How to add shields in PA

Actually it will be a build-your-own-game after 1.0.
Nearly all of these suggestions can be built into the game once we are given the proper framework to do it.
I am looking forward to what modders will turn this game into; whether it be bad, good, or just plain weird.
We will then be able to decide if it works in the game or not and that is great.

Okay, I'll bite.

Quickly responding to your final sentence first, as I've said to you before, wbonx, Statements like

and

are what get threads like this heated and locked, because you are utterly disregarding the other point of view, dismissing all arguments against you off-hand rather than engaging in debate. It makes people upset when, after having taken the time to respond to a new user on the forum to answer their questions, they are simply dismissed and told "you're wrong".

With that said, let's look at your ten points:

1- Improving the strategy.
What does this mean, specifically? Which strategy are you improving? There are, or at least will be, a lot of different strategies available to players in PA. Which one will shields be improving? Will they be optional or compulsory to win?

2- Holding strategic point.
This is already done very effectively using walls, laser turrets and mobile units. If you watch two even moderately good PA players, you'll see their use of various tactics to take and hold expansions, which are crucial to maintain their economy.

3- Helping reactivity when managing multiple planets.
The current problem with reacting to incoming threats is primarily due to a UI restrictions and the low TTK of units. I'm an advocate of increasing the TTK of units, which will significantly reduce this problem.
Ultimately, this will always be a problem when battles are occurring on multiple planets, as you can't be everywhere at once.

4- Prevent snipering.
Why? Sniping is a valid strategy and is particularly potent in the Assassination game mode. Your first point is that you wanted to improve strategy yet you want to remove sniping as an option for players?

5- Help shaping the base in a consistent way (now everything is random).
This is purely down to personal preference. Honestly, making a 'neat' base is fairly low on the list of priorities and is actually quite difficult to do when playing on a sphere.

6- Giving the chance to react even when low in metal providing large amount of energy to shields that could help defending and achieving an attack strategy based on the optima usage of metal (i.e: not random troops bubble).
I don't quite understand what you're trying so say here. If you're significantly lower on metal income than your opponent, you're in trouble no matter what else you have.

7- They would make super happy a large number of PA players!
It would make a large number of PA player super unhappy, too. You can't please all of the people all of the time.

8- They would rebalance the issue of bubbles of troops, so increasing the strategy against only spawning large troops.
You're saying that shields would encourage use of smaller armies? I'm not sure I'd be arguing that as a positive point, considering the grand scale to which PA aspires.

9- Killing random bubbles of troops would help with the actual lag/crash problems, 40% of games are crashing late in game.
This is absolute conjecture on your part and I doubt that shields will have any effect on game stability (they may even decrease it). In any case, come release, stability shouldn't be much of an issue.

10- The game barely uses differences in territory, this are mainly limited by water or lava. There are no mountains or holes in the terrain that people could use to increase the variety in their strategy. At least shields would help in that sense.
How do shields alleviate this issue? They just add a flat damage buffer to both sides of an engagement. Uber are actively working on making terrain more varied.


I'm strongly thinking that there are big technical issue and this is the reason why they are pushing for not introducing shields. My guess is the physics engine (maybe the part involved in bullets trajectory).
Uber is a team of exceedingly skilled engineers, many of whom successfully brought you Supreme Commander - if there is any team that could successfully and easily implement shields, it's these guys. Let's not debate this on technical merit, let's debate it on gameplay merit.

==

I'm actually not very strongly pro- or anti-shields, by the way. I'm just trying to play devils advocate and get you to debate your points a little, because so far it's been quite infuriating to watch these threads unfold.

My first laugh today, thanks

(Obvious joke is obvious, sorry to see it derail into an actual shield thread.)

1. Improving is a subjective word. I think it's an unimprovement (sic).
2. You can do that already. Shields change nothing here.
3. Yeah, this is true, but I think it's a bad thing.
4. See (3).
5. This isn't Sim Base. Also, you will have random shields in random bases. Shields change nothing here.
6. Okay, but I don't see how that's interesting.
7. Conversely, they would make super upset a large number of PA players. Give with one hand, take with the other.
8. I fail to see exactly how they would do that. Please explain it for me.
9. That's a transient problem. It's a technical problem. It requires a technical solution. Gameplay solutions are for gameplay problems.
10. See (9). You can fix that by changing the world-gen algorithm to include mountains and stuff.

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/how-to-add-shields-in-pa.60404/page-2#post-938469

If all of the arguments are weak then please take a moment to read my post and give me a structured counter argument as to why shields are absolutely necessary and why nothing other than a shield can fulfill your needs.




Personally I'm on the fence with the whole debate. I enjoyed TA, I enjoyed SupCom, I enjoy PA. Shields or the lack there of have not impacted my enjoyment meaningfully in any way, however, PA is my favorite game in the trio and I am convinced that shields would only make worse my only major complaint with the game... it's prone to stalemates.

Each of these games had their own stalemate scenario, and all of these are bad.

In TA it was two factions have a steady unit production and auto rally points. The ground between bases becomes a lethal nomans land of impassible wreckage and heavy defense fire. Battles could last many hours without any need for human interaction. The long term fix was make wreckage easier to destroy and weaken most defenses, you can see this applied in the later games, SupCom and PA.

In SupCom (vanilla and FA) bases had a nasty habit of becoming bubbled blobs of shields and Teir3 artillery. It was a never ending cycle to build more cannons to break the enemy shields, build shields on your end, and build more power plants to support more shields. Narrow choke points and swarms of aircraft shutdown even the largest super units approaching by land. The game was usually ended by UEF satellites, T4 artillery, or an Aon money hax plant. The long term fix was remove shields and remove ultra long range artillery so that the game's focus would return to units. The same guys that made the shields in SupCom decided to remove the shields for PA. I'm going to say that again in caps and bold so that it's not ignored quite as easily... THE SAME GUYS THAT MADE THE SHIELDS IN SUPCOM DECIDED TO REMOVE THE SHIELDS FOR PA.

In PA we see stalemates when faced with interplanetary assaults when super weapons are not an option. We completely lack the weapons to mount meaningful interplanetary assaults once a player has bunkered down with infinite patrols. In PA the long term fix is still pending, but many of us expect this to be the unit cannon, easy access to smaller asteroids, and new units to breach a planet.



In what way do you see shields improving PA without negatively effecting the existing stalemate situation?

there are relevant points on both sides, it should become more of a tradition to read thoroughly and respond argumentatively and develop each point one tries to press avoiding "it's been said" without links or quotes.

Thank you I appreciate an actual well written devils advocate post. The irony of your first paragraph is that both side of the debate feel this way. both sides of the argument have their share of knuckleheads saying everything the other side believes is wrong *because*. the quality of the debate fluctuates heavily and (personal bias) I have seen more 'aggressive' anti shield posting than pro, especially near the beginning of threads.


I will go through the relevant points from my perspective.

more options = more strategic potential (simplified equation but you get the picture)

However I agree that an 'option' that is made compulsory for victory is no longer an option and detracts from strategy rather than adds.

this is part of the reason I have been advocating payer shields as they have a niche that allows for more potential options when it comes to artillery. rather than acting like a SupCom shield (which many of the anti shield supporters attack as a strawman) it acts more like a point defense system and has clear advantages and disadvantages to exploit.

I agree that hold territory on the ground game in the current build has decent depth and strategy already. Against air units however there is very very little strategic depth beyond having more planes than the enemy or having enough planes to snipe past AA turrets. shields would help give a buffer against massed bombers but not counter them completely.

buying a few precious seconds with a shield generator would go a long way to helping us multitask but this is a side benefit. I would personally rather see limited AI support commanders for dealing with multiple planet micro issues but that is another thread.

Not remove but make more difficult. currently cheesy snipes that really shouldn't be viable can end the game in a very dissatisfying way (ssx insta snipe) with little to no counter play. shields would, while not removing sniping attempts from the strategy pool would make them more of an investment/risk and would give quick players a few seconds to react allowing more counter-play (strategy)

==

I agree with your assessment that a catch all shield that covers too many roles is bad for strategy and the health of the game. I also agree that there are many roles that shields *could* fill that could be done in more interesting ways. The solution for me is identifying a role (in the case of my layer shield anti artillery/anti high damage slow attack units), and allowing counter-play to make shields valuable in their role but not a detriment to overall strategy.

thank you for elevating the discussion.