What causes ships to be destroyed?

[Iranon]

I feel silly for asking such a basic question, and especially for not having asked it much sooner.
Most of the combat mechanics are available on the wiki, but I haven't been able to find out what actually causes a ship to give up the ghost and turn into a wreck.
Any ideas?

The answer could have interesting implications for ship design.

[AL]

I believe a ship is destroyed whenever all of its internal HTK have been "used up" in absorbing armour-penetrating damage.

[bean]

I believe a ship is destroyed whenever all of its internal HTK have been "used up" in absorbing armour-penetrating damage.

If that was the case, all components would be destroyed before the ship.  That doesn't happen.  (This is also disproved by the existence of salvageable components in wrecks.)  There may be a threshold of internal HTK before the ship goes away, but it's not 100%.

[Sematary]

You are basing that on the idea that if a component is salvageable then it must not have been destroyed in battle, but as far as I know that is not necessarily true. It could work on a different system.

[Steve Walmsley]

The damage allocation code picks a component type for damage based on the damage allocation chart for each class.

If it finds that all components of that type have been destroyed, it re-rolls and tries again.

If this happens twenty times without success, the ship is destroyed.

Any component not destroyed at this point can be found in the wreck.

[Mor]

I know that each weapon has damage pattern, what's a damage allocation chart?

Is it possible for a ship to become a wreck due to maintenance failure e.g. life support failure that will result in the loss of all of its crew?

Also speaking of damage and components is there any other fun surprises that can await us on top of these

[DIT_grue]

The DAC (Damage Allocation Chart) shows up in a couple of places, chiefly the ship design and individual ship windows. Mostly, it's about what bits of the ship are most likely to be hit (sizes of components, and the number of them onboard).

[Mor]

I see. size  name (#of components/ single component HTK ). Does damage allocation code assign one point of damage each roll i.e. it would take 25 lucky hits for a component with 25 HTK to be destroyed or will need one hit of at least 25HTK. If the later, what happens when 25 damage hit a cargo component of 1HTK ?

Also I wish that loosing the bridge will have dire consequences, after all the chance of that happening is soooo small

[Iranon]

Thank you, Steve!

I've been experimenting with sacrificial components as damage sinks, and wondered how some combinations with the same total HTK seemed hardier than others.

[Cassaralla]

Is it possible for a ship to become a wreck due to maintenance failure e.g. life support failure that will result in the loss of all of its crew?

I've had a ship wrecked due to a maintenance failure on an engine, had insufficient supplies to repair and it exploded, setting off a magazine as a secondary explosion and totally wrecking the 18 ktonne Battlecruiser.

[DIT_grue]

I see. size  name (#of components/ single component HTK ). Does damage allocation code assign one point of damage each roll i.e. it would take 25 lucky hits for a component with 25 HTK to be destroyed or will need one hit of at least 25HTK. If the later, what happens when 25 damage hit a cargo component of 1HTK ?

Also I wish that loosing the bridge will have dire consequences, after all the chance of that happening is soooo small

I don't recall with any certainty whether damage is applied one point at a time or not, but am confident damage from a single hit will be applied to a single component until the component is destroyed or the damage is exhausted. A component has a (damage/HTK) chance of being destroyed by damage; if it survives and is hit again, the calculation uses the reduced HTK due to damage sustained so far rather than the original value. Any overflow damage is applied to another component as normal. (I was sure I remembered seeing someone explain most of this in a post during the last week or so, but whatever.)

[Iranon]

Unless there was misleading info in a authoritative location,  it's not applies 1 at a time. If a component with 5HTK is hit by 7 damage, it's destroyed automatically, then a 2-damage hit is applied to the next component of the same type (I wasn't sure the same type is selected, but confirmed by Steve here).

[MarcAFK]

The usual sacrificial damage sink would be size 1 magazines of as much armour as possible.

[Iranon]

If we wanted to build the toughest ship on a given tonnage, yes.

I've been focusing more on ships consisting mostly of very low-power engines: Cheaper per HTK, and more likely to be hit.
Add enough base-tech railguns (capacitors are expensive and can explode) to handle moderate ASM attacks and you end up with something promising.
Exceptionally crummy for its size...but sturdy, costing about 1/5 of a respectable warship, uses practically no fuel and it can rebuild itself multiple times over (all components are dirt-cheap, 1000MSP from a storage bay last forever).

[Mor]

Thanks to everyone. Couple of thing that still bother me are the secondary explosions mechanic and the total loss @Cassaralla mentioned. I have tried playing with the SM function to assign points of damage but the results are all over the place.

1. Any ideas on how secondary explosions work? What can cause it (any weapon, mesons, shock damage) what is formula?
2. Any other fun catastrophic failures that can happen?
3. How maintenance failure cause ship to be destroyed?

I was sure I remembered seeing someone explain most of this in a post during the last week or so, but whatever.

Maybe it was, I didn't see it and I appreciate your effort try to explain it even better to silly ol' me 

EDIT:

Unless there was misleading info in a authoritative location,  it's not applies 1 at a time.

Any chance for a link? Because going by an early tutorial it is applies one at a time, but there is also a different internal armor / HTK formula than the one I am familiar with and mechanics has been known to change many times.