Why the shield change is good

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    Many people are upset about the shield change and who can blame them. They spent hours maybe even days designing and building huge ships with the idea of the shields help to defend it, and now a key premise in that design is gone. But this is to be expected to game is in alpha and many change will be made. So just deal with it, it sucks I know but it needed to be done.

    Firstly, the shields where too powerful at large scale and too weak at small. Small fighters just don't have the energy or space to have huge shields arrays, so you could have 50 and there nothing more than flies to a large ship. Also large ships shouldn't have unbreakable shields, you can't have a huge ship with 100 turrets, giant weapons and unbreakable shields, large ship's defense should come most from it's turrets. The small fighter need those shield because they can't have turrets, they need to be fast maneuverable take a few hits before losing very important blocks. Large ships can effort to lose a few blocks, a fighter can lose 5 blocks and be completely usefulless, but a large one can lose 50 and still function.

    Secondly, it's far more realistic. The fact is that if to double the size of the ship, the area the shields need to cover increases by 4. Increase the size of the ship by 10 the area increases by 100 time! Now instead of calculating the area of the ship (lots of work to program and also more CPU load), schema just assumes that if your putting a larger shield array inside your ship you have a large ship. So you can imagine trying to build bigger ships the shields stretch across a larger area. The upside to this is that you have even more volume to fill with shield blocks, which increases faster that the area.

    Thirdly, space combat is too one sided and not fun. As it was fighting a large ship was impossible, and now is still difficult but you can feel like you doing more damage. And in the bigger ship it gets boring, these was little threat or reason to think twice. Now though the weak side can hopefully feel like there attacks are doing something and the stronger side fells more on edge. Remember, short very one sided battles are very fun the loses feel cheated and the wins feel unchallenged, but longer battles are far more better, both side get a stronger rush from a 10 minute epic space battle, theres dodging AMC, tactics and flying around asteroids.

    Just have fun.

    EDIT:

    P.S.

    (Publisher removed video). I put 100 instead of 10 when writing about turrets.
     
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    all i read from this is \"i like small ships and i want to destroy capital ships with it\".
     
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    Realistic realistic realistic, that\'s the one word that I always see coming up not in your topic per say but overall. Tell me where can I find a space ship with shields and laser guns at my local Wal-Mart? People keep thinking that its always one fighter vs that large mean capital ship, which for all I know could be the case. By all rights that fighter should die if its fighting alone, its trying to fight a ship where the main guns are larger then the entire fighter.

    My idea of a large epic space battle is two or more capital ships fighting eachother, both sides also supported by other ship classes, kinda be more even if both sides have unbreakable shields huh? This is just how I see things, it is my opinion if you feel like its wrong then feel free to start an argument, I believe the problem is just in how we try to fight capitals not them being unkillable.
     
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    The sheild nerf is as bad as people think, doubling the lenght increases area by 4 (which is represented by the equation for capacity and regen), but the volume by 8 times, if you keep the ratio of volume you fill your ships with the shield blocks then it\'s strenght roughly equally scale with area.
     
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    AMC\'s scaled *3 better than shields. they were far from unbreakable.

    MAYBE they needed a regen nerf. i never denied that, but large ships get shafted hardcore.

    add 1k shield blocks to the ship? NP enjoy 84 regen every 4 seconds.

    best shield regen? 256 blocks. 0.5 recovery of a decent 12kish. after that its downhill, but capacity goes up.
    (who needs capacity on a massive target? you want regen....)
     
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    I think capacity shouldn\'t have be as nerf as it was, but as it was it was very possible for two capital ships to have sheild so powerful that they could never get through the other ships sheilds.
     
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    Very nice, another one of those one-sided subjective opinions, pushing everyone else\'s view aside. Ok, let\'s do this.


    But this is to be expected to game is in alpha and many change will be made. So just deal with it, it sucks I know but it needed to be done


    Doesn\'t quite sound like you know how or if it sucks. And for crying out loud stop using the world \"alpha\". Do you know what alpha means? Its a stage in the developement process, in which testing is done internally, by the employees, and not at all acessible to public. After that comes beta testing, which is done by the public. None of these traits discribes this game. Iterative development, as it is called, is all the rage with indie developers, and fun too. But you cannot hide behind some arbitrary greek letter and defend questionable decisions that way.




    Firstly, the shields where too powerful at large scale and too weak at small. Small fighters just don\'t have the energy or space to have huge shields arrays, so you could have 50 and there nothing more than flies to a large ship.


    I see you seem to be missing some fundamental mathematical principle here. Let me shed some light. 1 is less that 100. Thats right. Mind blowing right? More of your arbitrary numbers amuse me, please, where did you see 50 (fifty) fighters engaging a capital ship. I would love to see some data off that.


    Also large ships shouldn\'t have unbreakable shields, you can\'t have a huge ship with 100 turrets, giant weapons and unbreakable shields, large ship\'s defense should come most from it\'s turrets.


    Arbitrary seems to be the word of the day. huh. Me and my friend are building a ship 1200m in length, and I cant see more that 6 or 8 turrets in there. The thing is as big as a sector. However, since turrets are quite questionable in terms of behaviour, they are not the greatest thing since sliced bread as you seem to imply


    The small fighter need those shield because they can\'t have turrets, they need to be fast maneuverable take a few hits before losing very important blocks.


    Yes, they aren\'t now, or? Capitals have absolutely no hope of using their main guns against an agile fighter. They actually have to rely on the mentioned questionable turrets, which you can\'t really control effectively (yet). That is why, it is frustrating, when a single little pipsqueak shreds a huge ship simply by staying in the blind spot or something. Obviously, it\'s to the benefit of the fighter, but still the scene is ridiculous, being able to single handedly bring it down by punching through their shields.


    Secondly, it\'s far more realistic.


    I shall proceed to kill myself and then respawn with the Plex(TM) Undeathinator(R), i have purchased in my local 1000m tall space elevator.


    The fact is that if to double the size of the ship, the area the shields need to cover increases by 4. Increase the size of the ship by 10 the area increases by 100 time!


    Double the dimensions, 8 times the volume. Not really seeing what you are getting at though.


    Now instead of calculating the area of the ship (lots of work to program and also more CPU load), schema just assumes that if your putting a larger shield array inside your ship you have a large ship. So you can imagine trying to build bigger ships the shields stretch across a larger area. The upside to this is that you have even more volume to fill with shield blocks, which increases faster that the area.


    Somehow, this went completely over my head.


    Remember, short very one sided battles are very fun the loses feel cheated and the wins feel unchallenged, but longer battles are far more better, both side get a stronger rush from a 10 minute epic space battle, theres dodging AMC, tactics and flying around asteroids.


    Short, very one sided battles is what happens when a huge honking ship attacks a small mining vessel. You seem to think that the power of the force, or lore or some other feel-good, math-defying hippie bullshit dictates the little guy has to win, but newsflash. That is not what happens. Not in real world. In real world, the little apc get shot to hell by a T72 or abrams. he doesnt magically stick a potato up it\'s tailpipe, causing it to blow up. If you want to take on a large ship, and you do not have the strength to counter it, then you need numbers. SHOCKING


    Just have fun.


    What a classy condescending send-off. Here is mine: You have fun buddy. I\'ll have fun when the balance slider shifts my way again.

    And now for some constructivism. The general consensus in popular science-fiction is that shields have large capacity and little to no regen. And even with the shields up, some damage to the ship is incurred through power-surges or something. Partial damage to the ship would be acceptable, if there was a way to automate the repair, through drones or other means. Most likely the best solution is to remove the regeneration delay, reducing the shield regen drastically, therefore the scenario of one single small fighter demolishes a capital, but squadrons of bombers-fighters will have a chance against one, and in turn boosting the shield cap. After that, when some shipyards or automated repair systems are implemented, then there can be talk about partial damage and shield mitigation.
     
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    Short, very one sided battles is what happens when a huge honking ship attacks a small mining vessel. You seem to think that the power of the force, or lore or some other feel-good, math-defying hippie bullshit dictates the little guy has to win, but newsflash. That is not what happens. Not in real world. In real world, the little apc get shot to hell by a T72 or abrams. he doesnt magically stick a potato up it\'s tailpipe, causing it to blow up. If you want to take on a large ship, and you do not have the strength to counter it, then you need numbers. SHOCKING




    Somehow I doubt either of us are experts on armored ground combat, but there was that one time the United States got a bunch of vehicles lost in a sandstorm and accidentally sent a lone Bradley APC into a group of nine or ten of Iraqi T72s. Panic ensued, and the moral of the story is never make people with instant access to chainguns or missiles panic.


    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sum91rgJXkI
     

    Winterhome

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    Oh, boo-hoo. Your 100% invincible capital ships aren\'t invincible anymore. You actually need to work to win a fight now. 99/100 times, you\'ll win against a fighter. End of story. It\'ll fly in the path of a turret and get a main system shot out instantly, or it\'ll fly in front of a main gun and instantly die completely.

    Previously, you could have 50-100 fighters shooting at capital ships and their regen rates would still defeat it, even though a full-on platoon was attacking it a one-man vessel.

    I\'m very, very thoroughly of the mind that two people with teamwork can kill one person without it and one person with intellect and skill can kill one person without it.

    I\'m sorry to hear that your 500 meter long ships with a realistic crew requirement of 500 people can\'t spare the people to accurately fire your turrets and must rely on AI to do the job since the only one not on vacation is the Captain.

    I\'m sorry to hear that you use capital ships for anything other than a home base and for taking out other capital ships like they\'re supposed to be used for when you have well over enough space for a docking bay inside the ship that you can dock your own fighter in.
     
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    Well this put me in my place. It\'s allright people, we have found one instance in the entire history of man, where a small force overcame overwhelming odds. The change is therefore justified, has basis and reality and all of you who think it\'s even a little bit obectionable can go watch this cute little video I posted, rendering all your arguments NULL AND VOID. Why? Because internet and kittens.
     
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    You guys can bitch and moan all you want. This shield update was anything but bad. If you keep getting attacked by small fighters you can\'t turn to hit, install turrets. All this does is make combat more competitive and kicks gigantism in the teeth.
     

    Sio

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    i think it should be possible to kill a capital (250x250x250) with a small figther (25x25x25).

    BUT it wouldent be easy because it should take a lot of time (like 2 days) to take out a capital.

    I don\'t know a lot about playing the game cause my PC is just a pice of junk atm., so i can\'t say anything about this nerf or how op shield were before, but i think the best way to tweak the shield would be just to make a on-charge-delay according to the shipsize.
    That would mean big ships = massive shields but a big delay (like 5sec)
    small ships = thin shields with nearly no delay (like 0.05sec)
     

    Winterhome

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    Feel free to provide evidence that a larger object always wins, then.
    Hitler\'s army only won because of shock and awe, and was overrun by an even larger force.

    That larger force, the Russian military? It had entire tanks and crew shot to death by ONE GUY WITH A RIFLE later on.

    For naval concepts, you know why aircraft carriers were invented? To carry fighters. Naturally. Because fighters presented a massive threat to ships. Big guns couldn\'t hit little flying things. All space combat in science fiction is based on naval combat. One one-man fighter could destroy a battleship instantly by dropping a single bomb on it. INSTANTLY. Battleships beat ships, including aircraft carriers. Aircraft beat ships by means of mobility.

    For a more recent example...
    Somali pirates have taken over well armed ships using nothing but pontoon boats and tiny motorboats, grappling hooks, and submachineguns. A submachinegun will do quite literally nothing to the boat, but a single person can hop on board and kill or capture every single crew member easily.

    Saying that \"The little guy never wins\" is probably the biggest load of crap I\'ve ever seen.
    A mine can blow a tank, a grenade can disable a tank, a molotov down the barrel can disable the gun, a wrench rammed into the side of the treads will stop it from moving, some dude with a welding torch can seal the lid shut permanently, etc.
     
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    Here we go, pissed off internet heroes. You are funny, like monkeys wearing hats. Anywany, one thing you, yet again fail to grasp is balance of gameplay and \"reality\", or what little of \"reality\" is there to be had.

    Sure capital ships need 500 people to operate, point me to a server which can handle such number. Hmm, but sure, use this as an \"argument\", just as long no-one thinks about it too hard.

    The turrets are difficult to control in terms of targeting, and controlling their fire. Most of the time, they fix on one target, and wont leave it alone until it\'s out of range. Yep, don\'t think too hard about that one, either.

    I never said teaming up on a capital is wrong, if you weren\'t throwing a fit of nerd-rage, you would see that I mentioned that. And apparently you are jealous of my \"500 meter ship with whatever\", since you apparently do not have the mental capacity to build one yourself, therefore I would ask you not to went your insecurities here.

    Furthermore, do not start each paragraph with the same words, this is not a poetry contest and is a really bad writing device to use.

    And no, a turret cannot shoot out a fighter instantly even if it had massive damage. First it shoots in spreads, and second it would damage only one block.

    Next time, please calm down before you start hammering the keyboard.
     

    Winterhome

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    I\'ll happily point you to the Maria, a ship with roughly 80k DPS on *two* cannons and the updated Jormungandr, which has 200k DPS. Both have shields at the 500k range.

    Your puny mind cannot comprehend the concept of a capital ship builder believing that they\'re overpowered, apparently.


    You\'re currently using my favorite logical fallacy, argumentum ad hominem. You\'re attacking me rather than my argument solely because you cannot think of a counterargument of your own. Classy!
     
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    You cannot seem to keep your temper under control, and once again you are completely missing the point. All you are TRYING to do, is demonstrate some false superiority by using out-of-place historical trivia and knowledge of military sciences you previously claimed not to have in an weak attempt to express false modesty. Which makes you, a hippocrite. Congratulations, claim your prize.

    A 1000m long capital ship is supposed to be impervious to a single 20*20 fighter. End of story, end of argument. You may proceed to post more irrelevant historical data, trying to look smart.
     

    Winterhome

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    Please, tell me again how a huge battleship is impervious to a 1m bomb or a machinegun.
    http://youtu.be/Kxu2trrFhHE

    Another ad hominem attack, because you cannot create an argument FOR your idea.
     
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    My god, it even uses google to lookup fancy words. Bloody hell, they are evolving. Internet heroes at their finest, trying to prove superiority at all cost. Anywany, once again I have never said capital ships are not overpowered. I am fully aware, that until now, it was shield regen countering the dps or bust. I may once again point out a little bit of my constructive input suggesting weak regen and large capacity. Yet, until now, all you have done was trying to be offensive, and providing nothing of substance. Stop your goddamn spamming that isnt helping anything

    And pllease, please stop using google to post definitions of words you have no grasp of. I feel embarassed for you.
     

    Winterhome

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    Apparently people aren\'t allowed to have passed their English exams and gotten into university.

    Not sure what ghetto you live in, but it must be sad.