Dev-Thread: New Shielding System in devlopment

[Dire Venom]

Back on topic... anyone know anything more about this:

UI

Reactor shield? Reactor failsafe? Power rechage?
This is all new and exciting to me :3

 

[aceface]

...and yes its a fact the ships in bns werent particularly great.

especially when not fighting in a locked sector

 

[kikaha]

v 0.200.162
Anything connected to beams and beams on their own ignore shields and hit/damage whatever is "behind".
Missiles ignore shields also.
Canon, canon/canons don't ignore shields. Hand pistol don't ignore shields also.

 

[StormWing0]

Oh dear, Bugs! Bugs! Everywhere!.

 

[Top 4ce]

Oh dear, Bugs! Bugs! Everywhere!.

It is a Dev build...

 

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

Tried building a fun little ship in the current dev build, a 1:1 scale Danube-class Runabout. Works fine except for jump drive mysteriously not letting me jump.
It has no stabilizers, has the max reactor size before stabilizers come into play. Shield bubble is also pretty damn big from just the few blocks.

Overall, it feels like for fighters, it's probably fine right now, but I really worry because if the reactor is increased at all, it needs stabilizers, and there's nowhere to really put them in such tight builds (its longest dimension is 23 meters).

 

[Jojomo]

Tried building a fun little ship in the current dev build, a 1:1 scale Danube-class Runabout. Works fine except for jump drive mysteriously not letting me jump.
It has no stabilizers, has the max reactor size before stabilizers come into play. Shield bubble is also pretty damn big from just the few blocks.

Overall, it feels like for fighters, it's probably fine right now, but I really worry because if the reactor is increased at all, it needs stabilizers, and there's nowhere to really put them in such tight builds (its longest dimension is 23 meters).

Separation for 100% stabiliser efficiency starts at around just 6 metres (without even considering lower efficiency), and you're already 23m long without even needing stabilisers yet.
Doesn't sound like anything to worry about there...

 

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

Separation for 100% stabiliser efficiency starts at around just 6 metres (without even considering lower efficiency), and you're already 23m long without even needing stabilisers yet.
Doesn't sound like anything to worry about there...

It's for a very lightly-systemed ship (most Star Trek ships are like 90% living quarters), thus needs little power, but goes over power if moving and charging the jump drive at the same time. There's no area to put in stabilizers because it has a cockpit in the front. Making it more of an actual fighter would lead to requiring something like double the power, so the reactor would need to be pushed entirely to the back and the cockpit would just be stabilizers.
Basically, an Xwing is probably going to be fine because it has about the same amount of systems, but if anyone wants to build a millennium falcon-sized ship with decent firepower, I see trouble with stabilizer placement.

I plan to continue building a few more RP ships (Millennium Falcon and Xwing) and then try and make something original with optimal weapons at about the same size as a Millennium Falcon. I'll see how it goes; the shield bubble's at minimum are pretty damn large, so I think the main limiting factor will be stabilizers.

 

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

After making an Xwing (screenshots attached), I shot at it once with the Danube and immediately discovered that shields are currently not working at all (the capacity is known by the UI for placing shield blocks, but when queried, it seems to be using the old shield system). So much for testing that out. So, for the time being, it's mostly just a display of what you can do with partial blocks I guess (the reactor is in the snout and the cockpit is a single working glass door btw).

 

[GalactusX]

Please, I want to see the 2.0 power system finished before seeing a new version of shields 2.0 ... end with one thing, then start with another, not all at once ...

PLEASE ...

 

[kikaha]

That bubble is only there to show where the shield blocks can be placed when making several groups. It is not the actual shield.

 

[Jojomo]

It's for a very lightly-systemed ship (most Star Trek ships are like 90% living quarters), thus needs little power, but goes over power if moving and charging the jump drive at the same time. There's no area to put in stabilizers because it has a cockpit in the front. Making it more of an actual fighter would lead to requiring something like double the power, so the reactor would need to be pushed entirely to the back and the cockpit would just be stabilizers.

No, don’t worry, it's still fine. For example you can double the reactor size to 20 blocks and place the stabilisers at 40% efficiency (a semi-random choice for this example's sake) for a separation of just 15m, and double your power.
[doublepost=1510482553,1510481821][/doublepost]

Please, I want to see the 2.0 power system finished before seeing a new version of shields 2.0 ... end with one thing, then start with another, not all at once ...

PLEASE ...

But why?
If you've got two or more people coding it may not be possible for them to both effectively work on the same system at the same time, or if the mechanics of one system are done but parameter values are still being tested it would be incredibly inefficient for the coder(s) to down tools and not touch the next system until the testers had finalised those numbers...
Schine probably can't survive if it isn't run in a business-like manner - making players feel comfortable with how development tasks are scheduled can't be top priority.

 

[GalactusX]

Do not confuse my words as a criticism, the developers do their job well.

It's just that in my humble opinion, focusing efforts on completing a task, and leaving it fully functioning, gives way to greater stability to add other functions or modifications. .. you know, if you have a good base to work, it gives way to better stability to add new things and solve problems, instead of working on 20 things at once, and having to review everything if a problem arises.

 

[Jojomo]

Do not confuse my words as a criticism, the developers do their job well.

It's just that in my humble opinion, focusing efforts on completing a task, and leaving it fully functioning, gives way to greater stability to add other functions or modifications. .. you know, if you have a good base to work, it gives way to better stability to add new things and solve problems, instead of working on 20 things at once, and having to review everything if a problem arises.

I don't disagree that that might be nice, I just don't think it's practical from an efficiency or business point of view.

 

[Scypio]

I don't disagree that that might be nice, I just don't think it's practical from an efficiency or business point of view.

Doing everything at the same time mean every features quickly delivered with much more time used to debug said features and sometime entirely coding them again.
Going one step at a time mean more time of developement to get all features delivered but less time debugging the product.
Take your pick, depending on where and wich company you work for you'll work one way or the other and it mainly depend on the customer your software companies work for.

Knowing the game has been in alpha stage for 6 years if you tell me the first choice is better then i suggest you talk with schine about your point of view about developing.

 

[Ithirahad]

Please, I want to see the 2.0 power system finished before seeing a new version of shields 2.0 ... end with one thing, then start with another, not all at once ...

PLEASE ...

People have to refit anyway. Might as well not make people refit multiple times.

 

[Jojomo]

Knowing the game has been in alpha stage for 6 years if you tell me the first choice is better then i suggest you talk with schine about your point of view about developing.

Outward appearances suggest they have a similar opinion to my own. I don't what you think might be achieved by me discussing it with them.

 

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

New dev build has shields working. Was a hassle to refit the Danube to have a sane amount of shielding; I couldn't put a second group of rechargers in anywhere because even 4 blocks away was too much, so it only has a pitiful 89 shield regen a second (and the Xwing I built has about 100 damage a shot, and I think around 200 DPS). The good news is that the power was still fine with the 16k shields and 89 shields/s regen while moving and shooting. Xwing also had fine power, but pitiful shields at only 1800 (Danube's slapped-together 20-beam module beams easily can take out over 4 blocks per shot).
Edit: more juggling around of things got the Danube up to 19k shields and 120 shields/s. Xwing takes about a minute to take out its shields. I'd use the embedded thumbnail built-in thing on posts, but it isn't very cooperative:
I guess shields were buffed? There's still the old system's info showing on tooltip and in build mode's info expandables, which shows only 649 shields on the Xwing, but it has 1.8k shields according to the actual blocks. Combat perfomance is about where I'd expect it to be regardless.
The recharger spacing is a problem, I think small ships will need basically a solid chunk of them in the center, possibly directly in front of the reactor; you just can't shove them in wherever there's gaps in the walls anymore.

 

[StormWing0]

lol I loaded up and tried to refit my Striker ship and just learned how poorly it was setup to begin with, yep stabilizers on the outside of the ship. >.>

 

[Ithirahad]

lol I loaded up and tried to refit my Striker ship and just learned how poorly it was setup to begin with, yep stabilizers on the outside of the ship. >.>

Are you trying to make the existing weapons work? If so, you shouldn't. They'll be far too powerful and consume far too much energy under the new system.