Outline of the issue:
This is a collection of three separate changes that would help alleviate the issue some like to call "Gigantism", the phenomenon where people make bigger and bigger ships because this is the only way to remain effective in an arms race. You can argue that it's realistic or makes for nice competition and all but, the problem is gigantism in starmade has no limit. If servers don't set up limits for ship size, soon everyone puts all their faction resources into making sanity shattering titans that are completely unassailable by anything but other sanity shattering titans.
Why is this bad? It's simple. The only way to gain advantages is make bigger ships. Fighters? Forget about it. Corvettes and frigates? Better move up quickly or get left behind. Got new players in your faction but no resources to make big ships for them yet? To the gulags. All in all gigantism hampers the creative freedom the players have for not only building their ships, but also how they're supposed to play the game. Scouting only gives you intel on the size of the enemy ships, and maybe what weapons they're using.
The idea:
The changes are simple:
The Shield Emitter:
A cube with one side representing the output, and five empty sides. The cube itself would have the effective HP of several advanced armor blocks. The key features of the block would be that it:
Second, the emitter would check the open space on its output side for a sphere with the diameter of X blocks, where X is ship size divided by 2 (or something to this effect). If any part of the ship intersects this sphere, docked or not, the shield emitter "fails", and the portion of the shield it was responsible for also fails. This is to prevent builders burying the emitter in an impossible to hit location. See the following crude mspaint diagram:
Naturally, if somebody would decide to make a spherical death star they could easily fit the shield emitters inside it. To prevent this, the emitter may check whether the space it's in is closed or not, perhaps if there's anything in the path of the output side.
The other stuff:
Since just adding the shield emitters on their own would be a massive nerf to shields, a buff to shield capacity and regen rate would be in order. Optimally, in any given condition protecting your ship with shields should be stronger than armor, provided you can make sure your emitters aren't shot out by flanking enemies. This is to promote people using small ships to counter shielded large ships. Since armor-tanked ships with no shields are already vulnerable to light weapons, this means at any given time your ship should be vulnerable to bombers and other small ships.
Another problem with coaxing your fleet mates to use fighters is the way Undeathinators work. You could technically set your respawn location inside the mothership of the fleet so you can get back in the fight easily when your fighter inevitably gets shot up, but what if the mothership dies? You get sent back to the center of the galaxy. The easy solution would be to allow people to set a primary and secondary Undeathinator. One at the mothership, and the other at your home base/planet. Easy peasy.
Why the Shield Emitter?
Let's go over the pros and cons.
Pros:
This is a collection of three separate changes that would help alleviate the issue some like to call "Gigantism", the phenomenon where people make bigger and bigger ships because this is the only way to remain effective in an arms race. You can argue that it's realistic or makes for nice competition and all but, the problem is gigantism in starmade has no limit. If servers don't set up limits for ship size, soon everyone puts all their faction resources into making sanity shattering titans that are completely unassailable by anything but other sanity shattering titans.
Why is this bad? It's simple. The only way to gain advantages is make bigger ships. Fighters? Forget about it. Corvettes and frigates? Better move up quickly or get left behind. Got new players in your faction but no resources to make big ships for them yet? To the gulags. All in all gigantism hampers the creative freedom the players have for not only building their ships, but also how they're supposed to play the game. Scouting only gives you intel on the size of the enemy ships, and maybe what weapons they're using.
The idea:
The changes are simple:
- Add a "Shield Emitter" block, vulnerable from attack even through shields.
- Buff shield capacity and regeneration.
- Add the ability to assign secondary and primary undeathinators.
The Shield Emitter:
A cube with one side representing the output, and five empty sides. The cube itself would have the effective HP of several advanced armor blocks. The key features of the block would be that it:
- Is required for a shield to function.
- Can be damaged at any time, even through shields.
- Removes a portion of your shield when destroyed, proportional to the total amount of emitters the ship has.
Second, the emitter would check the open space on its output side for a sphere with the diameter of X blocks, where X is ship size divided by 2 (or something to this effect). If any part of the ship intersects this sphere, docked or not, the shield emitter "fails", and the portion of the shield it was responsible for also fails. This is to prevent builders burying the emitter in an impossible to hit location. See the following crude mspaint diagram:
Naturally, if somebody would decide to make a spherical death star they could easily fit the shield emitters inside it. To prevent this, the emitter may check whether the space it's in is closed or not, perhaps if there's anything in the path of the output side.
The other stuff:
Since just adding the shield emitters on their own would be a massive nerf to shields, a buff to shield capacity and regen rate would be in order. Optimally, in any given condition protecting your ship with shields should be stronger than armor, provided you can make sure your emitters aren't shot out by flanking enemies. This is to promote people using small ships to counter shielded large ships. Since armor-tanked ships with no shields are already vulnerable to light weapons, this means at any given time your ship should be vulnerable to bombers and other small ships.
Another problem with coaxing your fleet mates to use fighters is the way Undeathinators work. You could technically set your respawn location inside the mothership of the fleet so you can get back in the fight easily when your fighter inevitably gets shot up, but what if the mothership dies? You get sent back to the center of the galaxy. The easy solution would be to allow people to set a primary and secondary Undeathinator. One at the mothership, and the other at your home base/planet. Easy peasy.
Why the Shield Emitter?
Let's go over the pros and cons.
Pros:
- Fighters/Bombers now have a function and reason to exist. Bombers, and small corvettes and frigates and what have you, are able to maneuver around the enemy capital ship and hit the shield emitters. Additionally, fighters and small gunboat type ships can effectively defend their capital ship from bombers lodged into blind spots.
- Scouting has more importance and depth. Scouts and spies can relay information about the number and location of shield emitters on enemy capital ships. Before a fight, briefing the bomber pilots on this intel will have a big impact.
- Emitters are not a complex system. There's no need for shipmakers to painstakingly erase half their interiors; just sprinkle some emitters on your hull and you're good to go!
- A buff to shields gives more reason to use warheads for torpedoes/suicide attacks/ramming. It's also another incentive to board your enemy.
- Fighters/Bombers are still vulnerable to turret spam. Speeding to the blind spots of the enemy capital ships is probably their only chance of surviving. Then again, fighters and bombers are supposed to be disposable. Perhaps being suicidal isn't all that bad if you manage to pick off an emitter per bomber?
- Schema&co would have to change how shields work, which may be more work than it seems. I'm not sure, i'm no programmer, i made sure to include details on how it would work in as simple a way as possible, but there might be some unforeseen detail that makes this impossible? You never know!
- Emitters may break the aesthetics of some ships. Some people like to make really clean shapes with certain colors and that might not work well with a single emitter block being an eyesore. Additionally, some ship shapes make it impossible to place an emitter anywhere but on the "clean armor surface" that many people like to make.
- There might be issues where for example people dock their ship to a mothership with 3/3 emitters, increasing the mass of the mothership to the point where it can now has 3/4 emitters. If you place a fourth emitter on the mothership and undock the other ship, would the shields fail? If so builders would have to make sure carrier type ships have the appropriate amount of emitters before they add the subships, and so on. Another solution would be to not include docked entities in the mass calculation for emitters.