Shield Help

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    Hi! I'm having a bit of difficulty working with the new shield system. Specifically, I can't make one shield generator cover my entire ship. I'm working on building a star destroyer and with it's longer shape, the shield AOE covers a lot of unused space while leaving the front of my ship exposed. This system is relatively new and not much has been posted on youtube showing me how I might work around this. I wish I was able to change the AOE shape into something of an oval shape as opposed to being a perfect sphere. Any help would be appreciated!
     

    Lancake

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    You'll have to use 2 or more shield groups to cover your entire ship. Their balance is made that eventually, with a big enough ship, shields will need to be spread out over multiple groups to have full coverage.

    This makes parts of the ship less protected but for a ship that size, you should have no problem providing decent protection against ships that are smaller than yours.

    With the weapons update, we're going to tweak shields even more as then the improved armor scaling will also play a part, not to mention that each weapon will be different to what they are now. I've had feedback already that mentioned shields were too weak, or that its power consumption is too much.
    From what I can see, it's mostly the shield upkeep and the fact that shields recharging is a all-or-nothing mechanic right now so I'll be looking into changing those numbers up when needed. We could bring back the shield regen under fire too if it's simply doesn't want to cooperate with the weapon and armor changes.

    That said, most likely the shield radius will only change slightly and I have no doubts that you'll need more than 1 shield group to provide full coverage. As you said, your current shield covers a lot of unused space so most likely you won't even need a strong shield group to protect that specific unused area as it simply doesn't impact your ship performance if damaged. A small shield to just protect against smaller ships would be just fine in such a situation.
     
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    My biggest complaint with the new shield system is that the recharger bank needs to be one giant blob. Any other recharger banks will simply be disabled and useless but if they are not touching. As my ships have a significant portion of the ship taken up with interior I might not even be able to shield my smallish ships as I have to spread systems out more. Why can't multiple rechargers in the same bubble add to the pool instead of going offline?
     
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    Thank you for the quick response, Lancake! I'll get to work spreading smaller shields through out my ship.
     

    Edymnion

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    Why can't multiple rechargers in the same bubble add to the pool instead of going offline?
    I would assume the main issue would be finding the center of mass to center the bubble on, that would change every time one of the small clusters was destroyed, making the shields dance around like a flickering lightbulb. Thats a lot of rather complex calculations to make in the middle of combat.
     
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    I would assume the main issue would be finding the center of mass to center the bubble on, that would change every time one of the small clusters was destroyed, making the shields dance around like a flickering lightbulb. Thats a lot of rather complex calculations to make in the middle of combat.
    Being too complex to make it function outside of massive blocks of systems is a poor reason to keep it as it is now. The new shield mechanics are the only point of Power 2.0 that I really just can't seem to get on board with, there has to be a better way.
     

    Edymnion

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    Being too complex to make it function outside of massive blocks of systems is a poor reason to keep it as it is now. The new shield mechanics are the only point of Power 2.0 that I really just can't seem to get on board with, there has to be a better way.
    I agree, its a little... cumbersome, but I like the idea they were going for. Its actually a pretty nice way to help combat gigantism in that you can't have a 4km long ship with 100m shields and have the entire thing be a juggernaught. You now need multiple shield bubbles that are individually weaker, and suck up a lot more power.

    Seems to be the direction they're going is more that small ships will be shield tanks, while the changes they talked about wanting to make to armor would make larger ships better armor tanks (as opposed to it being the other way around like it used to be). Big ships would get more use out of heavy armor with shields protecting only the most important stuff.
     
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    Edymnion

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    Yeah, frankly any real discussion on balance or what will/will not work right now is premature. We only have the power update in place, we can't really know how well it does or does not work until everything else is in place as well.

    Right now we have some honestly pretty bad imbalances if you push it far enough (its fine for normal play, but bleeding edge competitive is kinda borked right now) due to Weapons 1.0 being mashed up with Power 2.0. Just so much of what weapons and armor are is expected to change that we just don't have any real data to work with right now.

    But hey, its alpha, and the dev team is very receptive to input (as long as you're polite about it). If something does go haywire, they'll fix it. Might make for a rough few weeks while they do, but I won't complain too much about having more time to work on aesthetics or that station I keep doing a few dozen blocks at a time on for the last couple of months...
     
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    Edymnion

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    You mean weapons 2.0 mashed with power 2.0? Remember the sliders? Those were truly the darkest times.
    Lol, oh yeah. I'm still stoked at the return of the Mine Layers!

    But easier to think of that as... I dunno, Weapons 0.5a or something just so we can keep a nice even terminology field. If we're calling it Power 2.0, and we're redoing weapons/armor, and then the universe, I figured its just easier to refer to "old" as 1.0 and "new" as 2.0 so we can reference it easier.
     
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    Can we get an option to use the old shields, the new shields make modular stations impossible to protect.
    Docked ships that aren't covered becomes free targets for anyone.

    Example:


    Please make bubble shields optional.
     
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    Edymnion

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    The game definitly needs some adjustments for stations. Maybe some station only chambers could fix this.
    Yeah, we need multiple fixes for stations, really.

    I'd give a kidney to have a shipyard for station building. We can design ships in shipyards all day long for "free", but we still need all of the blocks for a station up front.
     
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    Yeah, we need multiple fixes for stations, really.

    I'd give a kidney to have a shipyard for station building. We can design ships in shipyards all day long for "free", but we still need all of the blocks for a station up front.
    A station in a station o_O...
    Even an alterted build mode would be great, you can do whatever but it doesnt change the actual ship, and can be saved as blueprints or the such.
    Idk, I personaly just build most things in SP Creative
     
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    If they were optional there would be zero reason to use the bubble shields, so no. Old shields are dead, we have to accept that. Focus on ways to improve new shields, because there's not going to be an in-between here.
    I can cover ships with shield bubbles just fine, but the modular station concept isn't gonna work unless I alter the config.

    Shielded docks made all that space in turrets useful, now turrets will become sad empty shells filled an empty void and some mass enhancers.
    Not to mention the fact that in the case of modular stations they too would have their own shields and power, or atleast they did.

    Since stations can't dodge bullets (they are stationary duh) their only defense is shields and armor.
    It seems then that the only option when building any station will be ungodly sized ones, small stations will be useless since they can't protect anything or supply enough power.
     
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    Edymnion

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    Since stations can't dodge bullets (they are stationary duh) their only defense is shields and armor.
    We are currently in a transition period. Weapons and armor both are getting redone in the next overhaul that they are working on now.

    That said, yes, small stations and outposts are and should be more vulnerable than massive city state command posts. This has always been the case.