We're back again with some information on damaging and destroying ship components!
Support vessels can issue the 'Concentrate Fire' order which permits them and a set number of allied vessels to target individual components on a specific enemy ship.
A barrage aimed at that component can either hit it in its entirety, deal a smaller amount of damage across all components in that group or miss entirely and damage the ship as normal. Once a component is destroyed, attacks against it will damage the other components in that group or deal damage to the vessel directly if all components of that type have been destroyed.
A support vessel isn't the only means of damaging components however, as normal attacks have a chance of damaging a single component or group of components so it's important to check the component damage levels of your ships and protect them accordingly.
Too much damage to a weapon component will destroy it and as component attacks can ignore vessel armour and protective buffs, it can be a great strategy to neutralise heavily armoured vessels. Damage to engines will not destroy them entirely, but will significantly reduce the movement and turning range of a ship, not only making it easier to handle the enemy with long range weapons but will also reduce the enemies maximum evasion.
As a trade-off for the abilities of support ships, they have a reduced combat effectiveness and are more vulnerable on their own compared to the regular variants of that ship. To be used effectively they'll need an effective escort!
Looks beautiful! Congratulations! Also I applaud your excellent decision to create a sci-fi turn-based game! There are very few that have MOO-style combat.
It follows your game should be a great financial success!!
Additional references & ideas:
Warhammer 40K has great grim space-battle stories, ask around!
If you can somehow maybe consider bigger parts of ships falling off in fiery smoke and disintegrate. Essentially ships get shot apart gradually: hurt worse and worse then finally destroyed. The player can see / judge the level of destruction reached.