Shield alternative concept

What does ASF stand for? *stupid question*

Air Superiority Fighter.

Oh, so he wants to add two kind of fighters, alright.

Effectively, yes. But it doesn't have to be limited to ballistics. Such a system could be used to distrupt laser fire as well.

Yes, exactly. This also allows for heavy ordinance to not be completely nullified either, as the shells can still inflict damage. Since these aren't bubble shields, having one of these systems blow up an incoming shell should damage anything that's near the detonation point. You may not lose the unit that was the original target, but it might take out some defenses or other units.

While this may be true, wouldn't it be nice to also have alternative strategies available? I'm all for opening up as many reasonable defensive and offensive strategic paths as possible. A protective defensive structure seems reasonable to me.

The game is nowhere near its final balance point. Many components are still changing and are being tweaked. The experimentation is part of the fun! If the shields wreck the gameplay, then hey, it's still an alpha, they can just toss them out again.

This is also my thinking.

Yes, this is true. And an aggressive player could build these shields on the approach up to the enemies base, effectively neutralizing the incoming fire from the enemies point defenses during an attack. So even if that artillery is protected, there are still creative pathways towards countering it. That's all I'm shooting for: less chess, more go.

This is the classic way shields are handled. I hate that style, since I'd rather have half shields than no shields. Something that fails gracefully is essential in my mind.

If it sounds like it doesn't make sense, that's because it doesn't. I don't get it either. Of course, establishing the game in such specific X > Y > Z terms is just as silly, as the physics system makes such strict counters impossible. Units will excel wherever they excel, and you'll just have to deal with it.

There is a good reason to include some kind of stealth fighter/bomber. Stealth units are always more fun.

Oh, it does make sense. An interceptor is not a air superioty fighter. One intercepts bombers and stuff and tends to be fast with a long range and hard hitting weapon but can't stay around too long due to being taken out by the other rather quickly - air superioty fighters which are made to.. well, gain air superioty, to take out the enemies interceptors.

Would really prefer Shields to walls for a start and I like the concept that they draw on power, not enough power and your shields will fail along with your detection systems.

Overall I support the introduction of shields no matter how they work as I feel it would enhance the game and entice more Players to buy, it also as previously stated will oen up more avenues of Game Play and create more interesting games.

That's called a fighter bomber. Minus speed, plus firepower.

what about a directional shield. This could help to encourage flanking. The shield could also take a large amount of power to nerf it a little. With the 360 defense required it could help to counter a one way arty attack but not be to unstoppable. Perhaps a stacking nerf as well as in having 2 overlapping shields reduces the overlapped efficiency to 75 percent so still an improvement but by not as much and still a double the power cost.

If we want to nerf the shield system to prevent overlapping, merely set it so that the shield will ALWAYS shoot at a projectile incoming, even if another shield system has/is/just finished shooting at it so that one of the shots gets wasted. Instant solution to prevent stacking, as you'll get almost no benefit from overlapping them, just extra cost and a slightly wider shield.

This is similar to the solution that I had in mind. Since such a system must be capable of detecting incoming projectiles, it would be understandable that the more projectiles there are being blown up, the harder it would get for such a detection system to be able to detect anything through all the debris, smoke, etc. If we simulate this effect, one of the results would be that a heavy barrage would be far more likely to get through, even if you have 100 of these shield systems up and running where the fire is coming in. This introduces a rate of diminishing returns in terms of how many of these shields you pack into each unit area, which should help prevent extreme turtling. It would also encourage a spread of shields as opposed to stacking.

...Then what's the point of shields? So now you need 6 Catapults to crack your enemy instead of 1. I can do that. And once his projectile interceptor cannons blow up (due to Catapult Fire), he'll be all the more fucked.

I'm telling you, shields do nothing but delay the inevitable. I cannot think of any event where, in a game that I'm winning, I would ever have to build a shield. Raids? Okay, Turrets, some Walls and a few Fabbers for damage control. Some Bombers if the raids are mostly Scampers, Slammers and/or Stompers. Full brunt surprise attack? Okay, I Choose You, Standing Army! Standing Army used Pincer Attack; IT WAS SUPER EFFECTIVE! Forward base? Catapults loaded and firing. Naval force? Bombers on the horizon.

Okay, so I'm loosing the game and want to make a come-back. I do not build heavy defenses; any I do build are to tank damage for my standing army. I amass a small raid, find a weak spot and strike my enemy down like the filth he is. He has catapults? Okay, Go-Go-Gadget single T2 Bomber. LOL WHAT CATAPULT?

Because of the general knowledge available to new players (lack of a tutorial, lack of a meaty wiki, lack of training threads, lack of tool tips that tell you what things actually do), most games are very lopsided and involve one team of excessively good or at less decently competent players absolutely flooring a team of complete newbs. Those newbs then get disgruntled, put the game down, and the next batch roll in; repeat Ad Infinitum. And the newbs that do stick around are too busy getting their faces kicked in by players that think "HAR HAR WINNING IS PHUN!"

As a result, I think there is a massive chasm down the center of the community; on one side, we have the semi-competitive players and well-learned veterans, who are either in it to win it, or have just developed a natural resonance with RTS games and can curb-stomp any time of the day. Then we have players like Cola Colin who are both of these, but luckily they don't really care for pub stomps.

On the other hand, we have the newbs fresh off the Steam Store, people who haven played a single RTS before, and people who learn more through instruction than by experience or example. These are the people who are getting hammered from all sides by Catapults and getting Nuke Rushed or Botswarmed. And they tend to be the raccous majority, as if you ask any "pro", they will say Catapults are a good unit, but not in any way Overpowered. Same goes for Nukes. Tankblobs and Botswarms are WAAAAY more OP than indirect fire.

The ultimate solution to this will be implementing Elo or TruSkill or some other global ranking algorithm. That way players can play others of their roughly equal skill level, and we'll have less pub stomps involving butt-tons of catapults and Lobber spam. Also a tutorial, and a competitive play tutorial would be good for those up-and-coming in-it-to-win-it guys.

One could, quite literally, belittle every strategy this way. "So what, you need 8 Bombers to blow up X instead of 2. Big deal." The point is, the time it takes for that other player to build the extra Catapults may buy you enough time to get your forces to their base. If the player fails to account for his enemies strategy, then that's his problem -- not a problem that somehow invalidates shields. What you're describing is kind of a strange argument, as well. It seems as though you're arguing that if a player can fail badly with a particular strategy, then that strategy path shouldn't be introduced at all.

And what if a player literally relies on the delay that a shield introduces for his strategy? Then it sounds like shields would be right up that player's ally. You can't think of any event? What if you're being bombarded by long distance fire and those shields are enough to stop your base from getting hit? Then, with that relief, you can continue focusing on massing your forces instead of wasting resources rebuilding.

You just described the exact function of a shield. Their entire purpose is to absorb damage from the enemy while you dish out damage.

What you are failing to take into account is that other players don't necessarily play like you. You may be an offensive player, but other players aren't. Your strategic book isn't the only one in this game.

So in summation: wanting shields == noob? I wasn't making comments on any particular part of the game being overpowered. I am not trying to solve a balance problem as balance is really kind of moot right now. I am trying to solve what I see as a strategic bottleneck that weeds out my preferred style of play.
A play tutorial is only good for showing the player the controls etc of the game. It should really be up to that player to develop his or her own strategic balance, not up to them to learn the best "pro" strategy to replicate. We should be making certain that the game allows for fluid strategies that dynamically change throughout the game. What's interesting about playing a game where you effectively just have a handful of pre-baked strategies to select from?

So shields should delay you getting pummelled, but never ever prevent it outright.

Artillery should beat shields. Always. Even against infinite piles of shields.

But it shouldn't have to beat it instantly. Just eventually.

Right, exactly. The way I see this happening with artillery is that the shield range should be low enough that the shield is going to take some AOE damage with each large shell it intercepts. That way, with larger artillery, you'll lose chunks of your shields instead of losing chunks of your base. If you can't get more shields online fast enough, or if too many shells are coming in at once, then you'll start taking hits. This way, really no matter what, artillery is wearing down your shields. It's never stagnant.

The forum broke my post.

Since it is repetitive, you propose to break the repetition by not following that pattern.

Nuke, anti nuke.
Air, anti air.
artillery, no anti artillery.

I see no obvious balance flaw there.

Honestly, i say just either put in shields and make them balanced to wh

Overall balance opinion, is that counters should always exist in this game, but if you use
d nothing but counter units you would not have unit- per- unit power so you would fail, yet if you used the counter appropriately against an extreme one- unit- only enemy, it works as designed.ere it almost is not worth using them but marginally. Balance it in favor of artillery beating shields if anything.

Or, put in some other specifically anti kinetic defense. One that does what basically is artillery, that shoots down artillery shells, but has a small fraction the range of actual artillery for the same cost.

Shields are always a contentious topic. To understand why, you need to look at SupCom.

The problem in SupCom wasn't just that they could be layered, they defended against anything, or had a small energy usage, or any number of individual pros and cons. The issue was that all of these factors combined to create a situation whereby a shielded base was always better than an unshielded base.

Let me ask supcom veterans a question. How many times in Supcom or FA, did you start a new expansion base, and the very first thing you build is a shield. I would wager that this is not an uncommon scenario, as it gave you protected time to build your defenses and factories. There was literally no reason why you would ever not want to build a shield.

Thus, any of these shield suggestions (of which, i would hasten to add, there are now approximately 70 billion of them) need to answer this fundamental question - "Why would I not build this shield system". If the only answer is cost, then it's a poor idea, as cost becomes less of an issue as the game goes on. Furthermore, if the only balance lever is cost, then we have a hard to balance unit, as it runs into the issue of being too cheap and numerous, or too expensive and irrelevant. Although I believe that most potential ideas could be balanced in theory, things that reduce down to the cost balance lever tend to be the ideas that are very difficult to balance.

Overall, i believe that shields are balanceable in principle, but in practice, many of the ideas put forwards would be difficult to do. They offer counters to the artillery/missiles, but don't offer dynamic counters to the shield. I like to play a heavy-defense strategy as much as the next guy, but shields aren't something i feel is necessary now. I'd rather see a robust jamming, stealth, cloaking, and spoofing system. Uber have said that they would like to experiment with shields, but not for a long time. I think it's best to leave it at that.

And even then once FAF nerfed shields by reducing their stack-ability by about 50%, everyone complained because "omfg arty OP art nerf nerf shields need buff because arty OP tac missiles OP."

Mind you, I don't *have* a playstyle. I might lean towards slightly subversive as opposed to powerhouse, meaning I'll much prefer mass bots and planes over mass tanks and navy. I don't consider restricting yourself to specific units or specific uses of units to be healthy to a good strategy.

Also, noob != newb. Newb == new player, noob == ******* that can't be bothered to do anything but complain. And yes, I cannot think of literally any strategy where I could care to use a shield, unless we were playing Setons Clutch or Thermoplyae. Instead of wasting money on a shield to weather the attacks, I would buy two bombers and blow it up.

No. You are wrong. The point of an anti artillery defense is to say "don't shoot here". That does not prevent an artillery weapon from shooting everywhere else, which includes moons and even other planets. No other weapon in the PA arsenal can boast this ability, not even in theory.

PA already has base crackers. They're indistinguishable from planet crackers. Other base piercing options go to bombers, unit cannons, teleports and sattelites and transports. There's no need for artillery to get involved, not when it is the most boring option possible.

I'm sorry, but what the **** did that have to do with my post?