First off, I would like to thank everyone involved for letting me into the beta. It is a great game so far and I am really enjoying it. I am very excited to see where it goes! ^_^ I am not sure if this has been covered in the forums yet, but is it possible to get some sort of feed back of what locations a shield facing will protect from? Maybe something similar to the orange highlighting we get when we select our weapons? It would make using the shields far easier if we knew exactly where the enemy had to be to hit them. In the very least, an in hex indication of what side of the ship the shields will be raised would be nice. As long as I am on the topic of shielding, it would be nice if players got some credit for playing the "tank" role in a group battle. The other morning I was with a group of people and played the role of holding a front line of which ally players could fly in and out of to engage and retreat back to safety. While this was a fun and effective strategy, it was not very rewarding for the players who needed to keep their shields up and not do damage to the enemy directly. Maybe players should get some exp if they shield against an attack while near ally units? Or share exp from the destruction of enemy units that had recently attacked them? I am sure there are other ways to reward teamwork among players.
Welcome Meryle! I'm not too certain if there are any proposed changes coming up to the shield's HUD in a sense. Now I can tell you from my own experience that it's a bit easier than it seems at first. The real key point is just knowing which way your ship is facing. Once you have that down you can use the shield locations on the bar at the bottom right to show you which sides will be covered. If you notice, the layout of the shields when you can choose to add points to them is in a HEX that mirrors the front of your ship. So if you put one point into the front shields, you can then feel safe in knowing that the nose of the ship is covered. Same for Forward port and starboard and so on. I can definitely ask about the rewards for successfully taking hits, preventing hull damage, etc., but I can't make you any promises yet. Thank you for taking your time to try the game and post some feedback! I look forward to seeing you in-game more often too. Regards, Tobias Hale, HC Operator #0032
Hi Meryle, you can actually see the shields flash blue around your hex grid when you charge up a shield during allocation. Though I do want it a little clearer to the user, even would be nice to have little highlighted bars around your hex in combat to where you have shields active. As for XP gains, right now it is purely based on damage, partly because there can be potential abuse of the system (opposite players team up, keep hitting each others shields, farm xp without damage etc...). Of course, defending or capturing an area rewards all players with skillpoints for their officers, as well as the bonux XP when you capture a region. BTW it was good teaming up with you this morning.
as for the tanking not beeing rewarded part, maybe add some sort of shared exp system if your teammates hit/damage an enemy target within a certain distance around you. Not sure how big this area would need to be to make it useful though. (heck this area could even increase based on how many hits/dmg you have taken, shield or hull)
IF you look closely at your ship's hex, you DO get an indicator as to which shield you just raised or lowered! (ok V said that, didn't read all the replies yet ) The top set always corresponds to the fore of your ship, and everything else respectively around that. You do need to be able to bend your mind just a little bit or simply rotate your camera to align with 'forward' so that you can easily choose which arc to power. I can design XP reward systems that are difficult or impossible to abuse if you want I've said these exact things before concerning teamplay, rewards, specifically a bonus for taking hits near an ally, and more! Glad to see someone else on the topic.
