Better Destruction or Damage Models

[Keyes]

I think models is the word I'm looking for, But anyway so I've been playing KSP for quite a while now. I think some things I'd like are better IVA, More Planets and a procedurally generated Universe so everyone has the same universe to be discovered, but that's not I'm going to talk about as those have been discussed. Another in progress game by the name of BeamNG Drive caught my eye, and I thought it could or may not be a cool feature in KSP. Basically, in Beam NG Drive it has a very realistic soft body physics engine that allows for damage on cars. If you look at a few videos of it you can see its not just normal crashing. Now I thought if it could happen in KSP, but not so extreme as all our landers would be getting smooshed to pieces and what not. I'm talking about if you crash into your space station, or into the space centre or into an asteroid you saw some bits of destruction to your vehicle rather than the generic explosion.

I guess the next part to this is where the better IVA would come in where your kerbals have to rebuild and repair, assuming they sufficient resources. Now, this may be a feature not everyone would like so maybe have different modes like Easy - Realistic or something like it.

I would like to hear what you people think,

All the best,

Richard.

Edited November 12, 2013 by Keyes

[Jordanpumah]

only problem I see is the fact most parts are cylinders, so the model would have to be more exact, the best way to do beam damage would be using triangles, but they would have to be small enough to break without making ugly triangle-holes in the ship when those nodes are broken, which uses a LOT of resources,

another problem is engine, we can't even multi-thread yet, and I don't know if this version of unity and it's physics engine are good enough for soft-body.

It's a very nice idea, maybe later in development?

[chuckbillrow]

soft body physics is extremely CPU intensive and KSP already has major performance problems, the best bet for improved damage would be several levels of damaged before the part explodes for example the states of a fuel tank would be: good condition, battered, minor leak (can use a kerbal to fix to battered), major leak (cant be fixed) and then the the part breaks as it does now

[Killerdude8]

I'd rather wait for Multicore, 64bit support before we get any of these nice CPU intensive features.