Shield Blocks; Consider This

[Trafalgar]

You can take down an 8 million block shield (32.269 million capacity) in about 6.14 seconds with 360,000 AMCs set up as 2000 180-unit guns, or in 1.02 seconds with 2.16 million AMCs in the same 180-unit guns (12,000 guns).

If for some reason you actually used the same amount of mass on AMCs as shields, at 8 million shield units versus 44444 groups of 180-unit AMC guns (actual mass of 7,999,920), you would take down the shields in only 0.2764 seconds.

Of course, I don\'t think that StarMade is capable of handling anyone firing 44444 guns simultaneously right now, so efficiency may be reduced by the need to use bigger, less efficient, guns... It might be able to handle 12,000 simultaneous guns firing. Possibly.

 

[Dire Badger]

@rmooney01-

shields are all in the same \'bank\' regardless of physical contact.

Turrets and docked ships however have their own shields.

People have had great success with creating shield sub-connections.

when chain docking is implemented, I suspect we will see a great deal more \'modular\' ships. perhaps even \'pod links\' that share one resource across a ship\'s network, such as an engine link point, or power link point, so that each module could have it\'s own individual shielding (like a turret) and maybe still be able to contain useful stuff like engines. It will be especially cool if you could eject \'pods\' to increase your speed if you need to flee, or simply replace a badly-damaged pod instead of having to replace an entire ship.

 

[Jeff The Pilot]

With the idea of sub-connections you could have interchangable armor plates with low recharge delays to protect yourself from small fighters. Your ships would be harder to make still as beautiful, but then they get to be practical.

 

[Dire Badger]

Then again, I think that the shield change has made \'titanic\' ships less attractive, which was, I think, the point...

200 block long structures lag the servers, are overpowered, drain huge resources, and are not much fun to fight. The point behind the shield change was to make these bricks considerably less attractive.... which I think has succeeded.

\'medium\' ships of around 50-80 blocks in length are a lot more fun to fight. ships that are bigger than that are really more like plot complications than viable designs... a stylistic change I heartily approve of. Anything that makes medium-small ships more attractive than kilometer-long monsters is a bonus.



The battlestar galactica was more of the plot focus for the show, rather than a viable combat machine. The death star was little more than scenery to make the heroes look good, the Reapers were just a focus for cutscenes and an excuse to fight.


I know enormous ships are \'cool\', but when it comes right down to fighting, They are just there to one-shot space defense platforms and be a platform for launching spacefighters... where the REAL action comes into play.

Sometime, when you see pirates, try leaving your \'bigazz\' ship on bobby control and take over that 20 block long captain\'s gig to take the action to the enemy... you may find it surprisingly fun.

If a ship can\'t dodge, it ain\'t a ship, it\'s a mobile space station and plot element.

 

[Twinchicky]

With this entire idea of \"modular\" ships, I could see USS Prometheus-esque Multi-Vector ships which perform coordinated attacks, and then the whole ship comes back together.

(For those of you who don\'t know, a multi-vector ship is a ship that functions as a whole, but, in combat, splits into several smaller ships. The USS Prometheus split into three sections - if you want to know more, watch the Star Trek: Voyager episode!)

 

[Twinchicky]

I agree with you in some respects, and disagree with you in others. Take Star Trek as an example.

The USS Voyager was an Intrepid-class ship, somewhere between 400 and 500 meters long. It was just as maneuverable as a 40-meter-long ship in StarMade.

The USS Enterprise-E (from The Next Generation) was a Galaxy-Class ship, somewhere around 800 meters in length, and still just as maneuverable as the Voyager.

In the Star Trek universe, everything was based on ships at least 200 meters in length (With the exception of a few, like the DS9 Defiant or a Nova-class Science/Research vessel). Really, it should be left up to players what they like to build.

My point is, large ships should be made at least slightly more maneuverable than they are now, so that they don\'t end up being mobile space stations, and they are actually viable for combat. Some large ships can start and stop just as fast as a 25-mass fighter, but take 100 times as long to turn 90 degrees. This just seems a bit weird to me.

 

[Dire Badger]

I don\'t consider star trek standard \'starship wars\' fiction. truthfully, star trek technology is a complete outlier, since fighters don\'t even exist. There are only two real classes: capital ships and shuttles.

 

[krakk]

Actually, the concept of a \"starfighter\" is utterly ridiculous. Any moderately sized ship with 1980s computers would knock it out without a problem. This is assuming theyre using kinetic weapons which need to use predictive aiming...

 

[krakk]

what were we talking about again? I think its fair to assume that weapons outmatch shields. If you follow the trend of military technology since ancient times, weapon technology has skyrocketed past shielding technology. I mean, what is an energy shield exactly? Its electricity somehow transformed into a barrier that somehow absords force. Sounds like an extremely inefficient power hog.



What I want to see added to this game is shield blocks which explode when destroyed, setting off a chain reaction to detonate the entire capitol ship. This kind of \"headshot\" feature would add significantly to the awesome factor of the game.

 

[Dire Badger]

Starfighters, by virtue of their weak armament, cannot successfully attack capital ships without capship support. There is some apocryphal literature to support the opposite notion, but it originates entirely from the notoriously propagandistic New Republic descriptions of the exaggerated exploits of Wedge Antilles and his X-wing squadron. Canon support for this notion is nonexistent, and in the Battle of ROTJ, the fighters were used merely to \"finish off\" ships which have already been disabled by turbolaser cannonade, such as the Imperial communications ship and the Executor (also see the novelization, in which we heard Ackbar informing his bridge crew that \"if we can knock out their shields, our fighters might stand a chance against them\"- a far cry from the apocryphal nonsense of fighter squadrons pummeling the shields of warships).

The thing is, I see that in the way shields are RIGHT NOW. The new system. Previously, all damage would have to be done by a capital ship, since only sustained fire by a capital ship would be able to keep shield regeneration from refreshing a capital ship quickly beyond the ability of smaller ship weapons to suppress. If you are going to keep a capship pegged down just suppressing shields, smaller ships are completely and utterly irrelavant to the fight at all, NOT a pleasant way to reinforce the genre.



I am pleased to see a system in place that more closely resembles one of the defining fictons of the entire genre.

 

[Ridic poison]

I fly most salvaging ships. With the charge now i cant even handle 2 pirate fighters. Turrets a okay but they miss more then they hit. I get the balance needs for pvp but don\'t forget there is and will be more need for pve ships.

 

[DracoNB]

Week either put some cannons on your ship, run away, or get a fighter escort.... You are easy pray for pirates

 

[TheSovereign]

I think Big ships should be more powerful,if only the rich can offord them,Eve online,the titans require fleets to destroy.

Titans should kill Titans.

A fleet sorrounding a titan attacking a similar fleet is realistic,in Bsg the ships are glorified aircraft carriers as nukes could be carried by fighters.

A titan is also resource heavy and with weak shields a 50 block long missile ship could one shot it.

small ships are boring.

If a ship moves its a ship.Stations are STATIONARY.

Factions capable of building ships should get rewarded.

Theres no point of money if you get punshd for using it.

 

[TheSovereign]

I meant punished.

 

[douglasg14b]

I feel the new shields should passively recharge while beign shot. The delay before regen makes it so even the smallest ship can take out the largest ship.



It also makes non-faction starbases useless, since you can park a ship with 2 antimatter cannons on it and eventually kill it.

 

[rwolf93]

In all fairness small ships should have a higher top speed acceleration and turning ability they should also be able to cloke easier making them more for covert missions and large scale ambushes and battles however big ships should have more damage and higher shields in reality u would not want to or try to take on a large ship with a smaller one this way both ships have ad advantages and disadvantages and as fair as taking down large ships they could combine forces with another ship and use power drain and tactics which is what I believe a small ship should have to do there is no way to make both sides happy since both would prefer to be stronger by raising the top speed of small ships this would allow them to escape with minor damage if played right its only fair to reward large ships with shields and damage since the take more time to construct and would I real life have that agility thank u for hearing me out