Base Shields

Firstly; got the game a few says ago, it was pointless to resist. Having played alot of FA, I find the game easy to understand and I am loving it, will love it even more once the UI and late-game performance is improved even more.

On the topic of shields.

Shields seemed to distract new people I played FA with in the beginning - they tended to play to defensively just because they could, spending lots of energy and resources on fortifying bases, rather then investing in a decent army to gain map controll. This often resulted in them loosing many games in the beginning and being less inclined to continue playing. It's just a fact that this held lots of players back from the grander aspects of both macro and micro warfare. This is true even if one argues they made poor strategic decisions.

On the other side of the argument I myself used shields a lot in order to protect my high tech core base structures such as anti-nuke defenses and energy plants from snipes. This could give me the time to react with my main forces, or letting my patrols catch up. I often found myself building beachheads using shields - dropping a group of tech-3 engineers onto a proxy island and quickly throwing up three shields followed by some tech 2 artillery, sam-sites and other defenses would often be enough to keep the enemy occupied long enough for my main forces to reinforce while my engineers built up proxy-factories for those sustained assaults.

A decent player could focus fire my shields down rather quickly if they checked their map, or spend their resources on a few tactical bombers/missiles/(insert unit)ninjas to take out my energy-production - shields come at a heavy price if you use them the wrong way - but they can certainlly be very usefull in the right circumstances.

In the end this leaves me personally with the desire to have shields in the game, but very much open to new ways of them being implemented and functioning.

This would be the way I would like to see shields in PA. (lots of inspiration from others in these threads)

- Two types of shields with new shield mechanics.

Charged Particle Energy Barrier - shielding systems that convert metall into charged particles that are then concentrated at the point where fire traverses the barriers. A constant energy drain is required to keep converting a small amount of metal into a standby shielding system when active and at full strength. Energy and metal consumption increases the more the barrier absorbs laser/plasma damage & kinetic energy. Think surges as particles are concentrated to the right areas, and under sustained fire a heavy drain until barrier goes down. Then slowly charges up at a medium drain under a cool-down.

Highly strategic use - Very noticeable eco-tradeoff. Lowest cost at standby, medium energy consumption and a small metal consumption. Highest costs under fire - high energy drain and medium metal drain until barrier goes down. Medium during re-charging, medium energy drain and high metal drain until cool-down is done.

Should work well protecting specific targets against small attacks with few units or single artillery - economic load would increase as barrier is under attack , even defending against few targets - so incentive to deal with the problem sooner rather then later.

Tech 1 - Up-gradable wall sections - lateral weak charged particle barrier that soaks up energy weapons fire, but only reduces velocity/range/damage of projectile based weaponry. Barrier efficiency dropping laterally = weakest at the top. Effects are not limited to enemy fire- affects both friendly and enemy fire, encourages strategic employment. Barriers would work together with other barriers adjacent to it so as to increase ability to soak up damage at single point at the cost of connected barriers. No other bonuses other then sharing the load so to speak.

Tech 2 - Umbrella type shield - protects stuff directly under it from attacks. Offers no protection from the sides. Strong charged energy barrier that soaks up energy weapons fire and triggers projectile based kinetic shells to detonate prematurely. Useful against sporadic space based energy weapons and artillery shells. Stronger at the center. When shields overlap barrier works together with other barriers, no shields protecting shields.

All in all what I wish to convey is - shields should be ingame, but they should be a strategic choice, and it should come with very noticeable costs so that it is clearly understood that a shield is a sacrifice of metal and energy - it should not be viable to throw up shields over four metal spots. It might be a good thing if you know that your opponent is into a lot of sniping specific targets inside your base, or if you have a slow reaction speed, or if you are trying to establish a forward base on a enemy controlled planet.

I want shieldzzz haha

You.......you win this round!

The biggest issue I have with defensive structures, and defense in general in many RTS games, is that defensive structures are often much more cost efficient than offensive options or the offensive responses to a defensive structure or response that can only come POST the defensive! To me this doesn’t make sense!


What came first, the artillery round or the anti-artillery area defense?

What came first, the missile/rocket or the iron dome anti-missile defense?

What came first, the mortar round or the “Tactical High Energy Area Defense” (THEAD)?

What came first, the aircraft or the Anti-Aircraft Artillery?


Don’t get me wrong, offensive weapons have also been created to respond to defensive structure or options as well. With thicker armor larger guns were made in tank warfare. With walls we needed something to break them down and with Anti-Aircraft Artillery we needed long range guided missiles.


So what I would really like Planetary Annihilation to do as a game is to reflect on this tug of war between offensive options and defensive options a little bit.


I want a defensive option against tactical missiles. Let me build a missile shield umbrella of more expensive missiles than those being shot at me. Sure it won’t save me against a coordinated hailstorm of missiles that I should never have let my opponent build in the first place. But it should protect me from a small scale attack that would be targeted and seriously disruptive! A way that this could work is by simply placing a missile defense structure down that only works if you have radar for one and for two; it only covers a decent area. You then have to produce missiles at the cost of mass and energy and then the structure itself only can store 20 missiles at a time. Then make it so that it can only target five incoming missiles at a time or something like that. Limited defense but useful tactically!


I want to be able to defend against nuisance sniping artillery by building a laser weapon umbrella that cost me fair amounts of energy to use, but will provide me some protection; perhaps not against a shower of artillery rounds… but surely against a few guns trying to snipe my structures. Again, the structure would only work within radar range and if radar is active and only within a medium range! To balance it out the defensive weapon would only be able to target one artillery round at a time and it would take at minimum three seconds to knock it out of the sky. Only, it should target the most threatening artillery round first within radar, not necessarily its own range. Meaning, if some small rounds come into radar and then a large one before they enter knock out range, the weapon would let the small rounds go while targeting the larger one first.


Anyway… like everyone I’ve got ideas and these are just simply my thoughts on the issue.

PA is at the end of weapons development and technological progression available to the commanders from the start of the war.

There will be no progression, because everyone is at the end of the techtree.

What if instead of absorbing hits shields chucked it out the opposite end? Eg, shell goes in from west, wormhole timey-wimey's out east.

That would be weird.

Put that on a tank, make a mechanic out of it(Stuff that can be played with), and I'll support it.

I could care less about shields for bases, I only want to have military units that have there own personal shield like those Aeon spider robots in Supcom, they were soo coooool they really were my most favorite none-experimental unit in the game!! Oh and spaceships should also have shields obviously