Shield System Redux/ (no bubble shields)

    This idea is

    • Stupid

      Votes: 6 33.3%
    • Better than Bubble shields

      Votes: 1 5.6%
    • Just crazy enough it might work

      Votes: 9 50.0%
    • This is a solution to so many problems. Please add this!

      Votes: 2 11.1%

    • Total voters
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    Neon, youre the biggest random idea spammer ive ever seen.
    That would go against common logic, also the game would have to keep track of how many AIs/Players are targeting one entity, and should "small" be considered, also their mass, then add that to some nonesense calculation on each single shoot.

    wth man?
     

    NeonSturm

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    Perhaps it should be inefficient to use more than 100 small entities against a single ship.
    But using between 25 and 75 entities against a single ship should be effective.
    1. Setting up numbers would be an admin-job (if you don't want defaults).
    2. What exactly "effective" and "ineffective" means in terms of "require x% of cost compared to the big ship", should be up to the admin.
    3. 1+2 may be different for each server.

    How this is implemented doesn't really matter (as long as it does not hurt something else).
    That would go against common=>your logic, also the game would have to keep track of how many AIs/Players are targeting one entity=>how big attackers are compared to target, and should "small" be considered, also their mass, then add that to some nonesense calculation on each single shoot=>Just calculate 2 size limits for each possible target.
    X = mass|cost|combat-blocks|...

    Just once ((per entity, lazy update - after blocks are modified and build mode left))
    • upper = target.X / 25 = upper value limit for efficiency boost
    • lower = target.X / 75 = lower value limit for efficiency boost
    • halfRange = (upper - lower) /2
    • middle = upper + halfRange

    Just once per entity<=>target relation, lazy update - after blocks are modified and build mode left
    • lower < entity.X < upper
    • %boost = 1- (target.X / entity.X -middle) / halfRange
     
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    X = mass|cost|combat-blocks|...

    Just once ((per entity, lazy update - after blocks are modified and build mode left))
    • upper = target.X / 25 = upper value limit for efficiency boost
    • lower = target.X / 75 = lower value limit for efficiency boost
    • halfRange = (upper - lower) /2
    • middle = upper + halfRange

    Just once per entity<=>target relation, lazy update - after blocks are modified and build mode left
    • lower < entity.X < upper
    • %boost = 1- (target.X / entity.X -middle) / halfRange
    Perhaps it should be inefficient to use more than 100 small entities against a single ship.
    But using between 25 and 75 entities against a single ship should be effective.
    And where does that calculation have anything todo with the quantity of attackers?
    If you now say that any of those values is a number of attackers, your "are targeting one entity=>how big attackers are compared to target" change in my quote is false by your own logic.

    "That would go against common=>your logic"
    Explain to me how by your logic, it would make common sense that 25 to 75 of (lets just set small to 100 mass) 100 mass drones would be more efficient than 100 of those drones? By math, those 100 drones would have more combined firepower, and higher survivability as there are more off them to be taken out.
     
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    Snk

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    FullMetalFox, I have not the time to read over all of the posts here. However, I notice the length of the posts, and the amount of time you put into this thread. You obviously have passion for this suggestion. That is really admirable.

    I read through the OP and I can say that I really do like it. High Alpha damage breaking shields should be a thing - imagine a cloaking ship intercepting a jumping vessel, and releasing several warhead torpedoes onto the target, blowing out the FTL drive. Then that ship could be boarded. Or, that same ship executing hit and run attacks on a larger ship. That's just a hypothetical scenario, so whatever. It would also give a greater purpose to pilot skill the captain would have to try to balance out the damage on his ship while trying to hit the other. Honestly what I see from this suggestion is a multitude of various tactical scenarios and new ship designs.
     
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    FullMetalFox, I have not the time to read over all of the posts here. However, I notice the length of the posts, and the amount of time you put into this thread. You obviously have passion for this suggestion. That is really admirable.
    I sadly have to correct you on that assumption, i dont have passion for this suggestion. I have a passion for starmade itself, i want to see it succed as a well balanced sandbox, and with that i hope it wont turn into an unbalanced mess by trying to please every kind of player. Even a sandbox, heck especially a sandbox needs a very carefully crafted balance, otherwise people will just abuse everything they can to gain an advantage, and that in the end makes the whole game more boring, as the only chance you have left to keep up in multiplayer is to abuse too. So, might seem rude, but if i think i see a flaw in a suggestion, i point it out, if that results in a discussion, ill gladly discuss. Even if it sometimes looks a bit heated.

    I read through the OP and I can say that I really do like it. High Alpha damage breaking shields should be a thing - imagine a cloaking ship intercepting a jumping vessel, and releasing several warhead torpedoes onto the target, blowing out the FTL drive. Then that ship could be boarded. Or, that same ship executing hit and run attacks on a larger ship. That's just a hypothetical scenario, so whatever. It would also give a greater purpose to pilot skill the captain would have to try to balance out the damage on his ship while trying to hit the other. Honestly what I see from this suggestion is a multitude of various tactical scenarios and new ship designs.
    Well high alpha damage is currently very common, many ship designs even revolve around outright destroying smaller targets with alpha strikes, so as they are right now they are already the most efficient base design, giving them yet another advantage would tip the weapon balance even more towards high reload time missiles, whit every advantage you add to some specific kind of weapon, ship size, system or whatever, it will have an impact on a lot more than you may have intended.
     
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    hmm, my 2 cents....
    Well, to be honest, I don't mind the shields the way they are... OMG WHY!!?? you ask? simply put, If I am in a fighter and I happen to see a leviathan or something close, pick your large poison, I am fairly sure I would not mess with it. Not out of fear, but knowing the limits of my own ship. I may take a shot or so at a cruiser or something similar just to see if I do any damage, but normally no I will leave it alone. On the flip side, if I was with another 9 - 19 other fighters then sure we could pound on it and see if we do anything at all to it. But thats how it is. That's why other large ships exist and other role specific ships exist. I wouldn't want to take a RIB against a Destroyer, sure I could pound on it with my machine guns, but would I or even SHOULD I do damage to it enough to cripple it? (hull wise).
    So what exactly does this issue make you have to do in a PVP server? obviously you're not going to get 100+ of your friends to play the game in tiny little fighters. You're going to build a BIG ship to compete with him. If you don't build a big ship you have NO chance of even damaging him (as his shield recharge is probably 10x as much as your DPM) So if there was an area shield effect you could essentially knock him down block by block. Now that would still take forever, but it would be better than not even being able to approach him :P

    Just my 2 cents :)
     

    mrsinister

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    So what exactly does this issue make you have to do in a PVP server? obviously you're not going to get 100+ of your friends to play the game in tiny little fighters. You're going to build a BIG ship to compete with him. If you don't build a big ship you have NO chance of even damaging him (as his shield recharge is probably 10x as much as your DPM) So if there was an area shield effect you could essentially knock him down block by block. Now that would still take forever, but it would be better than not even being able to approach him :p

    Just my 2 cents :)
    if I was in a pvp server, I would hope to be in a faction with people and maybe some of those people have a large ship. If I am solo, then no, I wouldn't mess with it. Will everyone have a large ship? maybe, but again, I am sure there are others out there that do have large ships that could help. I can see your reasoning though, and if I was in fighter and against a leviathan, then no, I would hope the pilot of such a craft would nuke me before I did anything to him, death wish? nope, just that if you are in that kind of ship I would hope that you know what you are doing and be able to take out a measly fighter. ;)

    So, ok, I could/may go for what the OP would like, though I am still mulling it over. Should everything have a weak point? sure.....but some reasoning in my logic circuits tells me otherwise. But I do like the vision of 1 lone fighter bringing down a leviathan, lol, gives me a laugh as well.
     

    NeonSturm

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    But I do like the vision of 1 lone fighter bringing down a leviathan, lol, gives me a laugh as well.
    What If the leviathan has no weapons at one side? (Maybe killed by a nuke of an earlier fight)

    We all are assuming that it is a fight between fully repaired ships.
     

    Snk

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    What If the leviathan has no weapons at one side? (Maybe killed by a nuke of an earlier fight)

    We all are assuming that it is a fight between fully repaired ships.
    If the pilot has enough skill, and the captain of the capital is dumb enough, then why not? It would be hilarious.
     
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    What If the leviathan has no weapons at one side? (Maybe killed by a nuke of an earlier fight)

    We all are assuming that it is a fight between fully repaired ships.
    I think what you're saying here is a perfect reason for this :D If a titan has no weapons on one side that's an opportunity for a vigilant fighter pilot who's actually assessing the situation around him to be rewarded
     
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    FullMetalFox

    I really feel like you didn't read the original suggestion at all. I very clearly addressed your concern about salvos of missiles earlier on. It would be based on the computers damage, not the individual weapon groups. Purposely using smaller weapons with more computers would be counter productive as well since the area would get much smaller.


    And we're not talking about making a leviathan solo able by a corvette either, we're simply talking about removing the total invulnerability factor. Remove shields altogether, the leviathan still wins every time. more than likely, you won't ever get a ship that can hang in a blind spot long enough to damage you're 3rd bathroom, but the possibility is there.

    with armor as it is now, shields need to be adjusted so that you can wear them down as a smaller ship.

    I want skill to come into play more. numbers shouldn't decide every battle.

    Just because 100> 50 doesn't mean it should automatically win every time.
     
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    Jath ive read it, but pardon me for forgetting that one little info in brackets after some days.

    With that settled, there is still the issues of Drones gaining a huge boost from this, as well as the added calculations each hit.

    If you want combat skills to matter more, then there are other areas that need a good deal of love first, Weapon Balancing, Ship and Turret Turnrate, Thrust=Acceleration/Speed Calculations (or better whole new system on this), HP System, Effect Module Balancing, AI Control... fact is the current combat is a little bit broken, in a lot more pressing ways than shields, shields are rather one of the only things that arent that broken, if you look aside the fact that they are rather weak compared to weapon blocks, making it easy for ships to alpha nuke each other.

    100 > 50 doesnt automatically win, by no means, there are a lot more factors that play in this.
    Ill give you an example, my 25k Cruiser, ive spent a long time on this thing min/maxing everything and finding the optimal ratios with the current balancing, the result is a ship that can take on most ships more than double its size you can find here in the Community Content, i even calculated the best ratio between caps and rechargers to get the most of it, the result is it can perma tank over 50k DPS, aka 10.000 weapon blocks, its own weapons are strong enought to instakill a 55k ships of one of my faction memebers with a salvo of half its weapons.

    That, is Build Skill and Knowledge about System, two very important factor in ship to ship combat since all ships here are build by different persons.
    So currently, pure numbers in terms of size dont win everything, its tiny numbers of ratios and multiplications that are much more dangerous.

    If a ship is much bigger than you, you could still have enough DPS to wear down its shield, might take some time, if that ship was designed to tank a large amount of damage, or your ships simply doesnt carry enough firepower, your screwed, and you should be screwed because that ship is mathematically ouf of your league. But thats not the main reason youll lose, because your been screwed by other factors first, missiles, with having the same turn speed no matter their damage/size, aber the biggest bane of any maneauver to gain an advantage, homing, high range, quick turnspeeds, lots of damage, turrets with missiles, or even the main weapons on a ship, can murder you with these before youre even close enought to use any kind of skill except controlling the distance of the fight, your not fast enough to out maneauver turnspeeds on high distances, and your not fast and agile enought outmaneauver a shit ton of missiles heading your way. Should you miraculously managed to get close enought to use the currently rather small gap in speed and agility, there is a high chance that if that ship was build by a smart person, he will have some weapon to still deal with you, be it turrets, or most likely swarmers, since you are the closest target, youll be attacting the majority of them. And that even leaves aside the fact that he could also pack other weapons that ruin your day, be it hitscan beams, or rapid fire cannons, if you cant out maneauver him or his weapons, your whole shield weakness idea is for nothing. If you are flying with buddies against him, your chance of having enough firepower increases since there are more ships in play, if you all die or win then depends on who he and his turrets target first, how much time he needs to take on his next target, how well he manages his targets based on where they are in terms of his rotation, or in total: who needs longer to take out who, he to take your you guys, or you guys to take out him? Ofc your coordination with your buddies also plays a major part in this. Ofc if youre enemy is a swarmer ship, youre all fucked.
     
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    First off, Drones as they are currently couldn't even take advantage of this system. they'd all be hitting in different spots than eaveachother, and themselves.

    Secondly, there are a number of things you can do to reduce calculations taking place. For one, only calculate hits done by a primary weapon, not ai, Drones or turrets. .. two, only calculate if the target ship itself has been hit a number of times by the same ship already. 3rd, only calculate 1 impact zone per attacker, and only recalculate if they miss that zone a number of times in a row.

    these might not even be needed, but if you do them, it will not even be as laggy as missiles hitting an unshielded target, which isn't at all laggy for me. ..

    Your argument about the defenses against such an attack by a small coordinated strike team only reinforces my idea. It proves number 1 that this won't be as big a setback as your claiming to those who put the work into it, and number two, it shows some new tactics and game play that would result from my idea.

    The more i think about this, the more I'm convinced it needs to be added in some form. Small ships capable of focusing fire in a group SHOULD be able to weaken shields in order to carry out tactical strikes against larger ships.

    My original idea that i didn't post was to make each capacitor capable of protecting an area with in a curtain radius, which would be defined by group size. The problem with that idea though, even though i think it would be more interesting and make more sense, is that it would require everyone to redesign every ship. I don't want that. So this is an approximation of that system as though it was balanced on each ship.
     
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    I really dont know what drones youve seen, my only guess would be that youve only seen drones on a server in easy mode (AI cant hit a barn door then). The few battles we had with drones, whenever they killed something, it looked like someone took a drill to the hull.

    Im sorry, but this reads like grasping at a straw. And on what isnt laggy for you, i cant say anything about that as i dont know on what scale you saw that. But try out how laggy it can get when 500+ missiles impact at nearly the same time, or ships spitting out 1000+ projectiles a second (the famouse coredrills and wafflecannons), then scale that up to multiple ships doing that at the same time, then add the overall server load of the rest of the population doing something else. This can get very laggy.

    So instead of rather fixing the currently broken meta of combat, you rather want to fuck it up more by adding yet another factor? Jeez, you really are set on this idea. And as i said, small craft are able to weaken big ships, if their combined fire power is at least higher than the targets recharge. But then the whole reason i wrote that little analysis of a single or multiple smaller ships attacking a bigger target is to show how broken the meta of combat is right now, how other factors than the shields are the most crippling factors to different ship size combat. Your shield change would only minorly change those fights, ships would still get vaporized by missiles and not being able to out manauever at a distance, so what, that few ships that maybe would manage to get close could deal some minor damage to the HP if their lucky and then get nuked too. And for that tiny impact on such fights, we would get even shorter and more laggy capital fights.
     

    NeonSturm

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    FullMetalFox : If shields are dropped to zero, the real lag starts when blocks are removed by a missile. Shield formula lag without block changes is hopefully negligible.

    Perhaps we need a compromise.
    1. More shields compared to now to dis-able one-shooting shields as a whole.
    2. Damage bleed-through when our current-strength shields would vanish.
    3. Independent shield-plates.
      • Put a triangle-net over the collision-volume
        • Project positions of shield emitters onto the collision volume to set points for a triangle-net.
        • Project hit-blocks to the collision-volume to determinate which emitter-triangle is hit.
      • All 3 emitters emitting a shield-triangle will take part.
        • Emitter.maxAbsorption = shield/capacity of itself
        • Emitter.damage = 1/3
        • Emitter.bleed = not absorbed damage.
      • Render shield effect as it is rendered currently.
     
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    FullMetalFox : If shields are dropped to zero, the real lag starts when blocks are removed by a missile.
    Thats exactly the point why block based shield calculations would also cause lag, the removal of the blocks themselfs is a big part in that due to updates being send to all involved clients (for the love of god i hope they are tick based updates), as well as client lag for executing said updates. But the calculations of projectiles with effects hitting blocks with hp and an armor multiplier is also a big part. On his original suggestion a single shield hit, with the damage being spread to multiple shield blocks, would most likely cause more block based calculations, propably a normal single rapid fire cannon would be similar to firing missiles at a hull with the rate of fire of a rapid fire cannon in terms of block based calculations per impact.

    And again, im not a fan of fucking up more stuff in the already fucked up combat model, all the other broken stuff should get attention first, before even thinking about any suggestions that would requiere a whole rewrite of how shields currently work.

    More shields compared to now to dis-able one-shooting shields as a whole.
    You would need to increase them to rediculous amounts to make that happen, otherwise people will just pack more weapons instead of shields. The main issue for this one shoot madness is rather the liniar scaling, making it to easy to build extremly powerfull weapons.
     

    NeonSturm

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    You would need to increase them to rediculous amounts to make that happen, otherwise people will just pack more weapons instead of shields. The main issue for this one shoot madness is rather the liniar scaling, making it to easy to build extremly powerfull weapons.
    Depends on scale.
    The current problem is that you can't tell how big the opposing ship's shields are and easily find ships which are either 1/8 your mass or 8/1 your mass.
    Especially while fighting alternating battle-cubes and RP-ships with a lot of hollow space.​
    • Maybe in even fights it wouldn't help a lot, but in fights between 1:3 mass ships, the 3-times-mass ship would have more time to react and suddenly a chance to win.

    Maybe Star-Conflict has some solution (it shows shield+hp bars divided into "x shield/hp" segments in a non-default setting)
    0.3x hull, 0.5x shield compared to your max, 60% hull, 10% shield left.
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    0.5 hull, 2x shield compared to your max, 40% hull, 10% shield left.
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    Depends on scale.
    The current problem is that you can't tell how big the opposing ship's shields are
    Um, just look at it, press F, let your eyes wander up and to the left, and there magicaly happens to be some yellow bar with a current / max and % number under its. Thats your targets shields. With free camera you can pretty much very quickly check the shields on possible targets.
    The rest is the usual chaos battle, or following the callings of your fleet commander.
    Also if you got time for preparations, scouting your opponents fleet is obviously a very good tactic, gathering infos on their ship composition before the battle starts, so you save time checking ships in battle, being able to tell which of your fellow pilots have to focus on for example your opponents titan over there to nuke it to rage quit town before the battle even startet.
     
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    Ok, we're all sick of this topic, and so far, I don't think anyone has come up with the best solution. Bubble shields are basically out because of performance issues. While this may change in the future with more optimization, it's not what people even want anymore anyway.

    Premise:
    We want to make it possible for a highly skilled strike team of fighters to disable, or damage a mega-ship. This would fit into our big v small rolls better by allowing this to happen under the proper circumstances, without:
    A, making large ships overly vulnerable to other large ships, and
    B making it possible for a tiny ship to take out a giant ship by itself.

    Goals and Benefits
    Primarily, this idea would make it possible for
    1. boarding actions to take place,
    2.for small ships to do strategic damage to specific parts of a larger ship, making it less effective.
    3.It would also enable a highly skilled squadron of small fighters able to take down a large ship during a long hard engagement, rather than the larger ship being simply rendered invulnerable to all attacks.
    4. make skill more important to the large ships pilot as well, since the pilot will now have to make more corrections because of the limitation of the shield system against smaller ships, and also,
    5. make the smaller attacking ships more vulnerable to other defending fighters, causing more interesting game play.


    Breakdown
    The premise of this idea is based on location of shield capacitors, and scaling spread of damage to shields based on the incoming damage.

    First, the shield capacitor layout functionality would remain more or less the same as they are now, requiring little to no refitting.

    now lets assume a shield capacitor mass ratio of 10%, for a total of 1100 shields. Now lets assume that the ship has a mass of 100, for a total 1000 blocks. Now lets add a secondary "combat shield recharge" that is 10 seconds, instead of 60, and limit this combat recharge to only the area that's currently being shot at, after 10 seconds, the damage incurred in this area will add to the rest of the ship.

    The area that is being shot at will be an area figured by this formula:

    dps done(by single computer) *11(calculated from single block damage*2/ capacitance) = shield pool on area
    D*11 = St
    shield pool on area/total shield pool * total blocks = block area effected.
    Sa/St*Bt = Ba

    D=damage done, St = shield total, Sa = shield area, Bt = Blocks total, Ba = Blocks area

    So, if you were to do 5 damage per hit, on the above ship it would look like this.

    5*11 = 55
    55/1100*1000 = 50

    so basically, what would happen is each block in the ship would get it's own portion of the total shields or 1/xth of the shields where X is the total number of blocks in the ship.

    A hit of 5 would spread the shield damage to the 50 closest blocks, basically an explosion radius that continues until 50 blocks have been shield damaged. This hit would mark these 50 blocks "hit" for 10 seconds, during which time they will receive no recharge from other blocks, nor the standard rechargers.

    After 10 seconds of a block not being hit, or if a different area is hit, whichever comes first, the shields will begin to recharge, drawing shields from the other blocks in the ship first. The regular recharge rate would effect all non "hit" blocks.

    Layman's Terms

    Without all the math, whats happening here is that it's causing a shield to have weak spots depending on how much damage is received per second.

    If you can focus on a specific area for 11 seconds, as long as you're precise, you should be able to break through the shields in that small area and begin damaging the main ship.

    If you're not accurate, you'll wind up spreading your damage all over the place causing less effectiveness.

    If a fighter squadron is uncoordinated, you'll wind up with shields basically the same as they are now.

    if you go up against a ship that is much higher damage, it will spread the damage over a larger area of shields causing the 11 seconds to hold up regardless of the damage, unless your total shield pool is less than 11 times his total DPS.

    This system rewards accuracy, it also doesn't leave the larger ships as vulnerable as some other systems do, to smaller ships.

    Larger ships will have to do things like Roll more to keep specific zones from being targeted, adding more to large ship skill.

    It may even discourage larger ships since a small ship that can out maneuver it can theoretically take it on. It may cause the pilot of said large ship to actually get into a fighter to clean his hull of small ships.

    If you can punch a small hole into a large ship, you can board it. It also has interesting implications for personal weapons that might be able to finally kill doors and other systems once boarded.

    You may be able to add manual shield boosters that would require you to actively strengthen specific areas of shields that they might target. (not sure how to do this one yet)
    [DOUBLEPOST=1427758153,1427756745][/DOUBLEPOST]This system rewards accuracy, without punishing higher damage weapons.
    In my opinion, I don't think the game needs this much of a drastic overhaul. Perhaps some balancing here and there but, all-in-all, I don't believe that shields should have this sort of weakness implemented. I believe people need to take it for what it REALLY is. A gigantic ship is nothing but a big mother fucking gigantic ship and, it should all come down to ship design and role designation for what the ship is capable of doing/withstanding.

    If you design nothing but a battleship with slow moving, hard hitting weapons, then that is that ship's role and design (to decimate other large enemies). As a result, it is inherently susceptible to smaller craft, such as fighters, because of what it is designed to do. (And obviously, larger ships are capable of having larger shield generators)
    Boom... Boom... Boom...
    Well crap... we're screwed


    And then, there are alternatives to deal with threats from smaller craft.
     

    mrsinister

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    • Legacy Citizen 9
    In my opinion, I don't think the game needs this much of a drastic overhaul. Perhaps some balancing here and there but, all-in-all, I don't believe that shields should have this sort of weakness implemented. I believe people need to take it for what it REALLY is. A gigantic ship is nothing but a big mother fucking gigantic ship and, it should all come down to ship design and role designation for what the ship is capable of doing/withstanding.

    If you design nothing but a battleship with slow moving, hard hitting weapons, then that is that ship's role and design (to decimate other large enemies). As a result, it is inherently susceptible to smaller craft, such as fighters, because of what it is designed to do. (And obviously, larger ships are capable of having larger shield generators)
    Boom... Boom... Boom...
    Well crap... we're screwed


    And then, there are alternatives to deal with threats from smaller craft.
    thank you, exactly what I was getting at. ;)