Give us Shields! Come on!

You were caught redhanded in this very thread trying to sling bullshit at me and hoping that it would stick. I dont need to play any victim card. It is clear that you are using every dirty trick you have up your sleeve to discredit me and those arguing pro shield, including calling me a troll while I am one of the only guys trying to actually argue shields here.

We have a proverb in germany saying " Wie man es in den wald hineinruft so hallt es heraus" meaning that the response you get is dependant on the tone you use yourself.

Maybe I would be friendlier if you guys would not say stuff like this:

Surly accusing me of not researching the topic will get me to gently deal with your arguments.

Yes calling me a hypocrite is the way to get me to calmly argue your points!

And here we have your little slip up accusing me of not reading the linked material ... while clearly not reading the linked material. You even went ahead of yourself and bolded that bothered there just to really drive in how lazy I must be to not read the linked material... WHILE NOT READING IT YOURSELF.

Again this is clearly the way to deal with someone you want a productive discussion with.

I dont need to play any card at all here. This is not a game to me. You and others went ahead of themselves to attack my persona and not my argument - so I dealt with it.

Now you are crying because you didnt expect me to defend myself.

Defensive units like static AA very much do slow down enemy forces by killing them.

I don't understand how you don't get that, any unit that can shoot at the attacher slows them down as they will be unable to do as much damage as before because they have less units.

You make time by making the enemy force smaller, and it is far superior to having a energy shield.

Then don't let them get that close!

Havens above, how have you not got this by now?

You prevent a enemy from dropping directly on top of you by spotting them coming, and killing them before they get to you.

Most of their functions? No.....we are discussing their actual functions, not their strategy's for using them.

Don't mistake one for the other here, I am discussing how the shield works, not what you can do with it.

Nor are they ever a good time keeper either, you should use proper defences for that, as killing a enemy attacker permanently deals with them, unlike with shields that try to ignore enemy units.

You should not be in the mind set on not killing enemy forces, that doesn't solve anything.

Shields really are meat shields, there is no if or buts about it, they are designed to be shot at, that's their job.

This isn't a narrow view, because they literally do nothing else.

Gameplay isn't changed by their inclusion, so they are really really pointless and have no reason to be in the game because they don't do anything.

There is no reason to include something that does nothing.

You don't need to always see their actual base to see a incoming attack, because the battlefield is large, large enough that forces can take minutes to even cross a planet.

Attack is the best form of defence in war, you defend your stuff by making your enemy defend theirs.

There is no reason as to why you should be holding back, that is a really bad play.

Personal attacks? No I am not attacking you, nor your person.

But you are a really shitty strategist, and a bad player, and are also a little butt hurt.

Again seeing as you do love to play the victim card, im not attacking you, only your bad strategy and even worse forum etiquette.

Shields are the Velcro of RTS. It's fine for kids, old people, the handicapped, etc. But otherwise people should be able to tie their shoes.

Pretty sure that

a) You're still playing the victim card, and

b) I honestly apologised for the thread misdirection.​

I take it you're not accepting the apology, because to assume I'm a human being that can make mistakes is completely out of the question, and you're a divine perfect being whose job it is to lord over the rest of us?

Important notes:

1. A post can be hypocritical in it's nature. That doesn't make the user a hypocritical person, exactly.

2. Your behaviour can be trollish, but that doesn't make you a troll. I was explaining to you how your posts are coming across.​

And here you are, still proving my words.

It has been mentioned before, but here we go again:
You want time?
Place some extra base defences, by doing this you:
1. Add to the total HP of your defence as a whole (which is exactly what shields do).
2. Also gain some DPS, because those PD's actually fire at the enemy, instead of just stand there and soak up damage.

So..... why have shields then, this argument is not helping your case

Nope it does not change that, a smart attacker ALWAYS has to evaluate weakpoints in a defence, with or without shields.

If a player is able to get to your commander with an airstrike or an attack force, then you have already failed, as a commander.
You seem to be having trouble with 'cause & effect', you say that you losing (the effect) is CAUSED by lack of shields.
What you should ask yourself is: 'how did that attack force or airstrike get in my commanders butt in the first place?'
Answer: beCAUSE you FAILED in some kind of way (this can be due to lack of intel, lack of mapcontrol, lack of strategically placed PD's, lack of mobile units, lack of a deepspace radar, you not paying attention or (my favourite one) the lack of a pause button)

You know that deepspace radars got real cheap lately?
They show you every orbit in the solar system, and if your opponent launches an assualt from a moon the resulting conga line of astreus's shouldn't be hard to spot.
Also, to prevent this, it might be a good idea to drop of units from your planet on his moon, should be easy since he doesn't have shields.

Whenever the chance arises to attack, ATTACK!!!!! That's the basis of all strategy, pick your fights when and where you see fit, I believe some ancient Chinese guy wrote a book about it a couple of millenia ago, I recommend you read up on it cuz it's still strategically sound today.

Map control is key, that way you have enough time to send your own deathblob, draw him in, cut him off and annihilate him (Like what the Russians did to Napoleon at the beginning of the 19th century, only having to do it again little over a century later because some one-balled Austrian amateur painter wanted to try exactly the same thing)

No argument here, but why say such terrible things about yourself.

Even aforementioned one-balled Austrian amateur painter knew how to deal with shields. He just drove around them (the heavily shielded (with reinforced concrete) Maginot-line), but did get screwed over by his other opponents map control (RUSSIA).

Read up on some strategy plz

You cant kill stuff in Orbit. All you can do is try to evade the dropzones. It is impossible to see every single incoming attack because of the very nature of the game. It is very easy to deny your enemies vision and then use the blindspot as an attackbase, while your enemy still has to try and get new intel on the newly created blindspot.

Nope we are discussing the merits and downsides of shields as a whole. That includes how they work and what you can do with them.

I also dont really see any points about the function of shields in your posts. Its more of you asking what they should be used for and what their purpose is - in wich case strategies are actually the answer to your question.

Once again I am not saying that you can ignore any incoming fire if you hope to live. Of course you have to deal with the attacker, or else you are going to lose. Never have I ever stated anything else.

Yes of course. My argument was directed at you calling shields pointless and your reasoning behind that. Im sorry that I didnt make myself clear on that.

But they DO change stuff. They DO introduce new things to the game. We have brought up what shields can do multiple times by now, yet you only latch on to the timesaving aspect of them.

They just dont change everything there is. And again they dont need to.

Yes if the attack is coming from the same planet you are right. But what about dropships? What about Unit transports?

That may be your philosophy regarding doing battle. In my opinion it is better to strike when your enemie is exposing weakpoints or is recovering from attacking you.

Yet again no one of us is right or wrong we just subscribe to different mindsets.

So telling me im whining on the forums because I am a bad player is not a personal attack? Our definitions on that are way different then.

And I am still not playing any victim cards here. I am just pointing out your bad behaviour in this debate.

Allright you know what. We both said things that we should not have said. So now we can keep on going back and forth about who insults who and who is playing what cards or we can start actually debating shields calm and collected.

Lets try and not call each other stupid or close minded just because we have different opinions regarding a small thing in an overall pretty great game.

I hope you can accept this peace offering.

You also forget that the game is not finished yet. @nehekaras, your whole argument boils down to this: You want something to delay an attack slightly so you have time to react. Shields would do that, yes. BUT, you are forgetting something important - the game is not finished, and as such there will be more ways to assess the battlefield on multiple fronts without being overwhelmed. If you can see them coming you will be able to react in the necessary way, I agree. But at the same time if your opponent sends enough firepower to get where your commander is (bypassing all your defences) even with the shield you will die. Also, if an attacker sent 20 gunships, that shield would be toast in a second(obviously depending how much HP it has) but it would be gone, thereby not helping your ability to take a reactive step to him attacking you. That second would not help you.

We have a notification system which helps determine where you are being attacked - this helps increase your reaction times. We have radars which help see where they are coming from. There are a multitude of UI functions and units already built in to help you assess the battlefield and react to what your opponent is doing.

At the end of the day the game is more of an intelligence war than anything else - if you can pre-empt your opponents moves, you can defend them. If you can deny him the intelligence you can win. Something stopping my blob of gunships for a second will not change the outcome of the game. I get a slight delay can be helpful in reacting to a threat but at the other end of the spectrum if you are building shields, players would respond with a big enough force so as to prevent them from making a difference if they were trying to go for a snipe.

I find this rather offensive, that you think anyone who buys velcro/other non-lace shoes are some form of cripple or simpleton. You should watch your mouth, say that sort of thing in public and you are liable to get slapped.

You can't kill stuff moving between planets, but once they arrive, it is very easy to kill them with umbrellas.

And if you have secured a planet, defending against orbital drops only require a patrol of orbital fighters and bombers to get through most if not all attack that you wouldn't see.

Those strategys however, are either already present, or don't require shields to be implemented.

Then why use a middle man in the equasion when more defencive turrers would be far superior in ever instance?

They don't introduce anything that couldn't already be done, so what is the point?

Some rather niece strategy's that one guy uses?

They are by far not essential to the game, nor are really required at all.

Orbital radar should give you all the warning you will need, otherwise use orbital fighters to patrol your planet and make sure that most of the enemy transports don't even begin to drop.

And when your enemy doesn't just expend their entire army onto your defences like a AI would?

No, the only mind set you should have to constantly attack you enemy on all side and grid them down to dust, not to wait for them to analyse your defence and ultimately beat it.

If it's bad behaviour to link your comments to how you play and infer that your strategy is bad, then most of the forum would have been banned.

So I feel like it's alright to point that out, because is nothing personal, it just war, and a game.

Some very good ideas in this thread, but I think we should all tone it down a little and stop getting personal. It's obvious a lot of us are passionate on the matter, some for largely different reasons. Shields won't be in 1.0, fact! But I don't see the harm in debating about them getting post-release support, I mean either way I'm sure one would be able to turn them off if we were to get them!

I can also see that a lot of the counter-arguments are simply, "well why not just build more X units or more X towers, you don't need new units or anything, just use what you have.." For me that's quite a dis-heartening thought, I don't want to use more of the same of whatever we currently have. I don't want to race my opponent to have more units than him every match. I want to use strategy and lots of different ones. If putting up a shield or whatever is the "wrong" choice or decisive strategy at the time, I think that adds a lot, still. And not all of us are hardcore players looking to only play against randoms.. I only play with friends and A.I, usually. I for one, don't actually play to win either, I play for fun, and it's still fun to lose.

I also see a lot of people arguing with other peoples opinions.. Which is not nice to see. Fair enough if you don't agree with someone's view point, but to tell em that they are wrong, is wrong in itself.

Being able to turn something off never has and never will be a good argument for adding something.

And if telling someone that they are wrong is wrong, then I don't want to be right.

Why though? I'll be turning nukes off for every game when I'm able. You can't tell someone their opinion is wrong, it's their opinion..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion

If I can't tell a white supremacist their opinion is wrong, then what can I do?

If it was a good idea to add things on the condition that you can turn them off, you could add everything to the game ever.

Because being able to turn them off does not exclude genuinely bad ideas.

And speaking of nukes, I seriously hope that the nuke mechanic games changed, because it is horrible and highly dated, so I understand why you would tun them off.

It was someone's opinion that adding nukes to the game was a good idea, that's fine, but I don't share the same opinion, so I won't be using them when I get the option. The same can be applied to everything.

Well the nukes themselves serve a good purpose in being base destroying weapons with their large aoe and damage, and can even be effective at levelling enemy armys and navys that wonder too close.

The anti-nukes as a counter however are just plain old bad.

But yeah, my opinion on the shields doesn't apply to nukes, because nukes have distinct and unique purpose on the battlefield.

It's not about whether we like or dislike something, its about the merits of that thing it's self.

I respect your opinion. We could debate this all day to be fair.

True, and I also respect your opinion on the nukes, they are not much fun at the moment.

An opinion about a feature in (or not in) a video game is the same as the white supremacist movement.