Intutive damage feedback for top down 4x Game

I am building a 4X game, and I am at a phase where I am adding some GUI fluff.

It's probably a mistake, as I should program allot more before worring about that stuff, but I would like to bring it to the table and see if you have some nice examples, and I can atleast play around with the GUI functions I need to make it work. Ish.

StarDrive, with it's directional weapons has been an inspiration, but I hope I'll be able to turn it up a notch compared to the long range slugging seen there. The end result will be something like Distant Worlds, with the directional weapons seen in StarDrive.

Now the part where I need some inspiration: How should I cleary portay damage. As I have allready mentioned my inspiration:

StarDrive Combat: around 2:30 in

Distant Worlds Combat: around 4:30 in

StarDrive display the damage as a (single) numeric indicator that is increasing as damage is dealt.
Pro: Very clear that a ship takes allot of damage.
Con: Hard to tell where the damage is coming from or what weapons that are effective.

Distant worlds does not show any numbers but has the classic healthbars
Pro: Current status is clear.
con: Clutters the view. No info on where damage is coming from.

Nether games does a good job (in my opinion) to use particles to show weapons effectiveness, so perhaps that is a third way. Dungeon crawlers/Diablo generally does a good job here. Powerful weapons are bight and flashy.

Or is there another way that you know of?

 

I personally like Bars + visual feedback. Where damage comes from should be apparent based on the effects of, say, a swarm of fighters blasting lasers or a giant capital ship firing giant capital ship sized shells at you. Add that to visual feedback in terms of how much your ship is currently on fire (or not on fire as the case may be) and you have a good idea of how things are going. But when it comes to looking at the current status of your ships quickly and efficiently - bars are fastest for me. A quick glance tells me shields, armor, etc. I wouldnt go over 3 bars of info for any one ship... and possibly the smallest ships dont even have them (fighters or whatever).

 

I agree about in-world visual feedback. Perhaps particles could fly off in the same direction as the weapon impact, to indicate the physics of getting hit, with the size of the particle effect scaled to the amount of damage. That and a highlight flash would give a good feel for damage.

If you're using sprites, maybe you could swap in progressively more damaged versions as ships take damage, and add particle effects such as flames or engine leaks.

 

I think health bars are the easiest option, and you can make them look visually interesting and not too distracting. In mammoth gravity battles, I only add health bars to objects that have taken some damage.

 

I like that. It's an elegant solution that eliminates unnecessary visual elements.