So I have an enemy ship down to 10% hull, and yet he still has fullt power and weapons to blast away at me? really?
I might be dreaming here and I am not sure how hard it would be to code in, but damage should count for something in a starship, loss of power, loss of speed, loss of weapons, subsystem failure..... and repair times per system at your discretion should happen as well.
It would be a lot more fun to have ship conflicts where you are actually in command, and make comaand decisions, run, fight, what ever....say you just got ambused by Undine, You weapons systems are off line, shields are down, you gotta run for it, you hide in asteriods, you dodge incoming fire, you yell at your engineer to get weapons online now (you elect to repair your weapons systems first), an enginebattery serves a purpose to get you juuuuust out of range of their incoming fire......etc....
http://www.uvm.edu/~gcd/personal/files/2009/03/starfleetbattles-fedcon2.png
Comments
This was discussed a few times. They didn't want players to have to think and worry about what they called a "spiraling" effect of ships systems getting weaker as the ships took more damage.
They wanted to make the game easy enough for my 18 mo son to play it to keep him from climbing the kitchen counters and getting to the cookie jar...
edit..
I do not agree with this mind you. I'd much rather be able to disable your ship and laugh at you and require you to self destruct to get anywhere.
end of edit..
Easy? What does spiraling, or lack thereof, have to do with ease?
If anything it merely cuts your survivability as a fight continues at exponential rates. Why bother when you reach a certain point?
Furthermore, the "I still have 1 hp" trapping pre-dates video games as it is. All "spiraling" accomplishes is adding more vulnerability to a vulnerable player. Which ultimately means you're screwed at a certain point no matter what you do, and you're left watching yourself die slowly.
I would also like to point out that the hull points are the hull's structural integrity. A starship hull will be made of multiple layers, and just because the armor has been sheared off doesn't mean the internal structure has been irreversibly damaged.
Because some people would rather have the challenge of "surviving" than just being given victory. Its much more exciting that way. Especially if there was something to actually lose.
Cryptic has already acknowledged their game is way too easy but they haven't come up with a solution to fix it. A good DP and something like this would go a long way to making the game seem more difficult. Not to mention more exciting when you win.
What about relativity, d000d?
And why do phasers make noise in the vacuum of space?
Any change in the system would be hard to implement at this point though, as it would change the combat system in a very big way. This sort of change would of needed to have been done in beta imo.