This applies to area and radius fragments, and probably particle explosions.

These smaller explosions inside the main explosion look weird, especially when they're anchored to the ship and the explosion is not, causing them to drift apart. (This is especially easy to see with M2 and M5 missiles.)

Also, they are (or at least should be) redundant. It should be possible to see whether a ship is being hit based on whether it's passing through the main explosion graphic. In some cases, this might require reducing the duration and/or adjusting the size of radius explosions so the graphics are more accurate to what's actually happening (everything in the radius being hit instantly).

If you feel it's absolutely necessary to have hit effects on ships without active shields, they should not look like explosions. Maybe small hot spots on the ship?

the_shrike 29 Jan 2017:

I've done my own experiments with this, and having no effects is extremely inadvisable. You need the visual feedback and it makes no sense to omit them. Having a separate set of hiteffects that are smaller could improve the effects however.

This issue does not affect particle explosions under almost all circumstances due to how they work.

nms 29 Jan 2017:

I feel like if there weren't weapons that cause huge explosion effects despite only hitting a single target, it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume a ship is getting hit if it passes through an explosion. But I see your point. I'll tone down the title.

Ares micronuke shockwaves have thermo hit effects, but because they do so little damage per hit, the effects are just fairly small bright flashes (though still a bit bigger than I'd prefer). This works reasonably well as a visual indicator that the ship is being hit. I guess particle explosions also tend to cause a large number of small hit effects, which is fine.

But I'm not sure what to suggest about radius explosions, since they only hit once, and I still think a big secondary explosion looks bad. Since they aren't very common, I'm almost tempted to suggest converting them to radius or particle explosions, but that dramatically increases the variability in their damage. Maybe an explosion of non-damaging, fast-moving, invisible particles with small hit effects? Or maybe they could cause a cluster of small flashes around the impact point?

johnbwatson 30 Jan 2017:

Personally, I agree with the title. It creates lag and looks somewhat bizarre. Real explosions don't generate more explosions when they strike solid metal.

I'm pretty sure the present situation is the result of a glitch somewhere in the source code.

nms 30 Jan 2017:

I don't think it's a glitch, the weapons are just coded to have hit effects and fragment effects that both create explosions.

george moromisato 9 Feb 2017:

I agree, but I need to experiment with a replacement. I'd like to try a series of virtual particle explosions hitting the side facing the center of the explosion.