Suggesting basic shield concept for spacecrafts

Bertha Bot said:

June 8th
Coming Releases of Space

In the pipeline for the coming space-related releases we have warp speed to experience the thrill of space travel, more advanced engineering features. To increase protection for the motherships and its crew from opponents the number of gunner positions will be increased to 13 and 4 shield sections will be added. Also, heavy weapons, torpedos, will be added.

- Arachne -

Originally Posted Here

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Following up the outlook of comming releases for space from the 8th of june 2011, i want to suggest adding a simple shield concept to start out with which may just as well work as a lasting one.

Please release the blueprints for shield I-V upgrade modules for spacecrafts and make them work in a way similar to listed below:

shield device I (L) - 10% dmg reduction on all incomming/outgoing dmg |optional damage mitigation limit: 100% of total structural integrity / shield regeneration:0.1% per second
shield device II (L) - 20% dmg reduction on all incomming/outgoing dmg |optional damage mitigation limit: 150% of total structural integrity / shield regeneration:0.2% per second
shield device III (L) - 30% dmg reduction on all incomming/outgoing dmg |optional damage mitigation limit: 200% of total structural integrity / shield regeneration:0.3% per second
shield device IV (L) - 40% dmg reduction on all incomming/outgoing dmg |optional damage mitigation limit: 250% of total structural integrity / shield regeneration:0.4% per second
shield device V (L) - 50% dmg reduction on all incomming/outgoing dmg |optional damage mitigation limit: 300% of total structural integrity / shield regeneration:0.5% per second

Allow shield sections to be adjusted from engineer terminal or command center central table.
Following adjustments could be made:
- Enable/Disable shields for each section
- Overload shields - for every section thats switched off increase dmg reduction by another 20% of the base dmg reduction on the active sections (sample: 1 section off on device V = 60% on the other 3 sections / 3 sections off on device V = 80% reduction on incomming/outgoing dmg on the active shield section
- all sections switched off -> increase gun turret dmg by 10% due to additional energy reserves avaiable

If optional damage mitigation limit would be reached shields would stop mitigating damage and full damage gets inflicted on the ships structure.
The existing spacecraft engineer profession could be utilized to speed up shield regeneration maybe with a new range of tools, there could also be profession level requirements for managing the shields effectively(eg time penalties for switching shield sections on/off which would be reduced if handled by a higher skilled person) .

The above suggestion would allow for tactical space battles, require navigational skills and advanced engineering skills from the spaceships crew.
It would improve safety on all privateers and motherships, while giving motherships an edge on maximum shield strength at the cost of reduced gun turret power.
Considering that it takes motherships twice as much SI upgrades as privateers to achieve the same SI strength per section while only having half as much possible repaircrew per section, i think this is a fair balancing act but of course to be considered by the balancing team in regards to total percentages and gains of overload function.

Shields would further separte big spacecrafts in combat against quads as shields could be switched around the ship to offset attack strength from already highly damaged sections.

Explanation on why i suggest the shields to effect incomming and outgoing damage:
From a logic point of view there is no reason why energy comming from one side of the protecting energy field should be effected differently then comming from the other side.
It also allows for different playstyle, as people might prefer defending over attacking and it adds an additional tactical challenge as ship captains have to decide which turrets of their own ship have to be hampered for increased protection while maybe dropping security on another section to do full damage with turrets located on that section.
It also will keep most captains from going for a frontal attack with maximized frontal shields as they would loose alot of firepower trying to overcome their own shields.
Ships with high structural integrity still would need to lower their defence to inflict serious damage.

Another option for shields would be full absorption for X amount of damage, with a slow rebuild time, and maybe even the option of switching shields full forward or full aft.

Possibly it could even allow faster rebuild of shield strength when power is diverted from engines (reduced speed).

Some great ideas there and things like shields should come along as they were previously promised by MA.

What your are suggesting here is a "shield" repair tool ? similar to the RK or maybe the same tool could be implemented to do those repairs.

Lets hope that in the next space updates these features will be implemented as they were promised quite a while ago now and I think its now time!

I love the idea of torpedoes too especially if you can guide them to a target

Scurvy Sityl said:

Another option for shields would be full absorption for X amount of damage, with a slow rebuild time, and maybe even the option of switching shields full forward or full aft.

Possibly it could even allow faster rebuild of shield strength when power is diverted from engines (reduced speed).

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While a full absorbtion shield certainly would be nice, it would have to come with a similar upgrade concept like the ships structural integrity otherwise mindark would partially disable their own si concept as noone would need si anymore.
The second issue would be that a full absorbtion shield wouldnt come at the cost of reduced gun power, it would be more basic and less tactical - shields basically would be a replacement of si and there is no point for mindark to introduce a system that renders another one useless if they cant make money from it or improve gameplay experience.
Structural integrity is already like a 'full absorbtion shield' due to the fact that it can be repaired during combat.

In my opinion tweaking a shield for specific damage types makes no sense yet either as the number of weapons in space combat is pretty limited - this might become an option later on to modulate shields when developing the shield concept further.

They could use the enhancer mechanics on vehicles, would be a relatively easy way to do this. then could loadout with extra speed/fuel burn, weapon damage, shield.

Elite was so popular due to load outs and options, would be good for MA (ped burn), and for diversity in space. No 2 quads would be same etc. Unlimiteds would still have advantage, but load out for speed, defence, weaponry or combo of 3 would make space interesting for sure.

Good ideas and its about time these were implemented - particularly pilot operated torpedoes, preferably guide-able. I'm tired of being shot at with no way of firing back.

In my opinion every update should be planned to offer a proper balance between no-pirate and pirate ships, once all the exploits will be removed and new mission system will be fully operational, so to offer the best experience and fun for every kind of player.

Told this, once there will be all the numbers to allow MA doing the best work possible... we have to admit it's time to release so long time announced stuff.

Remove logout in space.

Or to be more coherent - make it so that if you log out on a large spaceship (as opposed to a Quad or Sleipnir) your stackables are tied to that ship until you log back in, and they will be lost in the event that the ship is destroyed, even if you are not logged in at the time.

There's balance for you.

giuly_adm said:

In my opinion every update should be planned to offer a proper balance between no-pirate and pirate ships, once all the exploits will be removed and new mission system will be fully operational, so to offer the best experience and fun for every kind of player.

Told this, once there will be all the numbers to allow MA doing the best work possible... we have to admit it's time to release so long time announced stuff.

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I aggree that pvp needs to be balanced, but not in regards to pirate vs non-pirate cause these are playermade descriptions which will be very outdated when the 'space oil rig' (aka transport missions) goes live.
Pirates will still be there of course hunting players and transport ships down as usual but the larger battles to come and faught will be competing over transport missions.

I think the shield concept is fine but the issue with not being able to warp is annoying. I understand it would allow motherships, privateers and Equus to escape every time, so maybe a % block feature. Such that if your warp drive charges to 50% it can not be stopped, hence the higher level shields would allow more % block and a great chance for warp to be achieved while under attack.

I still think Privateer pilots should have access to a gun as many privateers are solo services as crews are hard to find.

NO.......................

Why not have shields have much lower limited protection, but 100% damage mitigation, and they regen at a medium-level speed. They would be ship-wide, and would prevent ship from being knocked out of warp while they're up. To counter this, they would decay based on damage absorbed like armour, and also decay a very small amount over time while active, so you can't just leave shields up forever and have to use it when needed most.

Hijacker27 said:

Why not have shields have much lower limited protection, but 100% damage mitigation, and they regen at a medium-level speed. They would be ship-wide, and would prevent ship from being knocked out of warp while they're up. To counter this, they would decay based on damage absorbed like armour, and also decay a very small amount over time while active, so you can't just leave shields up forever and have to use it when needed most.

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The issue with such a solution would be that it most likely would render the warpgate/warpmine/warpdrive concept thats currently in place useless as people could just activate their shield when pulled out of warp and warp away again.
Or people might just use it as the safer alternativ to a higher level warpdrive and fly with warp drive I plus shield instead of ever using warp drive II+
A 100% timelimited shieldsolution would require long activation times till the shield reaches 100% and that it is impossible for a ship to warp while having shields active so that it would be a clear 'battle shield' that is only used when your going to fight for victory or death - however the downside of this would most likely be that attackers back off until shield runs out and then attack afterwards.

Well you're assuming the shields would be strong enough to survive 5-10 shots. I figure they should be around 500 hp to stop someone from preventing a warp from happening with no intention of shooting down the ship. Higher level shields would regenerate faster, but all of them should be around 500 hp.

Hijacker27 said:

Well you're assuming the shields would be strong enough to survive 5-10 shots. I figure they should be around 500 hp to stop someone from preventing a warp from happening with no intention of shooting down the ship. Higher level shields would regenerate faster, but all of them should be around 500 hp.

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They already had a solution for that in place 2 years ago, were it became impossible to break warp after repeating it several times for the same person - we wouldnt need shields for that.
But it got removed from mindark without further statement and we received corrected gunning range later on so that we are now capable of shooting back at any attacker since there are no blind spots anymore.

I assume from this that they want us to fight our way and that delays are intended.

This is also backed by support case answers to some participants were it was stated that it is ok to interupt warps for a lengthy period of time if there is other people comming in to assist on an attack - even if they are at the other end of the universe.

In my opinion 500hitpoint shields would be a waste for the promised shield concept as it only takes 1-2 hits from a gun turret to break the shield and when transport missions are out the major number of fights might actually no longer be quad vs. quad/privateer/mothership but quad/privateer/mothership vs. quad/privateer/mothership.

Some of you might already have noticed that sub warp modules now have a new stat which is 80% engine power - soon there will be new sub warp drives that allow motherships and privateers to fly different speeds enabling them to catch each other depending on how much decay the spacecraft owner is willing to pay.

John B Knight said:

when transport missions are out the major number of fights might actually no longer be quad vs. quad/privateer/mothership but quad/privateer/mothership vs. quad/privateer/mothership.

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Just a thought, why are shields needed? Is it specifically for pre warp? Because it seems rather unbalanced otherwise?

Kitch said:

Just a thought, why are shields needed? Is it specifically for pre warp? Because it seems rather unbalanced otherwise?

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A mothership with armament device III can put out 4000dps, there likely will be an armament device IV and V as well as the torpedos which mindark announced long time back.
Your welcome to make your own calculation on how much structural integrity every spacecraft owner will need to last at least 20seconds.
Mindark promised in the past other more advanced gun turrets as well therefor its very likely that soon motherships will be capable of doing 7-10kdps which essentially means that even a mothership with a million SI (aka 1-2million peds in upgrade costs at current markups) will die in a mere few seconds without shields (especially when the first fleet battles occur and several ships team up against one another).
I think you will admit that if one is going to spend thousands of peds for a space fight to destroy another ship then the least one could ask for is a prelonged gaming experience and some fun and not just a matter of who pulls the trigger first but actually something that requires strategy, skill, planning and cooperative teamwork.

And last but not least - because mindark promised shields as part of the mothership sales in 2011 as you can see from my quote in the first post.

John B Knight said:

...good info...

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But "light aircraft" weaponry would become redundant?

Kitch said:

But "light aircraft" weaponry would become redundant?

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You have seen how many quads/sleipnirs were at mindarks hogglo diablo event - nothing is redundant if it comes in numbers or is capable to flexibly attack from different sides at the same time to break up shield efficiency (like suggested in my concept).
Besides we have only seen two small weapons for quads so far - it is to be expected that we will see a wider weaponry arsenal for small spacecrafts in future as well - like heavy kismet laser, double/tripple kismet laser, small/medium/heavy mountable rocket launcher, etc.
We are just at the start of space and concepts have to be developed/deployed that will make sure that there is upgrade and progress possibilties for a very long time to come - just like planetside.
Only if there is progress possible the economy can work for space as well.