- Joined
- Jun 25, 2013
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I know shields are and have almost always been a touchy subject so I ask for and appreciate your patience. I'm working under the assumption that we'll be moving towards ships only being edited via Shipyards in the future, and this suggestion would require that before being implemented in earnest.
Not the typical "We want bubble shields" post but a proposition to have choices in method of shielding.
Such as blocks functioning similar to bubble shielding..
Extended Shields
A second shield option that could radically change large ship combat with carefully thought out balance tweaks (That I ask you to discuss) to make the choice of shield use more tactical than "every ship will have both."
Type 1
Imagine that the system we have now(T-1) remains fairly similar to its current state with small bleed-through for energy weapons and potential bleed-through for physical weapons, capacitors that maintain shield levels without or with little power requirements and shielding for all ship blocks. Large weapons could prove to be a problem but smaller weapons are meaningless.
Type 2
Bring to the mix a second shield type(T-2) composed of non-physical blocks similar to Trigger (Area) blocks that block all weapons fire but not ships / ships with T-1 Shields. The shield would be toggled on or off and maintained with constant drain from shield capacitor similar to the Radar Jammer draining energy. Damage to the shield would still remove energy from the capacitors but at a lower rate to prevent it from instantly evaporating.
T1 Pros
T2 Pros
Shield chargers of either type could be required to be connected to a one per entity Shield Computer(SC) and the SC could prevent using both shields by providing mixed type ships with a huge debuff to both shield types as well as increased power drain, combining some of the shield rules (such as no missile damage but constant drain) or outright preventing one type(preferred method).
T2 shield blocks would be created at some step after designing but before building ships at a shipyard by the system using any number of procedures such as volumetrics larger than the hulls measurements and starting at a determined point outside of three far measurements e.g. XL(ength)+#,YL+#,ZL+#
I personally prefer something insanely complicated like scaling the ships hull up as a volume and then filling the outermost space touching cubes in the volume, giving you an enlarged shadow of the ship as its shield (especially if hull shape could be well approximated) but an ellipsoid that encapsulates the ship would be fine and likely better looking.
If nothing else, T2 shield blocks could be manually placed with a potential limit like "can only be placed near T2 shield blocks or Forcefields at least # meters from other blocks."
And finally, a simpler and less dynamic alternate method: T2 shields function exactly like T1 in every way except they require more energy to charge/maintain and prevent any damage above a % of the shielded ships combined HPs allowing small weapons to do full damage while making large weapons chip at the shield first.
Not the typical "We want bubble shields" post but a proposition to have choices in method of shielding.
Such as blocks functioning similar to bubble shielding..
Extended Shields
A second shield option that could radically change large ship combat with carefully thought out balance tweaks (That I ask you to discuss) to make the choice of shield use more tactical than "every ship will have both."
Type 1
Imagine that the system we have now(T-1) remains fairly similar to its current state with small bleed-through for energy weapons and potential bleed-through for physical weapons, capacitors that maintain shield levels without or with little power requirements and shielding for all ship blocks. Large weapons could prove to be a problem but smaller weapons are meaningless.
Type 2
Bring to the mix a second shield type(T-2) composed of non-physical blocks similar to Trigger (Area) blocks that block all weapons fire but not ships / ships with T-1 Shields. The shield would be toggled on or off and maintained with constant drain from shield capacitor similar to the Radar Jammer draining energy. Damage to the shield would still remove energy from the capacitors but at a lower rate to prevent it from instantly evaporating.
T1 Pros
- All blocks are shielded
- Low power requirements
- Quickly regenerate
- Small weapons are almost useless
- Docked entities receive shielding
- All attacks still do damage to shielded blocks
- Only regenerate out of combat
- Large weapons evaporate them
T2 Pros
- No attacks from outside the shield do damage to the structure
- Reduced damage to shields
- Can regenerate in combat*
- Potentially stop non T1 entities(This could be a bit insane to do)
- Can only be toggled on when the charge is full*
- High power requirements
- Slowly regenerate and only when toggled off*
- Allow full damage to structure from small ships or players that enter the shield
- Docked entities are not provided shielding
- Potentially block allied fire (If your fleet is uncoordinated or the entity uses small turrets)
Shield chargers of either type could be required to be connected to a one per entity Shield Computer(SC) and the SC could prevent using both shields by providing mixed type ships with a huge debuff to both shield types as well as increased power drain, combining some of the shield rules (such as no missile damage but constant drain) or outright preventing one type(preferred method).
T2 shield blocks would be created at some step after designing but before building ships at a shipyard by the system using any number of procedures such as volumetrics larger than the hulls measurements and starting at a determined point outside of three far measurements e.g. XL(ength)+#,YL+#,ZL+#
I personally prefer something insanely complicated like scaling the ships hull up as a volume and then filling the outermost space touching cubes in the volume, giving you an enlarged shadow of the ship as its shield (especially if hull shape could be well approximated) but an ellipsoid that encapsulates the ship would be fine and likely better looking.
If nothing else, T2 shield blocks could be manually placed with a potential limit like "can only be placed near T2 shield blocks or Forcefields at least # meters from other blocks."
And finally, a simpler and less dynamic alternate method: T2 shields function exactly like T1 in every way except they require more energy to charge/maintain and prevent any damage above a % of the shielded ships combined HPs allowing small weapons to do full damage while making large weapons chip at the shield first.
