Agreed. If the implementation of enemy ships must be kept at an abstract level, having visual abstract indicators of enemy ship status would be useful to players. The extent of such implementation is quite variable. It could extend simply to fake systems damage information, that abstractly represents damage to the enemy from a percentage of total health. Alternatively, it could extend all the way to enemy crew count (for boarding actions), targetting weapons towards specific enemy ship systems, and changing enemy behaviour based on damage sustained.
Personally, I'd like to see useful abstract information about the status of an enemy ship, (to the fullest extent described above), that follows a set of rules that directly relate to the ship design of that ship. What specific information the player would be shown about the enemy ship would depend on the presence and active status of a "Sensor Room" or equivalent.
Moving on...
Will/Should the game support battles with/against more than two ships? How would this affect the feasibility of abstract ship combat? A radar or target list would enable target selection. But implemented abstractly, this would make the individual locations of enemy/friendly ships very important, since their movement behaviour would be trackable and strange movement/not following rules would be clear to the player.
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