Gazz wrote:IIRC, subsystems like engines have no specific location on the ship model.
What could be "almost as cool" would be the old Wing Commander system where a "critical" hit on a space ship would cause it to stream random sparks / atmosphere / debris from the hit location for a while.
That can be a completely PG visual effect with an actual information value.
You may not know exactly what was hit - but you know that it had to hurt. =)
Just FYI, engines and weapons and such are all discrete components that are attached to the base model, so they can be fired upon/destroyed individually!
As for actually seeing visible damage, I'm sure there will be something like Gazz said, where a damaged ship starts to throw flames/sparks from random places on the ship. But I don't know if I will do damage textures/damage models...that's definitely a lot harder (well, textures is moderate, damage models is way harder).