Balancing Shields

Ha, nice.

You might as well call anything that's not in the game lazy.

If there is no reason to include it, then why spend the effort.

A reason not to include something? A lack of reasoning to include it.

Have you tried TA shields? They were glitchy and horrible, if they worked at all. More often than not it was a second collision layer that any level of splash damage could sneak through.

Because a shield is a electromagnet or super science barrier that prevents mass from passing through it. The barrier I proposed does not prevent mass from passing through the structure instead it disrupts machines and EM fields that enter the barrier. It is a different idea then the ever misunderstood Barrier/Shield.

I am not saying it is not possible to have a barrier in the game. But the idea of them is problematic, they pose to many balance issues and story issues. Like how is this barrier generated? Is it solid all the way around? Or is the dome just a detection field and damage is blocked by smaller pin point projections of force. Or may be it is more like the Ray Shielding from Star Wars where energy weapons will be blocked but mass can pass through with out an issue.

Just saying "the game should have shields" does not mean anything. Heck the developers could give the bots an over sized plate of armor on one arm and they would have shields! It comes down to the effect of the devise, what it takes to run, how it effect the game play when added. Is it a nice thing to have or a necessity for survival...this needs to be defined.

The deflector fields in Balanced Annihilation, (at least I think it was BA been ages since I played spring) were actually an ingenious design. If you are unfamiliar with them they generated a very small field which would deflect, enemy plasma artillery of any kind. Other objects, such as lasers, non-plasma bombs, missiles would pass right through it. it made a system where a player could defend an isolated area against one specific type of attack. With the drawback being deflected fire often hit other nearby buildings. Or sometimes rarely the person who fired the shot in the first place. Unfortunately, with the scale PA is aiming for such a physics simulation heavy system might be difficult to handle. I could be mistaken though, I am well versed on how they are planning to do things.

I know people have mentioned spring a few times, but nobody actually described how the better ones worked.

No one has answered a key question yet. How will shields positively impact the core principles of the game?

Now, how do I define core principles? Obviously this is a war game about destroying the opposing side... but that is a very broad and not very useful description. So, instead, I posit that the core principles are intelligence gathering and economy expansion. Both lead to direct victory when done better than the enemy, and it's hard to reduce the ideas down any more than that (I don't include micro as these games tend to be more macro controlled, though micro skills do play into evenly matched opponents).

So, now you have to answer how the shields either A) benefit intelligence gathering, or B) benefit economic expansion? They don't really do much for A, but it is arguable that they can help with B IF done correctly (i.e. situational use that is mainly targeted towards pushing your control zone boundaries outwards). I explained all of this in an earlier post (which all of you argumentative types consciously avoided taking on...). However, with that in mind, the positives have to be weighed out against the negatives, the biggest and most problematic being that it promotes decreased intelligence gathering and decreased land grabbing. Both of those directly affect the core principles... which is not good.

I understand that people like to "turtle" and "play like they want to," and that is perfectly fine and acceptable. But, as it lies contrary to the core gameplay, it should NOT be a winning strategy against an opponent who is focused on expansion and intelligence. That is VERY firmly rooted in the history of the TA franchise.

So, including shields... fine. But they should be very situational and nothing but very short-term stop gaps that fail quickly and utterly. The easier solution is to not have them period, and encourage people to play to the ebb and flow of battle... not the stagnant pool of shields and laser towers that shields typically encourage.

I fully expect most of you to ignore this post again and continue to cry foul that someone outplayed you to the point of having 30 minutes worth of building time in artillery outside your doorstep and you don't have an uber-counter option at your fingertips...

I would challenge most of you to go back to TA, SC, SCFA, and less-so SC2 and find some high level 1v1 play videos that DIDN'T rely on expansion and intelligence to win... or that built giant shield farms as a primary focus of play (not an end game "oh ****" response where one just tries to draw out the game a bit longer before losing). You won't. It doesn't happen when people know how to win.

I would also add as a note that problems with shields are magnified in team games where having unbreakable bubbles is much more possible... especially if they are allowed to stack... which is a terrible idea at all times.

Another way is merely not allowing units or any kind of projectile through the shield at all, meaning to be able fire out of a shield [or walk outside of one], you have to deactivate it first. Otherwise your artillery will damage their shields when inside of them.

You are entitled to your own opinion but you are unfortunately wrong. Fast expansions in tournament maps was almost unheard of. You occassionaly refreshed the outwards lying mexes with a flying builder but otherwise didn't protect them

The need for a heavy infrastructure ( mainly building units supporting fabrication plants ) made it unfavorable to have more than one actual base.

What people did instead set up very small fire posts at strategic locations ( turrets, some anti air ) and reinforced them with units to control more of the metal on the map, or atleast lower the frequency of which the seperated mexes were shot down by something.

What ever you magical version of TA in which expansion was actually worth it is, it's not the reality. Defense oriented players were always having the advantage in TA ( Note: this HEAVILY changed with supcom ). That is to say, if you tried to lock yourself in a 100x100m square and NEVER leave it, that's not turtling, that's dumb.

Hmmm.... I recall most of the maps requiring expansion to get mass deposits (minus the metal planets which were usually lame to play). I could be wrong, I haven't fired up TA in a number of years.

Also... you totally dodged every question I asked and only focused on a very minor point in my post. And if you are referring to vanilla TA then what is your point? If you are referring to modded TA then how did the shields factor into this in a beneficial way?

This is what I proposed in my first post in this thread. They basically equal walls, which is perfectly fine with me. Shields for non-expansion reasons really aren't needed and a determent as I explained in a few posts above.

Sacrificial_Soul makes some good points. Shields don't contribute to an aggressive, action oriented game. They mostly serve to slow things down or delay the inevitable, as there aren't many ways to attack with a shield. Areas can be defended just as well with more guns, and maintained with a few engineers.

Then use walls. There's no need to reinvent the solid hunk of dirt. Such a facility is only good for protecting defenseless structures, which is easily accomplished by putting a bit more armor on those same structures.

There were a lot of bad things happening with shields. Stacking was only the most obvious.

Hmm maybe a Star Wars kind of approach? A Shield you can passtrough but prevent any bullets missiles ect to leave or enter the shield.

Youl would get two buildinsg that are actively working together a large Shield generator and a small Shield projector.

The generator must be placed in a certain radius near the projector to belinked to the projector.
They are not stackable. A Generator cant be placed under the dome of the projector (because of interference what ever)

And they are atleast a T2 building and really powerhungry to maintain when activated

But the thing about walls is, that you could establish 'tower' turrets behind them, that could fire over the walls, while (some, most?) units had to destroy the walls first.

That's fine. Typically there is a unit that has longer range than point defense but sucks at hitting moving targets (like missile launchers). They excel at taking down protected static defenses but suck horribly against mobile targets.

That would certainly qualify for a situational building and force active protection which is my goal.

As I stated, I have no problem if shields are incorporated (or not) as long as they are situational and do no promote static play. Even if they don't fill those roles, there is a good chance they won't see much use in competitive play anyways since they are static and it is pretty well established in the competitive RTS arena that a mobile offense is far superior to a static defense.

That being said, I would rather see the artists and coders time spend on something more useful than a shield (like something that causes orbital decay or moons, planets, etc.)

I just think that shields are awesome, i love when shields have an awesome effect as well, kinda like protoss shields in Starcraft. you see projectiles and stuff hit it and bounce off.

It always sounds cool gameplay wise.

This was a common tactic in TA.
Build dragon teeth (tank blockades) around your defense towers which blocked some of the incoming fire.
It was not overpowered or too strong at all - Sacrificial_Soul already mentioned artillery units being able to take those down without danger.

Oh yes, I meant that in a positive way. But that wouldn't be possible with that shield idea - at least, not with bubble shields, and what is the difference between a wall made up of metal, and a wall made up of energy?

Mostly nothing. I think they could probably keep both camps happy with walls made of projected energy. That keeps the graphically inclined happy, the plasma lovers happy, and the game design oriented happy. Bubble shields, bounce shields, selective shields, etc. while cool in concept don't work so well in practice. AoE HP boosts can be accomplished in different ways that function much better (repair towers, SC2 style mobile HP boosters, engineers, missile defense like structures, etc) and don't necessarily overlap with the purpose of a wall (cheap HP boost for direct fire only and pathing redirection).

Oh yes, something like the Hive and the Kennel from Forged Alliance, good idea!

From page 14 and up, you are the only one still wanting shields. No one is agreeing with you.

Shields are redundant because they add health to an area, and there are other ways of doing that. You've also stated that the reason you want shields is because you want long range artillery, and that needs a counter. In this case too, shields are redundant. Because as said before, the best counter is scouting.

Your move, son.

But that's the point, TA is not an aggressive, action oriented game. The game was designed to taking your time and thinking about what you do gives better results than just all in rushing people. From unit travel time to map size. Everything. Shields don't belong in starcraft because that's an aggressive, action oriented game. But TA wasn't that.

Not in TA, that's the fastest way to get yourself killed

TA is like the ONLY game in existence that manages to really balance offensive and defensive approaches. Judging from the comments in this thread, I'm just the only one aware of this and the others bring arguments from other RTSses into this which don't apply here. I'm really confused how you pretend to know much about the game and then spew such nonsense as "aslong as it doesn't promote static gameplay". Man, the whole GAME did promote static gameplay. Slowly expanding, frontline type WW1 era like territory fortificated static gameplay. That's the kind of game we're talking about here.

They just left. And precisely because they did, I have to defend the correct way of playing TA even more. On the day this game gets turned into another starcraft clone, I'm out. Waste of my time.

Such as? Building upgrades? The devs specifically stated they'd not have those. Moreso than shields.

Wrong, I wanted long range artillery and if there's NO shields, they'd have to be nerfed. With shields, they can be stronger. That does NOT mean that shields are a counter to artillery ( they are not ). It doesn't get rid of the artillery, it's not a counter, it just delays the inevitable if you don't take measures, of which there should be several.

Starcraft player logic. Try that across multiple large planets with stackable air fabricators and radar jammers. It won't work. Manual scouting was replaced by the radar system in TA. You will not be able to scout "everything", that's not how TA or PA is designed.

Your move, kid

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