Re: Questionable components.
There's a unspoken assumption here that you probably don't understand. Most of us 'fanatics' remember the oddities of damage allocation in SE IV posted in a thread some time ago. What happens is, the game allocates ONE component on a ship at a time to be damaged/destroyed by incoming fire. Damage is accumulated in a 'special' storage variable until enough has built up to destroy that designated component. Then it is flagged as 'destroyed' and a new component is randomly selected.
Because of the way the damage allocation code works, though, the damage can be 'fixed' on a component by certain circumstances. One is the regeneration of shields. When the shields 'come back' and the next hit occurs to the shields, all of the 'temporary' damage that was being saved up to destroy the crystalline armor (for example) is instead used up on the renewed shields. Only if the shields total LESS than the accumulated damage will any of it remain. So the damage 'goes away' and the armor is effectively 'repaired' by its ability to regenerate shields.
You can see how Crystalline Armor can make you 'invulnerable' in these circumstances....
Normal shield regeneration can have this effect, too, though.
Other weird things can happen, also. Armor skipping weapons can 'channel' damage that was accumulating to destroy a large chunk of armor INSIDE the ship and wipe out a bunch of low-damage internal components -- but also effectively 'fixing' the armor in the process.
Edit: Hey, post #2222. Interesting number.
[ August 16, 2002, 00:11: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]
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