Shield features

[Dimu5]

Hello guys,
We all know how customizable are, for example, weapon systems. What about making shields more, say, interesting?
I think that the shields could have some features like these:

Modifying the shield system
At this time, we can manipulate a weapon with an effect computer or another weapon computer. What about implementing it into shields?
For example: You have rather small ship, but with considerable amount of shields. You have upset a player on PvP server. And that player has a ship with huge firepower, but single type of weapons and a little of shields. And of course, he will one-shot you on sight. There is no time to build better ship, upgrade weapons, etc., and that player is just one sector away coming for you. So you reconfigure your shields to be more vulnerable against another weapon types, but more powerful against his weapons. And then shoot his core down when absorbing tons of damage.

I think, that there could be two ways of configuring shields:
1. way: You have a circle with a slider in the center and with weapon types on sides, so you can choose to put more power into defending against cannons, but less into pulse. Or leave it in the center to have your shields balanced.
2. way (those who have watched SGU will know): You have to tune the known frequency (every type of weapon has its own freq) or unknown frequency (the players will be able to set up their weapon's frequency for the cost of power consumption.

This can add more interesting moments into PvP battles (and not only these; pirates are also enemies )

Make the shields block slow-moving objects
The collision damage system is quite fine, but this enables players to spam single ship cores and kamikaze into another ships, even in protected regions. Or even grab an asteroid and throw it on someone's ship, which becomes totally destroyed, but shields left untouched . And again, making this cost more power could be also fine.

Overheating shields
Know that feeling when trying to shoot a pirate station, which has little shields but giant regeneration? No? I do. You shoot into it, and always take it down to 1% with ~20k damage/s, but before my weapon charges, the station's shields are again full .
What about implementing overheating - after taking some damage, the shield regenerators will start to overheat, slowly producing less and less shields (and exploding after total overheat :D ).
Making something like this will help get rid of indestructible giant motherships all covered in shields with regen over 100k/s, which could absorb a firepower of an entire fleet and never notice it.

Coloring shields
We can color weapons. We can color hulls. We can color lights. But we can't color shields. Why? I dunno. But I would appreciate making shields more interesting, not just only white color changing to red when low. Or even some way to change that hexagon pattern to something different.
RAAAINBOOOWS!!!

Thanks for reading my thoughts and sorry for all the mistakes. I live in the Czech Republic, so I do not know English that well to make none

Best regards,
"Dimus"

P.S. I am sorry if there is a thread about this already.

 

[jstenholt]

Most of these have been mentioned, but that's okay, I have always loved the idea of coloring our shields. I can't imagine it would be that difficult for the devs to implement.

As for changing the behavior of shields, we already have that in the form of defensive effect modules. When you have an effect system by itself, you can put it in your hotbar and activate it to receive a defensive bonus. Speed boost for OD, shield hardening for Ion, explosive resistance for explosive.

 

[CyberTao]

The collision damage system

They plan to overhaul that someday, the current collision system is more or less a placeholder.

 

[jayman38]

I like the idea of attaching the effect systems to a shield for permanent effect without needing to add it to the hotbar.

 

[EtherEel]

Colors = yes
What jayman38 said = yes

Here's another idea I think you'll all hate: Missiles cannot penetrate shields (because they are physical entities); only Beam or Cannon damage will bring them down (because they are purely "energy" damage.) ....Yeah, I knew yall'd hate that one. Would make Beams & Cannons relevant, though, ay?

 

[Snk]

+1

 

[mrsinister]

Coloring shields
We can color weapons. We can color hulls. We can color lights. But we can't color shields. Why? I dunno. But I would appreciate making shields more interesting, not just only white color changing to red when low. Or even some way to change that hexagon pattern to something different.
RAAAINBOOOWS!!!

You can however change the look if you do not like the hexagonal pattern. It would mean just downloading a different texture/color for it. I have 2 on my shipyard thread. There are a few in the mods section as well I believe. This of course is if you want a quick fix and if you are bored of what is currently in the game.

On Topic: it would be nice to be able to select a color for shields with slaving a light block to the shield block for its color.

 

[Groovrider]

I would like to see single use shields. That is: A block that gave you a certain amount of extra shielding with no regen and if depleted would "burn out" the block.

and

A shield computer that we could link other block to to gain an effect.
Say linking it to a salvage computer would allow it to gain energy on damage.
Pulse makes it reflective or increase capacity greatly while greatly reducing regen..
Missile causes shield beams to hit allies.
Cannon caused shield drain to hit enemies (anti-matter y'all).
Beam gives you guided shields: Allows targeted allies to use your shield capacity instead of their own.

Obviously these can come at the expense of power, shield cap and regen. Ratios/balance at dev's discretion.

 

[Ithirahad]

Shields blocking collision damage: Support; needed feature to make collision damage more practical.

Overheating shields? Eh, maybe.

Coloring shields? YES! YESYESYES 1000 TIMES YES. If there was an option for something other than hexagons (Maybe a solid-color wave effect or a grid of squares) would love it too.

I would like to see single use shields. That is: A block that gave you a certain amount of extra shielding with no regen and if depleted would "burn out" the block.

and

A shield computer that we could link other block to to gain an effect.
Say linking it to a salvage computer would allow it to gain energy on damage.
Pulse makes it reflective or increase capacity greatly while greatly reducing regen..
Missile causes shield beams to hit allies.
Cannon caused shield drain to hit enemies (anti-matter y'all).
Beam gives you guided shields: Allows targeted allies to use your shield capacity instead of their own.

Obviously these can come at the expense of power, shield cap and regen. Ratios/balance at dev's discretion.

Some of these seem a bit odd, but I like the general idea of this as well.

 

[Snk]

Coloring shields seems kind of redundant. What's the point? Other than "It looks cool"

 

[Nekrolysis]

Coloring shields seems kind of redundant. What's the point? Other than "It looks cool"

Not wanting the damn best looking ship this side of the galactic center. Every bit helps. :p

 

[MeepMoop]

Coloring shields seems kind of redundant. What's the point? Other than "It looks cool"

Well, at times people don't want cold, empty and ruthless total efficiency in games... I think things that look fun and cool might be good in a game every once in a while.

 

[Viridis00]

More aesthetic options are always cool, so I'm down with that. Also a shield overheat would be a great idea now that shields are twice as strong. This would be an indirect gain for small craft working together as well, giving them more time before the shields go up to inflict more damage, but still make it so that a single fighter can't wreck too much havoc supporting a carrier or something. Might be a good idea to make shield overheat scale with mass to give another drawback to large ships.

 

[CaptainTaz]

I wouldn't mind the overheating too badly (though it would be quite annoying for my ship specifically designed with just enough regen to keep it alive while fighting pirates) The exploding is a reject for me.

 

[Dimu5]

I wouldn't mind the overheating too badly (though it would be quite annoying for my ship specifically designed with just enough regen to keep it alive while fighting pirates)

I do not mean immediate overheating, but for example after depleting whole capacity of your shields twice, it might start to slowly overheat.

The exploding is a reject for me

And after depleting this capacity, say, ten times without cooling down, the shields will shut down for a specified amount of time.
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I would like to see single use shields.

This would be great as quite cheap, but not so powerful shielding system (can't absorb tons of damage in a single hit) for new players, who can't craft or buy more powerful shields yet.
That shield transferring - there are already shield drain/supply beam systems in game. I believe it can be automated using turrets, but I am not so familiar with them.
And what about "expanding" shields with something - make them cover larger area around the ship while decreasing capacity, for protecting badly damaged alies or just keep a lovely space rock safe from fire :D.

If there was an option for something other than hexagons (Maybe a solid-color wave effect or a grid of squares) would love it too.

Personally, I would love something like a transparent color wave - something that Aurora from SGA has. By my opinion it looks awesome. Or some sort of "cracks" in this color wave would be also fine when shields are getting low.

Missiles cannot penetrate shields (because they are physical entities); only Beam or Cannon damage will bring them down (because they are purely "energy" damage.) ....Yeah, I knew yall'd hate that one. Would make Beams & Cannons relevant, though, ay?

Very interesting; so you mean that cannons and beams will penetrate them with ease without the need of depleting their capacity (because it is energy) but dealing less damage and missiles will need to first to take them down and only then shoot the ship down?

I like the idea of attaching the effect systems to a shield for permanent effect without needing to add it to the hotbar.

I haven't meant connecting effect systems to them - you can activate them with activation module right now. But this is also quite interesting, though.

As for changing the behavior of shields, we already have that in the form of defensive effect modules.

I do not mean defending against an effect; I mean defending against special type of weapon - when talking about effects, there's only explosive effect sort of defending against missiles.

And of course, thanks a lot for posting great ideas you all

 

[Megacrafter127]

Very interesting; so you mean that cannons and beams will penetrate them with ease without the need of depleting their capacity (because it is energy) but dealing less damage and missiles will need to first to take them down and only then shoot the ship down?

I think he is referring to having beams/cannons generally do more damage against shields, kinda like a preimplemented ion effect.

 

[whooplaah]

I do not like the idea of shield frequencies at all.

I do like the idea of specialized shields, though, but only if I can have 'layers' of shield.

For instance, I link shield cap/recharge to a shield computer. Then I link effect modules to that computer to specialize the shield against a type of weapon. Then I can have different 'layers' of shield, each one specialized to a different weapon. They recharge at different rates, have different caps, etc. Rather than having a slider I can change on the fly, the ship has to specialize against a type of damage during the construction. This would solve EtherEel 's problem of a single shield stopping missiles and lasers.

This would allow the game an opportunity to tweak combat a bit. If shields were made stronger then ships would want to carry multiple weapon systems to compensate for the shield specialization - making battle longer, ship design more challenging, and cutting down on ships that just carry thousands of missile.

It would also create a way to quickly take down a ship's shield once astronaut mode is expanded (and we can board/raid).

 

[Auriga_Nexus]

How about a weapon effect, like say "Phase Shift", that allows all or part of a weapon's damage to bypass shields entirely?

To keep it balanced the Phase Shift effect would decrease overall damage AND increase overall power consumption; also since you cant have two effects at the same time, this would prevent people from blowing chunks out of your ship with Explosive weapons even when your shields are still up (with the exception of missiles but they'd be limited only to their base radius). Used defensively it protects against itself by reducing phase shift damage in exchange for your shields taking more damage from phased weapons. So, say, an attacker with a 100% Phase Shift effect on their weapon would do half damage at double energy cost, but would ignore shields entirely; a 50% effect would deal 75% damage at 150% energy cost, but 50% of their damage ignores shields and is applied to blocks (the remaining 50% is applied to shields as normal. A 100% defensive Phase Shift effect prevents phased weapon damage from getting through the shield entirely, but 2 points of damage are applied to the shield for every 1 point of phase damage blocked - and at 50%, half of all phase damage that would normally get through the shield is blocked, but that blocked damage deals 1.5 damage to the shields in addition to the phase damage that gets through.

In my eyes this still makes shields fairly useful but keeps them from being completely OP, because now you can create a weapon system that can still damage ships with or without shields, at the cost of being more power-intensive and less powerful. It also provides a way for pilots to defend themselves against these kinds of weapons while still not rendering their effect useless; the defender can choose between taking more overall shield damage or taking normal shield damage while risking direct damage to their ship even while shields are up. The damage reduction for phased weapons also makes armor more relevant, as the incoming damage is already being reduced by the phase effect and having armor reduces that damage further.

EDIT: Given what other people have said regarding boarding parties, a good change to go along with this would be to make it so that shields do not block enemy astronauts from boarding your ship. This way a ship can use a phased weapon to blow a hole in the enemy hull to send astronauts through to board and hijack the ship. I also like the idea of shields being ineffective against "sidearms" (astronaut weapons). This would make it possible to damage a ship from the inside once boarded, including but not limited to destroying weapon computers and power arrays, etc, as well as shooting the core directly until it overheats, killing the pilot and allowing someone else to enter and pilot the ship. Astronaut weapons are fairly weak compared to ship weapons and have a limited range, and of course you would have to pin the ship down with something like a stop effect. A ship's armor would prevent easy breaching due to how weak sidearms are, but un-armored systems would be child's play to destroy once shields are out of the question (plus it gives a reason to put blast doors/force fields in your ship as a security measure!). A pirate player faction could have a fleet with an interdictor (stop effect weapons) to hold the ship in place, a breacher (phase shift weapons) to blow open the hull, and a transporter (ship with lots of astronauts) to fly up close to the hull and have the passengers drop down and cripple/destroy/hijack the ship from the inside.

 

[Ithirahad]

How about a weapon effect, like say "Phase Shift", that allows all or part of a weapon's damage to bypass shields entirely?

To keep it balanced the Phase Shift effect would decrease overall damage AND increase overall power consumption; also since you cant have two effects at the same time, this would prevent people from blowing chunks out of your ship with Explosive weapons even when your shields are still up (with the exception of missiles but they'd be limited only to their base radius). Used defensively it protects against itself by reducing phase shift damage in exchange for your shields taking more damage from phased weapons. So, say, an attacker with a 100% Phase Shift effect on their weapon would do half damage at double energy cost, but would ignore shields entirely; a 50% effect would deal 75% damage at 150% energy cost, but 50% of their damage ignores shields and is applied to blocks (the remaining 50% is applied to shields as normal. A 100% defensive Phase Shift effect prevents phased weapon damage from getting through the shield entirely, but 2 points of damage are applied to the shield for every 1 point of phase damage blocked - and at 50%, half of all phase damage that would normally get through the shield is blocked, but that blocked damage deals 1.5 damage to the shields in addition to the phase damage that gets through.

In my eyes this still makes shields fairly useful but keeps them from being completely OP, because now you can create a weapon system that can still damage ships with or without shields, at the cost of being more power-intensive and less powerful. It also provides a way for pilots to defend themselves against these kinds of weapons while still not rendering their effect useless; the defender can choose between taking more overall shield damage or taking normal shield damage while risking direct damage to their ship even while shields are up. The damage reduction for phased weapons also makes armor more relevant, as the incoming damage is already being reduced by the phase effect and having armor reduces that damage further.

Still OP. Particularly against smaller ships that don't have space for tons of armor or redundant systems. :\

 

[Valiant70]

1. way: You have a circle with a slider in the center and with weapon types on sides, so you can choose to put more power into defending against cannons, but less into pulse. Or leave it in the center to have your shields balanced.

That would be interesting. I like this idea.

Make the shields block slow-moving objects
The collision damage system is quite fine, but this enables players to spam single ship cores and kamikaze into another ships, even in protected regions. Or even grab an asteroid and throw it on someone's ship, which becomes totally destroyed, but shields left untouched . And again, making this cost more power could be also fine.

Shields need to protect against collision damage, period. Otherwise few people will play with it turned on. If they can't deal with kinetic energy how the heck do they stop cannon projectiles? Seriously!

after taking some damage, the shield regenerators will start to overheat, slowly producing less and less shields (and exploding after total overheat :D ).