Shield Re-balancing

[Ixalite]

In the interests of game balance, I find the total reliance on million-block shield arrays to be harmful. To that end, I have a three part proposal.
1: Have shields only begin to recharge after a ten second timer, that is reset every time they take a hit. this includes partial recharges, so that ANY ship's shields can be eventually worn down.

2: Have shield blocks only benefit certain block types. My suggestion would be armored hull and glass, possibly including regular hull and doors as well.

3: Finally, have armor reduce damage against blocks beneath it, as well as itself.


I would also suggest a weapons tweak, tying the number of blocks in an AMC array to the DPS, rather than directly to the damage AND reload. Furthermore, I would like to see a damage/reload slider that can go all the way into the hour reload time range, rendering enormous damage.

 

[MichaelSeph]

At 1: No, that\'s a terrible idea, what\'s the point of \"recharge\" if when you get hit, it doesn\'t recharge ? With the shield limitation curve it\'s already enough since there won\'t be much enough shield capacity to need regen, and there it already has the 10 seconds wait to start recharging again, ONLY when the shields are down.

Also, I proven how a 1k and 3k mass ships can take down well built big capital ships, because shields are still quite weak for the AMC\'s powers, as much as shields DO NOT regenerate at the speed they say, because you also need at least half of the energy it says it requires when you do \"R\" on a shield block, from outside the ship. For 1 mill \"shield regen\", with only 400k shield ammount due to the limitation curve, (my 3k mass destroyer can take those 400k in 2 hits... let\'s say 3) needs 500 million energy regen, a thing will never happen now.

Shields actually need a fix to be compatible with the new energy systems.



A 5 blocks ships with 2 AMC blocks is never ment to take down anything, just to move around, anything bigger does much enough damage if it\'s not filled with empty rooms and such.



2: Shield blocks benefit the entire entity, separating the entity, think and only protect SOME of the blocks in an entity is an useless loss of performance (we could use it for example to have \"air\" inside ships and simulate the need of air in the space suit), why would it have to do all that math for all the blocks repeatedly all the time, just so you irrealistically go behind a ship and shoot it\'s engines out with the shields being USELESS ? In what movie have you seen that happening, shields go all around the ships, and it doesn\'t make sense to have shields at all (counting you 1 block barely gets you 2 points shield regen while 1 AMC block does 26+ damage) if shields doesn\'t protect what you need them to protect.

Idea evidence:





3. I understand where that idea comes from, I had it once.

But the point is the shield is ment to be a \"field\" around the ship, in this game, it being around ALL of it\'s blocks, like this:





So when a ship gets hit, it\'s not the armored hull block beneath it that gets hit, the shield field gets hit, so there is no damage reduction against hostile bullets because they never get near the armored hull to have that effect, and shields themselves don\'t have such damage reduction effect, just absortion.



About the weapons tweaking, apparently what you wish is to have stronger AMCs like before, and weaker Shields, so you can kill anything in a simple fighter... anyway, you can tweak weapons as many points as you have. But to get negative points on a detail to be able to add more points on something else is an interesting idea.

 

[Ixalite]

I will no longer belabor the point, I just wish to say one thing.
I suspect you and I wish to see very different games. What I believe in is a Starmade where battles are won by skill both in design, and ship handling. Where no one can be in a truly hopeless situation, and invincibility would be an unreachable ideal. I want a game where a skilled shipwright can create a vessel that can give the pilot/crew a huge edge, but not total victory. A universe of ships, all with their own roles and all unique; shaped to any of the countless possible combat or peacetime roles. Where every combat is more that just a pissing contest of DPS vs Shield Regen but rather a battle of wits and daring.

I want this game to have more weapons and defensive options. I don\'t want any of them to be the best. My only hope is that Schema shares at least part of my dream.

 

[dreadofmondays]

Ixalite, you\'ve brought up an important point. We will get hundreds of players, and possibly hundreds of different interpretations of how \'their game\' should function. There\'s going to be a conflict of interest eventually