Spherical Shields

[lazarus78]

The current shield system does need some fixing. Shields on the interior of ships, as the OP mentions, makes maneuvering through an enemy ship impossible.

Why would you want to do this? To capture, of course.

Obviously there is work that would need to be done to make the capturing of a ship fairly difficult, but being able to do so would make things like renegade pirate factions a viable play style, as you can then grow your fleet by capturing ships rather then building them all by hand.

Bubble shields do present some issues for the game, but I think they can be worked out. There is a lot of balancing to be done for the game in general, and things are subject to change often, so perhaps this idea would be good to revisit sometime down the line.

 

[Star Commander Shepard]

Perhaps instead of a bubble shield, the shield would mostly be on the outer surface of the ship. For example, 90% ship integrity on the outside and 10% on the inside. You would still have to get through the internal shields before you could wreck shite. It would allow for balanced boarding parties as well as helping planetary and stationary warfare.

 

[Ithirahad]

What if we got rectangular shields with a bubble graphic effect? Would that somewhat negate the performance issues? Or is that just because of the rendering of the sphere itself?

 

[Lecic]

What if we got rectangular shields with a bubble graphic effect? Would that somewhat negate the performance issues? Or is that just because of the rendering of the sphere itself?

I think it's the air rendering.

Anyway, there isn't much point to non-skinshields if they aren't going to protect turrets.

 

[JTF2014]

my thought on this is, have shields wrapped around the ship like heat shrink plastic instead of bubble shields so hangars would be better protected. or instead just have forcefield blocks instead.

 

[whiterhino16]

Perhaps instead of a bubble shield, the shield would mostly be on the outer surface of the ship. For example, 90% ship integrity on the outside and 10% on the inside. You would still have to get through the internal shields before you could wreck shite. It would allow for balanced boarding parties as well as helping stationary warfare.

I actually like this.

Also, I hate to be that guy and this has not been affecting my opinion but the ' i used when soothing belongs to something. The poll should read "all in favor of boarding partys" without the '
Turns out spell-check tells you to do this. Ignore this part

 

[Lecic]

my thought on this is, have shields wrapped around the ship like heat shrink plastic instead of bubble shields so hangars would be better protected. or instead just have forcefield blocks instead.

The problem with that is, how do you determine what exactly is inside and outside the ship? I'd really like that, but I'm not sure it's possible.

Also, Plex Doors stop incoming fire, so you can have a bunch of active ones covering your hangar door, allowing fighters in and out but not lasers.

 

[LordChicken]

As it stands, there is no reason to board a ship.

Spherical shields(from now on referred to as ball shields, because I am bad at spelling) could work, except as stated above, smaller ships would just ram threw them and try to instant burst into the core(if there is an exploit, it will be exploited.).

However the idea is nice, you could have both kinds of shields, however they would need to be distinct enough from each other to co exist in the same world. Maybe ball shields are not persistent, requiring energy to power up(Like how cloaking is now) and drain more power the longer they are up? Maybe as ships get larger the block shields lose efficiency, while the ball shield stands a better chance? Just off the top of my head take it with a grain of salt and don't trust any math.

In the future one could hope for a reason to board a craft, breaking into their hanger and stealing a shuttle, attacking their detector unit to force them to return to base and stop chasing your cloaked ship, sabotaging their power generator and crippling their power generation to give your large ship a better chance etc.

As it stand there no reason to board a ship, in the future I hope their will be, but as for now we can only dream.

That is my opinion, take it with a grain of salt and have a nice day.

 

[rece ktore leczo]

Boarding problem could be resolved by making the hacking/destroying doors able to work on the ship which has its shields up, so it won't be necessary to down the shields on the enemy ship to board it.

I like how shields are currently working, they aren't defending the turrets, so it's possible for the smaller crafts to destroy them, they doesn't allow to damage the ships without previously damaging shields and they are pretty performance effective.

 

[Daffor]

There is a reason why we no longer have spherical shields and I quite like the type we have now, they're cool and actually make more sense. Also the reason typical scifi shields in tv/movies are spheres like they are because it's easier to make an effect like that instead of a skin shield and by now people expect to see that so that's how it's done.

Oh and all you would be boarders... my larger designs often already inlcude internal turrets for killing hostile astronauts. Good luck.

 

[whiterhino16]

Carp. Wrong one. DELETE THIS MODS

 

[Vyor]

In just about every scifi show such as stargate, shields are wrapped around a ship like so:

I'm just saying, just about every show/movie i have watched has had shields like above.

Alternatively, star wars...

 

[Ithirahad]

...Or some of the shields in Star Trek, or even Farscape's defensive screen things.

 

[Vyor]

...Or some of the shields in Star Trek, or even Farscape's defensive screen things.

Ya, spherical shields aren't in that many to be honest, and they almost always appear along with skin shields.

 

[FunnyBunny14]

I think that everyone here can agree that the most important thing is that boarding becomes viable, no matter how that gets achieved.

 

[Calbiri]

Looking at the shield system and the hand held weapon that you are given, the weapon is useless for boarding party's. If the shields go up and you can't use the plex doors you world be trapped. The game is already calculating the hight, width, and length of your ship, if the shields rap around these points then the boarding party would have to break the shield then board. After you board you can knock out the doors with your sidearm so you can still move around. With this though the core should be emune to the hand held laser so that you can't break in an just destroy the core and user at the same time. To destroy the core you would have to use the ship class laser array. comments on this below please.

I'll cut through the majority of the discussion, simply put, spherical shields were tried initially, they caused more physics lag (particularly in larger ships) than they were worth, they were removed. http://www.indiedb.com/games/star-made/images/weekly-community-screenshot-001-skyclad
we may come back and look into a way top do bubble sheilds again, but try not to get your hopes up, as there are not many ways around solving the physics issues of calculating the impact position of our weapons (non simulated, they actually travel "physically" in the game, no effect magic) from any angle against various sizes of bubble shields moving at indeffinete velocity and directions... there are threads covering this, though i dont have links readily available for them, sorry.

 

[Tomino_sama]

Imagine if this had been done already? just imagine :D

or watch it now ;D

 

[jath]

Simple solution guys, just make handheld lasers bypass shielding entirely on certain blocks such as computers, cores, doors, etc. Noone is going to be dogfighting with thier buddy on the roof anyway.

 

[Tomino_sama]

Simple solution guys, just make handheld lasers bypass shielding entirely on certain blocks such as computers, cores, doors, etc. Noone is going to be dogfighting with thier buddy on the roof anyway.

Except for us, as its the first thing we did with Grapple. inb4 improved player weapons #confirmed. Bottom line this make interiors relevant as it matters how easy access to your core is made by your design.

 

[NeonSturm]

Except for us, as its the first thing we did with Grapple. inb4 improved player weapons #confirmed. Bottom line this make interiors relevant as it matters how easy access to your core is made by your design.

Would encourage doom-cubes and severely discourage from Designs similar to the International space-station.