Shield alternative concept

On an aside note: can someone explain to me how shield balance has changed between FAF, and 3599?

I haven't played FA in quite a while, so I'm out of date on the current meta.

In FAF, adjacent shields take 50% of the damage one shield takes.

So if you have one T3 shield surrounded by 4 T2 shields, and get hit by a shell that does 1000 damage, each T2 shield will take 500 damage.

The value might have been changed to 40% or 25%, a lot of people were complaining about shields being underpowered.

How is adjacent being measured?

Bubbles overlapping, one footprint being under the bubble of another, or literally two shield structures touching?

That sounds like a decent system. Damage [to the shield bubbles] scales roughly as fast as regen scales.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but shield topics already sound like one.

Anti kinetic weapon. A canon, that shoots artillery shells mid air, has reduced ground range, low damage, and a rate of fire slightly less than artillery so 1:1 every 3rd shell will pass the anti.

It is easier to implement, easier to balance, and isn't a general defends all thing.

The question asked about shields is, when wouldn't you build them. Answer to mine, is anytime you don't want to waste your time if you know your enemy don't artillery, or when it won't save you anyway because it won't stop abundant artillery.

If a shield is implemented, it should let normal attacks go through, air unit attacks go, not completely stop all attacks when it does stop one it lets another through, only mitigate damage no matter how many are stacked. Has anyone thought of shields that reduce but not stop damage, by "reducing the speed of the projectile"

I think that something is needed, but whatever it is, you should have able to somewhat fairly be able to kill things through it simple and straightforward. The person using it should not expect it every game to stop a snipe or a base from being shelled gone, they should have it happen on a regular basis in spite of having used a shield.

That's what this shield system would do - mitigate the damage by blocking some of the shots, but only some. Massed fire would still go through. Hell, you could send some Fireflies in first just to absorb its projectile charges before shooting it with something else. Creates something that causes you to think about how your doing your attack more, rather than drag select right click.

Seems like shields have pretty strong opposition against them, although this idea is still pretty cool.

I also had an idea of how shields could work (in the same way) - basically, just a rectangle that fires up a wave of energy whenever it detects a projectile. The wave is destroyed when it hits any projectile, and does not destroy any other projectiles that come through it for some time.

But, then again, a shield by any other name would still raise arguments about them.

So long as shields suck at actually defending against legitimate attacks I'm fine with them.

Hi to everyone, I'm new to this forum in which i signed up because I was really interested in PA. I am also a veteran of SupCom and once I saw that all the things that made that game unique in his genre are going to be removed in PA (like Experimentals or Shields) I couldn't be not disappointed.

To a question that someone posted, that was like "why wouldn't you place shields?" I am going to answer: because if I'm winning I don't want to waste time, if not I'm not going to waste something that may get destroyed in a matter of seconds? I could build an AA turret instead that gives me a bit of covering fire, don't you think?

Also in reply to mushroomars, I loved reading about your strategy that was like the Blitzkrieg of the Germans, but how someone else said this may be your strategy, but mine's different... I personally like having a strong base from where to start and follow my attacks while I don't have to worry about how my commander is doing. So a good defence first and then a strong attack, or even better if I have a friend! I care about the defence and he about the attacks! I loved seeing bubble shields in supcom (although they were a bit weak), because they helped to make the game last longer, or because i had some time to gather forces for an attack!
Now that I've been seeing so many new perspectives of shielding (like planetary shields or shield ships) you want to remove them? This is getting more disappointing...

But I trust the game developers and I know they'll be doing the right thing.

One last thing:

Yup, I'll take some steps away and then throw my shield at the claymore, Boom and the threat's away

Just a suggestion: a Shield Device which can only been build on metal spots.
You want Shields?
So you have to sacrifice precious metal -a shield spam would be unwise.
This Structure may have a foundation almost like the factories, so it would be stupid
to place it in a dense metal area -it would cover far too many metal spots.

^I like a sacrifice feel to it, except it would as far as logic make no sense that it would need to be on one to function properly.

How would you explain it needing metal to function?

I thought of a relative big structure, not like a small Point Defense. Maybe a facility which produces a Shield consisting of hovering drones (which can be destroyed through rapid fire) -that will require lots of metal.
The Point here is that a Player who wants Shields has to choose carefully where to build them
and has to keep his Economy/Unit Production in mind.
It also would be impossible to create a large Base entirely shielded.

The shield is made out of tiny bits of metal, not tiny bits of energy?

Posting this again cause my previous post with this idea disappeared mysteriously.

Shields should be a way to flexibly give extra "hp" to a building or 2. A shield generator with low durability that grant a small personal shield, that is easily taken down, to a selected building. Only one or 2 buildings at once. It would be manually selected to target a building and once a new target is chosen the shield would take time to "charge" on the target before it could absorb damage. I could draw a concept if anyone needs it to be clearer.

Just airing an idea to change shields to be weak enough to be impractical to cover a base with them while also making them useful as shields.

Toastybro, the issue with this idea is that it's inherently underpowered.

Why? Because it would require a metric ASSton of micro.

[The shield is made out of tiny bits of metal, not tiny bits of energy?]

The Shield may consist of small flying units similar to the Protoss Interceptors,
but unarmed -basically a swarm of mass-produced canonn fodder.

The main problem with defenses like this and regular shields is that you can spam them. Make lots of them behind your defenses and nothing will get through.
I think a non-stacking resistance boost would be better. Units and buildings in its range would take much less damage, but making lots of them wouldn't make a difference.
You could also upgrade them to provide a higher boost at the expense of consuming more power.

Okay, you missed what I wanted to say with that post... I wasn't clear and this is my fault...

- Shields are not anti-artillery how someone, artillery lover, said in some post before, but they are artillery-damage-absorbers. This means that shields take one, two or maybe three shots, go down and let pass one, two, three or maybe four shots, which eventually could take down a building, and the shield gets up again. The cycle repeates.

- For the last time... Shields do not make you become invulnerable, they only give you a chance to get back up after you've been confined with an army back to your planet and then shot at with artillery.

- Also, artillery hasn't been invented to kill your enemy, but only to weak him, and then kill him with an army!

- Stacking shields should be useless, because artillery has splash damage, and deals 100% in a little spot, but 50% in a big one

- Shields shouldn't have all-time-energy-consumption, this is bullsh**, they should have no energy draining when inactive, but when they get hit they make you lose X amount of damage. Think of it, this would open many doors to tactics never seen before, like to use artillery to empty your enemy's energy reserves, and this would add a point for the series "why wouldn't I build shields?"

- to balance this they should be bubble shields, big enough and you should be able to shut them down

- artillery lovers, (which I am proudly one, too) your big guns don't deal enough damage to break through the shields and destroy at least one building? Build more guns! One double shot shield gets down, and then you have eight shots free that hit the base directly.
(Plus you're draining his energy)

Sorry for my awful english, but I'm italian...
~evolve

@evolvexxx, this is how they worked in Supreme Commander, and it fundamentally changed the game for the worse. The problem is, shields like that need to have enough HP to block artillery. By doing so, they make smaller units useless. So in answer, the damage of smaller units gets increased. What that does is make everything fragile. Which means you now have to have shields whenever possible. If you ever lose your shields, or energy, you die. It really doesn't end up being fun.

You're right reaven, but basicly what the shields in SupCom did was to block any attack that came into them, and that was the mistake, I understood that you all want shields that make the gameplay not stagnant or are overpowered. You want action.
But I personally would like it better like a football match, the leading team can change many times, but the play is 90minutes long and this one-hour-and-half game is all fun to watch. When you take out some basic defences like the shields, the gameplay becomes what you don't want it to be, the first one who gets a bomber online wins! I hate this gametype, like pushing forward and keep it until the other one dies, without even letting him have a second chance.

It is never going to be stagnant, trust me, at least it could become a siege, but is a siege really stagnant and not fun? I personally don't think so (the siege of troja lasted for 10 years, and I don't think anyone got bored ).

You are right reaven, shields were to overpowered in SupCom because they could block any attack, while I am thinking of heavy shields that activate only against artillery although after (how I said) 2/3 shots they break down...
But I want some defence against artillery only because I'd hate to see the game go from "who has the best tactics wins" to "who builds artillery (or whatever) first wins". In SupCom they were overpowered, right? This is an alpha, it's time to change and calibrate things until they work perfectly.

Thanks for the attention
~evolve

But that's the issue, this just isn't true. A bomber can so easily be countered by many units and strategies.

The first who build a long range artillery wins was because that artillery was balanced with shields in mind. Thus it had to do so much damage that when there were no shields it was seriously op. Just look at TA, no shields there and if you build a Big Bertha (the most badass artillery in RTS history) it doesn't mean you win. It was powerful yes, but it was inaccurate, costly to build and shoot and easily blocked by mountains, walls etc.

Our argument is that without shields or shield-like features you can balance those units in such a way that they're not op and fun to use. That on the other hand shields and shield-like features forces balance changes to units that make the presence of shields or shield-likes necessary and usually decimate everything without their presence.

And thats what we argue is no fun.

(Btw.... I hate those new smilies. )