My Thoughts on Shields

Not that I was asking you that, unless you're a dupe account of @nehekaras

Your linked post doesn't deal with the question I've been asking, which is what are shields needed for that walls can't provide? Which is what I asked nehekaras.

yes it does :
walls don't provide t2 shot blocking
walls don't provide commander safety
walls don't provide nuke gameplay value
walls don't provide a simultaneous shot blocking but not unit blocking
walls don't provide missile block
walls don't provide air fire cover

are you sure you read my post?

Well actually tatsujb brought up some points in his linked post but since you want me to answer and not someone else I ll just copy paste the relevant parts here:

• shields mean more focus on economy, a shift back to macro, as stalling energy could be your death sentence. and basically the fact that economy should matter more in a game where you're advocating flow economy. I'm getting tired of seeing even our best players stall the living hell out of their eco, because it doesn't matter at all.
  
  
• more scouting to actually see where shields are and avoid wasting troops firering inefficiently to instead move them underneath the shield to obtain a successful mission: a lot of the games I see noone bothers to scout once they have a general idea of where their enemy is. I see this as threatening to PA's gameplay: player should desperately want to ID units while playing: this stuff should matter. finding out if there is a stealth generator and where, finding out if there is a shield and where, finding out if there is a com and where
  
  
• the ground attacks can be blocked for t1 units by walls but no airborne attack can be blocked. Meaning you could just get the payload through by brute force, pushing through the air patrol with a sufficient swarm of t2 bombers or gunships and at the right point in the patrol cycle.

And to add to that some of my own points:

• Give the Defending side more time to react to an incoming attack.
• Slowing down ComSniping
• Give you a chance to react to incoming artillery fire
• You now have a choice to either build more units but be easier to attack yourself, or build less units but be more protected

Honestly I've been considering not even debating with you anymore afther 'that' line in your post before.

I have never played FAF with shields because I don't play with T3 and map crossing artillery, I don't see the need to make attacking overall harder with a large hp boost when your artillery will always be in proxy range, but please do understand that well firstly (I am talking about static bubble shields, then personal HP boosting shields) and secondly that is more about how they fail to really counter artillery in my eyes because I don't consider a unit that cannot kill as a counter to anything.

Also:

Naval units don't get personal shields

The experimental shield is defiantly not required, and by mid to late game won't save you anyway

And you made no mention of the normal static shields

I find it very, very strange that you mention personal shields and the experimental shield without mentioning the actual static shields, which have been the topic for most of this conversation, it feels like you are persposly ignoring stuff that doesn't fit your point.

Im not arguing for or against the balance of the SupCom shields, My point has and always will be that I really don't think the mechanic works.

This is why I suggest we find ways of taking out the shields good elements into new and better things, while leaving the stuff that doesn't work behind.

I will never agree to having the old bubble shields back, because I don't believe that their mechanics even work for their purposes.

I am trying to work with your point here, don't just drive me away because I won't completely flop on what I believe, I am trying to compromise.

Shields add defence to a area

Shields as a purely defensive unit are designed to defend from everything out side of it's radius

As a result you get a unit that isn't just a air defence, isn't just a land defence, isn't just a naval defence but a defence vs all, a omni defence, but as a result they share this defence with all units within it's radius.

You get a turret, a turret is balanced, it is weak vs artillery and planes, but now the shield keeps it safe from artillery and planes, and even tanks, the unit it counters.

The shield in a normal combat sense (Not talking about shields in regard to map crossing artillery) changes the balance in a way that say a AA turret cannot.

A AA turret can shoot at the planes that attempt to destroy the turret, the turret can shoot at the tanks that try to shoot at the AA turret, the Bomber plane can shoot at the artillery that tries to shoot the turrets.

A counter system, unit X kills unit Y kills unit Z kills unit X.

But shields stop that, they remove traditional counter systems in favour of just the shield, or at the very least they alter the balance of the units underneath them by providing them a shared additional hp pool.

So how do you counter the turret? Do you bomb it? Do you artillery it? No, you must deal with the shields added HP before you can even counter them, but most shields regenerate.

So you have a shield a AA turret and a normal turret, what is the counter in the counter system? Do I need to build a anti-shield unit? Well few of them have existed in these games, and even so, despite the lack of a bomber in this scenario without a anti-shield unit my artillery cannot assault the turret, but now the turret is and always was a counter to the anti-shield? Well that's good balance you say? I don't really agree, because the shield plays as ever role here when it needs too, and it does so simultaneously.

The shield is a medic, the shield is the AA, the shield is the turret, the shield is the artillery, the shield is the bomber....

The shield plays every role, but it can't kill, so that is what makes it balanced I hear? Sure maybe it does, maybe it is balanced.

But you know what isn't balanced? the AA and the turret.

Until the shield is destroyed or turned off the turret and the AA lose their counters and effectively become immune to damage, because the shield is a all in one defence, even if it is not lethal.

The shield doesn't have a unit it counters, because it counters damage.

We used to have units that could shoot at land units, and aircraft simultaneously, but these were believed to be unbalanced, because you could simply build just one unit type to cover everything.

The shield can't shoot, it's not designed to shoot, it designed to tank.

But why does the shield remain able to counter all of these roles?

Why is the shield able to counter air while it counters land while it counters navy while it counter artillery?

But if we do have shields that can only counter a single layer, they need to be justified in why they do so.

Walls defend from land armys by literally blocking shots, and even then people demanded a better way of countering them by being able to shoot over them!

Land units that beat their own anti-defence.

This is the route that shields need to head, not what contrived thing FAF to keep shields in their games, shields need to stop being all round defences and need to specialise, or else they change the balance of every thing they protect.

Like turrets, turrets in PA were ok until walls were introduced, then suddenly turrets were the greatest units in the game that needed to be nerfed.....but turrets didn't change when walls were introduced, all that changed was that....walls were introduced.

And that is a shield that doesn't project a power charged field, that's a shield that uses it's own hp to cover against land units, one of the most specialised shield types and it was inconceivably powerful.


But shields? Bubble shields from game like FAF? They project HP to a entire area, not even their own HP, and can cover against all projectiles.

This is wrong, so completely wrong, as is why I have problems with shields in the first place, I can't play FAF with them, even when I disable T3, because it chasnged the balance of every thing around them, they don't just cover things.

They don't just change the dynamic of a fight, they become the dynamic of the fight.


You guys want shields for these unique reasons, then create something to fulfil the reason, don't include the bubble shield because that is one thing that it can also do, because bubble shield do so much more that you aren't intending.

And so me and others in the community say no to a idea, not because of the intended purpose but because of the side effects, side effects we have seen, side effects we want to avoid.


I hope this helps, because this and my previous posts in this thread are all of my answers to your questions that I have, these are my reasons for not wanting bubbles, don't let bubbles ruin the functions you actually want.

Anti-shield crackers anyone? EMP bot maybe? Maybe have a bubble shield with metal filaments as I said before, that way its hit or miss. Maybe have a unit that spews out a shield, and it pulses around a certain area, giving maybe 50% protection over the duration as it pulses on and off.

I have always been very spotty on counter units that can't kill.

Not a fan of shields, not a fan of anti-nukes and well....yeah.

I prefer to keep my counters in the default category's: Land, air, sea, orbital, building.


*Shrugs* but I'm kinda drained from my wall of text right now to really argue about anything at the moment, there isn't much more I can say on this subject, so I will take a brake.

I understand your point of view. I'm just spewing out some more ideas for discussion, I'm not intelligent enough to theorize if they would work or not, nor do I have the experience.

I do like the idea of diversity and variety however (whether they get me killed or not,) and I myself wouldn't mind units that don't fit into a certain category, as long as they aren't alone.

If units don't fit into a category, then yeah, why nor make a new category.

Allright we are getting somewhere here!

So if I understand you correctly your main point is that shields will break the balance because they applie an added HP bonus to all units they cover, and they block attacks from every direction. All the while having no real counter to themselfes to be able to deal with them and they regenerate on top of that.

Let me first point out that you could / should use infernos / vanguards as anti shild units, seeing as they are already used against walls. In order to attack from a different angle you could use SXX sattelites to shoot down the shields quickly.

So without changing anything we already have 2 units that should quite effectively counter shields in my opinion.

As for the broken balance - yeas kind of, but that is an upside of shields!

Seeing that shields only work in a small area, the area they cover now cant be attacked as effectively by traditional means. I can see why at first this seems like a bad idea, but if we think about it walls already do the same thing. If you attack a base wich is coverd with walls the same way you would attack it as if it would not have walls you would most likely lose more units.

What that means is - you need an attack plan. You need to see the shield, wich puts emphasis on scouting, you then need to get the right kind of unit to the shield to disable it quickly, wich puts emphasis on the right army composition for the right situation.

Your attack will most likely consist of 2 stages

1. Kill shields / walls
2. Kill units behind shields / walls

All that needs to be done is to make shields expensive enough for them to not be able to be spamed everywhere without heavily pulling your economy down.

Sounds like a new pleasant layer of strategy to me.

I love shields. I love the look of shields. Huge, Big and maybe creepy.
The only thing is.
Imo, it would look really stupid on small planets and such. Buildings like over the shields and such.
Huge blobs just sticking out of the planets. But who knows.'
Maybe it would look awesome.

I agree, they might upset the art-style if they were too big like. I would have them small to medium sized where the biggest they could cover would be a T2 factory or the equivalent. Maybe have the view of them disabled even when zooming out to celestial.

Agree to disagree in the end I suppose, I don't suppose ill ever like having the shields project a energy shield, but at least we understand each other and now I can prepare for tats to tell me why im wrong on ever point and why im a bad player.....sigh.

From pure gameplay POV i think they do not add much, quite like any single aspect of game does not add much. There needs to be synergy and balance with other things. Shields just counter artillery, so instead of keeping some gunship strike team handy you build more shields. Some pople like turtling some not, shields are lazy alternative to strike team.

But from game and graphics optimization POV shields are pure nightmare. Most expensive rendering effect is multiple transparent surfaces that cover each another. You can do this or code some quite complicated routine for morphing shields together. Or do some trick with Z buffer to find it out. At best this whole thing will be as GPU intensive as calculating dynamic shadows for whole scene. This silly transparent blob is just very costly.

So my opinion on this is unless we can do cheap graphics effect that shows shields there is not true benefit to them. Same gameplay result can be done with anti rocket defense, and maybe some anti artillery.

We have an invisible nuke bubble shield right now (anti-nuke).
You are arguing that this is not a counter because it cannot kill the nuke launcher?
You persuaded me, I understand that it is not a counter, rather it is actually a shield.
So shields are already in the game and there is not really a heated debate over them as long as they only block specific attacks. Why can't we compromise and have a device that shields us from artillery and space bombardments (I consider this as artillery)? It doesn't have to be called a shield or even look cool.
But looking cool would be a bonus.

Well, that is the thing dude, you shouldn't need to shield from stuff, you should just kill the stuff that's shooting at you.

That is why I love the current artillery, its within range for a counter attack!

I agree, we don't need them for current artillery as long as all your proxy bases have factories producing units and their own artillery. Unless you consider space bombardments as artillery like I do.
I simply cannot just send a strike team to kill an anchor. If I had a strike team then they would not have been able to build it in the first place.

Yeah, current PA balance is hopefully temporary.

I am pretty certain that the engine they have coded already supports most, if not all different parts a shield needs including partly visible bubbles (thats what the atmosphere effect is as far as I know).

Also shields dont equate to turteling tactics - they can be used for them but thats not all they can do.

On top of that shields not only influence artillery gameplay, they influence the whole gameplay as @igncom1 pointed out. Some like that some dont, either way is fine.

A friend of mine was talking about a unit that he would like to see, a mobile personal shield generator unit, giving units little personal shields in it radius a a kind of alternative medic, not healing but giving temporary HP, got me thinking a little....