Entirely Reworked Shields

[Vii]

Entirely Reworked Shields





I'm thinking that the current shields system is a nice way to buff the health of your armor. But if we took that system and nerfed it's ability to regen at all, and simply called it, i dunno, "Hull Polarizers", we could tack on another line of defense with the name "Shields".

I'd like to see a "Shield Emittor" that acts like a docking bay, it'd generate an actual ((mayhaps invisible)) wall of shield the direction the block is pointing. You'd use "Shield Extenders" to dictate the size and shape of the shield, and perhaps another new block, "Shield Modulators" or something to Buff the health of the shields.



I think this would allow us to have vastly more powerful shields, because the trade off is that they're intirely directional. Not only that, but you'd have the ability to destroy a ships shield emitter, adding to the dynamics of ship to ship combat. And as a shield emitter takes damage it'd produce a weaker shield, if you were lucky enough not ot loose it before the shield regenerated.

 

[Visitor]

Up to the point when you realize you can put those directional emitters all over the hull. I like the shields the way they are, minus effectiveness which still needs to be somewhat balanced in case of big ships, though possibly making them have certain range per block would be nice.

 

[Vii]

but it\'d be a MUCH more massive powerdrain than the current shield system.

 

[Darkatus 101]

got nerfed. It would add realisim and a new way of shielding that doesnt

get affected by the size of the ship, but instead by the shield itself. I\'d love

to see this added to the game, and also, Massive energydrains are good

for balancing ;D

 

[Morrigi]

Maybe it could follow the curve of the hull in the designated area to keep the blockiness down. Great idea, I\'ve been thinking about a similar concept.

 

[Ludovsky]

What I could see is a diminishing return on how much shield point individal shield blocks gives to ships with a larger mass.

Think about it, you\'re not just trying to create thicker shields to cover a ship, in reality you are trying to give basic shielding across a larger surface in the first place. It should require more block to give merely \"basic\" shielding to the largest ships, and thus even more to just give this basic shield more point.

As such, by sheer block count, capital ships could still have impressive shields, but nowhere near the impregnable barriers they seem to be able to build up with the proper setup(unless someone brings a \"bigger gun\").

Similarly, there should be more \"cost effectives\" way to bring down enemy shields for smaller ships, so that they could stand more of a \"fighting chance\" as well. That is, perhaps a weapon which might scale badly with size, but does by default very high shield damages.

And to counter balance such a change the ability of weapons to purely annihilihate block should be drastically be reduced either in damage(or as in the case of missiles) in spread, and possibly change weapons mechanics such that the larger weapons still keep incredible damage dealing values(at least in damage dealt but still with reduced spread of block destruction) and incredible range to make them devastating \"sniper\" weapons... but reduces their firing rate to represent the more cumbersome nature of having to handle larger ammunitions and power charges buildup required for each shot. This would thus be a way of truly making smaller weapons the tools of dogfight and anti-strikecraft defenses, while larger weapons like real-like battleship guns would become the massive damage dealing snipers and artillery of the game that work great at the longer range but would perform with more difficulties at the shorter ranges.

Warships or armored tanks rarely blow up because of the pure explosive charges of the warhead which penetrate their plating(in fact, most armor-piercing shells carry very little to none explosive charges...some are in fact more or less nothing more than discarding darts of very strong metal alloys) but rather because the penetrating shell set fire to the -target-\'s own ammunition stocks or engine which is the actual source of the explosion.
(such results should be possible to some level by making power or shield generators, which are very complex mechanism handling very large amount of energy at any given time, prone to exploding when destroyed... this could change fighting to becoming a more tactical deal of trying to destroy the enemy \"weak points\" for the massive damages rather than weapons dealing such massive damages of their own by just hitting anywhere).

 

[Vii]

You seem to be talking about a way to balance the current shields rather than supplying your comment of my particular idea of individual shield systems.

Personally i love the way that the docking enhancers increase the docking bay size, by outlining my ship\'s hull in dock enhancers i was able to make a \'hardpoint\' where other ships of similar size could dock onto my own.

a similar network of shield \'enhancers\' could be used to shape the shield in a paralel fashion instead of an opposing one with docking bays.

 

[tear151]

the current forumla for ship strength in relation to blocks contains a ^2/3 which creates a diminishing returns effect.