In the past Wing Commander games, capital ships could not be damaged by traditional weapons and missiles.Do you see this being true in the Star Citizen persistent universe?For instance, would a Hornet fighter even be able to damage an Idris corvette or Javelin destroyer, or would a Gladiator or Retaliator be needed to even be in that fight?asked by Kinshadow
TL;DRChris Roberts says there won't be an artificial limit stopping small ships damaging capital ships, but localized damage is modeled, so crippling is possible while splitting one in two would need a ship torpedo.
I definitely think that you would be able to do damage to bigger ships in smaller ships, so I don't think we're gonna have an artificial limitation saying "if you're only in a Hornet you can't damage this capital ship," but like anything, the amount of damage that your ship can mete out, is proportional to what you deliver.Obviously something like Retaliator with big ship-to-ship torpedoes can really do some damage to a bigger ship like a destroyer or a corvette, but that's not to say that a team of Hornets working together couldn't cripple a Idris corvette.They will be able to come in, strafe, try to shoot the turrets, and there will certainly be weak spots on some of the bigger ships that you could potentially do some crippling damage to, but in general the goal would be, to take out the bigger ships, what we would like to have is a combined arms situation. You've got some Hornets for the air superiority, then people coming with Gladiators and Retaliators to do the heavy damage. That would be the ideal way, but there definitely should be cases where you'd be able to inflict some damage even if you don't have the heavy guns like the Retaliator.It won't be like Wing Commander where you needed a capital ship torpedo to take out a capital ship, but you certainly won't be able to just put a bunch of laser blasts into an Idris corvette and expect it to blow up.We're modelling damage accurately, we're modeling the different parts of it accurately. So you're doing localized damage, and potentially some of that localized damage could be fairly impactful or crippling on the ship, but if you really want to split it in two, you probably have to put a ship torpedo into it.