Shields, Afterburner’s & engines, and other Smalltalk mixed in between…
That’s right people, another thread just for these subjects, we’ve seen a lot of these already and mine won’t be the last as well. Mine is only very detailed and one big wall of text, you have been warned.
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SHIELDS
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Well to get stated i want to talk about shields;
The coming update involves a lot off new weapons and combinations, we also get a armor and shield balances to go with these.
Now has come to my attention that a lot of these things are rather selfish in nature, none of the things that are coming up are there for support, and support only.
My thought, why not add a second shield type, the ‘’bubble’’ shield.
Now before people go all mad about it being ‘’Overpowered’’ and or ‘’useless’’ or plain ‘’butt ugly’’, i have some good points to make about this type of shield and ho wit would fit in within Starmade, also ‘’bubble’’ is just the name this kind of shield has, it does not necessarily mean it is ‘’sphere’’ or ‘’bubble’’ shaped.
Currently we are used to the ‘’SD Shield Disperser’’, a personal shield of the ‘’skin’’ type, as the type implies it covers the users ship in a protective skin, but only the users ship, none of his or her nearby allies.
The ‘’bubble’’ type, or ‘’SSD Support Shield Disperser’’, is a group shield, this shield covers the users ship and any other ship within range of the emitter, this shield is mostly used when ships inside the group have little or no shields, giving them a better or longer survivability. This shield type is also used on planetary base area or local space station defence.
How this ‘’bubble’’ type works:
This shield requires one emitter block to be placed on the users ship, base, or station. When the block is placed regular ‘’SD Shield Disperser’’ blocks have to be linked to this emitter block, the more blocks the bigger and stronger the shield becomes.
However, due to physical implications and sci-fi huzza, this shield is 65% as effective as a “SD Shield disperser”, meaning that for every 100 points of shields you add, 65 points will be effective.
the other 45% of energy is lost in projecting the ‘’bubble’’, which can only have a max range of 500 blocks in diameter, which is a radius of 250 blocks around the emitter respectively.
Anything and any block within this range will be protected from harm, anything and any block outside this shield can be harmed, this also counts for parts of structures sticking out the ‘’bubble’’, this unless equipped with its own set of shields. this anything inside rule also counts for enemy vessels and objects, the ''bubble'' is merely a mid to long-range barrier.
Overlapping shields has also been a point of discussion, will overlapping shields merge? Or will they remain the same, and what about incoming damage?. This is fairly simple to awnser, when shields overlap,, the shields will not merge but the shield which is the first to be hit in the line of fire will take the damage, kind of obvious isn’t it.
Now the internal mechanics are out of the way we get to external mechanics, or easthetics;
Noticeable in the discussions concerning the ‘’bubble’’ shields is its shape, what shape should it be, round? Square? Or rectangular?
I would say rectangular/square, this is however depending on the shape and amount of ‘’SD Shield Dispersers’’ acting as enhancers, They would function exactly the same as docking modules. with the final and largest shape being a square of 500x500x500 which is enough of a medium to large fleet. The only difference with actual docking modules is that the shield is not physical and therefore you can build on and beyond the boundaries.
Visually there is much booing and cussing going around for this shield will look ugly and detract from the game. I say, why would that be when the current shield is invisible as well, only to be briefly seen when shot at….
Seeing the shields size would be the same as seeing docking area sizes when in advanced build mode.***
***Regarding these visible boundaries, they provide a lot of clutter while building in advanced build mode, therefore I propose, you can only see said boundaries of docking areas and shields of the object you are currently building on, and only when a checkbox is ticked so the visuals get enabled. This also helps the game strategically, not knowing ones enemys shield size, turrets, or docking amounts helps immersion, that’s were certain scanners should come in to be able to detect these.***
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END OF SHIELDS / AFTERBURNERS & ENGINES
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Engines, without them you won’t go far, however people dislike the current system for it is completely block based ‘’block-to-thruster ratio’’ system, I’m perfectly fine with this however, the real problem is the blocks are to powerfull, tone them down to 1/3 or even 1/5 of their strength and ships become a lot more sluggish and will accelerate a great deal slower. If you still want a fast ship you either go small, go nuts on the engine size or use Afterburners to get you up to speed, Now before you start whining a booing, here’s where ‘’afterburners’’ come in and what they do.
just like in real life jets they should decrease the acceleration time, however, Starmade’s ‘’aferburners’’ are ‘’special’’,
Their ‘’special’’ are that they can be set to do either give boosts in acceleration or even deceleration while:
1a.Rolling Sideways,
1b.Rolling Up/Downwards,
2a.Turning Sideways,
2b.Turning Up/Downwards,
3.Forward/Backward motion,
4a.Strafing Sideways,
4b.Strafing Up/Downwards,
**These could when coding the game either be grouped according to number or all different settings.**
However, here’s where the fun starts, before going mad and crazy about this being Overpowered, remind yourself that:
=1= Having 1 engine block and 100 ‘’afterburners’’ is not going to do much and is not efficient since each afterburner block only adds a certain percentage % of boost and that only for a limited time. a max of 25% Boost increase is my suggestion, it sounds small but in numbers that can get quite big, also for every block added, efficiency per block decreases (to soft cap the amount of afterburners before 25% is reached, which is the hard cap, this to prevent fighters or other sizeable craft from going nuts)
=2= They take in space, and therefore mass, making the ship heavier, (but not much) which burdens the available thrusters and decreases room for other subsytems such as weapons, shields, power or armor.
=3= They require a small amount of energy to run this since they add energy to the thrusters to boost them in one way or the other which requires you to have enough energy when the boost is needed.
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END OF AFTERBURNERS & ENGINES / Smalltalk
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Smalltalk, my head hurts right now and I think yours as well…
Reserved for future use…
That’s right people, another thread just for these subjects, we’ve seen a lot of these already and mine won’t be the last as well. Mine is only very detailed and one big wall of text, you have been warned.
==================================================================================
==================================================================================
Well to get stated i want to talk about shields;
The coming update involves a lot off new weapons and combinations, we also get a armor and shield balances to go with these.
Now has come to my attention that a lot of these things are rather selfish in nature, none of the things that are coming up are there for support, and support only.
My thought, why not add a second shield type, the ‘’bubble’’ shield.
Now before people go all mad about it being ‘’Overpowered’’ and or ‘’useless’’ or plain ‘’butt ugly’’, i have some good points to make about this type of shield and ho wit would fit in within Starmade, also ‘’bubble’’ is just the name this kind of shield has, it does not necessarily mean it is ‘’sphere’’ or ‘’bubble’’ shaped.
Currently we are used to the ‘’SD Shield Disperser’’, a personal shield of the ‘’skin’’ type, as the type implies it covers the users ship in a protective skin, but only the users ship, none of his or her nearby allies.
The ‘’bubble’’ type, or ‘’SSD Support Shield Disperser’’, is a group shield, this shield covers the users ship and any other ship within range of the emitter, this shield is mostly used when ships inside the group have little or no shields, giving them a better or longer survivability. This shield type is also used on planetary base area or local space station defence.
How this ‘’bubble’’ type works:
This shield requires one emitter block to be placed on the users ship, base, or station. When the block is placed regular ‘’SD Shield Disperser’’ blocks have to be linked to this emitter block, the more blocks the bigger and stronger the shield becomes.
However, due to physical implications and sci-fi huzza, this shield is 65% as effective as a “SD Shield disperser”, meaning that for every 100 points of shields you add, 65 points will be effective.
the other 45% of energy is lost in projecting the ‘’bubble’’, which can only have a max range of 500 blocks in diameter, which is a radius of 250 blocks around the emitter respectively.
Anything and any block within this range will be protected from harm, anything and any block outside this shield can be harmed, this also counts for parts of structures sticking out the ‘’bubble’’, this unless equipped with its own set of shields. this anything inside rule also counts for enemy vessels and objects, the ''bubble'' is merely a mid to long-range barrier.
Overlapping shields has also been a point of discussion, will overlapping shields merge? Or will they remain the same, and what about incoming damage?. This is fairly simple to awnser, when shields overlap,, the shields will not merge but the shield which is the first to be hit in the line of fire will take the damage, kind of obvious isn’t it.
Now the internal mechanics are out of the way we get to external mechanics, or easthetics;
Noticeable in the discussions concerning the ‘’bubble’’ shields is its shape, what shape should it be, round? Square? Or rectangular?
I would say rectangular/square, this is however depending on the shape and amount of ‘’SD Shield Dispersers’’ acting as enhancers, They would function exactly the same as docking modules. with the final and largest shape being a square of 500x500x500 which is enough of a medium to large fleet. The only difference with actual docking modules is that the shield is not physical and therefore you can build on and beyond the boundaries.
Visually there is much booing and cussing going around for this shield will look ugly and detract from the game. I say, why would that be when the current shield is invisible as well, only to be briefly seen when shot at….
Seeing the shields size would be the same as seeing docking area sizes when in advanced build mode.***
***Regarding these visible boundaries, they provide a lot of clutter while building in advanced build mode, therefore I propose, you can only see said boundaries of docking areas and shields of the object you are currently building on, and only when a checkbox is ticked so the visuals get enabled. This also helps the game strategically, not knowing ones enemys shield size, turrets, or docking amounts helps immersion, that’s were certain scanners should come in to be able to detect these.***
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Engines, without them you won’t go far, however people dislike the current system for it is completely block based ‘’block-to-thruster ratio’’ system, I’m perfectly fine with this however, the real problem is the blocks are to powerfull, tone them down to 1/3 or even 1/5 of their strength and ships become a lot more sluggish and will accelerate a great deal slower. If you still want a fast ship you either go small, go nuts on the engine size or use Afterburners to get you up to speed, Now before you start whining a booing, here’s where ‘’afterburners’’ come in and what they do.
just like in real life jets they should decrease the acceleration time, however, Starmade’s ‘’aferburners’’ are ‘’special’’,
Their ‘’special’’ are that they can be set to do either give boosts in acceleration or even deceleration while:
1a.Rolling Sideways,
1b.Rolling Up/Downwards,
2a.Turning Sideways,
2b.Turning Up/Downwards,
3.Forward/Backward motion,
4a.Strafing Sideways,
4b.Strafing Up/Downwards,
**These could when coding the game either be grouped according to number or all different settings.**
However, here’s where the fun starts, before going mad and crazy about this being Overpowered, remind yourself that:
=1= Having 1 engine block and 100 ‘’afterburners’’ is not going to do much and is not efficient since each afterburner block only adds a certain percentage % of boost and that only for a limited time. a max of 25% Boost increase is my suggestion, it sounds small but in numbers that can get quite big, also for every block added, efficiency per block decreases (to soft cap the amount of afterburners before 25% is reached, which is the hard cap, this to prevent fighters or other sizeable craft from going nuts)
=2= They take in space, and therefore mass, making the ship heavier, (but not much) which burdens the available thrusters and decreases room for other subsytems such as weapons, shields, power or armor.
=3= They require a small amount of energy to run this since they add energy to the thrusters to boost them in one way or the other which requires you to have enough energy when the boost is needed.
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Smalltalk, my head hurts right now and I think yours as well…
Reserved for future use…
