Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggestion)

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

Isn't the purpose of artillery to attack enemy army's rather then enemy bases?

While the jury on shields is out as they were in SupCom, there still persist the need to shield bases from their fire.

So why not a interception laser rather then a actual shield?

One designed for enemy tactical missiles and large artillery shells? Reminiscent of THEL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_High_Energy_Laser

Mobile artillery and ordinance moves too fast and is too small, and planes are too large to really be effected by this type of weapon (Game play wise anyway).

Enemy artillery would be ineffective against bases with enough radar to support the intercept laser (if they are close enough, and if the terrain allows it), but they would still be vulnerable to enemy army's assaulting the base.

The devices come with high energy demand when firing to prevent a mass build up, and wallah.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

That would be a option yes. Me myself would prefear a sheild tough, i like sheilds.

But some kind of interception laser would most likely be easier to implement (for the devs) and improve game performance (no graphical effect when unused, and no area of effect coding).

I just think sheilds are more awsome :roll: .

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

Game design, man. Game design. The design purpose of a shield is to make bases more durable to damage, right? Well...

1) This role is redundant with the vast array of other options available to protect a base. Repairs and rebuilding are very effective against long term, low level damage.

2) It can not adequately cover a large range of game scales. Shields will always be overpowered against little things OR underpowered against large things. Shields are a static unit that at some point won't scale properly with the game.

3) Shield values are very difficult to establish, as EVERY level of combat has to be taken into account. AoE protection is far more effective than direct damage protection. Air protection could very well be superior to ground protection. Blocking a 1000 damage arty shell is many times better than blocking 1000 damage of gunship fire, which is still better than blocking 1000 damage of tank fire. What's the right number to use? Is it even possible to hit a sweet spot between all its conflicting needs?

Quite simply, large scale shields present a huge problem of interacting with every theatre of battle. It is insanely difficult to make shield power appropriate for every area.

Because anti-arty makes sure that anti-arty gets the pricing and effectiveness that it deserves. Anti-air makes sure that anti-air gets the pricing and effectiveness that it deserves. Repair makes sure that base defense gets the pricing and effectiveness that it deserves. You can't force shields to adopt a spot in supporting EVERY SINGLE role in the game. It's just a recipe for disaster.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

No. They weren't clear cut like that.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

I always thought that the difference between artillery and tactical missiles is that:

Artillery: Faster weapon, AOE, Low-medium damage, weapon costs power to fire.

Tac Missile: Slow weapon, no-very small AOE, High-very high damage, weapon cost mass and energy to fire.

Making tac missiles your base destroyers and artillery your army destroyers.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

Artillery tends to do high damage, not low (Not even when considered long term). For instance, in supcom they can one hit aloot of buildings and units.

If the enemy uses artillery against for example your economy sections the hit you would take would be anything but minor and could (in minutes, or even seconds) cost you the game.

There are currently (Supcom) no other option available to protect a base against artillery, unless you manage to destroy the artillery installation quickly before it does to much damage. They could add the suggested anti artillery weapons, but currently there are no info on any such unit, i dont even remember a game that has anything like it (well maybe the counter artillery in CoH, it simply bombs any artillery that fires with another artillery, if that's more along your line of thought).

Repair and rebuild is terribly uneffective against a artillery bombarment unless they rebalance it completely since supcom. Even if you manage to repair and rebuild your base the constant resource drain will cost you the game.

That would be the point of many of the suggestions in this thread, trying to limit sheilds so that they dont support every single role, but still keep them ingame.

I highly disagree that sheilds will "always be overpowered against little things OR underpowered against large things.", if the sheilds dont work against for example land then they wouldent be overpowered or underpowered against it, becuse it wouldent be part of its role.

As said, if the sheild no longer guard against everything the argument disappears.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

It's interesting to see everyone's take on shields here. Some people absolutely loathe it, while others feel it would destroy the game not to have them in it.

Let me just say: I love the idea behind this game. I've never played Total Annihilation, but I've played Supreme Commander. I understand that Planetary Annihilation will be more similar to TA then SupCom, and I am cool with that. I love the idea those games represent.

If the developers see my idea for shields and like them, awesome. If they do not, then no skin off my back. I'll still play and make the best I can out of it. I just came up with this idea after reading that Mavor likes the basic idea of shields, but not how it was implemented in SupCom. I fully agree with him. The fact that shields work as a bubble that guards anything under it made the games very one-dimensional to play for me. Hence the umbrella shields to guard against incredibly powerful base-destroying attacks like artillery.

That is the general idea. However this is not my game. I cant design games, I can barely program a simple calculator using a step-by-step guide. I have no idea how difficult it is to implement. IF shields enter the game one way or another, that's a happyface for me. If they do not, I'll still play the heck out of this game because I LOVE THIS (edit: the whole game ->)IDEA! <3

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

This discussion around shields interests me a bit. I mean, we are probably talking about a feature that isn't going to be in the game, but I find that in itself interesting because a technologically super refined bunch of killer automatons having no shields seems like a bit of a contradiction. My opinion is that the fact that TA didn't have shields is an influencing factor for the dev team not including them in PA.

That aside, I think shields add depth to the game. I see people have been talking about stationary/structural shield generators. There are also shielded mobile units. It's a dynamic that I think worked very well in SupCom. For all intents and purposes I, as everyone else here appears to be doing, will be basing my post on SupCom shields format.

Let's start with mobile units...
There are a few common attributes based around shielded units that set them apart from their unshielded piers:
1. Considerably less physical health than their unshielded counterparts.
2. Consume energy from the player's economy to generate shields.
3. Movement speed is slightly higher than heavier armoured units. Lending the attributes of shielded units to raiders and fast attack types.
The kind of dynamics that shielded units provided in SupCom made the game interesting. Units with shields are utilised in a very different way to high HP units in order to get the most out of them. I'm going to deliberately omit the mobile shield generator unit from this part of the discussion.

Now for structural shields...
The purpose of shield structures is to introduce an extra level of protection to a specific area that the player deems critical to their war effort. For example, their only T3 power generator or a defensive bottleneck. Generally it is used to protect against things like snipes and provides a buffer for the player to react to a situation like artillery bombardment. It is not really like repairing and certainly not at all like rebuilding. The former suggesting that several buildings taking damage and being repaired is the same as a shield is technically incorrect and the latter suggests the replacement of destroyed structures - in the mean time losing the facility they provided. I'm not going to go into any more detail here.
When thinking about shield generators we must consider the following:
1. A shield isn't going to protect against sustained artillery fire and just a couple of tac missiles can knock them out.
2. Shields only protect against long range attack. Getting up close and personal renders shields useless. Ergo, they need to be supplemented with other defences.
3. Shields are not impregnable and in order to really turtle up it takes significant time and resources. If the same time and resources were spent on a mobile force by the enemy, chances are that your shields within shields within shields still won't save you.
4. Shields are not only costly to build, they are also costly to maintain. Lending them to tactical use for most players. The majority of which, choosing not to build their entire base within a bubble.
5. All factions in SupCom had shields and all were typically the same, with some minor differences. Aeon and UEF also had T3 shields and cybran shields were actually upgradable to 5 stages IIRC. Aeon shields were not upgradeable at all.
6. I am surprised that no one has mentioned shield assisting with engineers.

On artillery...
When talking about artillery here most people I think are referring to fixed emplacement types. Generally with artillery in games it is a balance between range, accuracy and damage (including area of effect size). Accuracy being the defining attribute dictating the effectiveness of an artillery gun at taking out specific targets. Though damage is generally significant enough to maintain it's effectiveness on groups of structures/units.
In SupCom, artillery was proficient at softening targets ready for a ground based attack. It is more of a blanket approach when compared to tac missiles, which are better suited to taking out specific targets. Coupled with the high cost of tac missiles, artillery is a cost effective method for attacking a shielded enemy.

EDITED x1: Artillery is also a good way of defining a perimeter around your base. It's extremely difficult to build anything while under artillery fire. This also means that it is difficult for the enemy to set up artillery inside the range of your artillery.

EDITED x2: I forgot Aeon had T3 shields.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

I think it's also worth mentioning that it's possible TA might not have had shields due to technical reasons as opposed to just because they didn't want them.

Mike

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

Indeed, I think it is the first link on the accepted suggestions page for shields that has a dev saying that the way they worked in SC was a reason why they were denied.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

And Supcom shields failed at EVERY SINGLE point you made. They were superior for protecting everything, against every threat, in every way possible. They were fairly cheap units that had amazing returns against artillery and AoE damage. The other issues arose from the painfully unforgiving repair system in Supcom. Units cost 100% resources to repair, while shields did it for FREE. Shield assisting was borked as that also cost 100% base resources to recharge, leading to the strangest optimal layouts.

So inevitably, the best survival option was to spam shields. Layered shields gave mutual coverage, plus each of them was their own source of FREE healing, plus it got retardedly huge returns when shields collapsed and had another shield to cover them. Their OP'ness was a combination of many bad factors leading to one broken outcome.

It's a terrible idea to carry over how shields worked from Supcom. That's why establishing a good role for them in PA is very important. Universal general coverage is redundant if repairs and base maintenance is cheap. If an artillery shell blows something up, build a new one. It's not overwhelming to balance a game around this principle. Specialized coverage is pointless compared to a direct counter. If an artillery shell blows something up, it's because you didn't have enough artillery defense. That's something anyone can work with. At no point was game design backed into a corner and forced to use shields as the only means of making a particular strategy survivable. Most units don't really need shields, and from anything other than an aesthetic viewpoint it doesn't matter if they have one or not.

The only units that really NEED a shield are the ones that NEED complete protection from ALL forms of damage, at ANY cost. The list of those units can be counted on one hand: Commander and anti-nuke are clear examples. Balance shield design around this principle, and they become something very different from Supcom. Instead the purpose of shields is to act as a nigh-invulnerability field, a specialty item used to protect those handful of key units that would otherwise cost you the game. It might draw protection directly from energy storage, or allow a minimal amount of damage through, or be restricted to just those few units. Any way it goes, shields would have a clear role at protecting only the handful of things that need protection, in a way that can potentially scale with the conflict. Beyond that, it's just better to build more robots.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

I feel like due to the disposable nature of your forces in games like this, shields wouldn't be necessary.

Also, TA artillery is more comparable to SupCom T2 artillery then T3 artillery.

No T3 artillery, no real need for shields. If your enemy get into range to properly set them up, then your already in trouble.


Another point to cover is if artillery need to do enough damage to be a threat to building anyway, why not just have a low damage high AOE weapon for softening enemy forces? And leave the anti-base to Tactical and strategic missiles?

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

I absolutely LOVE long range artillery. Big Bertha was a staple in every game I played.

with that said, I have recently played SupCom2 and the shields were... interesting. I think that the idea proposed here of ground units (and even air that flies low) should completely ignore shields.

Also, make shields have a MASSIVE power draw on them. massive artillery in TA had a cost of 1500 energy per shot, so have shields require a baseline power draw of 1000 and another 500 per shell stopped(or vice versa).

artillery mitigating shields are very doable, they would just need the correct balance of cost vs. what they protect against.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

These would be those bubble shields that Uber have already said will not exist in PA?

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

Actually, they have just said that "Yeah, I like the idea of shields, I just think we need to come up with a different spin on it." & "Basically what I've been saying is that shields probably aren't going to make it into the first version of the game.".

That said "probably" is not a confirmation that they wont be in the release version, i have no idea why people choose to interpet it as a confirmation. So they might be in the release version, its just likely that they wont be.

The following part "the first version of the game" kinda hints that they could be added in a expansion/dlc/patch even if they arent in the release version.

The suggested umbrella (and not bubble) sheild is one possible way to adjust them so that they dont work as in supcom, but there are plenty of ways to adjust them away from the supcom version while keeping them as "bubble sheilds".

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

Everything about this post is perfect. I think I can suggest two more things that might balance big shields and fix the Supcom problems:

1. Every hit should do damage proportionate to BOTH damage and aoe (i.e. damage per sq. meter) and drain energy from your resources accordingly.

2. When shields are overloaded, the generator should explode (this wouldn't apply to units with built in shield generators I suppose) and damage units near the pylon.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

This is really going along the line of having special damage types. While it makes sense that an AoE is a lot more lethal than an equal damage direct shot, the damage is basically going to be some kind of modifier. Such things likely wouldn't fit with the game.

Instead, direct countermeasures can handle AoE weapons without resorting to shields. Spread out, use less swarmy things, and take out the facility.

Actually, the idea precludes the use of shield pylons entirely. A big bubble and a tiny personal field have very different demands on how efficient they should be. In this case the idea is for a personal field, which is virtually impenetrable, and incredibly expensive to use. Basically it's a form of ca$h4HP exchange.

The only unique purpose of the supcom bubble shield was to protect against arty. Anti-arty can do that. Every other purpose can be directly accomplished with more defenses and spare facilities.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

I have this feeling that a large amount of the problems with shields could be very quickly fixed by making the shield bi-directional (ie; stopping outgoing projectiles as well)

It will deal with the problem of a shielded army shooting a non-shielded army. It will deal with turtling to some extent (as you cannot build your heavy artillery inside your base shield)

It will pose an interesting choice regarding bomber defense (your shielded base is safe, but you can't build ground-based AA either)

It will let you use melee-based units in the late game, as they can move across the battlefield with their personal shield and be relvatively safe until they close with the enemy.

But it won't let you overlap dozens of shields, because nothing will be able to shoot anymore since their shells bump into all the overlapping shields all the time and it will basically just be a giant cluster****.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

So your suggestion is a shield that is effective against bombers and artillery but not tanks, mechs, any other land vehicle, gunships and any long range weapons that don't have a high firing arc (lasers?).

Seems kinda stupid to have such an expensive building with a continuous drain on your economy that only protects against a very specific set of units.

Re: Can I come with suggestions?(Edit: I came with a suggest

Sorry I should have clarified, I liked everything you said except that I feel there are still ways to leave the big shields in and keep them balanced.

AOE is already a different damage type. The danger of "modifiers" is that when you add them in things tend to get into Rock-Paper-Scissors situations. That isn't the case here and we don't need to be modifier purists. Why should a cluster bomb do more damage to shields than one big bomb even though the big bomb has a higher real damage? Makes no sense.

That said, it wouldn't be a damage type anyway. It would be a calculation the shield makes.

Towards what you suggest about countermeasures being a better solution..I agree that would be cooler, but it wouldn't help the problem. If I can mass shields then I can mass countermeasures. What's to gain? All it does is cause the game to favor massed little bombs and artillery over fewer big ones that can all be shot down, and people can still turtle away. In fact it would be more imba than shields because it operates per shell/bomb rather than per damage.

To everyone:

Adding to what I mentioned before, here's what I think would make shields "balanced":

1. AOE damage is taken into consideration by the shield.
2. Each hit drains large amounts of energy, and there's a limit on how much energy the shield can draw. If it goes past that limit, it overloads.
3. Overloaded shield generators explode and damage units near the pylon.
4. Units (friend or foe) can pass through the shield no problem, it only would stop shells and bombs.
5. Shields cannot overlap or they will short each other out. OR overlapping shields only short each other out when one of them overloads (so take out one and you take them all out).

Does that sound pretty balanced?