Everything below is about the same thing: making a fight readable by watching the ships, not just the bars on your HUD.
A hull counts by its shape
A target is now checked against the real shape of its hull — length, width and height — instead of against a round bubble. The difference shows the moment a ship is long: a cruiser presents an enormous target head-on and a fairly narrow one from the side, exactly as it looks on screen.
It cuts both ways. Turn edge-on and you are a harder target; catch a frigate’s flank and you know the shot goes in where it looks like it goes in.
Fighters keep their round bubble, because a fighter’s hull is close to cubic and there is no difference to feel. The bulk of player-versus-player is fought in fighters, so that duel is untouched.
And the proportions come from the class, never from the design: the hull you buy in the shop changes how you look, never how you get hit. A design can never hand you a combat advantage.
The tracer follows its target
The fixation cannon now leaves the barrel aimed at the target it has marked and chases it all the way to the hull. If the victim turns while the shot is in the air, the tracer turns with it and ends where the damage was already going to land. Over a second of flight that reads as a gunner tracking you — which is exactly what is happening.
The damage itself is unchanged: the shot decided it, and it is still collected on arrival.
What a hit looks like
An impact against metal is now three things, each saying something different:
- A white-hot ring lying flat on the surface, flush with the plating. That is what makes the hit read as struck metal rather than something bursting in mid-air.
- A very brief hot core — the flash.
- A fan of short sparks thrown back out of the entry point.
A graze is no longer just a smaller hit: it is a dry spark with no flash at all. One glance tells you what scraped you from what went in.
Missiles burst on their victim’s plating too, not in the air alongside it.
Damaged ships smoke
Until now, two seconds after the shooting stopped, a ship at 5 % health and an untouched one were the same picture. Not any more:
| State | From | What you see |
|---|---|---|
| Hit | 55 % health | Thin, steady grey smoke trailing behind the ship |
| Critical | 28 % health | Dense smoke plus electrical arcs jumping off the hull |
This is combat information, not decoration. In a six-contact brawl you can now decide who to finish without locking each one in turn. And it works on you as well as on them: if you can see the arcs, you have one burst left.
The smoke clears once a ship heals back above the threshold, with a little margin so it does not flicker when someone sits right on the line.
Missiles fly on rockets
A missile’s drive is no longer the same flame as a ship’s engine. It runs at rocket setting: a tight jet, a fast flicker, and shock diamonds lit inside the plume. It still carries its faction’s colour, which at range is the only thing that tells you whose missile is closing on you.
The smoke trail it leaves behind is unchanged: that is what tells you where it came from.
