Dev-Thread: New Shielding System in devlopment

[GnomeKing]

Would you at least agree that 'Area-Group-shields' are better gameplay concept than 'plonk-anywhere-and-forget-shields' ?
What do you think about 'All-or -nothing' vs 'Progressively-weakened' damage mitigation for shields ?

 

[Dire Venom]

Some intersting thougths so far.
I think that the missile meta requires a seperate fix, where spamming 100+ missiles just so your main get through isn't as viable as it is now.
Currently you have to spam large ammounts of no-cost point defense turrets to counters missile spam, which just results in an endless lag increasing match.

EDIT: I thougth about it too much so had to make a seperate thread -_-:
Missiles and PD 2.0, Less spam moar balance

 

[Non]

Would you at least agree that 'Area-Group-shields' are better gameplay concept than 'plonk-anywhere-and-forget-shields' ?
What do you think about 'All-or -nothing' vs 'Progressively-weakened' damage mitigation for shields ?

I would agree that having shield strength in different areas be a configurable is a cool idea that would add a lot to the game, but having it done the way that it is (and i don't have any better suggestions for how to do it, other than maybe just a shield tab like the thrust one that allows you to set different damage multipliers on your shield areas) just makes the game worse. I think plonk anywhere shields are fine, as it allows a lot more flexibility in what shapes a ship can be and how it can utilize its volume and the amount of time it takes to make a ship. The way they have it now encourages you to either stay inside the bubble or go far enough outside it to make another strong bubble, anything in between those is just a liability.

Assuming im understanding what you mean by damage mitigation in your second question, i think all or nothing is best, especially in a game where shields are pretty weak to begin with.

 

[GnomeKing]

"The way they have it now encourages you to either stay inside the bubble or go far enough outside it to make another strong bubble, anything in between those is just a liability."

this is actually a big problem if overlapping shield-bubbles are in any way problematic :/

 

[Jojomo]

"The way they have it now encourages you to either stay inside the bubble or go far enough outside it to make another strong bubble, anything in between those is just a liability."

this is actually a big problem if overlapping shield-bubbles are in any way problematic :/

From what Lancake and Ithirihad say in their quotes in the OP it sounds like overlapping is fine in general.

 

[Dire Venom]

From what I understand, you can have overlap without issues, but you cannot have the center/blocks of one group in another shield bubble, if so the smaller one will deactivate.
This allows some areas to be under the protection of multiple layers of shields, but only to an extent.
You can simply just make a bubble bigger if you want to build outside it.

 

[Non]

in regards to the last three posts, i didnt say anything about overlapping, but rather that anything that extends past the primary bubble needs its own bubble to have shield protection, if that part that extends out is not large enough for proper shield protection, then it will be blown off easily. If something is going to extend out beyond your primary bubble it needs to have a considerable amount of shields, anything that doesn't should just be condensed into the bubble and in that sense limiting what is feasible for a good ship

 

[Jojomo]

in regards to the last three posts, i didnt say anything about overlapping, but rather that anything that extends past the primary bubble needs its own bubble to have shield protection, if that part that extends out is not large enough for proper shield protection, then it will be blown off easily. If something is going to extend out beyond your primary bubble it needs to have a considerable amount of shields, anything that doesn't should just be condensed into the bubble and in that sense limiting what is feasible for a good ship

You have three choices: cover it with a bubble centred elsewhere, give it its own bubble, or leave it unshielded.
Sounds good to me - compromises are exactly what makes design an interesting and enjoyable challenge.

 

[GnomeKing]

i don't think Area-Shields is 'limiting' (and i am very much against 'limits' in general - for example, happy to see googly-eyed-tentacle-ships) -

Small parts, far from the main body of a ship should be easily damaged - cupolas/pods and more substantial projections and auxiliary structures should have their own shielding...

and there are still presumably chamber type customization that could boost effectiveness of small shield groups on distant 'pods'....

 

[Dire Venom]

i don't think Area-Shields is 'limiting' (and i am very much against 'limits' in general - for example, happy to see googly-eyed-tentacle-ships) -

Small parts, far from the main body of a ship should be easily damaged - cupolas/pods and more substantial projections and auxiliary structures should have their own shielding...

and there are still presumably chamber type customization that could boost effectiveness of small shield groups on distant 'pods'....

Well said. I feel this still provides pleanty of options to the player and gives them work-arounds if they want to build something wackey.

 

[Non]

and i am very much against 'limits' in general - for example, happy to see googly-eyed-tentacle-ships

How many of those tentacles do you think will have good shield coverage?

Really, I'm done with this conversation, because its not me that this change hurts, in fact my ships will probably become stronger in comparison to most. I don't know how big these spheres will be compared to shield strength, maybe they will only negatively affect the most extreme design, but I suspect not. I suggest you look at something like the size comparison chart in the shipyard section and ask yourself how many of those relatively pretty, conventional ships will have adequate shielding on all parts if this change goes through. Maybe the answer is all of them, maybe its none of them.

 

[GnomeKing]

"How many of those tentacles do you think will have good shield coverage?"

they will have distributed shield coverage, and like all well behaved, classic Googly-eyed-tentacle-ships, it will progressively loose its tentacles to the brave little hero...but hey, 3/8 tentacles might just be enough to grab a tasty ship-snack

[re-fitting would probably be a pain, but at least this would be working towards a better mechanic that makes the game more interesting and varied]

 

[Dire Venom]

"How many of those tentacles do you think will have good shield coverage?"

they will have distributed shield coverage, and like all well behaved, classic Googly-eyed-tentacle-ships, it will progressively loose its tentacles to the brave little hero...but hey, 3/8 tentacles might just be enough to grab a tasty ship-snack

[re-fitting would probably be a pain, but at least this would be working towards a better mechanic that makes the game more interesting and varied]

Tbh all ships will need to be gutted and refitted because of the power update anyway XD
Another thing this systems discourages is floating turrets/parts of the ship in space. They are somewhat cancer

 

[Non]

Another thing this systems discourages is floating turrets/parts of the ship in space. They are somewhat cancer

Floating turrets aren't really much of a problem, most of them are pretty reasonable as far as distance from the ship goes and generally aren't in a super high quantity, and in their favor, they also tend to fall off nicer than a lot of conventional or embedded turrets if base entity docking is destroyed, if the docking for the barrel to the base is destroyed then its about the same as far as collisions go.

 

[Dire Venom]

Floating turrets aren't really much of a problem, most of them are pretty reasonable as far as distance from the ship goes and generally aren't in a super high quantity, and in their favor, they also tend to fall off nicer than a lot of conventional or embedded turrets if base entity docking is destroyed, if the docking for the barrel to the base is destroyed then its about the same as far as collisions go.

I agree, it's only the more extreme cases which could be problimatic. They would also beable to have their own shielding as well, so no real loss by the shielding change.
Tbh I've never encoutered a spread out ship in-game before, and I'm sure they would be removed from PvP Duels.
I quite like to have full firing arcs on my turrets, so don't really mind on floating turrets as long as they aren't too seperated.

 

[Non]

I made a low density ship and it is 100% cancer, trust that this change does nothing to solve that.

And for the record, pretty much all my damage turrets are floating with full rotation.

 

[GnomeKing]

I strongly dislike the ability to easily make free floating turret pods - these are essentially just tethered ships to do all the shooting on auto-pilot, and impose no real design limits on how they are mounted on the main entity (ie can easily just remount them further away...).

So far I have seen no clear solutions to these 'floaters', although Area-Shields make such pods more vulnerable. While I am in favor of strange and usual builds, 'floater' turrets are bad for the game (too easy to make very powerful/big with near 100% coverage, with very little design limitations - and, crime-of-crimes, often also just ugly).

Maybe the only solution is a simple requirement that when building every part must have at least 1 block attachment (even if just capsule or scaffold, not "open doors" or cargo though) to every other. That would still allow for moderate 'pod' designs, but these would require more thought to achieve similar mountings and coverage to current 'floaters'.

Spaghetti-monsters can be rehabilitated, but 'floaters' should be flushed away ...

[non-the less, i don't really want to exclude all 'pods'; space dwelling clusters of cloud-crystal space entity-beings for example, perhaps even 'nano-swarms' - but at the moment 'turret-floaters' are far too easy to make 'meta' - perhaps just penalties of some kind applied to disconnected entities, especially if docked power is gone. this would make them less reliable as a component of uber PvP ships for example ..... that all said, and as said many times elsewhere, the performance problem of how to deal with dead turrets/overheating/detached entities still needs urgent attention - until that is done, easily 'fall-off-able' turrets are the only sensible way to go :/]

 

[Non]

I strongly dislike the ability to easily make free floating turret pods - these are essentially just tethered ships to do all the shooting on auto-pilot, and impose no real design limits on how they are mounted on the main entity (ie can easily just remount them further away...).

So far I have seen no clear solutions to these 'floaters', although Area-Shields make such pods more vulnerable. While I am in favor of strange and usual builds, 'floater' turrets are bad for the game (too easy to make very powerful/big with near 100% coverage, with very little design limitations - and, crime-of-crimes, often also just ugly).

Maybe the only solution is a simple requirement that when building every part must have at least 1 block attachment (even if just capsule or scaffold, not "open doors" or cargo though) to every other. That would still allow for moderate 'pod' designs, but these would require more thought to achieve similar mountings and coverage to current 'floaters'.

Spaghetti-monsters can be rehabilitated, but 'floaters' should be flushed away ...

You are burning my soul here man, there is nothing that inherently breaks the game about floating turrets unlike spaghetti and other similar things. Floating turrets still take normal damage and can still be targeted easily. They still have limits to what they can hit and normal turrets can still be big and clunky and do all the damage for a ship. Floating turrets are easy to make too, its not like some hidden secret the pvp community has been fighting to hide from the general population.

 

[Master_chief_150]

This shield update should help with the benefits of flanking and attacking from surprising angles. As most instincts would put heavy shielding in the front while weaker shielding in the back. This helps compared to the entity wide shield system we currently have, as being attacked from any angle doesn't affect the shield damage in any way. With this new update, attacking from alternative angles should be a viable strategy in game for combat.

 

[GnomeKing]

Exactly - floaters are relatively 'easy to make' - But i can also just mount loads of fighters on a huge open grid like rack of non-physical, disconnected pickup-points and call it a ship with docked guns - with no significant hindrances or penalties.
I could accept happily something like a 'tethered drone' that keeps station with a ship as a kind of pod-turret - but why should that share shields or power with the main entity?

Without a power transfer block or similar idea, why should a disconnected entity share any attributes with the main entity???

Agreed, this makes turrets difficult > mainly because we build in square blocks and can't have an axle in a round, snugly fitting hole...
Therefore it makes turrets easier to build (for wide coverage and low collision lag) by using disconnected axis-blocks, so that the attachment docker can be fully inside the the protective body of the turret base. Same idea can be extended to the base-docker and axis-block to the main ship to create a tru floater. That is something I have done myself. - but i am not sure its that good, either conceptually, or in terms of detachment when gun-blocks have to clip through base blocks for example.