Immersion arguement. If you can use scifi jargon to explain it, then please do so. Impaler came up with an excellent one for Deplete Shields which he called Energy Dialation Shields and which I think should be named Time Dialation Shields. This is an excellent explanation. Time is slowed down where the shields exist which slows down the weapons causing the damage to slowly be applied instead of instantly. I now think this is a great idea and that it would be one of the most fun shields in the game. I do think, though, that it should be a late game shield.utilae wrote:Realism argument? I could easily use scifi jargon to explain it all. It does not have to make sense cause we have no shields invented yet. What matters is gameplay.
It doesn't matter if we have real shields yet or not, what matters is if it is beleivable. Something being unbeleivable ruins immersion in a game. If we were making a fantasy game with magic in it and I said, "Lets have a weapon that you hold in one or two hands and you push on a part of the weapon and that causes a beam of energy to shoot out of it," would you think that was fun or would you look at it and say, "That sounds like a Scifi weapon and it just sounds wierd for it to be in a fantasy magic game"?
You got the same arguements when you made the suggestion of "Poison effect" weapons. Until you were able to explain it better, many were opposed to it because it sounded out of place in a space 4x game.
Actually no. Stop all damage means that the weapon hits the shield and all damage is stopped. Stop some damage means the weapon hits the shield and some damage is stopped but some passes through. I am talking about the effect a shield has on a single weapon, not the effect it has over the course of a battle.utilae wrote:In actual fact all the shields that I have come up with, as well as shields that others have come up with all come under the category of stopping some damage. To stop all damage is unfair. So since there is only one category, forget about this theory: "shields function in two ways".
Because it sounds weird and stupid to me. Why would somebody invent shields that would lower some damage and raise other damage? The same thing with Roulette shields. Why would somebody invent shields that would mosttimes reduce damage by x%, sometimes negate it completely and sometimes tripple it?utilae wrote:The phased shields are very good against strong weapons, but poor against week weapons. It reverses the food chain in a sense. This makes things interesting, whats wrong with that?
I just thought of an explaination for Flux shields that would make them beleivable. The shields can stop a certain ammount of energy all of the time but can't sustain higher levels. A charge is built up that is released at a random time and that is how you get the increase. A little more detail is needed on that but with that basic explaination, it sounds beleivable to me.
Unchanging would be me still insisting on only one or two kinds of shields and arguing against the rest. In my last post, I liked three maybe four kinds of shields. I am now up to five maybe six. Why have these changes occurred? Because I argued against things that didn't make sense and you and utilae tried to think of ways to explain them better and low and behold, they make more sense now.Impaler wrote:Ranos we are quie familiar with your unchainging position on shields, your oposed to anything beyond the 2 or 3 types you like. Your last 10 post have been little more then to repeatedly restated that point over and over again. Pllease give it a rest and let thouse of us who are actualy Brianstorming to Brainstorm stuff up before you shoot it down.
I am brainstorming also. The problem you are trying to solve is coming up with multiple types of shields. The problem I am trying to solve is keeping us from using shields that don't make sense or seem unbalanced. Guess what, it's working. There are six shields that function in different ways and that make sense to me and five that seem to be balanced. Regen shields are the only wones that still seem like they may be unbalanced.
I don't think this would work since as weapon damage and armor HP increased, the damage done to the ship would remain the same and ships with these shields would be more effective. A possible solution is to give these HP so that the damage they reduce knocks down their HP. The problem that brings up is that they are then more powerful than Wall Shields. Two possible solutions are to give them less HP or have Wall shields evolve into these. The last thing that is needed is a fluff explaination for how they work. Why are they able to reduce all damage down to a certain ammount of HP?Impaler wrote:Another possible variation, the shield could reduce the attack not just by a % but reduce it all the way down to X so esentialy the Shield is acting to Cap the damage recived in any individual attack.
Utilae suggested it as a serparate shield that deflects damage, I suggested it be a mod for Screen shields. The missile problem is easy, it only acts as a Screen when it comes to missiles and possible Kinetic weapons too and only deflects energy attacks. This would really give another reason for them to be mods on Screens.Impaler wrote:Also if you want a shield that reflects an attack back at the attacker (remeinds me of Thorns Aura in Diablo 2) I would spin that off as a seperate shield with that being the only effect aka the shield dose. Personaly I think its a bit too outlandish especialy when it comes to missles and stuff.
Another good idea but I don't think it would work as a separate shield either. It basically sounds like either Wall shields that absorb some damage while still taking most (20% absorb damage delt is 100 so shield actually only takes 60 damage), or Screen shields with HP that absorb damage.Impaler wrote:Another idea might be for a shield that absorbs some attacks to add to its HP total, adsactly what attacks get absorbed I dont know.
As shields stop more damage, they should get more expensive. They do also need to be balanced within combat though, otherwise a player that can afford those shields that reduce damage better would have more of an advantage then a player that can't afford them. All shields should have pluses and minuses. Shield stops all damage, it has hp that runs out. Shield reduces X% damage, Y% gets through.utilae wrote:Of course we could also balance the shields by their cost as well.
That just brought up another thought on Time Dialation shields. They would be vastly overpowered if they could take all damage and slow it down. An idea here is that there is a max limit of damage that can be slowed and once that max is reached, the shields fail and all damage that has been slowed is instantly delt to the ship. This would make them less overpowered.
@ Impaler and utilae
Both of you guys have great ideas and I hope you will keep coming up with more. Sorry if I am getting irritating but progress is being made, IMO. Throw something at me if it gets to be too much, just don't throw anything hard.