Them Shields!

[PerfectDeath]

So, our current plan for implementing shields is not complete; however, we do have shields in game, they do provide passive resist; however, there are a few problems that players can take advantage over right now.

- Their effects can stack. Our shield plan is that a ship may only have one active shield at a time.

- The passive effect is permanent. Our shield plan is to have these powerful passive shield effects to last within a min. They will then cost supplies to activate again, thus it acts like a blocking resist.

Since the shields that work right now only block either projectile or beam damage types you either bring a fleet mixed of both damage types or use missiles (I recently change the missile effect to an unused one for our graphics programmer to assign the new one when it is ready).

This does mean you can stack enough shield resists to stack multiple 50% resists to certain damage types.

I'm making this topic as a bit of a PSA and also discussion for what changes we can make to the shields until we can do our original plan. We might even like some of the results from our discussion here.

For starters, once we finish doing some demos and can start updating the server again, I will be reducing the passive resist of the shields to something like 5-10%. If you feel a different number is better feel free to discuss that as well. Right now we can't do too much fancy with them.

From a test I did, the beam shield needs some work to make it work. However, prettying ctrl+x to show damage you can find cannons doing 0 damage because of a combination of shield and armour reductions.

[Silligoose]

Are these same mechanics still on the live server?

I've read a few things regarding dat dere shield:
- Shields were working opposite as intended (they increased damage taken instead of decreasing it), but that has been fixed.
- Shields kinda work, but that there are some UI issues which are known. Tailtale also has a gameplan in the works regarding UI, so it's all good
- Shields will be better vs different weapons, through UI or modifiers.

Any other ideas/plans/info/updates you can give us regarding shields?

[PerfectDeath]

Shields already have modifiers towards different damage types, projectile, beam, and missile.

The problem I face is that I can not put the modifier below 1.00 and this means 100% resistance, thus no damage can be done.

[Silligoose]

I see.

Is the idea for modifiers to be built on the ships, ie I decide to build ships with beam resistant shields and that's that, or will modifiers be part of ships in terms of it being a shield that will allow players to well... modify and change the damage resistant type during battle?

[Sinuhe]

Stacking armor-types should always come with a downside. The most usual way to do would be, highest factor counts 100%, 2nd highest 75%, 3rd 50% and... well. U see the picture.

Towards activation of shields. Why not make em "overload"? When u have a shield, granting 30% defence to laserbeams, and u can overload it to 60% for the cost of it going offline for some time, after it... that could add in some spice.
Some shields could even grant defence to other dmg-types when beeing overloaded - or they could loose damage-reduction, but therefor boost the own ships beam-dmg and stuff.

For sure, we should aim at not getting too high on resistences. I'd suggest a 75% as max. cap.

[Sypheria]

He just means modifiers he can put on components via content creation tools.

Shields cannot stack.
You can have multiple types equipped at once, but only one active at a time.

[Silligoose]

Sadly I don't know much about programming :/

I guess I would try to change the scale of parameters so 100% resistance = 100.0 instead of 1.0 and work from there... Told you I don't know about it ^_^

Hope that 'light-bulb moment' strikes soon

[Sypheria]

We know how to fix it, it is just not currently highest priority.
Stability, saving and trade is at this moment.

[Silligoose]

Good to hear. It will be interesting to see how it affects gameplay.

Atm I feel type modifiers may have good and not-so-good implications, but it's a little early to jump the gun and form an standpoint without seeing the idea at least fleshed out a bit. or in action.

[Sypheria]

When he says modifiers he just means the tool that creates components such as:

LASER_DMG 2000
RELOAD_DURATION 10
SUPPLIES_CONSUMPTION 50