What do you think about the new shield system?

[ToyotaSupra]

The devs have added a new system similar to the way power currently works, you have a capacity block and a recharge block. This is in the development build by the way.

What do you think? I think it will encourage more gigantism as even with a recharge delay large ships will be able to have both recharge and large capacity. Whereas fighters now are even more weak, they have to choose between recharge or capacity.

Give us your voice, 'Maders

Spoiler

we really need a better fandom name, different topic though.

 

[Crashmaster]

IMO the ever-increasing variety of block types that would be considered mandatory for a normal ship as we are used to them has been pushing fighters more towards extreme specialization. This over-specialization in my opinion will lead to the extinction of small fighters due to; the infrequency of their particular specialization being relevant, the size and co-ordination of effective fighter groups being prohibitive and the general expendability of fighters and their pilots being somewhat unattractive to most.

Should fighter pilots be able to set their spawn point in a carrier of sufficient size/ power to support a plex-undeathinator and a functioning core, and perhaps a shop module in the hanger?

 

[MrFURB]

No clue... At least not until the numbers make it live and we get folks testing it out. A bunch of different scenarios come to mind.

If in combat regen is a substantial stat worth investing in then we're at a catch 22, as large ships can specialize against low damage weapons to the point of being impervious, but may have their shields flat out disappear when hit by an anti-capital weapon such as a bomber's missile/pulse/ion.
If in combat regen is expensive per block, or doesn't make enough difference to warrant use, then it'll rarely be used in any combat oriented designs.

If capacity doesn't have any substantial limiters, then larger and larger ships are going to have exponentially larger shield capacities due to space being the only requirement. With the currently high levels of interaction between ship sizes, that's a bad thing.
If capacity is not cost effective or space effective (each shield block giving a small number of shield points)... Well, it'll be interesting to watch a battle where shields last all of ten seconds.

 

[therimmer96]

My biggest issue is that once again, there is another update that will break the ships we have. All the shields will turn into one of the blocks, so if you have packed your ship tight with no gaps, you're going to have a problem finding blocks and replacing them. Sometimes it feels like keeping up to date with the game is a chore rather than fun. I know the game is in alpha, but that alter the fact that the game is available, with people playing it. If this kind of update keeps happening, the devs may as well be like "Hey, you know all that work you did to comply with the last update? Nope" *Raises middle finger*

 

[Stakhanov]

My biggest issue is that once again, there is another update that will break the ships we have.

What did you think alpha meant ? The game is still in the early stage of construction. It's expected to break the combat ability of ships every few updates as stuff is being added or revamped. But it's not like any updates broke hulls so far. Maybe keep blueprints of your ship hulls before stuffing them with modules ?

 

[Qweesdy]

What do you think?

In theory, I really like the idea - it allows people to customise their ships for a specific role. For example, you might have a merchant ship with large shield capacity and very little regen (designed to run rather than fight), or a destroyer designed for taking on large numbers of little ships that has high regen but low shield capacity, or a nice mixture.

In practice, it really depends on the formulas and how it's balanced. Mostly I'd be looking for "diminishing returns" for shield regen, with closer to linear (but still diminishing) shield capacity. This would mean large ships end up with a lot of shield capacity but it takes them a very long time to recharge, while small ships have small shield capacity but recharge very fast.

 

[therimmer96]

What did you think alpha meant ? The game is still in the early stage of construction. It's expected to break the combat ability of ships every few updates as stuff is being added or revamped. But it's not like any updates broke hulls so far. Maybe keep blueprints of your ship hulls before stuffing them with modules ?

I know the game is in alpha, but as i have said before, this game is readily available, with people investing alot of time, effort and sometimes money into it. I have no problem with things getting broken every now and then, but if there is just going to be a stint of updates where you spend 2 weeks fixing shit, then another update comes and says "fuck you, start again", people are gonna get pissed. it would be alright if there was some sort of system in place to say replace 50% of the blocks on a ship with one type of shield, and 50% with the other, but no.

 

[Aecetym]

So ships we refit now is pretty much waisted time sinds new blocks will (soon?) be introduced that have to be in your ships to make them viable.

So the only thing we can do now in the game is building shells.

 

[flpsantoss]

i really think small fighters must have really small shields or none at all. The bigger the ship, the more balance power, shield and weapons options it will have, but i dont see any problem with the current (dev) shield design, instead i think it is better this way.

The way i see, people tend to think they need to put all systems in one big ship or have to strugle to do it in a small one, but as a block game it will never be possible to please everyone style and desire

 

[rece ktore leczo]

therimmer96 Calbiri said Schema is working on the system which allows to modify blocks only of chosen type and we are getting more options for advanced building mode, so refitting ships would be easier and less time-consuming.


About the new shield system - no idea. Haven't played, haven't heard others opinions, haven't seen much info about it.
The idea seems reasonable but i'm not sure if it's abuse-proof (placing mostly shield regen)

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

There is a reason I have not spent any time refitting ships until a proper balance has been established with all the new systems.

A block removal type selector in advanced build mode. When this option is selected (via a checkbox) then only the block type highlighted in the hotbar is removed when clicking.

We will have a new filter removal option before this becomes an issue of replacing blocks.

I'm not sure what you classify as a fighter but the new shield system has a base shield value, so even having a single shield block will give you a nice hefty shield for small size craft such as turrets and fighters (<50Mass).

 

[CyberTao]

I heard something on Public chat yesterday about Power Regen; that it would be disabled for 10 seconds if it fully drained (like shields). If that's true, it puts a Cap on ship regen, since if your shield regen cost more then your power regen can support, you're gonna be stuck sitting there as it continuously drains power o -o

From what I've seen so far, it seems promising, just unsure of the curves/lines it will have. And for all those worrying about Shields on a fighter craft; you'll just have to wait and try really. Give it time for the update to settle (when it comes) and people will figure out how to make fighters again When the standards are changed (average shields of this class), its hard to figure out how to build appropriately methinks, since you'd be unsure of how much space to give to each block type.
I dunno, I personally don't think Fighters are in that bad a spot yet, just gonna need a different approach.

 

[Keptick]

I think that the current shield blocks should become the buffer blocks when the change goes live. It's currently the regen block, which completely messes up every single ship ever built. Refitting some of the shields into regen would be much easier than the opposite.

As for the fighter VS bigger ships debate: A fighter can't hurt a bigger ship. But neither can a bigger ship hurt a proper fighter due to how dodgy the turrets currently are.

 

[Lister]

I like the new idea. The blocks are wrong way round though.
But my main grief with the shields is not being able to walk down the corridors of my ship with out dying from missile fire this really needs fixing

 

[jzimmerman4]

I was thinking about this and I believe I found a problem which appears to hugely encourage gigantism. This would happen when a player made shield regen and shield amount equal. So for example a ship with 1 mil shields and 1 mil regen would be invincible unless attacked by a few ships that deal 1 mil dps or have a cannon slave that dealt around 1 mil damage per tick. Is this possible or will the mechanics be different?

 

[Keptick]

I was thinking about this and I believe I found a problem which appears to hugely encourage gigantism. This would happen when a player made shield regen and shield amount equal. So for example a ship with 1 mil shields and 1 mil regen would be invincible unless attacked by a few ships that deal 1 mil dps or have a cannon slave that dealt around 1 mil damage per tick. Is this possible or will the mechanics be different?

If you make a siege weapon it's pretty easy to reach over 1 million damage. Once the shields are down you can just blap the core with an other weapon during the shield depleted regen timer. This ship might be good versus normal weapon configurations but it still has a gigantic weakness.

That's what the new systems are all about: tactics.

 

[CyberTao]

I was thinking about this and I believe I found a problem which appears to hugely encourage gigantism. This would happen when a player made shield regen and shield amount equal. So for example a ship with 1 mil shields and 1 mil regen would be invincible unless attacked by a few ships that deal 1 mil dps or have a cannon slave that dealt around 1 mil damage per tick. Is this possible or will the mechanics be different?

Yes and No. Combat will still have reduced regen no doubt (would be annoying if it didn't). Plus there's the Power issue.
If it takes 10 power per shield point, and you got 1 mill regen a second, That's Roughly 10 million Power if they are hitting you hard enough. That's alot of power, and would no doubt greatly hinder weaponry on such a such. (Also, see my other post about possible changes to Power storage. If it does happen, this would be a rare thing methinks).

People seem to think this will generate "Larger Ships", But I think it'll create "A different Breed of ship". Regen will be important on Tanking ships, but I dont expect the Average ship to stack it too much (I would probably try to match it to what the current gen rate is, possibly a little lower).

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Honestly I still the only way to obtain proper balance in combat is to remove combat regen. This will ensure that one ship will always die and that there will never be a stalemate unless you both manage to disable the other ships guns before they die. The amount of regen you have compared to your capacity could determine how long are stuck in the no regen state during combat.

 

[Unnamed25]

If it takes 10 power per shield point, and you got 1 mill regen a second, That's Roughly 10 million Power if they are hitting you hard enough. That's alot of power, and would no doubt greatly hinder weaponry on such a such.

I yet have to see a ship with 1mil shields per second (which currently is around 800mil shields) and "only" 10mil power per second.

 

[CyberTao]

I yet have to see a ship with 1mil shields per second (which currently is around 800mil shields) and "only" 10mil power per second.

It was a response to jzimmer's concern about People stacking Shield regen in the upcoming update. And was all hypothetical~ Chances are it will be more power per shield, but I don't know and its better to under-estimate the exaggerate o -o in this sense anyways.