Shielding

[Hanspeter Schnitzel]

Yep. Good defaults are extremely important. It would be quite annoying for players if they had to make new ships for each server just because their balance is different.

 

[Krazykat]

Any of you actually reading the posts? I agree that the default values for the economy are important. But it doesn't matter in this game's early alpha state

 

[Unnamed25]

The problem is also with servers increasing shop credit quantity.
For example, NASS has 1bil per shop
How rare are titans?
They aren't.
On old illusive shops had 10mil creds
And there titans were VERY rare.
The only titan i heard off in all the time i played that server with 10mil creds per shop was the ender. (And i played there for like a year)
There probably were some more but the point is titans were rarer and medium-mass ships were quite common

Even this wont stop people from buying titans, though.

 

[Planr]

Any of you actually reading the posts? I agree that the default values for the economy are important. But it doesn't matter in this game's early alpha state

Are YOU actually reading the posts? We get you agree with us on that but you're just dead wrong when you say that serious gameplay flaws should not be addressed until a later date. FYI by the time that "later date" comes around, they will have supposed to have been FIXED already long prior. That's the spirit of a beta. You can't get to it if you don't solve the major issues plaguing the game first.

This kind of dismissive ignorance just baffles me to no end.

 

[ltmauve]

Also, having solid numbers now means that it's easier to put in new systems later

 

[Rhyssia]

I think I'd rather have block effects/configs working more or less as intended to have an understandable base line before moving to block economy personally. It might be a step backward to other people, but I think that if we were to get Weapons, Shields, and Effects working as intended... Then fixing the prices on items such as Hardened Hull, and Hull could be established more easily. Also, I think the Titan mentality is more of a community and economic issue. Two Capital Ships, of similar mass and capability, should be able to defeat a titan equal to the sum of their individual abilities at a comparable, if not reduced cost. Now it can be argued that two titans should easily dominate a single titan, which would be the admitted economical factor.

So in closing, I believe that the economy should be looked at, but after the blocks, and their attributes have been more or less established.

P.S. It's my observation that a lot of people that shoot for titans are usually only on a server with possibly a friend or two, so they shoot for single larger ships. Where if they had a group of friends, then the strengths of capital ships assisted by fighters might be more apparent.

 

[Ithirahad]

I do not believe that shutting off regeneration altogether during combat is an option. Frankly, I find the "reduced combat regeneration rate" idea to be a lot of nonsense. I don't care what my regeneration rate is like outside of combat, as long as my shields get back to full in a reasonable period. Meaning, the only time I care about regeneration is during combat, and if you take it away, or make me fill my ship with a million blocks just to get something survivable, it's not a valid system.

I like that there are now two separate blocks, allowing players to customize their capacity and regeneration, but the settings are much too low in my opinion. I tried making a fighter last night, and it quickly ballooned into a small ship as I tried to fit enough blocks for it to survive a battle with a typical band of Isanth pirates. More blocks meant more thrusters, more power, etc. I don't believe it is the goal of the developers that players's ships be nothing but a ship core wrapped around a ton of mechanical blocks. As they balance these settings, they need to allow for players to make decorative decisions, as well. There are plenty of threads talking about how to fill the space of ships with bridges and crew quarters, or showing off their design ideas. As I'm refitting my ships to include regeneration blocks, I'm growing increasingly annoyed each time I have to ask myself if I should maybe fill in a particular room with blocks instead.

This sums up pretty much every issue I have with ship construction as it is currently.

 

[aceface]

I must say I do very much love that we now have shield generators and shield capacitators.
But I do feel like the shield capacity is too low, especially on smaller starfighters or on turrets now. I would prefer if we had more capacity, but simply no regen during combat. Regeneration should pause when you get hit, we already had that once, I liked it. Not sure if the majority did not, but that must be the case since it was removed.

Why don't we make it like this: Big ships have longer regen-cooldowns, like a few seconds, since if they actually manage not to get hit for multiple seconds (which gotta be hard due to their size) then they should start to regen. Small ships should have regen times of a second. So smaller ships can take a hit, try to dogde, quickly refill their shields and get back in the fray.

Right now, like I said, I feel that the capacity is simply too small per block and you also gain less shield per block placed. I preferred the linear system. Perhaps to balance it we should give a constant power consumption to shields? That way shields are always using power, not only when they regenerate. Due to the low capacity it is also hard to make turrets able to survive being fired at, without lowering their firepower too much. I would prefer if the hostship's shield would also cover the turrets. That way the turrets would be pure weapon plattforms.

I think Calbiri said in a video that there is a bug with shielding when it comes to small ships, because as of the update fighters have way too low shields, and the shields of titans have multiplied many times.

 

[.keJ]

I dislike the new shielding as a whole. They are trying to combat gigantism but played right into its hands.

Until Schema stops relying on raw volume for effectiveness of systems we will never have anything but a constant arms race of gigantism.

 

[Rhyssia]

There's four ways I can see all this going.
1) Making ship systems based on "weight classes"
2) Calculation by Mass
3) Multiple Bell Curves
4) Diminishing returns

1) Separate identical systems designed with different objectives. It would require multiple types of many block. For example, thrusters geared toward small ships and other thrusters geared towards medium or large ships. The amount of additional work on this system would be significant. This approach would be able to fight "gigantism"...to a point (Titan ships based on "large" ship systems with a greater return on system size scaling... would produce "Mega-Titans").

2) Calculation by mass would only work after the new HP system was implemented. It would take the "saved blue print" and calculate the ships mass and use it as a variable in determining the ships stats. This would also require additional wok in determining how and what to buff and nerf depending on size and mass of the ship. Ultimately probably not the best way to approach this situation.

3) Multiple bell curves could work, but unfortunately would force the creation of "Niche" ships. Where ever the efficiency peaks would dictate the new favorable ship size. The curves could be moved around to favor different target weights, yet I think this would eventual prove to be ineffective.

4) Diminishing returns seems like the best investment in direction of the four choices. It would create a more level playing field only in the fact that it would allow smaller ships to engage larger ships. The goal would to be preventing a small ship from single handedly destroying a titan. On the other hand, preventing the returns from diminishing to the point that large ships become unplayable. I think finding a balance with this system would be the easiest on The Devs, and the play testers.