Shields only absorb a Percentage of damage.

[Ciber]

To put it simply, shields should work by reducing damage delt to armor by a percentage. The percentage of damage negated should be remaining charge in the shield. Obviously being highest when the shield has not taken any damage. Shields should be capped to block no more than say 80% of damage even when fully charged.











Elaborations upon this idea based on the coming Master / Slave feature.

Instead of having a single damage soak %age, now each shield subsystem has a seperate soak for each of the five primary weapon types. Also, shield systems can now optionally be linked to a shield control computer that allows that particular sub-system to be toggled while also enableing the slaving of both other weapon types and shields.

Each shield/weapon combo provides a minimum of 40% soak for it's weapon type, which approaches 95% at a ratio of 1/1, but it is an asymptomatic function and never reaches 100%. It also provides a constant 20% soak for all energy types..

The special shield/shield combo allows you to reach 80% soak at a 1/1 ratio, but never reaches 90%. This will be balanced by the fact that it requires you to double the weight and energy use of your system without increasing your recharge rate or shield power.

Oh, I am not sure if I said before that shield power stays. The higher it is the longer it takes to reduce your soak percentage. Also, soak percents don't stack. You have a single set of stats for each type of damage soak, so the charge/rechargerate of all sub-assemblies of the same type is pooled.









Shields can also be slaved to weapons, giving them a measure of shield penetration.



Thoughts???

 

[thomotron]

It could be so that missiles completely avoid the shield system or at least dodge most of the %age taken away from the damage dealt. Or even give a certain chance that missiles will breach shields, say 30% of the time, but only deal 80% of the damage they could normally inflict.

 

[Ciber]

Nah, missiles are one of the new weapon types. They will be blocked if somone decides to use anti missile shields. Of course if you slave a cannon to your missile and that cannon has twice as many blocks as the missile then only a third of your shots damage will be blocked by the anti missile armor. Or if you want a more direct but not always better solution you could slave a shield system to your missile giving it shield piercing ability.

The first solution would probably be better in terms of damage penetration if your enemy did not have shielding for the slave weapons type, but using shield piercing ammo means that you don\'t have to gamble on your enemy not having the correct shield sub-system.

 

[NeonSturm]

If the shield blocks only a part of all damage, your missiles would make maybe 10 damage each time.

200 missiles will kill extra hardened hulls! Or just 24 with about 40% damage passing.

It would at least give you a reason to use these.

 

[Ciber]

The numbers I give could of course be changed, and things like armor strength would ideally be balanced at the same time, but I think that the system I propose adds lots of interesting elements to the game without forcing it all on new players. It also makes armor be relavant.

 

[Vyor]

The reason why hull is uselss is because guns do so much damage, the armor doesn\'t matter. Even if you add another 40% to it, it still dies in one shot. this just nerfs sheilds...

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I\'d be okay with random shots getting through but not an overall base damage percent. You\'ll be repairing your ship after every engagment even if your sheilds never even waver.

 

[Syzygy]

You really want to make shields as useless as hull?

 

[BeefBacon]

Massively increase shield capacity, but make it so that, say, 10 or 20 % of damage gets through.

That way hardened hull would actually be useful, because the vast majority of the damage would be soaked up by the shields, and what little damage gets though will be partially negated by the armour of the hardened hull. Regular hull wouldn\'t be as tough so would go down quicker, but it wouldn\'t be like tissue paper.

In addition, ships that sport no hull and just have bare modules would be at a serious disadvantage, which could be either good or bad depending on your disposition.

 

[NeonSturm]

Suggested partially damage-transparent shields before somewhere (maybe in the middle of a shield thread)



But I don\'t like tiny little 25-damage guns to hit you through your 90% charged shield.

Maybe give it % *0.001 minimum absorbed damage (will reduce lag too - less complicated calculation for very small damage arrays)



Can we not just put the armor of hulls on top of shields? That way sweet-spots are clearly visible if a ship don\'t have a decorative hull around hardened sections and the rest equally.

 

[ltmauve]

I think the chance of leakage should be related to the damage and the shield charge. This way if you get ambushed you probably won\'t see any leakage (maybe 1-2 damage if it does) right away but then as the battle wears on there is more likely to be leaks, resulting in a need for armor.

 

[Ciber]

I don\'t think your really getting the point of making armor relevant. The idea is that this way armor will be damaged without being destroyed, which will also make things like repair beams worthwhile.

 

[Ciber]

Another thought I just had is that repair beams with slaved shields could instead replunish shields and perhaps give a minor increase to the % damage blocked.

 

[Terraniel]

I feel like this would only make shields useless. Even at 10% damage getting through, my turrets pack enough punch to 1-shot hardened hull. And there are multiple cannons per turret, multiple turrets per ship. Nevermind my actual onboard cannons. Thus effectively making core-drilling viable before the shields ever get to do anything other than make fancy lighting effects around the hole I\'m drilling. And now my missiles will be able to add to the mayhem as well. So now we just have a race to the core that is faster than before.

 

[NeonSturm]

Can we try it with the hull\'s armour above the shield - for some time?

 

[Ciber]

@Terraniel

This is meant to go hand in hand with the upcoming weapon rewrite, and there is no reason that the devs cannot change the values I choose for balance reasons. Regardless, the concept of shields letting through a small but non-zero amount of damage is the main point of this suggestion. If you believe that this core idea is flawed, please state why. Otherwise, don\'t complain about numbers I pulled off the top of my head that have never been playtested and were chosen because I thought they would make my idea simpler to understand.



@NeonSturm

Wut?

 

[ltmauve]

A couple of points: One, I don\'t like the idea of slaving weapons to increase defense against certain attack types. It\'s overy complex. Right now shields are just \"slap them in anywhere,\" and while I think there should be more planning involved I believe this master/slave system involving a shield computer and different damage soaks isn\'t the best way to do that.

Also, I believe what NeonStrum was talking about was using armor damage reduction based on what block actually got hit. I would agree with this*, as it provides an incentive to use hulls instead of just using only components. This also means stealth cruisers will have less shields, effectively, than other ships, putting them at a slight disadvantage.

*provided a slight nerf to shield capacity.

 

[NeonSturm]

I wouldn\'t mind if some damage from mines would go through shields - they are shoot-able and either only hit the front or may crash into lose blocks (maybe water or lamps if you care about visuals) around your ship.

Although cloaked ships with explosives may abuse it.

 

[Ciber]

@ltmauve

I am not entirely sure what you are complaining about here. My system still lets you just slap on shields if you want, and just slapping down plain old shields can sometimes be better. What my system adds is the ability to specialize.

@NeonSturm

There is no need to add a specific buff to mines, because the proposed system allready incintivises pepole to specialize their ships defenses. I expect that most people would not include more than a token anti-mine shield because mines are easier to dodge and any blocks spend blocking mines are blocks that cannot be spent blocking tracking missiles.

 

[ltmauve]

I would propose instead that the shield computer simplely allows the user to set the proportion of soak depending on the situation, so when attacked by AMC-wielding pirates, the player can set the shield to be more resistaint to AMC fire. This way, there isn\'t the nerf to shields that having to lug around a bunch of extra modules requires. Also, tiny ships might not have room for those extra modules.