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[Flare]

I'd like to draw attention to Battleship Forever's damage layout. It is a lot like what is proposed here and is somewhat feasible. There are a set of inner core parts and parts over these that have to be blasted away in order to reach the core parts. You could blast away at the "armor" all you want but one of the core parts inside of the ship needs to be destroyed in order to disable the ship. Perhaps the core of the ship will be underneath the hull, with the hull and the armor plating needing to be torn away first before a weapon can hit the vitals.

[DSMK2]

I'd like to draw attention to Battleship Forever's damage layout. It is a lot like what is proposed here and is somewhat feasible. There are a set of inner core parts and parts over these that have to be blasted away in order to reach the core parts. You could blast away at the "armor" all you want but one of the core parts inside of the ship needs to be destroyed in order to disable the ship. Perhaps the core of the ship will be underneath the hull, with the hull and the armor plating needing to be torn away first before a weapon can hit the vitals.

So you're saying, instead of a radial gradient of hull HP over a ship, ships should have actual vital parts rendered under it's graphics? That's a step farther from what I'm trying to propose  

Having actual weak points to hit, in the general sense (unless its an actual design feature of a ship), feels like a step away from the "beat ship into submission" theme I'm seeing in the current version of Starfarer's combat. To recap: I'm wanting to go away from the current "being able continually shoot a small part of a ship's exposed hull to disable it" to a "beat enough of the entire ship's hull as to disable it". Basically, you can either chip away at a target ship's armor and "outer" hull enough to disable it, or concentrate attacks on one side of a target ship to quickly disable it.



See the above mock up, the darker areas represent lower hull HP density, the brighter areas are higher hull HP density. Against smaller ships, it's easier to just brute force attack it, "digging" for the high hull HP density to quickly disable the target ship. While for larger ships, your fleet would find it easier to just batter the ship enough for it to be disabled, and hope that losses are minimal 

[Flare]

I'd like to draw attention to Battleship Forever's damage layout. It is a lot like what is proposed here and is somewhat feasible. There are a set of inner core parts and parts over these that have to be blasted away in order to reach the core parts. You could blast away at the "armor" all you want but one of the core parts inside of the ship needs to be destroyed in order to disable the ship. Perhaps the core of the ship will be underneath the hull, with the hull and the armor plating needing to be torn away first before a weapon can hit the vitals.

So you're saying, instead of a radial gradient of hull HP over a ship, ships should have actual vital parts rendered under it's graphics? That's a step farther from what I'm trying to propose 

Actually, just making another distinction within the shell of the ship would be enough. There are two clear parts of a ship, that being the armor on the outside and the core at the center which would have its own shape as opposed to the exponential gradient you're proposing. The reason 'm proposing this isn't because I think it's more plausible or realistic, but rather because I think it would be easier to establish clear lines between where getting hit doesn't take damage and where it does. As such, I think it would be easier to program there being two things that needs to be put in place: the plating, and the core codes. Though of course, your method might be easier in the engine Alex is using and with the code already in the game, so its fairly likely that my point is moot if it isn't actually easier to code.

[Dark.Revenant]

Perhaps a solution would be to add is one more damage "layer" on top of the existing graphics, wherein an area/section that has taken a huge amount of damage (say, 4*(ShipHP/NumSections) damage) will stop receiving full hull damage, and all weapons/engines on that section are permanently destroyed (the ship, even if it loses all engines, would still be able to move slowly with some kind of base movement factor from maneuvering thrusters throughout the hull).  Any shots that hit the section at a shallow angle would damage the ship at a 25% rate, and would be displayed in a gray font.  Shots that hit it at a deep angle (such that the shot, if it were to pierce the hull, would land in a non-destroyed section), will instead hit the section behind the destroyed one for 75% of the original damage (because 25% is taken by the first section).  The actual graphic would be a highly damaged blackened mess of metal, more like an extreme version of the current damage effect, and could perhaps emit smoke and sparks.

This might affect balance, but ships can and will be tweaked throughout development.  It's not like perfect balance is a requirement for this kind of single player game, at any rate.