Revolutionary new approach to shield mechanics

There are some problems with the way shields are implemented in game. Against a strong ship a smaller ship cannot possibly even scratch the paint, and no matter how strong a ship is 2 or 3 ships piling onto one shield facing negate your shields even though you had to power all sides.

There is also a problem that shields do zero to help you escape from a sector but that would not be addressed by this suggestion.

I think that instead of shields providing a number of points of absolute protection, which guarantees defense up to their limit and does nothing past that point; they should be in the form of a percentage reduction to incoming damage. This should be with diminishing returns.

This is just a raw example to describe the idea and not meant as a serious suggestion on the actual numbers. let's say the first point assigned to a shield for a given class gave 15% protection and that subsequent points gave 12/10/8 respectively (for a max of 45%). There would be diminishing returns and you would still need to put power into all 6 sides, but the two issues described in the first paragraph would both go away.

Furthermore, any hit that knocked out a shield generator would take effect immediately so that side is vulnerable for the rest of the turn.

 

There are so many day to day 'complaints' about shields from both sides of the faction border , maybe at some point a reworking along these lines would be a very wise idea .

 

My biggest problem with shields is speed. The speed allows multiple enemies to get point black shots on the same shield facing. (At basically the same time.)

Getting on someone's "6" should be hard.

One possible idea I had was to have a reserve shield. It would not block damage directly but would instead recharge a shield either after each weapon was fired or after each player passes or ends their turn.
For example;
Facing shield 2, reserve shield 4
First att 3, 2 to the shield 1 to hull
Reserve shield recharges facing shield to orginal setting of 2.
Second att 3, 2 to the shield,1 to hull.
Reserve shield recharges facing shield and is depleted for the remainder of the turn.

 

Currently, the situation looks like the players from Sol complain about the hull Genari ships have and Genari players that the Sol shields are too powerful.
I suggest to introduce into the game a new mechanic called ammunition. Three types of ammunition:
normal - works as it is today
AP - deals more damage to the hull but no damage to the shields
SP - bypasses the shield but deals reduced damage to the hull.

This will give low tiers the chance to damage ships from higher tiers.
The disadvantage of this solution is that everyone will use AP ammunition on a ship escaping from battle. Therefore, any damage to a ship leaving the sector should be counted as normal regardless of the ammunition used.

 

That is part of the suggestion. If your shield was charged to where it was mitigating 62% of the damage, it would do that for the first enemy and the second and so on whether they were on the same shield or not. The only time focusing would become critical would be when a lucky hit took down the generator on a given facing.

I do in general agree that ships are too fast, much too fast.

 

dalwin,,,, this one at the top is ,,,,well,,,Not a good idea, Apologises if seams im-polite i just woke up.

 

@Deran for my only missile is a kinetic/warhead weapon, beams use energy no ammunition, so it's rather a frequency of the laser beam. But still i think that's a bad idea. Maybe a new type of weapon that will be stricly kinetic, and bypass shield by with other statistic of dmg/power ratio and acc/range ratio.

About shields.

Now shields are fine for solo battle, because you can tank all dmg on shield, especially when enemy miss something. Not every ship have good basic shield capacity and multipler to do it. When you have multiple enemy they can all shot to the same arc, make your shield very low usefull. It's consume a lot of power to raise up all arcs so it's only make you die slower.

So the issue is that enemy can go 1 hex from you shot with the best acc and +dmg, and fly away, then come next enemy and repeat it to the same arc. If you fight on longer range(which is rare) there is no +dmg, acc is lower and you also can hit multiple arcs. Then shields are more usefull, because enemy have more chance to miss and is harder to hit the same arc. Also you don't need to have max shield everywhere.

The basic issue is to determine what a shield is. It's help to mitigate or avoid hull dmg. Second issue is that in every turn you can have 100% shields, so it's always the same effective as before, if only enemy don't hit your engine. In real time battle you will constantly lose % of shields to 0% if only enemy have more dps than you have shield regeneration. The problem is that is hard to transfer this to turn game with mechanic that we have. The problem is power allocation and arcs.

Why? With this system we need to have bigger shields capacity, that can only regenerate % of them and that need to dependent from power allocated to this arc. There is no info for enemy how much shield have this ship on this arc. It's means that you always come to battle with option to have full shields (should be a basic power lvl that was needed to hold shield effectivness), and you need to spend more power on shields after you gain dmg. This could make battle slower, because no option to kill shielded ship in one turn, but in the same turn ship with full shields will be faster.
Still attacking the same arc will be good idea, but enemy have more time to counter it with obstacle.

Thats why i think that Dalwin idea is fine, but from second hand for me it's a kind of armour that you need to power up to have any effect. It's a simple solution, that not need a massive time, rebalance and cost to do, like that what I write above. Maybe in future

 

Perhaps we need a general reduction of energy available. Making it harder to power up all shields and decrease insane speeds. As well why not allow basic functions like powering up shields if hoing into hyperdrive even powering up weapons but not able to steer. I like the idea of somehow kinetic arms which bypass shiels. Low range costly to power

 

Having a much larger shield, with a limited recharge capacity with energy is an intriguing idea. And would allow for a general reduction in power. I believe giving the player the option of:
A. running or recharging shields
is a better choice than
B. Moving or powering shields.

 

Peroox did a good job of covering all my thoughts +1 to this.

 

A part of me thinks of Battlefleet Gothic(the boardgame, though the video game is nice), The ships in that had void shields, which would passivly ignore set amounts of damage each turn (the biggest ships having only 3 shields) and no arcs, any hit anywhere would drop the value by 1 for a turn. Of course we still want arcs and complete invulability would be silly in small battles, but maybe instead it gives damage resist, like in the show star trek, the shields are up, but damage still bleeds through

 

I will explain my vision for this prob. I hope this will can help devs. (sorry for the longest and my english, isn't my primary language)

One prob with shielding point is also their cost-effectiveness I think, relative to points of energy not used by example. I explain me :
- One energy does not use, give: more initiative and movement speed. Preserve points have hight cost-effectiveness (Especially to play (or play against) the harassment)
- Use one energy on shield gives actually, for the most performant shield, 4 points of shield per point of energy use. Where is the prob then? That appears to be a good cost-effectiveness. (especially as damages increase to 1 by 1 energy use). BUT there are 3 probs to this :

1: actually a lot of weapons have bonus damages based on their range (RNG). Then the first point in one weapon is more cost-effectiveness. OK; thus to compensate for the number of enemy weapons, the simple solution it's just to put more point on the shield. If enemy harasses you with 3 weapons put 2 or 3 points on the shield, ok it's simple but we have now the second of third problems. (I call the second "the cost of shield", and the third "the strategy movement")

2: "the cost of shield": We will imagine one advantageous situation for the player using the shield ( I called him "player one" or P1). He is on the border of the grid, only 3 sides of the ship can be attacked. ( The "player one" is fair, he accepts to take a damage to the enemy (player 2) with 3 weapons (on his ship). )
The player one put 2 energy point on the shield. (he will take low damages same if the enemy attack his shield) BUT the player 2 are not stupid he will try to attack one side without the shield. Him chances are about 2 of 3. If the enemy shoots one side with no point shield attributed then the energy attributed to the shield lost all cost-effectiveness, this cost-effectiveness descends to 0. The player one is 2 choices in this situation: accept the "coin flip" or put 2 shields on the 3 sides. In the 2 choices, the mathematics suggest one cost-effectiveness of 1 point of shield of 2.4 for 1 (and not "4 for 1") with "4x pwr shield. AND THIS cost-effectiveness for basic type shield, the "2x pwr shield", this cost-effectiveness descend to 1.2 for 1.
One more time: "Where is the prob then? That appears to be a good cost-effectiveness." the prob 3 "the strategy movement"

3: "the strategy movement", if u decide to put points on shield u will probably give initiative to ur adversary, and he will have more movement than u. There are 2 consequently: if the enemy "pass turn" before finding you, he will have one "free attack turn", in the second turn he will attack u before with the range accuracy and bonus damage of the weapons, and after this attack just escape, (strategy of harassment). If u run after him ( maybe u will find him or not) u will shouldn't profit of bonus range accuracy and damage. Ans the next turn you've got to protect 4,5 or 6 side of ur ship.

( But I know that strategy of harassment is strong in 1vs1, but risky when there are several enemies, cause the ship without shield can meet an enemy accidentally and take a lot of damage. And too, I don't really know, the situation with high tier ship, but if one mechanic have prob with low tier (t3.t4.t5) and high tier, one evolution is necessary I think)

A possible evolution can maybe be that sides protect sides neighboring to author of half of the points invested in the shields in this side, at the most.

 

Talking about shields i would like to say that we are trying to have turn based strategy here. This should not be a ''guess from which side your opponent will fire'' game. I would like to see shield charging which gives you a certain amount of shield. So lets say you have 10 shield points, once you receive 10 dmg (that dmg might come from any direction, not necessarily from the same side) it is down and you hull becomes vulnerable. It would be more simple and more practical.