This is why I try and outline time and again that it has been confirmed that there will be no classic shields in the vanilla game, and because of this such topics are pointless to continue. End of story. It never works though.
Some of us know this and would still like to continue talking about it, it's not a big problem surely
Then talk about it in the modding forum. I presume that those that want SupCom-esque bubbles will mod them in when the opportunity arises.
No I have absolutely no problem with people discussing the pros and cons of classic shields in a rational, civilised manner. However these threads are never like that. They just devolve into slagging matches, the focus of the topic becomes buried and it reflects badly on all of us. The mere mention of the word "shields" on this forum just seems to have the entire community frothing at the mouth. As I have stated, it has already been confirmed that shields will not be present in the game in the form seen in games such as SupCom. The devs may experiment with a shield in some altered form at some point, and if that happens we will discuss it. This forum however is "the place to discuss alpha specific issues." Shields are not present in the alpha so they are therefore not a topic for this forum. I apologise, I'm not trying to have a go at you, I just wish that we could all stick to reasoned discussion.
Wow, this thread really took off in the 3 days i was out.. lol. Well thanks for all the interesting conversation all though some of it could have been less passive-aggressive that is for sure. I would like to make a side note that i didn't say the shields needed to be like sup com at all, i said i did like those and would like to see something similar return. This is a discussion thread on new types of things that are "like" shields that could work. But the topic kinda looped all over the place lol. I am still on the "for" some type of shield team, all though the stealth generator would be a nice solution against artillery to. Edit - Also, directional wall shields sound fun, they are like walls.. but with a different style of hit points plus they don't block your units from leaving. Should be a higher tier item, they are not a bubble though so it doesn't break artillery and you would instead need to build a stealth gen!
I think this is a gem of an idea buried in this shield thread. It would be a very interesting mechanic to have the t1 radar reveal any unit that fires into its range of influence. I can see it being useful throughout the game this way, as well as becoming a priority target for turtles wishing to use secret artillery bases. I also thought that supcom's shields bred a very stagnant way of fighting a war. It made your base seem like an invincible fortress, and the same for the enemy base. This caused a lot of massive battles in an all or nothing type of gameplay, but it also heavily rewarded either rushing to kill the enemy before they got too many shields, or boring tech races to lots of nukes and experimentals. I think people who like shields (and I won't lie, I did enjoy the idea of having an invincible base that could stop any attack) can't see that supcom would actually be better off without them. If you couldnt ultra turtle your base so easily, what would you do? send out raiding parties, bomb enemy power plants, organize pincer attacks to overwhelm static defenses, etc. These things take more effort, but they are much more rewarding. Does anybody remember that coordinated assault was a thing in supcom? Did people use this function? I almost never did because I was almost always just hurling everything I had at the same spot trying to break through a huge pile of shields. Now in one of the unit packs for TA there were T2 walls that were very tall. They were pretty good for blocking artillery, but not perfect. They also blocked YOUR shots as well, because they were solid walls obviously. I'd like to see something like this. A countermeasure that has drawbacks. Maybe a directional shield, it would look like a vertical section of transparent shield, taller than a wall, but only units can pass through it, not projectiles, so it would only be built around sensitive areas of your base and not just an obvious defense building you'd be crazy NOT to build. That way if you resort to walling yourself off from enemy artillery, you can't fight back the same way. You've lost that battle, and you need to regain ground by counter attacking or vacating your base. This way artillery won't be OP, but it also wont be useless against turtels. I also love this quote... Why is the first warrior you thought of Michael Jordan lol?
If they truly created an invincible base then I would agree but they didn't, shields were hard but they went down, in fact if you were going to attack your enemy's base, your force would be the same if they didn't have shields, the only difference being you had to take his shields down first before attacking so the difference between what you would have to build if shields weren't in the game would be minimal. If you were truly on the offensive then you would have no real problems taking your enemy and his shields down anyway because he took a risk and built shields fast but couldn't afford the units or defence to stop you.
Yeah, I'm in a "for" shield camp. I know in SC, if you layered your shields right, they could effectively neutralize nukes. That's one thing I'd change. The damage of the nuke blast shouldn't be reduced (or is reduced by less than what the shield's HPs are) by the shields. Nukes are just that super powerful. I really liked the long, drawn out slug fests, which is why I always played against the AI. I do remember having some battles with the AI where it layered shields and made portions of its base very tough to crack, but that actually added a layer of fun for me. I would coordinate getting transports in to drop troops and move them in to take out the shield generators and then have the T3 artillery mop up. To someone else's comment on the "coordinated attack" feature... I tried using it a couple times but never worked properly. That's why I never bothered with it. But really, when I think of an SC game without shields, what comes to my mind is the feeling of "crap, gotta take them out before they can even build an artillery unit." That makes for a short game and is boring to me. If I wanted quick death-matches like that, I'd play an FPS. What's the point in the higher tier tech if you never get to use it? Artillery shells really hurt your base when they hit in SC. They were powerful. And the one problem I have with the suggestion of the "counter" being to attack it is that in many situations their artillery is deep inside their base, which makes getting to it near impossible unless you have an army large enough to annihilate their base... at which point you have to stop and consider why this army is still sitting at your base.... One thing I noticed in the code during my modding of FA that I don't recall ever seeing used was an anti-artillery style shield. It would only block shots that came from weapons marked as being indirect fire. Shields could also be made to take longer to recharge after failing and not being "assistable" in recharging.
