would appear the devs had ideas similar to yours already as well!  There is an incapacitator.js already in, though I don't see it as attached to any objects; looks like we'll have at least a simple version of EMP at some point!

[Hecter94]

Looking at some of the scripts included but not used, though, it would appear the devs had ideas similar to yours already as well!  There is an incapacitator.js already in, though I don't see it as attached to any objects; looks like we'll have at least a simple version of EMP at some point!

That's very cool!
It'd be great to hear something from a developer about whether your suspicions are true or not.
It'd be cool to see how similar my idea and the dev's idea were, and whether or not any of my ideas or suggestions might possibly be included too.

So far it seems well received, so I think it might be possible, and I would loooove to play the game with this added to it, just adds so much strategic depth to the fighting and gameplay that I'd be quite excited to play with it.

[Lurler]

It's true. We were prototyping some devices such as EMP, but they are not yet in the game, since they aren't "cool" enough yet, and we would like spend some more time working on it before releasing

[Hecter94]

That's awesome!

Is there any chance of getting some details on the way the system will be implemented?

[Lurler]

Is there any chance of getting some details on the way the system will be implemented?

Not yet, since we haven't actively started doing it. These were only prototypes to see if it would work at all.
When we get around to actually implementing it we will review all of our options and suggestions from the forum to come up with something fun.

[Hecter94]

Good to hear that, I'm looking forward to seeing what you eventually come up with. ^.^