SOSE - Can subsystems be damage?

Health bar, bitter end.

That would be a cool addition, being able to target a ship's engines or something so you could disable it and then board it to take it over.

Probably why there have been several threads on the ideas involved there. Boarding, subsystem damage, ship capture, all been done.

Boarding and subsystems have already been turned down for the time being (too much micro).

Personally i agree with kryo that it would introduce too much micro in the current format of the game.
I although like the idea that was mentioned:
"Lucky hits" Every (cap)ship has on each salvo a chance to land a lucky hit (totally by chance) and damage one of the enemies subsystems if their shields are down already.
That would have a similar effect of the Akkans ion shot only that it would only deactivate one system at a time for a certain amount until its been repaired sufficiently (short-long, whatever ^^)
Would make battles more fun and dynamic i think.
Also would people try and keep their shields intact.

Yeah, lucky hits would be cool. Still, ships are hit with tons of shots, so the odds would have to be crazy low...or they would be happening all the time in spite of a relatively low chance of occuring.

I actually have this implemented in my Kin of the Stars mod. Your basic light frigate has a very low chance (around 0.5%, IIRC) to "overload" the systems of the target, disabling it for 10 seconds. It works quite well given the number of frigates you have running around. You'll see it happen from time to time, but it's not what you'd call "reliable."

excellent, at least its possible to do such things