the idea of shield Radius

[Forge_Meiser]

I came across this one late at night and I thought this would provide a fresh new idea on the old "THEIR TOO STRONK!" argument. What if... and this is a BIG what if.... shields had a radius that, when on, allows enemies to try to get under them. the result is as follows:

let's say you have a big ship with shields. However, as the size of the ship increases, so does the x,y,and z of the shield's "bubble". now it will be as tight on the ship as possible, but still an ellipse.

But if say a small fighter were to breach that ellipse, the result is that you could then damage the ship...or the possibility that the ship would have to use twice as much power to make the ellipse fully "skin-tight", like the ones we have now, making it hard to keep up shield integrity AND weapons.

essentially, a way to bypass the ship's defense by having a smaller ship.
you would still have to deal with the ship's turrets, but then it gives you a small chance of success.

now, possible exploits:
-ramming & gunning: the ENTIRE enemy ship would have to be inside the ellipse in order for the shields to drop or go to "skin-tight-mode"

-using disintegrator vessels to breach heavy-armor: this is not a common tactic, as they would either explode on contact, and even if they did explode, there's that "skin-tight" version that ensures a surprise attack would not effect the vessel right away.

-smaller ship = powerdrain: just an issue of balance should fix this. Overall, if the vessel is standing still, it should not be severely effected. However, in say a team battle, this could be used effectively.

So there's my probably stupid idea, thanks for viewing if you have, and maybe leave a suggestion or perhaps debate it a little.

 

[Aecetym]

Some things have been talked about already in this thread
http://starmadedock.net/threads/spherical-shields.1226/

To me ellipse shields would cause more distrust among players. Players flying 'large(r)' ships could get bullied by <5 min builds causing hours apon hours of repair work. And if you got a troll then he will keep coming back. At some point players will just shoot at anything coming close to their ships out of fear they might damage it.

now it will be as skin-tight on the ship as possible, but still an ellipse.

But if say a small fighter were to breach that ellipse, the result is that you could then damage the ship...or the possibility that the ship would have to use twice as much power to make the ellipse fully "skin-tight", making it hard to keep up shield integrity AND weapons.

And if the skin-tight version would still be an ellipse it isn't really 'skin-tight'. Also if skin-tight shields ask twice as much power most players wouldn't have it working all the time, they might even not use it at all cause you don't benifit from it in a gained boost for shields or something. It's much easier, if not better, to putting all the extra energie into more turrets so you can blast everything out of the sky rather then letting it become a threat.

as the size of the ship increases, so does the radius of the shield's "bubble".

Another possible issue right here. How will you get a fair shield system that works on all the different shapes ships can have? You can't work in dimentions as that would make a cylindrical ships or even adjusted cubes the best ships.

 

[BraveSteelDragon]

If i remember correctly, schema once tried such thing, with horrible results both gameplay- and performance-wise.

"Bubble" shields would be nice, but perhaps we should for the core workings of the game to be stabilized and finished before trying anything that complex.

 

[AtraUnam]

People would just make giant floating guns and poke the end of the barrel through shields to bypass them.

 

[karkinosz]

While I've already argued against spherical shields I'm not sure why people would think you could fly though them, it doesn't really make much sense regardless of if your idea of shields are deflecting objects or impenetrable walls of light. I would want to discourage any game play mechanic that could lead to ships ramming each other (or being that close) for performance reasons but for the smaller v.s larger ship debate that's another issue.

Totally negating shields in any way is a bad idea. Being able to use a ship (Even a small one) to make the power drain and mass used for shields pointless is bad game play, plain and simple. Being able to hard-counter something is, I would argue, bad game play. Like an array that forcefully uncloaks nearby ships or a perfect anti-missile point defence system.

While your implementation is kind of inventive I would avoid anything that renders a system practically useless in the face of a counter. For example instead of completely bypassing the shields you could have it so that within the shields weapons are harder to block thus drain more shield integrity (effectively a damage multiplier in the *1.25 to the *2.5 range). Kind of like a how energy production becomes less efficient with size increase you want the shield of the larger ships to be less able to blot out the damage of smaller ships.

Other TLDR issues.
Performance issues with spheres/ellipses. These things are tough on performance.
This change forces ships to conform to certain shapes to minimize area inside shields essentially your shield idea can be built around disadvantaging further RP shields and favouring extreme min-maxer set ups which will now practically have the skin tight shields + less regen than it'd require an RP ship to achieve same coverage.