In movies like Empire Strikes Back or Star Trek, the time to kill on a ship is pretty high, with crew running around fixing things. What can you tell us about that kind of time to kill, since right now ships are dispatched much more quickly than in the sci-fi we're used to?
TL;DRAs the game moves to component-based damage, longer fights with repairs and rerouting power are expected, with the focus shifting from time to kill to time to disable, but the current fixed health pool can't support that.
We touched on that before, in the earlier answer about how we're balanced around the current gameplay and how we're going to move towards that component system. So yes, it is going to be like that. You will have, on the ships that have interior space, you will be knocking out those components, and someone will have to go repair, replace, reroute power to get the ship back up to function. And it's something we can't nicely do at the moment, because we have that fixed health pool and you're alive or you're dead.
There's been complaints about big ships. Sometimes they can just die really quickly. It's because of the current system we have, and we've had to work with it and try to balance around that. And sometimes it works really well for those small ships and for the large ships. And I remember the Aurora having all that superfluous health for the longest time. I remember the Aurora would just soak up damage like a sponge. And that was because of the current system.
Going forwards, mid to long term, it's going to be talking less about time to kill, more time to disable, to give you that gameplay. Because if you're blowing ships up, there's no way to board them and do anything interesting like that with it.
How are all these shipwrecks out there? Every time you get into a fight, they just blow up. I mean, obviously we've designed missions and stuff based around shipwrecks. That's the intention. That will be a long, protracted, multi-crew engagement. You need to be able to get out of one chair, run to another, change the system, defend yourself.
More great things that just fall out of that is they start generating missions themselves. So rather than it being design-placed wrecks, people can start calling for help that they're disabled, need repair, refuel, rearm. They need people to come help them do stuff, need to help them transfer their cargo. The game just sort of builds upon itself.
Yeah, you have to have that longer engagement. Time to disable.