FreeOrion

It is if you consider my previous posts (about diferent shield stenght per side and sort of shield point at ship design). Let's say front = F, right=R, left=L and back=B. A more complete example.

I design a ship and put "Advanced cosmic shield of god" (or whatever name you choose). This shield have a base of 5 shield points. The ship size is "Medium" so it can have greater shields than a small ship, let´s say a multiplier of 3 is used for shield strenght with this size. So I have a total of 3x5=15 shield points (SP).

Now I choose to distribute them in this way: F=5, R=5, L=3, B=2 (5+5+3+2=15). I build the ship like this, note than after creating the ship design I don't need to apply any extra AI or user interface to handle the shields.

In combat now I know my ships are thought if I give the enemy my F-R side. So I position my fleet to move accordingly to this advantage (in a similar way to old naval battles, when wind made the rules for combat).

Now I get hit by 3 different beams from the front for 12, 8 and 4 damage (24 total).
Damage taken equals to (12-5)+(8-5)+(4-5) = 7 + 3 + 0 = 10. Not bad, I keep on fighting. Suddently a previously cloaked ship appears at my back and hits me with all it has. I take 2 attacks for 9 damage each (18 damage). Since my rear shield is weak I take 2x(9-2) = 14 damage (more than the combined frontal attack) and I'm in deep troubble if I cannot shake that bastard from my tail.

There you got strategy without much code and no extra user input.

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My proposals for: Resources - Spies

How fast would you be able to change your shield facings?
We could add improved shield facing change time for better shields or even add a new tech decreasing the time needed to change the shield facing (sth. like "Charge Distribution Capacitor" maybe??).

The times to change shield facings could look like this:

Class I shield: 4 turns
Class III shield: 3 turns
Class VI shield: 2 turns
Class X shield: 1 turn


The separate shields for each direction I mentioned in my previous post would work like in moo2 (with differrent shield strenghts possible in each direction however). No shield energy could be distributed so an overloaded shield in front could not be reinforced by by energy from the port shield.
The advantage of this type of shield would be that only the shield under attack overloads, but the others remain online. Rotating the ship (if there is enough room) could present a fully operational starboard shield to the enemy.

That still isnt encouraging you to split your forces, it just means that you try to get ALL of your ships behind someone. Plus its relying on people designing their ships with weak rear shields - what if they choose not to do this?

The other problem i have is with shields not taking damage. Using this model (sounds very much like the damper field from moo3) it becomes easy to end up in a stalemate, and you end up with the biggest heaviest weapons being the only thing that has a chance to even scratch the enemy. At least if every hit to a shield reduces its effectiveness you have a chance to wear down a heavy enemy with a lot of light weapons over time.


As i've said before, the proposed system requires no extra user input.


Sounds good. These times should only apply to switching off parts of the shield. Shields should always switch on instantly to any incoming attack.

Also, bear in mind that (AFAIK) no decision has been made yet w.r.t. turnbased/realtime combat. If realtime ends up being chosen then there will need to be something more analogue in place.

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The COW Project : You have a spy in your midst.

The proposal of Kharagh makes the distributed shild points from Dreamer more "Star Trek" like, but adds the userinteraction Kharagh (and many other) would have liked to avoid.
As I remember MoO2 has both combined. A shild reduces damage by a certain percentage and takes same damage before the ship is hit. This way you still have two possibillities. The first being the use of heavy beams to crunsh the shild, and the secound using highly sophisticated shild-pircing thech to avoid the shild.
But the Idea of this thread, to have an advantage due to tactikal manuvering is geat but does not have anything to do with the strucure of the shild istselfe. The Shild (indepened of the actual tpye you use) ist less efficiant if the target ship is souroundet or flanked.
This way less strong beams coudl go through reduction shild (damaga - X) or absoption shild coudl be taken down faster.
Maby the numers in the initial post are a bit off, but I woudl have to think about that a bit longer...

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Dieser Text basiert ausschließlich auf frei erfundener Interpunktion und Orthographie. Jegliche Uebereinstimmungen mit geltenden Regelungen sind rein zufaellig und wurden nicht beabsichtigt.

Yeah, sure, I know that, it was only meant as a rough idea how it could work



Exactly, the structure of the shield is a different, but related topic.

As I mentioned before, there was a thread with lots of great shield types in it but I can't find it atm, sry.

I found the thread

http://www.freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=940

In addition to the shield types there also is a lot of other useful stuff in there.

I still really like the idea of shield focus points.

I do think that the level of threat needs to be taken into account as well. If a battleship detects an enemy scout ship in battle and can see no other enemy ships then a focus point will be created like normal but the focus point will only charge up to a maximum of 20%. This leaves the shields ready to react quickly to a large undetected fleet.

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Time flies like the wind, fruit flies like bananas.

Well, you cannot get ALL your forces in one side or the enemy ship just need to turn and you are not in his rear anymore, hence the need to split your forces.

Yes. I meant it as an example. My point is that I would like a ship shield to have fixed strong/weak sides (whatever the shield structure) instead of an automatic adjustment to enemy position (or any extra user input of course). A lot of tweaks can be done to this basic idea to solve the issues mentioned. Sorry if I got too numerical

Exactly my point. If you want to automate the shield focus you need to know not only where the enemy ships are but wich weapons they have, how effective this weapons are at that distance and o lot of other considerations. If not your ship shields will be focusing in a couple of transports (for example) while the real battle ships lay waste to your ship. And if eventually you manage to add this kind of AI into combat (whitout lag into the game) you still have complicated things a lot for the player to make desitions. I hate when game mechanics are so complex that it hard to see what is happening. And for no real gain from my perspective.

(I don't mean to be rude or anything, just constructive feedback)

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My proposals for: Resources - Spies

No, I would just take into account the size of the ship(s), at least for the initial algorithm. You seem to be forgetting that computers can do billions of calculations a second, and that a calculation about the strength of a shield at a particular point would only have to be made at the instant that a weapon strikes that shield. The charging/decay and movement of shield focus points would basically be addition operation, which, in computer time, can be done millions of times a second before anyone starts noticing a delay.

I don’t think that focus points complicate things for the player at all, aside from making the strategy more complex. Everything would be done automatically. I imagine an overlay (something that can be turned on and off) that would show a shield focus as a little white dot that would go from grey to white as it charged up.

It would put an emphasis on intelligence. A spy mission that managed to input a worm into their tactical screen and showed you the position and strength of each of their forces would give you a distinct advantage. Barring that, if you know that an enemy you are fighting is likely to try to flank you, do you leave a portion of your force behind the main force so you can flank the flankers? That’s the kind of complexity you want in a strategy game.

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Time flies like the wind, fruit flies like bananas.

I see a Loop-hole possibillity there:
take a small ship, speed through enemy lines, fire with the three small lasers on the enemy.
Now the three big Battelcrusers are at 25% shild eficienmcy (tok the numers from the initial post) when you fire from up front, so your Battlecrusers will simply sweep them away -- you would only have to sacrifice one small ship for that.


There coudl be possibilitys to avoid this, e.g. taking the strength of the atack from diferent angeles into account when calculationg the shild efficiancy, but this woudl make all this more comlicated.

got my Point ??
(I like the Idea, since it tarkets strategical comabat, but we have to be carefull)

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Dieser Text basiert ausschließlich auf frei erfundener Interpunktion und Orthographie. Jegliche Uebereinstimmungen mit geltenden Regelungen sind rein zufaellig und wurden nicht beabsichtigt.

Yeah, Rapunzel is right, we certainly need to be very careful when we finally implement this idea. However it should not be left out, as it provides some interesting tactical possibilties in space combat.

Well, that is exactly the exploit I mentioned a couple of post ago (I really hate to be unabble to express myself correctly in english sometimes). And the reason why I assumed that you will need to know the threat (weapon capabilities --> damega potential) of enemy ships before setting focus to the shields. Not just the number and size of ships. I'm just trying to follow this guidelines...




But what the hell, I it can be done right and it gives more strategy to combat I'm all for it. (I still like more my simple solution though).

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My proposals for: Resources - Spies

I suppose if you just look at the original post this could be a loophole. However, with the system I'm describing that small ship would have to survive for quite some time before it diverted significant power from your shields, it's shields would be unable to focus on anything, so even if it was packed with defensive shielding it would still make for an extremely simple kill, and any focus points it spawned would be limited in strength due to the ship's small stature.

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Time flies like the wind, fruit flies like bananas.

Well, i guess you could look on it as an exploit, or you could look on it as something to guard against during combat. All the more reason to protect your flanks and manouvre for position with care and attention. Bear in mind that a single small ship isnt going to last long on its own, and in fact is very likely to be taken out before it even gets near your flanks. So chances are high that all the enemy is going to achieve is to lose a small ship without inflicting any damage at all.

They might have a better chance by sending a larger task force, which would be more likely to survive for long enough to get the enemy in a crossfire. But theyre still taking a risk splitting off a small group which could potentially be pcked off easily if the youre prepared for it. Its all about tactics, manouevering, risk and reward. Which is the whole point, innit?

However, one potential problem with this system that i have thought of is w.r.t. fighters. If fighters were going to be modelled something like those in Moo3 (not that they are necessarily going to be, but anyway...), then they would tend to be all around any ships they were attacking. This might make fighters a bit overpowered in that its not so much the damage they cause, more that they will diffuse an enemy's shield focus without them being able to do much about it, which kinda trashes the point of the tactics and manouevering for capital ships.

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The COW Project : You have a spy in your midst.

I like those Shield Facings too. But i would do it in a different way ( compared as Daveybaby proposed it in the first place). I guess i want something similar as dreamer is proposing. My main concern goes with having a shield which only covers one sector and leave another completely unprotected. I assume we agree on having only one shield.
So i would suggest something like that:
facing : front => 75% front + 10% left + 10% right + 5% back
facing : default => 50% front + 20% left + 20% right +10% back
facing : equal => 25% front + 25% left + 25% right +25% back.

I wouldn't allow any distribution, only a set. Maybe the shielding ability differ from shield type to shield type. Say basic shields can only have the facing equal (or only front). Advanced shield might be adjustable to different facing models (front/default/equal).

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