Building health

[chrisb2e9]

Does anyone know the Hp for the different buildings? Is there any way to look this up?

I'm also trying to figure out how the size of an object vs it's speed determines what damage is done to a building.

Say for example if a fuel tank with an engine and a nose cone. Maybe some fins on the side... were to hit one building. How do I determine what size fuel tank would be needed at what speed to blow up the building.

For science...

what?

[King Arthur]

I've destroyed the launchpad numerous times from simply launching a rocket or soft-landing onto it.

The runway on the other hand has proven so far to be nigh invulnerable to my crashing a multitude of rockets and planes onto its tarmac.

[glen.mack]

Speed, is unfortunately irrelevant atm. There is no concept of mass and acceleration equaling force, only bulk weight.

You can ram a probe into a building at the speed of light, (If you can get the collision mesh to detect it at that speed.) but it will do nothing, soft landing on anything right now with a heavy enough object will always do the trick.

[chrisb2e9]

Speed, is unfortunately irrelevant atm. There is no concept of mass and acceleration equaling force, only bulk weight.

You can ram a probe into a building at the speed of light, (If you can get the collision mesh to detect it at that speed.) but it will do nothing, soft landing on anything right now with a heavy enough object will always do the trick.

Sorry to learn that, but thank you for the answer!

[Alshain]

I don't think we have really determined the inner mechanics of how a building decides to explode. I'm not sure there is an "hit points" system, back when 0.25 was just released one of the streamers fired multiple "missiles" at the runway for what seemed like 30 minutes and the thing never blew up, but dropping one big plane during physics load seems to be enough.

I don't think it's a cumulative system like hit points would imply. I honestly think the damage has to be done in a single crash. Essentially a crash either does 100% damage or 0% damage and there is no in between. If there was a cumulative effect then a buildings health would need be stored somewhere in the persistence file.

Edited November 13, 2014 by Alshain

[jmiki8]

I use a weapon mod (forgot its name, sorry), which adds machine guns, numerous rockets and bombs to the game.

If I fire a fast salvo of rockets at the VAB, it explodes, but if I fire the same amount of rockets at a slower rate, it won't get destroyed. Interesting.

[Alshain]

I use a weapon mod (forgot its name, sorry), which adds numerous rockets and bombs to the game.

If I fire a fast salvo of rockets at the VAB, it explodes, but if I fire the same amount of rockets at a slower rate, it won't get destroyed. Interesting.

There is possibly a timer to ensure any debris from the initial crash counts toward it's damage if it impacts again. But if my suspicions are correct, once that timer runs out, the building is at 100% health again.

[glen.mack]

Not sure about a weapon mod, but what I know for certain is in stock, while testing I built a structure (which was quite large x2 orange tanks + structural stuff) which I landed on the astronaut complex, at 0.3 m/s with the hack gravity on, which made it explode when I turned hack gravity off. Thus my conclusion that bulk weight (not mass) is used for the calculation of destruction.

[moon80]

Does anyone know the Hp for the different buildings? Is there any way to look this up?

I'm also trying to figure out how the size of an object vs it's speed determines what damage is done to a building.

Say for example if a fuel tank with an engine and a nose cone. Maybe some fins on the side... were to hit one building. How do I determine what size fuel tank would be needed at what speed to blow up the building.

For science...

what?

Try to increase your food.

[wyzwon]

sorry for digging up old threads but I figured for anyone else who drops b here, I would point out that Roninpawn landed a helicarrier on the VAB after several attempts at touchdown resulted in the building breaking apart. The only differences between the success and failures seems to be the speed in which he landed. There could be a weight difference in the fuel he had left (He didn't have the meter showing for the successful attempt but the bar in the staging was about equal to that in his previous attempts.

Edited June 3, 2016 by wyzwon

[Geschosskopf]

On 11/12/2014 at 9:14 PM, chrisb2e9 said:

I'm also trying to figure out how the size of an object vs it's speed determines what damage is done to a building.

My own experiments have determined there are 2 game issues that prevent any really good explanation of how this works.

First off, the missile and the building don't experience the collision the same way.  In KSP (and all games), objects teleport from place to place because digital, not analog.  The faster something's going, the further it teleports between physics ticks.  This can cause objects to move through each other harmlessly if they're going fast enough.  Rockets "look behind themselves" to some extent, so even if the front of the rocket teleports below ground level or inside a building, the rocket will still explode.  However, buildings don't seem to "look inside themselves", so are unaffected by the rocket exploding just inside their walls.  This means that speed can actually be counterproductive when it comes to destroying buildings.

The second problem is that when a rocket teleports close enough to the wall for the building to be affected, the collision system pays too much attention to the part at the very front of the rocket and not enough to all the momentum of the other parts behind it.  So, for example, you're using a Kickback SRB as your missile.  If you put a nosecone on it for streamlining, it will be MUCH less effective because only the mass or momentum of the nosecone seems to be counted.  But if you omit the nosecone, then the mass or momentum of the SRB gets counted.

These factors combine to make building destruction a real luck of the draw thing.  For example, consider this missile-launcher I made.

Sometimes you can destroy any building with a single hit, sometimes it will remain standing when your magazine is empty.  It all depends on where you hit it, from what range, how fast the missile is going, etc.

 

 

 

[DaMachinator]

Apparently the buildings have a max temp as well. This was ascertained by playing with BDArmory stuff, which adds heat to objects to obtain it's results. Thus, a fast salvo does more damage than firing individual missiles. 

 

Also, the launch pad often explodes when I release the launch clamps after main engines start on really big rockets. No, the rocket doesn't hit the pad.