New ship death animations

[Cuttlefish]

At some point in the future i would love different ship death animations because the current one seems really out of place with the look and feel of the game.

[Captain Smollett]

Interesting...  I've actually always loved the ship death animation.  what do you propose?

[Imagine]

Interesting...  I've actually always loved the ship death animation.  what do you propose?

I only have one question for you: EXPLOSIONS?!

But yeah no honestly I think the ship death animations are actually great right now.

[Cuttlefish]

Interesting...  I've actually always loved the ship death animation.  what do you propose?

Like a ship going up in a massive fireball or splitting in half and falling to the ground.

[Captain Smollett]

Ooh midair titanic style.

[Mill Wilkinson]

Or the balloon ripping itself apart from the hull and flying to freedom in the high airs, where the oppression of little people and heavy burden won't torture it anymore.

[Coldcurse]

can the ship fall out of the sky instead of blown into smithereens?

[Sgt. Spoon]

oh yeah, I've always thought it would be quite awesome to have the ship just bursting into flames and smoke, and then head-long tip over forward as it falls to the ground. It would feel spectacular I bet, both from the crew and other ships around it. If the ship falls almost vertical in the end you'll have to try and land on some crate or rope as the whole thing tips over, or just jump of the ship as you're still going to die.

We discussed this waaay back in the old forums, and the main issue people could find was that it could possibly get quite preformance heavy with all those fire/smoke particles lasting for such a long duration as the ship needed to fall to the ground. You know, instead of just exploding and disappearing in seconds.

[Moo]

Like a ship going up in a massive fireball or splitting in half and falling to the ground.

If you've played FTL, you will have seen something along these lines far too many times. Something like that, with a lot of explosions occurring on the ship (it must have a lot of fuel and ammo on board, after all), then breaking apart... Balloon could maybe float down slower than hull parts...
But that might need some reasonable physics to work well. And would need someone to create it and the respective parts, rather than the strange self-destruct we have now.
But I like the current system anyway, even if it is a bit weird.

[Boarchild]

Another cool thing would be the balloon collapsing and the ship hanging dangling by it spiralling to the ground

[Plasmarobo]

I feel like the Bursting into flames aspect would add even more lag to the lighting system!

I'm pretty good with where the death animations are. I appreciate simple and I think they are nice, short, and clear at the moment. 
However, it'd be interesting to see different animations based on how you died. Like the kind of damage (granted the current shatter animation is pretty much one-fits-all so it's solid).

[Boarchild]

What about the balloon tethering being destroyed, baloon detaching and flying off and the ship crashing to the ground? That would look really cool

The animations as is is quite sufficient, but when the devs run out of cool new things to add, there might be time to reread this thread

[Sugar Honey]

What if your ship went super saiyan....
Just saiyan....

[Lord Dick Tim]

A more in depth death animation, I believe, would find a better home in Adventure mode vs the AI if dying means you lose the encounter and don't respawn.  In skirmish the animation more than meets the requirement of showing you a satisfying death with good animation and effect without causing to much of a delay for the ship to get back into the fight.

Another argument for longer death animations in Adventure mode would be to make the entire experience a little more visually traumatic.

[Zenark]

Visually traumatizing anything is alright with me <3 *Flashes*

I agree that the current animation is incredibly satisfying, though I've noticed the frame of the exploding ships is based off of the undamaged model rather than the damaged one.

What if the players on the dieing ship's vision lasts a second longer so they can see their ship exploding around them as they start to fall?