Increases the damage done by colliding with space debris, and ramming enemy ships. 3 difficulty levels to choose from for both obstacle collisions and ramming.
This mod increases the damage done to all ships (both player and NPC) by ramming into obstacles, whether those obstacles are asteroids, space debris, enemy ships, or debris resulting from the destruction of enemy ships. There are 3 difficulties to choose from, which are the result of lots of trial and error, and in-game testing. See videos below for demonstrations of the hardest versions. The easy and medium versions will obviously be more forgiving than what is shown.
Effects of This Mod on Space Battles
If you are right on an enemy’s tail and blow them up from close range, the resulting debris field has the potential to seriously damage or even destroy your ship unless you immediately break away and avoid it. Also, since NPC ships are affected by the increased collision damage, running away from a fight and hoping that your enemies crash into an asteroid or piece of debris is now a somewhat valid tactic.
In vanilla, ramming heavily favors the player. With this mod’s hardest ramming version installed, this favoritism is completely removed, and the outcome of ramming depends on each ship’s shields, hull strength, mass, and velocity. If you try ramming a tiny class A ship into a big class C, you will take lots of damage while not doing much to the enemy. Conversely, if you have a big class C ship, it is possible to instantly destroy small class A ships if you can land a solid hit. However, you may want to aim for a shallow angle of collision to avoid the resulting debris field.
Ramming damage only applies to ships that are currently hostile to you. Ramming into friendly or neutral ships does no damage, unless you shoot them first to turn them hostile. As far as I can tell, this is hard-coded.
Navigating Debris Fields
The Starborn Guardian can be challenging to fly through debris fields, due to its tall vertical profile. If you are being attacked by Starborn, taking cover in a debris field might not be a bad move. Similarly, pilots of large or asymmetric ships will need to keep their ship’s profile in mind when navigating debris or asteroid fields.
If you happen to park your ship close to an asymmetric asteroid that is slowly rotating in place, it is possible for the outer-most edges of the asteroid to hit you as it rotates. This would be a minor inconvenience in vanilla, but with this mod installed you have to respect asteroids and make sure you park far enough away to avoid getting hit and taking heavy damage.
Three Difficulty Levels For Obstacle Collisions
Across all versions, damage is affected by the size of the obstacle and the angle of collision. Colliding head-on into a huge asteroid will do far more damage than a glancing blow from a small piece of debris.
Easy – Assuming you are starting with full health, ships with a shield strength of less than 500 can take 2 or 3 glancing hits, but can still potentially be destroyed in a single hit if the collision is head-on. Stronger ships with a shield strength of over 1000 can take anywhere from 4 to about 8 hits.
Medium – From full health, ships with a shield strength of less than 500 can take 1 or 2 glancing hits. Stronger ships will be destroyed in about 3 to 5 hits. Head on collisions usually result in instant death.
Hard – From full health, ships with a shield strength of less than 500 will take massive damage from a single glancing hit, possibly being destroyed instantly. Stronger ships will be destroyed in about 2 to 3 hits.
Three Difficulty Levels For Ramming
Easy – Arguably easier than vanilla. The player is heavily favored in ramming damage, and can do more damage overall.
Medium – The player is moderately favored, but may receive slightly more damage as a result of ramming.
Hard – Player favoritism is completely removed. The outcome of ramming depends solely on each ship’s shields, hull strength, mass, and velocity
Note that in the videos, I am using Ship HUD Tweaks, which shows shield true health as opposed to percentage.
Installation and Compatibility
You can mix and match difficulty levels however you want (e.g. use easy collision difficulty alongside hard ramming difficulty).
Just don’t install two different difficulty levels for the same type of damage at the same time (e.g. don’t install easy ramming difficulty at the same time as medium ramming difficulty).
While the plugins for obstacle damage and ramming damage have different names, your mod organizer may try to name the parent mods the same thing during installation, because both files are categorized as “main files.” You can either give each mod a different name during installation, or select “merge,” which will cause the plugins to go into the same parent mod. Again, the plugins are named differently, so no over-writing will occur as long as you don’t select “replace” during installation.
The plugins are light masters and have the same name across all 3 difficulties, so you should be able to swap out versions in an on-going save file if you want to raise or lower the difficulty.
Under the hood, this mod is as simple as it gets, only touching the following 6 game settings. The hard part was finding ranges that were challenging but still somewhat balanced.
Ship-to-ship ramming damage is controlled by:
fShipCollDamageMax
fShipCollDamageMin
fShipCollDamagePlayerClamp
fShipCollDamageEnemyScale
Ship-to-obstacle collision damage is controlled by:
fSpaceshipBodyCollisionMaxDamage
fSpaceshipBodyCollisionMinDamage
This is compatible with everything. You can put it wherever you want in your load order, unless you have another mod that touches one of the above 6 settings. Currently, the only one I am aware of is Royal Skies Space Combat, which from what I saw only touches fShipCollDamageMax and not the other 5 settings. If you are using that mod, load this one below it.
It never hurts to check for conflicts in xEdit yourself and sort your load order accordingly.
Credits:
FlippingEggs
Download mod
| File | File size |
|---|---|
Ramming - Easy-1-0
|
394 B |
|
Obstacle Collision - Medium-1-0
|
389 B |
|
Obstacle Collision - Hard-1-0
|
389 B |
|
Obstacle Collision - Easy-1-0
|
389 B |
|
Ramming - Medium-1-0
|
428 B |
|
Ramming - Hard-1-0
|
419 B |
