Directional Shields (does NOT replace current shields)

[KuramaFox]

Edit: Due to a request of interest from someone, I will start this post with a version of the idea that requires No New Blocks, which had initially appeared a few posts down. He suggested a separate topic for the idea, but I think its close enough to the current topic that I will simply move a quote of it up here to be the first thing mentioned.

The short version of this modified idea is that you keep the current blocks, and add a Shield Menu, similar to the Thruster Menu.

It may not be necessary to actually add new blocks to implement one or more of the basic concepts of the shield idea.

One option would be to keep the current two shield blocks, but to implement the directional shields and whatever hit detection works best in terms of gameplay and required processing power. In this case, the shields would simply generate either 4 or 6 directions automatically, and you could use a "Shields Menu" similar to the thrust menu. You would use this Shields menu similarly to the thrust menu to basically decide which side(s) to focus the shields on. The result being that you can get customizable shields without needing to work it into the actual ship design, or requiring new blocks or potentially complicated layering mechanics.


Another option is to only implement the shields menu. In this case, you only have ONE shield bank, just like you do currently. However, the shield menu would then allow you to decrease shield damage taken from one or more directions, at the expense of increasing the shield damage taken from some other directions (the multiplier would be applied before any weapons multipliers like ion or pierce). This would allow some shield customization, while not requiring multiple shield banks (or alternatively, could allow some shield customization to be set up, while allowing multiple shield banks to be implemented at a later time).

As you can probably guess, either variant version of the idea is likely easier to implement than the ones requiring new blocks, and would also allow you to do so without needing to update your ship designs.

I will leave the rest of the original opening post below, in case people wish to look at it still.




When I say that they will not replace the current shields, I mean that these directional shields would be NEW shield blocks that act a bit differently. The old shield blocks would still exist, and would continue to function as they do now.

To explain it, I'll also explain the current shield blocks to give a better idea of how the new ones are similar and different to current ones.


Overview:

A ship can have up to 7 shield banks. 6 directional ones and the current omnidirectional one. When hit by a source of damage, the appropriate directional shield would take damage first, with the omni-directional shields taking damage after the directional shield collapses.



Shield Blocks Types:

Omnidirectional Shields: These are the shields we already have in the game. They will also continue to exist in the game, and will continue to function as they do now.

Omnidirectional Shield Capacitor: These blocks increase the shield capacity of the ship. The shields "stored" in this bank can be transferred using a shield supply beam. The shields from this capacitor protect a ship from damage no matter what direction the attack comes from.

Omnidirectional Shield Recharger: These blocks allow your shields to recharge. If the Omnidirectional shield bank is full, it will divide its recharge rate among any directional shield banks that are not full.


Directional Shields: These are shields that only defend against a single direction. The upside is that they are at least several times stronger (both capacity and recharge), and also a bit more energy efficient in terms of raw numbers. They are also easy to set up, and operate based on which direction the block is facing (it would use a texture set to make it easy to tell this).

Directional Shield Capacitor: These blocks increase the shield capacity of the ship in a directional bank. The shields stored in this bank cannot be transferred using a shield supply beam. The shields from this capacitor protect the ship from damage, only if the damage comes from the direction the shields are facing.

Directional Shield Recharger: These increase the rate at which a directional shield bank recharges. This ONLY effects the shield bank in the direction it is facing. It does not improve any other direction, nor does it improve the omnidirectional shield recharge rate, but it is several times stronger than an omnidirectional recharger.


Shield hit direction detection and other mechanics:

This is a subject that will need fleshing as well and perhaps comments/suggestions from other people to ensure it is fair. I'll list some of my thoughts on it to start.

1. "Bubble Shields" CANNOT be used for this because it would be a major processing load. Regardless of direction, shields will be hit when an enemy shot is about to hit the hull, and this will continue to be true for ANY shield type.

1a: We could potentially consider a special "Box Shield" that lets a ship protect nearby vessels with, since a box is much easier to deal with than a bubble, but that may be a topic for a different suggestion.

2. When a ship is hit, ALL shields on it suffer the same recharge penalty, including the chargers for directional shields which were not hit and the chargers for the omnidirectional shields.

3. When a ship is hit, the directional shields are the first to take damage. The omnidirectional shields only take damage if there is no/not enough directional shield available to absorb it.

4. When a directional shield collapses, they remain down for several times longer than the omnidirectional shields do.

5. One option for determining which shield got hit: Base it on which side of the block it hits. If it hits the top of a block (relative to the ship's orientation), then it will hit the top shield. This means you can in fact hit the sides, top, and bottom of most ships fairly easily during combat. As such, a ship that specializes almost entirely on forward shields can still be damaged if not designed to limit how frequently shots are likely to hit its blocks on sides other than the front. It would of course also be weak to attacks from any non-front direction in general too.

6. Another option for determining which shield got hit: Divide the ship into 6 "pyramids," originating at the center of mass. This basically splits the ship into 6 sections. If we go with this, then it doesn't matter what side of the block is hit, and the shield hit will be decided based on which 6th of the ship its in. Using Center of Mass instead of the center of the bounding box is strongly recommended, as the latter can be easily exploited.

7. A third option for determining which shield got hit: direction of the weapon vs. direction of the ship hit. Put another way, an attack which hits the ship from a head-on direction will hit the forward shield, no matter where on the ship the attack hit. The same applies for any other direction. This method is somewhat simple, but it does make it much less valuable to use anything except forward-facing directional shields in a one-on-one fight (although it does mean that side-launch missiles may be much more effective since they would not hit the enemy on the front where they may have focused all their shield strength).

 

[Snowtiger256]

Nice work and interesting concepts, but I'm curious, why would the devs consider going with this and the other multi-block suggestions you've posted?

Implementing these changes would add so many blocks in the game, and needlessly make building things more complex. More blocks with more options is not always good, especially if it involves branching simple systems into multiple branches.

As an avid builder, I enjoy the simplicity of the build system, and making creative choices. I don't want to be bothered about what kind of core to use on what kind of build, or what kind of shield blocks to use to make the most of what I build. Shield blocks may not be that efficient now, but they're easy to lay down without needing to think about orientation and grouping that much.

 

[Dire Venom]

I like the concept in general, but in a different way.
Sort of like a shield overcharge, however it only has a short duration and drains massive ammounts of energy and requires vast ammounts of energy to recharge before its nect use (like how jumpdrives charge)
During this time it boosts shields up to 200-500% of their max value (e.g 10 mill becomes 20-50 mill for a short period) and boosts regen as well.
Timing it well, while draining all of your energy could save you from a potentiality devastating strike.

Would also be really useful for small craft

 

[jayman38]

I want to like this suggestion, but I think it will frustrate new players too much.

Example scenario:
A new player makes a big ship with lots of forward shields.
Thinking he is invincible and overestimating his turning ability, he gets into a fight with a player who has a smaller ship.
The smaller ship gets around behind the new player and blows him away, due to the shield arrangement.
Queue keyboard thrown through a window.

 

[sayerulz]

I don't see what the problem is there. The player that did all forward shields made a mistake, plain and simple. If they can't learn from that and instead decide to throw their keyboard, then that's their loss.

It's no different than making a ship with nothing but missile/pulse then running into a PD boat, or making an ion focused ship then getting killed by an armor tank. If you make a ship that's only good at one thing, expect to be killed by stuff that can exploit it's weaknesses.

 

[Madman198237]

I like the idea of angling shields, but being forced to make shield banks for each direction may very well limit creativity. I would, however, still like some method of decreasing the damage dealt from a certain direction for a time. Perhaps some sort of logic-based controls for an ion effect computer....temporary, 6x directional shield buff (As if all of the ion effect was directed at one face of the shields, strengthening it), at the expense of a shield debuff (Taking away all of the ion effect's effect and maybe a little extra from 5 directions) in all other directions.

 

[MeRobo]

If this was implemented we would have 3-4 defense layers:

1. AMS (Obviously only applies for missiles) - Depending on turret ammount and design varies from directional to nearly omnidirectional
2. Directional shields - Directional
3. Omnidirectional shields - Omnidirectional
4. Armour - Directional

What I want to point out with this is that directional shields wouldn't differ much from armour, the only two thing I see is that directional shields would deflect damage befor omnidirectional shields instead of after said shields and are rechargeable.

 

[Bladeriker]

Basicly layered shields, interesting idea.

 

[KuramaFox]

Honestly, I made the suggestion partly due to being on a roll of thought after the Fuel Reactors one.

It may not be necessary to actually add new blocks to implement one or more of the basic concepts of the shield idea.

One option would be to keep the current two shield blocks, but to implement the directional shields and whatever hit detection works best in terms of gameplay and required processing power. In this case, the shields would simply generate either 4 or 6 directions automatically, and you could use a "Shields Menu" similar to the thrust menu. You would use this Shields menu similarly to the thrust menu to basically decide which side(s) to focus the shields on. The result being that you can get customizable shields without needing to work it into the actual ship design, or requiring new blocks or potentially complicated layering mechanics.


Another option is to only implement the shields menu. In this case, you only have ONE shield bank, just like you do currently. However, the shield menu would then allow you to decrease shield damage taken from one or more directions, at the expense of increasing the shield damage taken from some other directions (the multiplier would be applied before any weapons multipliers like ion or pierce). This would allow some shield customization, while not requiring multiple shield banks (or alternatively, could allow some shield customization to be set up, while allowing multiple shield banks to be implemented at a later time).

 

[Madman198237]

No love for the ion-effect-based directional shield "overcharge" idea I threw out? I feel abandoned....

But a shield menu sounds like a very good idea. It fits with the theme (Thruster menu), and adds a little more creative freedom.

 

[psteiner]

Honestly, I made the suggestion partly due to being on a roll of thought after the Fuel Reactors one.

It may not be necessary to actually add new blocks to implement one or more of the basic concepts of the shield idea.

One option would be to keep the current two shield blocks, but to implement the directional shields and whatever hit detection works best in terms of gameplay and required processing power. In this case, the shields would simply generate either 4 or 6 directions automatically, and you could use a "Shields Menu" similar to the thrust menu. You would use this Shields menu similarly to the thrust menu to basically decide which side(s) to focus the shields on. The result being that you can get customizable shields without needing to work it into the actual ship design, or requiring new blocks or potentially complicated layering mechanics.


Another option is to only implement the shields menu. In this case, you only have ONE shield bank, just like you do currently. However, the shield menu would then allow you to decrease shield damage taken from one or more directions, at the expense of increasing the shield damage taken from some other directions (the multiplier would be applied before any weapons multipliers like ion or pierce). This would allow some shield customization, while not requiring multiple shield banks (or alternatively, could allow some shield customization to be set up, while allowing multiple shield banks to be implemented at a later time).

Please, take this and make it into a custom thread before I do it for you...

 

[KuramaFox]

I don't think that is necessary. It is already a topic about directional shields after all, and even the version of the "Shields Menu" idea which retains only one shield bank is still a form of directional shields.

Instead, I'll just edit the opening post and quote my later post, so that the first thing posted is now the Shields Menu.

 

[NeonSturm]

I'd like to use docked entities for directional shields. Wings and the main part have different ion-effect strengths on them.

I think StarMade should reward shield-splitting by adding more shield.

But that quadruple-armour mixing could make it a really big issue.
​

5. One option for determining which shield got hit: Base it on which side of the block it hits.
6. Another option for determining which shield got hit: Divide the ship into 6 "pyramids," originating at the center of mass.
7. A third option for determining which shield got hit: direction of the weapon vs. direction of the ship hit.

5. issues:

what would you do with wedges?
Why should I not build with a corner's bottom side so that shots likely get just 1 side?

This makes ships more ugly than they have to be!​

6. issues:

I could make a Borg-cube of advanced armour and then dock a hollow shielding pyramid to one side which would catch shots from almost an 1/4 angle (90/360°).

The heavier the (quadrupled-armor) cube, the closer it is a 90° angle.
​

I can go even further and dock this pyramid on a turret which is like a satellite around the cube for a full 360° of protection!​

7. issues:

Could over-power stop/push weapons (and missiles).
The further away a target is, the longer the angular distance (diameter*PI/2 to get behind you)​