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- Oct 8, 2014
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The following is a proposal similar in many ways to one I gave quite some time ago, but also, different in quite a few fundamental aspects. With the power system moving on to a (much better) more recharge rate oriented functioning, I thought, why not have the shield system shift over as well? There are a few more changes I would like to suggest, so I guess I'll have to redefine all the variables...
tl;dr:
>Just have shield recharger blocks.
>Shield recharger groups would create bubble regions inside which blocks would be protected.
>On being hit by a shot, shields would not block the entire damage, but a fraction of the damage. This fraction would scale with (recharger group size)/ (mass of entity), meaning smaller ships would need lesser shield recharger blocks to achieve the same percentage of blocking (although their power systems would not be strong enough to hold back high damage shots from much bigger ships, read on...)
>Power would be needed to "upkeep" the shields and additional (though small) power would be needed to block off shots. This power needed would scale with the damage of the shot.
>As there is no "capacity", shields would work and provide fractional protection as long as there is power in the entity enough to support them (power priority list to the rescue!) and the shield recharger block group is not completely destroyed.
I feel that this kind of shield system would:
>Compliment the new armor system very well, because players would no longer be relying COMPLETELY on shields, a basic armor would be necessary (as it should be).
>Increase the importance of armor without decreasing the importance of shield systems.
>Allow shields to be part of the battle even when much of the ship's systems have been exposed.
>Stop shield tanking and end the eternal debate of recharge rates during battle.
tl;dr:
>Just have shield recharger blocks.
>Shield recharger groups would create bubble regions inside which blocks would be protected.
>On being hit by a shot, shields would not block the entire damage, but a fraction of the damage. This fraction would scale with (recharger group size)/ (mass of entity), meaning smaller ships would need lesser shield recharger blocks to achieve the same percentage of blocking (although their power systems would not be strong enough to hold back high damage shots from much bigger ships, read on...)
>Power would be needed to "upkeep" the shields and additional (though small) power would be needed to block off shots. This power needed would scale with the damage of the shot.
>As there is no "capacity", shields would work and provide fractional protection as long as there is power in the entity enough to support them (power priority list to the rescue!) and the shield recharger block group is not completely destroyed.
>Shields would be a system with a single block type-the shield recharger. There would be no "shield capacity" as we know it.
>Shield rechargers would work much like the current ones do, they would have bubble-regions inside of which the ship's blocks are "protected". The bubble regions would scale with size and overlapping would be handled just like it is currently handled.
>Only, the blocks inside these bubble regions would not be completely protected. The shields would allow a fraction of the damage (specified later on in the thread) of any projectile to be transmitted through to the armor/other blocks present at the area of impact. Now, if this fractional damage is lesser than what the new armor can withstand without taking any damage (if I understand that correctly), then there will be no damage contributed by that shot, although power *will* be used in blocking off a percentage of that shot.
>The power usage of this shield system would be similar to weapon systems- there would be a base usage to sort of 'maintain' the shields when not in use. When the shields are hit by a weapon, they would block off a percentage of the shot's damage and this would need additional power, scaling with the value of the damage blocked off, meaning that in theory, it would be possible to completely take out the power of a ship simply by hitting the shields of a ship with a very high damage weapon, assuming the shields are at the highest priority in the power priority menu. This would add an interesting twist to the ideal position of shields on the power priority list (not first!). However, for balance purposes I believe the majority of power usage by shields should be just the "upkeep" and the blocking of shots should only be little "blips", nothing too serious, simply because there's a lot of systems using up power and in case of high damage shots, the transmitted damage is penalty enough, without having to worry about your power system failing as well.
>The shield system would block the same fraction of ANY amount of damage, and because there is no "capacity" the shields would work as long as- 1)there is power enough to (partially) block the incoming shots AND 2)The shield blocks are not destroyed. This would mean that shields would be in effect throughout battles (at least for a much larger fraction of the time than they currently do) and the only way to stop them (assuming power doesn't run out) would be to actually deal damage to the shield recharger blocks group itself. This, I feel is a major problem of the current system-the way battles work is target shields>target armor>target system groups>end battle, and the ideal strategy is to use the shield blocks themselves as armor layers because they're useless once the shields have been taken down. Using this proposal, the shield blocks would have to protected as well if players want to win encounters.
>The percentage of damage allowed through would depend on the size of the shield recharge group *relative to the ship size (mass)*. It should have a soft cap of course (at about 85 percentage maybe? ). So, it would take only a few blocks to achieve 75ish percentage blocking for tiny ships, but much much more for larger ships.
>Shield rechargers would work much like the current ones do, they would have bubble-regions inside of which the ship's blocks are "protected". The bubble regions would scale with size and overlapping would be handled just like it is currently handled.
>Only, the blocks inside these bubble regions would not be completely protected. The shields would allow a fraction of the damage (specified later on in the thread) of any projectile to be transmitted through to the armor/other blocks present at the area of impact. Now, if this fractional damage is lesser than what the new armor can withstand without taking any damage (if I understand that correctly), then there will be no damage contributed by that shot, although power *will* be used in blocking off a percentage of that shot.
>The power usage of this shield system would be similar to weapon systems- there would be a base usage to sort of 'maintain' the shields when not in use. When the shields are hit by a weapon, they would block off a percentage of the shot's damage and this would need additional power, scaling with the value of the damage blocked off, meaning that in theory, it would be possible to completely take out the power of a ship simply by hitting the shields of a ship with a very high damage weapon, assuming the shields are at the highest priority in the power priority menu. This would add an interesting twist to the ideal position of shields on the power priority list (not first!). However, for balance purposes I believe the majority of power usage by shields should be just the "upkeep" and the blocking of shots should only be little "blips", nothing too serious, simply because there's a lot of systems using up power and in case of high damage shots, the transmitted damage is penalty enough, without having to worry about your power system failing as well.
>The shield system would block the same fraction of ANY amount of damage, and because there is no "capacity" the shields would work as long as- 1)there is power enough to (partially) block the incoming shots AND 2)The shield blocks are not destroyed. This would mean that shields would be in effect throughout battles (at least for a much larger fraction of the time than they currently do) and the only way to stop them (assuming power doesn't run out) would be to actually deal damage to the shield recharger blocks group itself. This, I feel is a major problem of the current system-the way battles work is target shields>target armor>target system groups>end battle, and the ideal strategy is to use the shield blocks themselves as armor layers because they're useless once the shields have been taken down. Using this proposal, the shield blocks would have to protected as well if players want to win encounters.
>The percentage of damage allowed through would depend on the size of the shield recharge group *relative to the ship size (mass)*. It should have a soft cap of course (at about 85 percentage maybe? ). So, it would take only a few blocks to achieve 75ish percentage blocking for tiny ships, but much much more for larger ships.
I feel that this kind of shield system would:
>Compliment the new armor system very well, because players would no longer be relying COMPLETELY on shields, a basic armor would be necessary (as it should be).
>Increase the importance of armor without decreasing the importance of shield systems.
>Allow shields to be part of the battle even when much of the ship's systems have been exposed.
>Stop shield tanking and end the eternal debate of recharge rates during battle.
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