I have another update.
I put a little work into the damage system and came up with something that will fit nicely into the concept of position and orientation dependent combat. At least I hope it will.
The main idea is that a ship uses shield generators to defend itself. These are small objects attached to sockets of the main ship mesh. Every generator has a certain angle it can cover. If an incoming projectile hits the shield at a position covered by a shield generator the projectile is deflected by the shield. The small blue parts of the generator mesh light up to give visual feedback which generator deflected the projectile.
By deflecting the projectile the shield consumes power which must be recharged before it can deflect another projectile. To recharge itself it must request power from an ship-wide power generator that is producing energy at a fixed rate. If energy is available the shield recharges, if not it can retry after a grace period.
This mechanic would allow the player to defend fragile portions of the ship by multiple shield generators to keep the downtime between requesting energy and granting energy by the power generator as small as possible.
Shield Generators also have impact on the offensive capabilities of a ship. To fire a turret the ship must check if the projectile would hit one of the ship’s own shields. If it would the corresponding shield generator ist deactivated for a few seconds. (Indicated by red glowing parts.) While the shield is deactivated the ship is obviously vulnerable from that direction. This makes it crucial to distribute shield generators cleverly across the ships hull and position the ship itself correctly to fight enemies effectively.
Prototypes of all the related components are finished. The shield shader has still a few seams but it should be fine for demonstrating the underlying principle.
After all these words - here is a video that shows how everything would look like.
I did not yet decide what will be done next. I already have a few ideas how to handle damage by projectiles that did not get deflected. Maybe I will get that working.