Read by Council Force Fields

[Waterphoenix]

Now, we've all heard loads about fantastic new shield ideas, and before we get started, i just want to clear up that this should not replace shields and also is not intended to be used much on ships.

So the idea is that on planets and space stations you can plonk down a shield emitter block and it will create a sphere of forcefield (not made of blocks) that cannot be shot through or destroyed until thr emitter is destroyed. You can mae them larger by linking more emitter blocks to the output like the old docking system. However, ships and players will still ba able to move through the forcefield - think Star Wars:

Why we should we implement it:
1. It will make smaller ships and bombers more useful, as super huge titans would be unable to get inside the sphere and destroy the emitter
2. It will stop stations and planetary bases being destroyed so easily by passing giants. If someone in a huge ship sees a small base, they're likely to obliterate it for fun. The forcefields will mean that it takes more effort to destroy a base, and that it wouldn't be worth their time - thus a kind of auto-balancing of PvP.
3.It would look cool as hell. Who doesn't want a force field!?

Balancing Issues:
1. Force fields will require a ton of energy to run, meaning they will only really be usable on bases and stations. Every time they take a hit, they use up energy. If all energy is depleted, they go down just like shields.
2. The bigger they are, the more energy the use.
3. The force fields are not allowed to intersect, so that you can't just coat your base in them.
4. On any ship with thrusters, they are temporary active items. Activate them like a radar jammer and they will burn through energy for as long as they are active. Think personal shields from Star Wars Battlefront:
[Couldn't download the picture for some reason sorry]

So yeah I thought this is a pretty cool idea, what do you guys think?

 

[kiraen]

Bubble shields are an old idea. And specifically removed from the game due to lagtastic performance issues and the smoking ruin of many a desktop.

 

[Waterphoenix]

Bubble shields are an old idea. And specifically removed from the game due to lagtastic performance issues and the smoking ruin of many a desktop.

Oh... how long ago was this?

 

[kiraen]

Umm...not sure exactly. Before my time, at least a year. Here's the most recent thread I could find about it, tho.

Rejected - Bubble Shields

 

[AtraUnam]

I believe bubble shields were discussed before and the concensus was that large ships would just poke the tips of their gun barrels through the bubble and blow up the emitters that way.

 

[Waterphoenix]

Oh so not long ago then.. well that's a shame

Then again, they said rails would destroy computers and my laptop is fine with them

 

[NeonSturm]

Ok, why not just translate the projectile into ship-coordinates, eliminate the rotation, half the relative coordinates and check it against 3 2D cross-sections?
If it changes from outside to inside, collide. If it changes from inside to outside, ignore.

 

[Shaker]

Is a good idea for a shield variant, running off power capacity instead of shield capacity.

 

[Lord_Greyscale]

2. It will stop stations and planetary bases being destroyed so easily by passing giants. If someone in a huge ship sees a small base, they're likely to obliterate it for fun. The forcefields will mean that it takes more effort to destroy a base, and that it wouldn't be worth their time - thus a kind of auto-balancing of PvP.

Balancing Issues:
1. Force fields will require a ton of energy to run, meaning they will only really be usable on bases and stations. Every time they take a hit, they use up energy. If all energy is depleted, they go down just like shields.
2. The bigger they are, the more energy the use.
3. The force fields are not allowed to intersect, so that you can't just coat your base in them.

Balance points 1, 2, and 3 entirely fuck-over the core concept.

Most "small" bases are either Role-play listening posts, or a new player's homebase.

Part of that is because Bases suck big flaming leperous donkey balls, and the other part is that they have all the same deficiencies as Starships, but lose the mobility.

Requiring a butt-load of energy to run them, means that no-one can afford to use the damn theatre-shield.
If, and this is a big IF, bases didn't have the energy-generation diminishing returns, then maybe the concept would work.

You'd allso need players that aren't suddenly pissed that their "fly-swatter" didn't work, and go full aggro on the poor base that "dared" to not die to a potshot.
(this then drains all the remaining power on the "small" base, and it promptly implodes from the biggatons being shot at it.)

Design some better balance points, and then we'll talk.

MASSIVE EDIT:

I'm NOT, repeat, NOT against the core concept, just the "suggested balance" that makes the concept not work.

 

[Amadeus]

Now, we've all heard loads about fantastic new shield ideas, and before we get started, i just want to clear up that this should not replace shields and also is not intended to be used much on ships.

So the idea is that on planets and space stations you can plonk down a shield emitter block and it will create a sphere of forcefield (not made of blocks) that cannot be shot through or destroyed until thr emitter is destroyed. You can mae them larger by linking more emitter blocks to the output like the old docking system. However, ships and players will still ba able to move through the forcefield - think Star Wars:

Why we should we implement it:
1. It will make smaller ships and bombers more useful, as super huge titans would be unable to get inside the sphere and destroy the emitter
2. It will stop stations and planetary bases being destroyed so easily by passing giants. If someone in a huge ship sees a small base, they're likely to obliterate it for fun. The forcefields will mean that it takes more effort to destroy a base, and that it wouldn't be worth their time - thus a kind of auto-balancing of PvP.
3.It would look cool as hell. Who doesn't want a force field!?

Balancing Issues:
1. Force fields will require a ton of energy to run, meaning they will only really be usable on bases and stations. Every time they take a hit, they use up energy. If all energy is depleted, they go down just like shields.
2. The bigger they are, the more energy the use.
3. The force fields are not allowed to intersect, so that you can't just coat your base in them.
4. On any ship with thrusters, they are temporary active items. Activate them like a radar jammer and they will burn through energy for as long as they are active. Think personal shields from Star Wars Battlefront:
[Couldn't download the picture for some reason sorry]

So yeah I thought this is a pretty cool idea, what do you guys think?

What if instead of being a physical object it was based on distance instead? After reading the old, rejected thread it's the general consensus that the bubble shields caused too much lag because they would be physical objects. What if the "force fields" were still based off of being a skin, but the modules themselves greatly improve the performance of said shields as the distance of the attacker increases? As this would merely be an enhancement of the current system it would not involve the lag associated with creating a physical entity that encompasses a planet.

 

[Waterphoenix]

Balance points 1, 2, and 3 entirely fuck-over the core concept.

Most "small" bases are either Role-play listening posts, or a new player's homebase.

Part of that is because Bases suck big flaming leperous donkey balls, and the other part is that they have all the same deficiencies as Starships, but lose the mobility.

Requiring a butt-load of energy to run them, means that no-one can afford to use the damn theatre-shield.
If, and this is a big IF, bases didn't have the energy-generation diminishing returns, then maybe the concept would work.

You'd allso need players that aren't suddenly pissed that their "fly-swatter" didn't work, and go full aggro on the poor base that "dared" to not die to a potshot.
(this then drains all the remaining power on the "small" base, and it promptly implodes from the biggatons being shot at it.)

Design some better balance points, and then we'll talk.

MASSIVE EDIT:

I'm NOT, repeat, NOT against the core concept, just the "suggested balance" that makes the concept not work.

Ok, maybe the idea that it drains power with every hit is a bad idea.
Other than that, what balance points would you suggest?
[DOUBLEPOST=1454166409,1454163011][/DOUBLEPOST]

What if instead of being a physical object it was based on distance instead? After reading the old, rejected thread it's the general consensus that the bubble shields caused too much lag because they would be physical objects. What if the "force fields" were still based off of being a skin, but the modules themselves greatly improve the performance of said shields as the distance of the attacker increases? As this would merely be an enhancement of the current system it would not involve the lag associated with creating a physical entity that encompasses a planet.

I actually like the idea of enhanced shielding, but i do think that maybe starships could just have these dotted around all over making them practically invulnerable. Without a major drawback, personally i think these would be a bit OP. The lag issue... idk why this would be a problem, feel free to explain if you like

Edit: also, what's wrong with point 3?

 

[Lord_Greyscale]

How to balance it better?

I'm sorry to say that I don't have an idea at this time. I'll be mulling it over through the next few weeks, and if I think of something, I'll be certain to let you know. (but, I'm thinking that won't happen. most of my "best" ideas are spur-of-the-moment realizations of several lesser ideas congealing.)

As for what was wrong with point 3:
TL;DR : It'll end up a creativity stifling measure, plain and simple.

This is one of those lucky, lucky few spaceship games (shut up about all the clones damn you! ) where creativity, though not the end-all-be-all, is still astoundingly important on a deep, fundamental level. (mostly because the "vanilla" blueprints are pretty, but functionally shitty, so you HAVE to invent your own goodness, or download from those who allready did.)

Point 3 would Stifle that. Stifle it HARD.
As in, unless you took great and terrible pains to make the shield-size server adjustable, you'd end up with "small" bases that simply cannot make use of it, due to a combination of size creep and feature creep.
(hangar bays kinda have to fit the ships actually being used after all.)

Equally important, it'd lead to the "all space-stations are testicles" problem, where in order to fit into the theatre-shield, the station was designed as a giant ball.

I dunno about you, but I didn't download StarMade to play SpaceBalls: Ballin' Balls edition.


Oh, and sorry to be so, unrelentingly harsh. I know how it feels to be on the other side of this sort of conversation, and I hated it.
I just wish I had a good idea for balancing.

Hopefully the rest of the community can help with that one.

 

[Waterphoenix]

How to balance it better?

I'm sorry to say that I don't have an idea at this time. I'll be mulling it over through the next few weeks, and if I think of something, I'll be certain to let you know. (but, I'm thinking that won't happen. most of my "best" ideas are spur-of-the-moment realizations of several lesser ideas congealing.)

As for what was wrong with point 3:
TL;DR : It'll end up a creativity stifling measure, plain and simple.

This is one of those lucky, lucky few spaceship games (shut up about all the clones damn you! ) where creativity, though not the end-all-be-all, is still astoundingly important on a deep, fundamental level. (mostly because the "vanilla" blueprints are pretty, but functionally shitty, so you HAVE to invent your own goodness, or download from those who allready did.)

Point 3 would Stifle that. Stifle it HARD.
As in, unless you took great and terrible pains to make the shield-size server adjustable, you'd end up with "small" bases that simply cannot make use of it, due to a combination of size creep and feature creep.
(hangar bays kinda have to fit the ships actually being used after all.)

Equally important, it'd lead to the "all space-stations are testicles" problem, where in order to fit into the theatre-shield, the station was designed as a giant ball.

I dunno about you, but I didn't download StarMade to play SpaceBalls: Ballin' Balls edition.


Oh, and sorry to be so, unrelentingly harsh. I know how it feels to be on the other side of this sort of conversation, and I hated it.
I just wish I had a good idea for balancing.

Hopefully the rest of the community can help with that one.

Lol "spaceballs: balling balls edition" i love it xD

But the idea is that you can resize your force field using expansion blocks that can be slaved to the emitter. This means that a huge base will have to have one huge force field, making it easier to take down with larger ships. With intersecting shields, you'd be able to coat your huge base in little tiny bubbles that only little tiny fighters would be able to breach, but they wouldn't be able to withstand huge turrets on the huge base.

Hope i cleared this up a bit :p

 

[Lord_Greyscale]

Aye, that did actually clear up that issue.
(and looking back, can't fecking believe I missed it. Derp on me. :p )

Some players would tend towards "balls" (mostly the munchkin types) , but not nearly as badly as I had believed it would.

 

[JTJSniperBee]

hmm. power drain is nice. but make it not that heavy. the idea of a forcefield is to block projectiles or physical objects. and forcefields can intersect in most cases. so some balance pointers would be. energy consuming. not that heavy unless your shot by all the weapons on a missile boat. able to overlap. but running 1 huge one is more efficent than 20 tiny ones. facing ramming targets you need to switch modes to protect from the warheads. but doing that leaves your shields open to incoming fire. you can set a tolerance threshold. for instance. you can have it tolerate incoming fire untill it drains 1/4% power in one draw. then it auto turns off. or set it if your power drops below a precentage it shuts off. so you just cant be whacked at by a missile boat till power goes down. leaving you open.

 

[Waterphoenix]

hmm. power drain is nice. but make it not that heavy. the idea of a forcefield is to block projectiles or physical objects. and forcefields can intersect in most cases. so some balance pointers would be. energy consuming. not that heavy unless your shot by all the weapons on a missile boat. able to overlap. but running 1 huge one is more efficent than 20 tiny ones. facing ramming targets you need to switch modes to protect from the warheads. but doing that leaves your shields open to incoming fire. you can set a tolerance threshold. for instance. you can have it tolerate incoming fire untill it drains 1/4% power in one draw. then it auto turns off. or set it if your power drops below a precentage it shuts off. so you just cant be whacked at by a missile boat till power goes down. leaving you open.

The idea is that warheads are still let through, but missiles are blocked. This is so that warhead torpedoes and bombs are used more often, because atm everyone seems to be using planet-destroying missile launchers.

 

[jorn818]

I Already suggested this about a month ago, it lags atm I believe

 

[Waterphoenix]

I Already suggested this about a month ago, it lags atm I believe

Well, they said rails would render a world unplayable due to lag, but look where we are now. You never know, they could find a way to overcome it.

Also, can someone please explain why it would be so laggy? Thanks.

 

[NeonSturm]

Also, can someone please explain why it would be so laggy? Thanks.

Seconded. But that would probably fall under the NDA – nobody speaks about it as it could reveal a secret of a feature which is important to keep players addicted to StarMade.

 

[Waterphoenix]

Seconded. But that would probably fall under the NDA – nobody speaks about it as it could reveal a secret of a feature which is important to keep players addicted to StarMade.

Explains why i can never stop playing