My Thoughts on Shields

Irma stop you right there and tell you that the context is towards map crossing artillery and shields.

Proxys are what I love about the current artillery, and would love them to stay that way.

The rest of my post was talking about how such map crossing artillery is not countered by shields because shield are hard to stack, and artillery is not, leading to a escalation n point where more artillery can focus on one spot then shields can, kinda undoing their point of countering artillery.

And countering map crossing artillery themselves is also made difficult as a mass build up of them can prevent any major land or naval army form approaching them, leaving the job to a air or orbital force, making the map crossing artillery counter 2 entire layers of combat, so that a defence of map crossing artillery is even easier.


Shields just don't counter map crossing artillery, and if they don't do that, then they don't have a unique enough role in the other static defences to really warrant their implementation.

Guys; @Gorbles and @BulletMagnet : this is hardcore theory crafting; you have no proof to corroborate what you say and you are likely thinking of a certain implementation but understand you can't conceive all the possibilities in the world, and that could include even one that's laying at your feet (something that happens to me often as well), what I'd ask of you on this matter is:

you are neglecting that there are lots of different implementations of shields, evidently. At least your giving off that strong impression.

there are some I didn't even know of and new ideas are surging up, but also I find it surprising that you think of the bubble shield as the symbol of imbalance and turtle when FAF has balanced them successfully (https://forums.uberent.com/threads/my-thoughts-on-shields.60191/page-2#post-935750 ) and when you think SupCom vanila immediately what's the word that everyone associated with it? not "bubble shields" no i haven't even heard of "SupCom vanilla" ever bringing up as a first thought "bubble shields". No, it was "Gunships" or "Gunship rush". It didn't even require to ever have player the game.

Heck people who have never played C&C red alert all know that it's soviet tank was overpowered to a ridiculous degree.

well same for SupCom and gunships.

So that means that even with the original vanilla shields, before aaaaaaall the nerfs it got, bringing it to today's version, it didn't stick out like a sore thumb enough to scare customers away like it did for C&C; the game was still balanced enough for hundreds of thousands of people to go buy the game and play it online competitively.

And taking those 7 years of balancing's experience and adding Uber's own twist and extra balance you think that they would still be unbalanceable?

Have you considered that you're playing an unbalanced game right now and it doesn't seem to be causing you the issues you say the slightest pip of imbalance would cause you?

I'm not going to develop the list of issues wrong with PA's balance right now because I doubt you'd disagree.

My point being you remain against the base premise of "shields" for claimed unbalance .... I raise you my argument and say you must be kidding?

FOR HEAVENS SAKE DUDE!

Read my words, I am not current talking about other implementations of shield like units.

I was talking about how with map crossing artillery, shields fundamentally do not work to counter them, I have seen this literally HUNDREDS OF TIMES.

Again, I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT OTHER IMPLEMENTATIONS OF SHIELDS!

I addressed it originally to Gorbles and BulletMagnet only, I added you thinking you might be interested as well. edited you out of the addressee line.

Thank you, I really really am trying to be more open minded about this, and I am sorry about getting hot headed.

But you mist understand, that most of us here are not basing our opinions on what could happen, but what we have seen happen in the games.

"the" games?

name "the" game.

I named mine.

and if possible try to make it 2 that would justify the use of plural.

You have not answered my question.

What strategies do shields provide that walls don't. What tactics do shields provide that walls don't? How is this favourable for PA.

You need to explain these things, instead of just saying "i think it'll work in PA".

The onus is on you, as you're suggesting the feature. I don't have to disprove the feature, because I don't know the scope of it's implementation. I can't disprove something that doesn't exist.

Please, answer my question, and we might get somewhere. Complexity for complexity's sake is not good games design.

*mod edited - knock it off people*

Look, just.....no, if your going to be like this then I won't be continuing this discussion with you.

You don't share your ideas with people by insulting and condensing them.

Then let me ask you nicely. You said that you think shields dont work and you base your argument on saying that shields dont work in other games - am I correct so far?

If that is the case would you please tell me, and others who might not know aobut about what games you are talking, how the shields in those games where implemented and why you think they didnt work.

I want to point out that I am no beeing ironic here, I really want to know what games you are taking about and how shields where implemented there. If you would do that I, and others for that matter, would be able to see where you are coming from. Maybe we would even get some new aspects of shields into the discussion that we have not considered yet.

well I didn't provide my link for the argument for. here it is : https://forums.uberent.com/threads/give-us-shields-come-on.60152/page-14#post-937248

I find shots flying above the the wall as they all do at t2 would have a chance to get blocked, guships and bombers a harder time getting to the commander as well as providing a counter to artillery.


there's depth to shields, it's my experience. they provide a means to an end. They make nuke play come to life, they help commander survivability, they make army's interactions and unit choice more interesting and important.

read my full linked post.

I'm trying to avoid tension as best I can so I'll not respond to the second part of your post except for this : I was not insulting. What I said applies even to me as was part of that original, now truncated quote.

Supreme Commander/ Forged Alliance and Supreme Commander 2.

As per my response before , to you I believe, my reasoning is that while a single shield can be balance to prevent the damage of a single artillery to it's self, even when being more cost effective does not deal with the problems of a artillery gun with the range to allow the artillery to stack up all on single locations and more importantly, any location that is not shielded if the artillery is ineffective against them.

I feel that shields can only be stacked onto a single location by a certain amount, where as artillery with map crossing range can easily outnumber the shields of any one locations, while also being flexible enough to hit other target too, unlike the static shield which can only defend one position.

I do however feel like the other advantages of shields, and other ruses of shields can be distilled out of previous games shields so that we can retain the unique bonuses with out the problems or situations that the rest of the shield can create.

As for shields like the one you suggested for PA shorter ranged artillery, I don't feel like it's going to have much of a purpose when compared to buffing up on more traditional defences or combat fabber repair units.

And I feel like the functionality outside of defending from artillery (As a shorter firing rage prevents having to take 5 mins to travel to and kill enemy artillery) can be done in more interesting and unique ways then a simple shield.

That is only because you are assuming that shields can't stack as well as artillery. Which is a stupid assumption to make.

Why do you believe this, is it because shield generators were 4 times the size of t2 artillery in sup com?

I shouldn't need to point out, that this is not supcom.

Even map-crossing artillery has a range, I agree that there's no way you could build enough shields in a single location to stop unlimited range artillery built on every other centimeter of the planet, but that's not an argument to not include shields, that's an argument to not include ridiculously long-ranged artillery.

At the moment we have one super-long range weapon (well two if you include halleys), and is it always better to be the nuker and not the nukey? Your argument of stacking wouldn't apply here either, technically you could build way more nukes that are capable to targeting an area than anti-nuke's to defend it but stacking nukes doesn't make sense, it would be too exhaustive on your resources. (By which I mean building hundred's of nukes on one planet to take down a cluster of twenty anti-nuke building's on another.)

My point being we don't need "stupidly long range artillery" to go with the "easier to balance stupidly-long ranged nukes".

Shields should be in the game to counter local reasonably-ranged artillery. The only way you could stack enough of this type of artillery to overwhelm shields would be to be in a position where you can start building your artillery way inside their total range or to build artillery in a massive circle in a circumference around the enemy base, either way your opponent has failed to maintain map control, which is usually why turtles that are too inwardly focused tend to lose at this point.

I am basing my opinion form my experiences in the supreme commander games.

So I have so idea what this is about.

One thing I don't understand is why this issue, seemingly above all others devolves into personal attacks? As a person on the fence I find this disgusting, cut it out guys, resorting to name calling and IQ-questioning indicates you've run out of constructive arguments and really should log off and cool down, and maybe post again another day...chances are the thread will still be hot enough and right at the top if people such as yourselves haven't got it locked for this aforementioned behavior... come on!

For my part (after watching most of these threads) I feel that shields have do two things going for them; They're something of a energy-sink, badly needed since energy is simply too easy to acquire in near limitless amounts with almost nothing to use it on late game (and presumably even more limitless amounts once gas planets arrive), and a barrier against artillery/tac missiles which are entirely not counter-able by walls last time I checked (and is precisely what a lot the pro-shielders are asking for), so to answer the nay-sayers who demand the pro-shielder's explain what shields do that wall don't, this (now former I guess since beyond the turtling fears I see little harm in having shields (which don't stack) possibly included post 1.0) fence sitter has answered.

Just started playing Titanfall, their shields don't negate all shots fired at it, the shields let some of the bullets go through it, I find that interesting. There really is so many ways shields could be implemented, many ways that haven't even been conceived yet. Shields could be using metal instead of energy for instance, call it a metal frag shield, with tiny metal flakes used in an anti gravity machine, making all bullets reflect from it randomly, making the bullets/firepower reflect into your own structures/units and the enemies, this linked with an economy drag that makes it depleat with every shot fired at it... Just an example that really anything can be thought up.

You have a point. I wish the moderators were more active, they could sort this issue out and maybe curb it from happening in the future. Time and time again Garat or Brad has to come in and bang a couple heads together, I just think their time would be better served doing other things..

Also, I like your input, you should jump in from the fence more often!

Allright so the core of our disagreement is that to you shields are a boring solution and that there are more interesting solutions to the problems that shields address.

So as Nietzsche said:
"You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist."

So let me ask you one more question in order to find out wich solution('s) may be more favorable:

Would you please point out some of the problems you think shields may fix and how a different solution may be more interesting / better / more balanced?

Isn't that that Tatsujb was trying to say? Like before he brought his point up,
I couldn't think of anything.

And I don't find shields boring, but more that they cause more grief then good in their current format.

I don't believe the ends justify's the means.

• SupCom2's implementation of shields can barely be called one, you just ticked a tickbox on some menu and then ALL of your land units or ALL of your air units or ALL of your naval units instantly got a body shield at not cost.
  
  (for construction)
  
  INSTANTLY
  
  NO COST (ok some upgrade point that you get for free over time, I'm talking about metal and energy here, something we can translate over to PA)
  
  ALL UNITS
  
  ok, let's talk about the other shields they were of small radius on the factories, kind of a non-choice thing as well as their other upgrades but shield was really the one in the lot you didn't want to be missing.
  
  the experimental shield was an absolute must because it actually had a workable size that could serve some purpose, and that was a pain in the butt because that meant you had to cavalcade your way to it on the research tree or you were basically boned for the mid to late game.
  
  they were very measly balanced. they held out too well against prolonged damage and took damage individually.
  
  They led to real turtle.
  
  
• Sup Com vanilla shields and Sup Com FA vanilla shields (lets combine them for the sake of time)
  
  Not half bad, as I stated above:
  • constant energy consumption
  • recharge time (higher energy cost)
  • extremely low health for the structure itself
    
  • around as much HP for the plasma as a t2/t3 factory
    
  • blocked 1/2 shots from a t3bomber/tactical missile
  • didn't block nuke
  • off as soon as energy storage hit zero (all of them)
  • blocked all entering shots (even ally and yourself)
  • didn't block exiting shots
  • didn't block unit's passage both ways, whatever the team
  
  
  For the most most part, the competitive community didn't even notice the balance issue it did have:
  
  
  but that was balanced away soon enough.
  
  
• And now I raise you FAF's shield which adds to the picture:
  • reduced size slightly to fit 3D model
  • bigger AOE effect on incoming shot
  • full damage across the AOE ring
  • recharge time longer
  • energy cost bigger
  • less HP
  • overlapping act as one and all take damage

I find there's a certain point where I fail to see what it's doing wrong and how it isn't filling it's role.

in FAF the shield isn't a massively spammed unit, it just covers the most critical strategic points.

you still often see them go off from lack of energy at which point they are insta-sniped because of their low HP.

Why is it that you consider FAF's shields to be imbalanced?

Well the current format of shields is that they dont exist so we agree there .

And like you I don't believe the ends justify's the means. But I am of the opinion that shields are not just means to an end.

So I get that you are of the opinion that shields cause a load of problems when they are implemented. But in order to address those concerns of yours I need to know what they actually are. So if you could maybe make a short list of the biggest problems you have with shields, or what problems they may cause, we can start trying to sort those out and stop spinning in circles as I feel we are currently doing .