Shield/Armor Changes/Improvement Ideas.

[osXFan]

Shield vs Armor, but why can't they work together?

Shields could reduce a percentage of damage, not take an ammount of damage, you can upgrade this and coustomize the charicteristics of this... want 100% damage reduction rate? Defence chamber just add a the tree and upgrade it. but lets say you can do only a 75% or even 50% damage reduction from the incoming sorce of damage meaning the shields total hp would only take 50% or 75% of that projectiles damage, but reduces the total damage that projectile will do, putting more of an emphasis on the armor as the backdrop, the shield effect could radiate out from on the sphere you see when placing your rechargers, we could have a defense chamber for shields that gets upgraded, base implementation means 25% damage blocked, and on the fourth means 100% damage blocked (the shields also take the full brunt of the weapon though) based on the amount of capacitors you can have the shields just completely block a weapon if it is too small of an amount of damage, but it takes suppressive fire, reducing the recharge of the base health of the shields (after the shield breaks they rely on the 25%-75% damage reduction, letting the backdrop of the armor take the rest of the weapon damage.

Lets say a 100 dmg projectile is shot my way, my shields set at 50% damage reduction knocks 50% (50) damage off of that projectile leaving the 50% left for my standard armor to take the brunt of, my shields are now at 950/1000 and my armor which has a damage reduction of its own (i think standard armor reduces it by .5) meaning it completely blocks out the damage done.

after my shields are completely destroyed (0/1000) all that would be left is the armor.

Shields could take a diffrent turn, you know how the sphere had a radius, one of my ships has a 100 radius lets say, depending on where my ship is orented in the sphere would depend on the ammount of dmg blocked, lets say my front end is extedning 25 blocks from the centre of the sphere, and my back is 60 blocks, if i got hit with the direction of fire hitting the front of the sphere and hitting the front of my ship (provided it caused enough damage to get into the shere all the way and hitting me) the it would experience a 75% damage reduction, and my armor doing the rest, lets say its standard, isnt that 50% reduction or somthing advanced being 75%

Shields should be more advanced, somthing more than just a regenerative number, shileding technology should be highly cousomizable for diffrent ships, and i believe this would make the game more intresting.
i believe this sugjesstion would put more of an emphasas on armor aswell... if the % of blocked damage between shields and armor worked together, we could use smaller amounts of shield blocks, requiring less power to be actively used, and more available power

 

[Lone_Puppy]

How many cloaked ships have you found?

You may recognize this phrase, yes its from the game. I wondered once I read it again after many times of reading... What if there were stat counters? How many pirates have you killed? Outcasts? How much cargo have you looted? How many pirate stations destroyed? Players killed?

This is a nice suggestion. I recommend you post this one separately, maybe headed something like "Player Statistics" or something.

This would be great for servers, to know who's who in the zoo and these kinds of stats.

 

[osXFan]

I would like for people to comment there ideas, and what should be changed with this suggestion because i know it is not perfect.

 

[Non]

Shields could reduce a percentage of damage, not take an ammount of damage, you can upgrade this and coustomize the charicteristics of this... want 100% damage reduction rate? Defence chamber just add a the tree and upgrade it. but lets say you can do only a 75% or even 50% damage reduction from the incoming sorce of damage meaning the shields total hp would only take 50% or 75% of that projectiles damage, but reduces the total damage that projectile will do, putting more of an emphasis on the armor as the backdrop, the shield effect could radiate out from on the sphere you see when placing your rechargers, we could have a defense chamber for shields that gets upgraded, base implementation means 25% damage blocked, and on the fourth means 100% damage blocked (the shields also take the full brunt of the weapon though) based on the amount of capacitors you can have the shields just completely block a weapon if it is too small of an amount of damage, but it takes suppressive fire, reducing the recharge of the base health of the shields (after the shield breaks they rely on the 25%-75% damage reduction, letting the backdrop of the armor take the rest of the weapon damage.

Even before power 2.0, SM alpha damage was way too high for this to be a realistic option, it only took maybe a 1k beam/beam (150k damage) to pen through most battleships (something in the range of 400-500k mass). Now a 1k beam/beam does double the damage at much lower comparative power costs. I'm not saying this is a horrible idea, but it would require you to rework SM's weapons to match.

Shields should be more advanced, somthing more than just a regenerative number, shileding technology should be highly cousomizable for diffrent ships, and i believe this would make the game more intresting.

Believe it or not, it was. Power 1.0, through the combination of docked hulls and regen vs capacity allowed a ships shield system to be very specialized, and because shields could be docked, they could be made to only apply in very specific local areas, which power 2.0 shields could theoretically do, but not in practice. Shield injectors were also a thing, which turned out to be cancer from what I've heard, but they could have been fixed instead of removed. If you and a buddy can work as a team you can get basically the same effect as a shield injector in combat.
Point is there used to be a lot more options that aren't there anymore.

 

[osXFan]

ah, i see, though weapons are bound to be reworked aren't they? There are a lot of ways shields could be reworked alongside the weapons. as of now, shields are more beneficial than armor, i would love to see a day that shield and armor are both highly viable defenses

 

[NeonSturm]

I have had my own idea to this: Fluid Armour.

Your armor takes all damage and no shields, but fluids will flow to the damage and replace missing armor blocks after a delay.

Does not work for systems.​

Details:

Any destroyed hull block would be listed in teh todo-list and sorted 5 seconds after it got destroyed. Advanced armour will get sorted 15 seconds after. There could be a sort-marker for the block-category at which to insert-after so that not every block has to search a position in the todo-list again.

If no fluid is available (empty storage), the restoration will be suspended.

It can be made in reverse order to make it look naturally growing back.
​

Advantages:

1. It's simple.
2. Fixes the problem of how to repair ships.
3. More realistic way to compensate for damage (we can almost do that with today's technology, just imagine nano-machinery).
4. Makes armour and -type actually matter.
5. We could use both systems to make alien-ships more shield-heavy or just have faction characteristics.

 

[Edymnion]

ah, i see, though weapons are bound to be reworked aren't they?

They are. Armor is also apparently on the table to be reworked along with the weapons (they talk about finding ways to make armor viable for large ships without making it overpowered on small ones), so we can't really say what does or does not work with weapons/shield/armor interactions right now because they're all about to change anyway.

 

[Nosajimiki]

Ummm... not sure if you are familiar with how much of a pain in the butt repairing combat damage is, But the suggestions means that every little skirmish would result in damage that (including getting strafed by crappy little pirate ships 1/1000th your size). Shields as a HP buffer are an important quality of life feature because they mean you can walk away from an overwhelmed enemy without having to waist a trip to the shipyards to replace a few missing blocks. Without them, the guy who dies in a 500 mass nuisance fighter is far less incovienced than the 500k mass battleship trying to stay optimal for the next meaningful fight.

It also means that every meaningful fight with be a pyrrhic victory at best. Even if I win a fight hands down, I might still need to spend 2 hour mining to replace lost blocks. It would totally kill the PvP and PvE elements to the game.
[doublepost=1518119209,1518119041][/doublepost]Instead of reinventing armor, people should start looking into how to do it right. New power makes armor far more viable and it is very effective when layered right.

Complex Armor

The bits about Modular Hull no longer apply but the rest of the stuff is still viable.

 

[NeonSturm]

Shields as a HP buffer are an important quality of life feature because they mean you can walk away from an overwhelmed enemy without having to waist a trip to the shipyards to replace a few missing blocks.

That is why -with my idea- armour replaces itself after 5,10 or 15 seconds depending on armour level.

You would place advanced to shield systems, normal to take alpha-weapon damage and hull to mitigate damage over time.
If the enemy is really that much overwelmed, he wouldn't penetrate through all that armor, especially if proectiles hit an area and not a straight penetrating line (like the weapon update intends it)

 

[Nosajimiki]

that... makes no logical sense...
[doublepost=1518131866,1518130981][/doublepost]Self replicating armor is processor and memory intensive and Unrealistic, not to mention the tons of meta imbalances your create in the process. A much better and simpler solution is to just make armor stop everything until aHP is depleated. That way you can scale back shields a bit form the power 1.0 effectiveness levels, but maintain a similar soak to damage where you don't need quite so much dot to be able to harm someone. It would also make armor itself more worth while such that shields and armor would ballence out

 

[osXFan]

Ummm... not sure if you are familiar with how much of a pain in the butt repairing combat damage is, But the suggestions means that every little skirmish would result in damage that (including getting strafed by crappy little pirate ships 1/1000th your size).

I am not sure you read my suggestion right because my suggestion indicates that no damage would come of small arms like a pirate

 

[osXFan]

Lets say a 100 dmg projectile is shot my way, my shields set at 50% damage reduction knocks 50% (50) damage off of that projectile leaving the 50% left for my standard armor to take the brunt of, my shields are now at 950/1000 and my armor which has a damage reduction of its own (i think standard armor reduces it by .5) meaning it completely blocks out the damage done.

 

[osXFan]

I have had my own idea to this: Fluid Armour.

Please keep your ideas to your suggestion post, this is discuss of a different idea far from anything close to yours

 

[osXFan]

Instead of reinventing armor, people should start looking into how to do it right. New power makes armor far more viable and it is very effective when layered right.

And would work better if armor permanently blocked a percentage of damage instead of just for itself, like my suggestion suggest.

 

[MacThule]

I don't feel like this kind of function for shields would be bad because it is actually bad, it's only bad because shipyards can't repair minor damage.

To me that is more of an issue with shipyards than a real reason why shields could never be soft. I think shields aren't bad now though. They're already better than the mandatory, OP shields from 1.0 and this release is still quite young.
[doublepost=1518490980,1518489329][/doublepost]

the suggestions means that every little skirmish would result in damage that (including getting strafed by crappy little pirate ships 1/1000th your size). Shields as a HP buffer are an important quality of life feature because they mean you can walk away from an overwhelmed enemy without having to waist a trip to the shipyards to replace a few missing blocks. Without them, the guy who dies in a 500 mass nuisance fighter is far less incovienced than the 500k mass battleship trying to stay optimal for the next meaningful fight.

Sorry, I was replying to this in my previous comment and for some reason when I hit reply it wasn't quoted. Must have hit the wrong one.

Anyway, I also don't think there is a problem with the fact that large ships might suffer attritive damage from even small skirmishes. That is the purpose of skirmishing. Building the game's core combat dynamics around ensuring that every battle is an all-or-nothing affair (win with 0% damage or lose 100%) is not only unrealistic but not very fun interesting. It makes combat free for the biggest player, further encouraging megaships, and is extremely unfriendly to newer/learning players who are less likely to win outright but may be encouraged to keep playing by the fact that at least they gave you a bloody nose before going down. No conquest is free, and the only ones who believe the victor in a real fight never walks away limping a bit, are those who don't know.

I would love to see soft shields added, best would be to see them as another shield type. Maybe a more economical shield type that covers the whole entity like 1.0 shields. Of course... it would be a massive help if shipyards could repair minor damage to ships with available schematics......

 

[Nosajimiki]

I am not sure you read my suggestion right because my suggestion indicates that no damage would come of small arms like a pirate

Even if the armor is self replicating, any ship more than a few hundred mass can pack weapons able to punch through armor and hit the systems below which I assume you mean to not be self replicating as well. The other way of doing armor is to make it fully block hits and be self healing which is 100% exactly what a shield is.

And would work better if armor permanently blocked a percentage of damage instead of just for itself, like my suggestion suggest.

Not sure if I agree with this. Right now armor is used to create hardpoints. I would personally prefer a better aHP system though. Right now aHP is pretty good at soaking missile damage but is crap against direct fire. I think instead making aHP have higher %s would be better, like 75% mitigation @ default that can be boosted to 100% instead of 50%-75%.

I don't feel like this kind of function for shields would be bad because it is actually bad, it's only bad because shipyards can't repair minor damage.

To me that is more of an issue with shipyards than a real reason why shields could never be soft. I think shields aren't bad now though. They're already better than the mandatory, OP shields from 1.0 and this release is still quite young.

Sorry, I was replying to this in my previous comment and for some reason when I hit reply it wasn't quoted. Must have hit the wrong one.

Anyway, I also don't think there is a problem with the fact that large ships might suffer attritive damage from even small skirmishes. That is the purpose of skirmishing. Building the game's core combat dynamics around ensuring that every battle is an all-or-nothing affair (win with 0% damage or lose 100%) is not only unrealistic but not very fun interesting. It makes combat free for the biggest player, further encouraging megaships, and is extremely unfriendly to newer/learning players who are less likely to win outright but may be encouraged to keep playing by the fact that at least they gave you a bloody nose before going down. No conquest is free, and the only ones who believe the victor in a real fight never walks away limping a bit, are those who don't know.

I would love to see soft shields added, best would be to see them as another shield type. Maybe a more economical shield type that covers the whole entity like 1.0 shields. Of course... it would be a massive help if shipyards could repair minor damage to ships with available schematics......

This mentality is an issue if you do not first address making combat important enough to be worth the cost. When the potential to walk away unhurt is an option, then a fight to the death is worthwhile with little other motive than because you can. It's like gambling. If you win, you get salvage rights, if you lose, you're out of a ship that might have taken 5-15 hours of mining and processing blocks to make.

... but if you are sure to take damage, then there is no pleasure in victory because you may well still be out 1-3 hours to make the supplies you need for repairs, and to get to a ship yard with all the right stuff... assuming the shipyard isn't pretty much certain to break. Recovering from combat would become more aggravating than worth while.

So the game would really need to do a lot more to answer "what are we fighting for" for that game mechanic to not be a game killer. While this has been the topic for MANY discussions, there have not really been any good ideas for making this combat valuable to that scale.