92821 - power tanks and shields

[HatBuster]

Power Tanks behave quite weirdly, when I placed the first one on a ship without build mode, it wouldn't register.



Also, shields still use 2k E/s, but the patchnotes said their power usage would be halved, which didn't seem to happen.

 

[EspiOwnage]

Well it\'s a good thing it didnt happen. Shields are good where they are. Reduction of shield power usage is imo, a bad way to balance the game. I already started up a suggestions thread asking for a shield capacity block that would increase shield load but not regen. This way large ships are actually vulnerable to smaller ships rather than 100% impervious to them. If anything i\'d ask the cost of shield regen to go up 150% energy

 

[HatBuster]

you\'re kidding, right? AMCs were made 5x stronger (they use 80% less power) and even before that, one could shred through shields without effort.

 

[Calbiri]

Schema plans to add the ability to turn off sheild regeneration (while leaving the shields themselves active to defend) in order to save power. This will help aleviate both sides of this argument. The power cost should be at 1k, the fact that its not IS a bug and should be corrected. The proper drain a shield should be set at is a balance issue that will likely go up/down depending in other factors.

 

[BDLS]

Earlier in chat we were dicussing that it might be a nice mechanic to make the AMC shot that breaks the shield to be either dissipated completely, or reduce the damage it does to the block in the path of the shot.

This would potentially increase survivability of small fighters and make dog fighting a bit more fun with the extra survivability, since a single shot from all but the tiniest AMC arrays will have enough power to wipe out even a hardened hull block.

There was also the discussion of highly increasing shield block load and reducing regeneration, might be interesting.

 

[EspiOwnage]

A consistant stream of shield regeneration is great, but no ship should be \"invulnerable\" to other ships that are unable to outdamage a larger ships\' shields.

I don\'t mean to sound like a heritic or anything, but I think shields should be somewhat like the HP systems of games like Battlefield and CoD. Here is my idea:

When a ship is being attacked, shield regen should instantly shut down. Shielding can go either way at this point; Either the ships\' shield load (See this. Xiphon makes a good point about why 2 types of shields blocks are important.) can continue towards zero, or the ship manages to avoid damage for a certain amount of time in which case, the shield regeneration will turn back on regenerating shield load back to full. This actually makes all ships no matter how large, vulnerable to a much wider spectrum of other types of ships.

This is where my other idea of adding Shield capacitator blocks comes in. with two seperate blocks (Sheild Regen and Shield Capacity), people will be able to make their own variation of defenses according to their preferances.They can take low shield regen but high shield load, or they can take high shield regen but low shield load, or they can take a versitalle amount of both.

The only problem with having a shield system like this, is that I can\'t really figure out the math to balance Sheild Load and Regen... :P

 

[Awesomest]

It\'s a lot harder to make a big shield than to make a big AMC. Even a decent sized AMC (Or array of them) can shred through a large shield in no time flat.