Shield Idea

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    I have what I consider to be a rather interesting idea. I think it would balance the large ship vs small ship arguement. Basically, each shield block created a box, like a docking module. For each Block that you add to the group, the box expands. And for each new group placed, it creates a new box. To prevent infinity loops of shielding, shields would start using the amc formula(each new group costs 10% more energy than the last. Fighters would be allowed to physically pass through the shields, if they could fit. Similarly, the shield on fighters increases the size of their hitbox. Thoughts?
     
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    No, simply no.

    To put simply, a bigger ship in space would be stronger, more deadly, and even faster than a snub fighter.

    Shields should get better the more you add, and that is that.
     
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    Not really, shields work normally, but they have a square hitbox that expands based on the number of shields provided. This could give use to bombers, and make hull nessicary. It also makes fighters easier to hit. It would add strategy because you can have multiple shields to protect different areas. Please provide more explanation, as it seems like you are bashing it for the big ships sake, when it is actually balanced.
     
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    As strange of an idea as it is, I like this idea. It would of course ruin every last ship design out there that has shields on it, but it would allow for a big ship to have small weak points that a 1 man fighter could attack, rather then forcing one to field massive ships to fight massive ships.*



    This would of course require ships to have hull points, and blocks to be harder to break on a ship, which in turn could make the whole point of this idea meaningless. I mean, it\'s all fine and dandy to have a ship with a few weak points that one has to add defenses around, but if that weak point is like butter against a decent AMC array, then people would spend massive sums of cash on to harden enough to fend off tiny ships that can enter those weakpoints and slaughter the ship. But on a purely tactical level, yeah, I am 100% behind this idea. Add a second set of field emmiters around a weak point or important location, or maybe just make a series of bubbles around your ship that are hard to break through.



    It would in turn add a reason to have Convoy Escorts, but this being a game with both SP and MP means this isn\'t too good for SP until one can have AI controlled Ships on the player\'s team. It would add greatly, however, to any Quests/Storyline added to Starmade. But since the game is still a sandbox... I\'d say this idea should be added... just, not right now, or even soon. It\'s a great idea, and it belongs on the back burner for now.
     

    therimmer96

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    Star wars was completly inaccurrate in that scene, no way would that of happened. Why should a 1 man battle bike take down my ship that I spent over a month building. It doesnt make sense, that is the biggest problem with the nerf to shields. I dont agree with this idea either, leave shields alone, of course a huge mother ship is going to take out a fighter, but we already have to sacrifice turn speeds. If you want to take down a huge ship, get a huge ship. That is how it should always be.
     

    ???

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    Have you ever seen Star wars? Are you realy telling me that the death star was faster than an X-wing fighter?

    BIG SHIPS STRONGER? NO the strongest navy ships are Destroyers Whitch are one of the smaller ship classes THE WEAKEST ships are Carriers AND they are the biggest i think that the bigger ships should bee weaker but should offer differant advantages such as a AOE heal or a mobile respawn and the ability to have an onboard shop
     
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    Hi,

    Um; the weakest ships should be large hollow ships that have very little room for shields (carriers). Large ships full of shields (with no empty space for docking areas) are a completely different story.
     
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    Actually, the Deathstar had a glarring weakness(IE that vent lead directly to the main power generation for the whole bloody ship which made the thing explode), and when Luke blew it up it destroyed* the Deathstar.



    This isn\'t inaccurate at all, this is something that one has to think about with ship designs. They were using those vents to keep the reactor cool(IIRC) and this meant they left a weakness that wasn\'t deemed a actual problem. No ship could fit in it, only a torpedo could. And one couldn\'t fire the torpedo down there without being a crack pilot AND have the force to send it down there...



    But if you leave a weakpoint, yeah, you should expect it to be attacked eventually.



    And the idea that a massive ship always wins against smaller ships doesn\'t work anywhere. Size doesn\'t matter in actual warfare against anything. Shooting giant cannons at tiny ships causes you to waste cannon rounds. The tiny ship for one, is faster, and has a much smaller profile. It can turn quicker, reach its top speed faster, and is over all, a better ship. Star Ruler even has a way to make it more realstic anyway, the bigger a ship is, the easier it is to hit, the smaller it is, the harder. It\'s even better with a certain mod that gives fighter/bomber ships a chance to outright evade a attack depending on how fast they are going. But that doesn\'t help against Point Defense weapons, which chew tiny ships, missiles, and the occasional astroid, into harmless dust.



    Why do you think I\'m saying this should go on the back burner? There is so much that would have to be added before this is viable. And by that point, your giant ship you \"spent months building\" will have been replaced by a better ship, or maybe even you\'ll have stopped playing. We\'ll have Drones we can send out to attack things using AI and even ways to fight those drones that we don\'t have now. We\'ll have new weapons, Spinal Mounting for certain weapons, Planet Cracker weapons, and maybe even He-3 harvesting for some things.
     

    ???

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    The carriers arent weak because they can hold of damage they are weak because they are big and bulky therefore slow to turn and slow to accelerate



    as far as speed goes would say that the bigger the ship is the slower the acceleration and turn rate should be that alone should make them weak but i also agree that 1 fighter should not be able to kill 1 battleship it should take a whole squad of fighters
     
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    No no no, all entirely wrong, inaccurate, false. This idea is great, and the best ship is the kind that can deal a lot of damage without being slow.

    People think this is the case in starmade simply because it\'s not balanced yet. In space, especially with true Newtonian physics, acceleration is much more important than how big your forward guns are. Currently a destroyer with a capable crew could take down a much larger ship by staying to it\'s side and wiping out it\'s turrets first. And this idea is fully viable for the above reasons and because shields would also cover those turrets instead of them having to rely on their own small shield generators. So in a way it would also help those big ships. It\'s a fair trade, protecting one\'s turrets in exchange for having to think tactically about how you build your ship so as to not let other ships inside your shields to destroy your main systems.

    I like this.
     
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    It was called a \"thermal exhaust port\" for a reason.

    Also, this is an O.K. idea to me.
     
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    The proton torpedoes caused a chain reaction within the shaft. The torpedoes didn\'t just go down without bumping into anything.
     
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    What about shields are directions based on the bounding boxes of the collisions, or the gerneral collision bounding box of the whole vessel (this would allow fighters to pass through the shields of sprawling vessels and stations to exploit that weakness. Also this would make turrets on the interior more desirable.

    So a shield turned to face the + Z axiz may be different to shield on the - Z axiz. This is simple as putting the shield generators facing in the direction you want to re-enforce.

    Also there could be omni-directional shield blocks that generate a shield as it does now, but at a lesser strength to allow fighters to have a chance...



    (Or the shield blocks could be like weapon computers where it fires in the direction the computer is facing and all blocks linked to it will re-enforce it in some way... Over all strength, recharge and mitigation.)
     
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    Seems like people believe that this is asking for a shield nerf, I find that rediculus. The shield strength stays the same, the only thing that changes is how far out the shields extend. Capitol versus Capitol fights would stay the same, but the pourpose Is to make fighters a viable option. The counter to that would be adding more hull layers. This would also provide missle testing opportunities, so schema can work those out and balance them.
     

    therimmer96

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    I do understand what happened, I am infact quite a fan of star wars, My point was how the torpedo fell into the shaft, they made it clear they wasnt using locking missiles and would have to aim for the shaft. so the sudden 90 degree change in trajectory just for the convenience of the plot annoys me
     
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    i like the idea of shelds that do what your sugesting but i dont want to have no shelds like we have now

    a balance:

    shelds as it is now and a new tipe that duse axactly what your saying aka we add new shelds that can be activated and turned off like fireing wepons

    it lets fendy fire out of the shelds and stops all other fire leting turents be used and if put on lets say a mother ship smaller ships can hang out in this protective buble if thay nee to recharge shelds

    it shuld take like 5000 power to activate +150 per block and since its gona be a instant sheld if you sont have the power to put it up all at one time it wont go up becuse a recharge of it will be alittle silly consitering it will be takeing fire imeaditly

    1 \"outer sheald\" as i sugest can cover a 20 by 20 by 20 area with about 1000 shelds makeing to powerfull but to balance it it wont ever recharge in battle untill its droped and re rased agenwich a tepe after it drops or fails it will have a cool down time on it as for epanding ading 1 will epand all sides by 4 and the power of the shelds will have 500 added each this may make for usefull hangers that are protected from stray fire so crew can get out of the scouts thay were in and swich to a fighter without worying about a spare shot heting liucky and going into the open hanger killing and destoying all

    recharge must be big to cope with this epic shelding so i sugest a whole 5 minute time as a start with the max time being 1 hour making this a eather last resort move or a rare battle tactic at best
     
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    Not really, the idea is that this adds tactics to ship building, this means that you can minimally shield crew quarters, but maximally shield the core and bridge. It\'d be even more epic if ship pieces broke off during combat, so you risk whole parts of a ship being sheared off, so you add better shields. The bottom line is that all ships should be able to have massive shielding, but there would have to be penalties, however, 25 energy per shield block would require huge amounts of energy blocks, because players might like to move or shoot every hundred years or so...
     
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    As for this shield change, it would make unique designs with spikes/wings/etc, utterly useless, now that you need to place shield specificly for the box to be the adiquate size.

    As for the entire \"deathstar was beaten by a snub fighter\", I present you the borg cube from startrek killing 40+ smaller ships.

    I present you the tiger tank killing 5+ sherman tanks.

    I present you almost anything that is bigger killing several smaller things.
     
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    It astounds me that this has become another arguement of big ship versus small ship. If you read the OP, I did comment on how the smaller ships would also have a large hitbox due to shields. As to wings, they shouldn\'t be too much of a problem, don\'t make them huge. That or give them a shingle shield block, they arn\'t supposed to take hits anyways... Right?
     
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    All in all, I love this idea. I have been thinking of a good way to do this for a while, and while this way works, another way to add a bit more customization would be to have three different types of shield blocks. They would work like this:

    1. Shield projector: Would work exactly like the shield in the OP, except has no shield storage or regen behind it. Size of field generated relies on XYZ dimensions of connected shield projectors, plus the basic 7x7x7 area of one projector. Example: a shield projector group that is 100 blocks long but only two blocks wide would project a field 207 blocks long and 11 blocks wide.

    2. Shield generator: Would be connected to a shield projector group, only one generator group per projector. Adds either a set amount of regen or scales exponentially. Generator groups work similarly to how AMC groups, where being connected makes them more efficient.

    3. Shield Container: Adds shield capacity, does not get a bonus from grouping, works similarly to how current shields work in terms of capacity. I\'m not sure exactly how these would work with the projectors, either similar to how the generators work or something else.

    This is my addition to how this could work, numbers are of course just examples.