Visual Representation of Vehicle Damage

A simple smoke column, some fire, maybe even a model's skin change would be nice to tell just how much damage an enemy tank has taken.

I 'think' this was suggested in the old forums, but don't see it in these forums OR in any of the change lists.

Right now, after hitting a tank 5 times with some cannon, people feel they didn't do ANYTHING to the tank, it feels as if the weapons are feeble and useless. Having some smoke, sparks, or fire coming from a damaged tank will give a certain level of satisfaction to hitting the enemy and knowing he is about to be blasted apart. Instead of just having the player die and believe he didn't do any damage.

2nd, during battles it would make it easier to pick the weaker targets, right now if you face 3-4 tanks (with a couple friendly tanks behind you of course) there is NO way you can tell a damaged vehicle from a brand new one.

3rd, friendly engineers may see the smoke/fire from a tank and know that it needs some fixing up, instead of having to go up close and visually checking it.

4th, it adds to the atmosphere by having your tanks slowly getting blasted to bits.

Ideas for this are:

-Small column of smoke coming from the engine compartment. The smoke grows denser depending on how much damage the hull has taken.

-Sparks, a few sparks coming from random spots on the tank

-Fire, if the tank is really close to being destroyed a column of fire may come out, indicating a near death.

-And finally, a skin change depending on percentage of health. As more damage is taken the skin changes, showing a more burnt and deteriorated tank. I left this for last since it might consume more resources. A more advanced version of this would have a separate skin for each face of armor (front/sides/back) so you can actually see where the armor is weakest, but this will probably consume a lot of resources, and seems unnecessary right now.

Of course, all the damage effects are removed when the tank is fixed up.

This doesn't seem to hard to implement in the near future, the effects are already there, only the coding part needs to be done.

Some CONs
Takes up some CPU and GFX space
Makes tank combat easier

 

1. Well thats all good and fine but the smoke and fire would have particle effects that drain a bunch of shit on your computer which in turn cause lag... so maybe down the road once things are balanced out but at this point in time I dont think we need to lag things back up again bro.

2. How about a couple keys: one key targets the closest damaged target and the other targets any closest target.

3. Perhaps instead of using particle effects and things of the sort, there could be some kind of color code on the radar.

4. Would cause lag but look nice. Not necessary at this time.

 

Skin changes seem like a good idea it wouldn't increase lag or eat too much resources. Having three different "damaged" skins might be a good solution. One for the green condition another for the yellow and one for the red(these colors indicate the ones you see when you're commanding a tank).

Color coding in the radar would lead into confusion on who is who as NF is red and BE is blue... Thus I don't think it's a good idea.

 

That means they will have to remodle it and that takes time. I know how remodling is. it sucks!

 

common sense tells me this is probably planned.

 

Didn't they say they were going to do something with shaders to show damage?

 

Good idea, but the part about the seperate indicators of damage for each side of the tank is bad since armor detect skill of the naders already shows this, and the skill shouldn't be made useless.