Force fields?

could also have a anti-shield specific unit which are designed to penetrate shields to take out any shield generators or a shield disruptor tank which De-stabilizes the shield bubble for as long as it can fire.... this adds some strategic tactical scenarios where specific units actually matter rather then blob spam of everything..... does mean you have to keep those units alive for as long as possible, perhaps even making those units a focal point of any attack or defense rather then the shields or turrets themselves

As ledarsi sort of touched on, you can also have an anti-shield tactical missile that fires out of the nuke launcher that targets and obliterates shields instantly.....

I'll add my 2 cents on shields and how they can be integrated. Just as a side not. I can also live without them.

Let me start by saying that shields aren't overpowered and don't let you be safe. I've played SupCom for a long time and shield give you no gurantee for survival. Also those Experimentals in SupCom could nearly instantly take down shields. I suppose that the biggest problem that people have with shields is that they can be layered to some extend what still doesn't make you safe but give you a big advantage against lower tier units.

Well you could counter this by making it's core exposed and vunerable to allow lower tier units to take it down or even by artillery. Secondly you could make it explode on death to damage surrounding buildings/units, depending on the strengh of the shield. The biggest shields could act like a mini nuke to show how much power is unleashed/has been used to build up such a shield.

I don't think that ideas are useless if you give them purpose on one side and risk on the other.

Let's look over the hedge for a second.

How do other games handle shields? Halo has personal shields that are just regenerating HP. Team Fortress has bubbleshields - to protect spawn. Crysis has shields in the form of an "armor mode" that can take a couple of hits before health is drained (it also has ~4x as much "shield" as health) but still has the hit markers. Warcraft 3 has characters with personal shields that act as (quite slow) regenerating health. Borderlands is a game where shields are indeed treated as health. Some characters there can dial them up to 11, get massive defence stats in, while others have a thin sliver of shield and focus on HP. The recent addition of the Psycho leads to a character that's virtually shieldles and uses HP and risk/reward tradeoffs. The latter is something you won't find an RTS, probably.

Even Starcraft -to my knowledge- has no bubbleshields: they feature shield walls that block damage and are temporary (but they're shields) and personal shields.

In fact, one of the most common forms of shielding IS regenerative health. And quite frankly, i think that's EXACTLY what we want. It has all of the benefits of allowing health regeneration, but none of the drawbacks (namely no wear on your army).

It also comes in many forms, ranging from Turtleshields that have a massive pool and slow regen, to rapid recharge shields that can't take much, but are back up quick as well.

It's why my "crusade" is against bubbleshields. Because they are bad for balance. They are horrible for balance. Adding a structure that can personal-shield nearby objects is bad too, because it's a slightly worse Bubbleshield.

If we want shields, then they should be integrated into a unit, that is balanced and designed for that shield.

There we go, a question that has some detail!

Shields do neither of those things alone, they do however give you the time you need to do them.

If your shields are protecting your artillery piece, then you'll be able to counter their artillery my simply firing back, which isn't possible without a shield as they get to shoot first, if they aim properly they can take out your artillery before it can fire. With a shield they are not able to do this.

Similarly, you can have your shield protecting your AA guns, the bombers now can't take them out in the first pass, allowing your AA to wipe them out at your leisure.

Alternatively you can use shields as a security blanket, giving you enough time, identify and destroy the threat to your base with mobile forces without incurring losses to your base.

Simply put they give you time, and time is a resource you will need to use appropriately but will inevitably be amazingly helpful.

I think i said this before but:

If you give your enemy the opportunity to build a Holkins in your backyard, that's your fault. If you do not have a bunch of scouts on a patrol run, that's your fault. scouting, keeping track of the enemy, building radar etc is all there for you to give you time to deal with something.

Adjacent objects is quite a bit different to nearby objects but I take your point.

Maybe it would be best, if every unit and building simply regenerated hp automatically, this would cost energy and could be switched off if preferred. Rather than having to patrol engineers which is a bit of a pain, as it doesn't always work properly. Engineers could still be used to repair as it would make the process faster.

I would be cool with only the commander having a proper shield, as he's such an important asset.

Scouts can be destroyed, if your opponent has a huge base close to yours, then having a radar won't tell you anything. Misdirection is a key tactic that is employed, i.e. attacks and harassment from multiple sides. You can't always spot threats before they become threatening, hence why sniping is possible. To say that shields aren't necessary for that reason is ignorant.

Of course scouts can be destroyed. But scouting and destroying a scout in time is a pretty important mechanic in just about any RTS.

Misdirection is something i see tons of people filing suggestions for (plenty of people want MORE options to misdirect enemies) so not everyone thinks that's bad.

Attacking from multiple sides means that yes, you have to pay more attention.

Or shields are not the only solution to your problem.

It seems to me like 2 things are going on in your game:

-you spawn too close to enemies (this was quite bad in Alpha).
-you play on planets that are too small.

Can be either, can be a combo, can be situational.

The thing is that you're advocating improved turtling when turtling is already pretty easy. Anti-air requires a bit more active defense measure and artillery is indeed a case of "whoever builds it first", but i've had games where i denied the enemy the Orbital stage by using a (T1)bomber run. All in all, it comes down to proper environment control.

This is just about the worst solution one can think of.

It sounds to me like the solutions are:

-more controlled starting conditions (placement has been improved massively already
-play on a bigger planet (remember: surface area goes squared to the radius, so 2x the radius is 4x the playground)
-employ a small reactive air force. this includes a few dozen scouts
-have a bomber team on standby to engage enemy forward bases
-build T2 radar and build a Holkins (or Catapult) to deal with enemies performing a base crawl.

If we want shields, then they should be integrated into a unit, that is balanced and designed for that shield. [/quote]

I wouldn't mind this either, having units that their only power is shields... Don't forget though that shields are in many shows and movies that work like bubbles, Star Trek for one, Star Wars: Clone Wars during the droid attack, Stargate ect... One of the most iconic Sci-Fi movies of our time which is probably what people are more leaning towards even had shields, DUNE. The only difference in dune is that it was more of a shield protecting wall rather then a blanket shield but there was never a real clear-cut shot of the shielding in the movie but it couldn't be attacked from above either, only when the shield wall was down, was then the air units of the harkonen were able to bomb the sh!t out of it.....

Many of them have bubbly personal shields. Personal should be read as "for a single unit" so even though the BC-304 Daedalus from Stargate has a bubbleshield, it still only works for that ship. The same for a Star Destroyer or the Enterprise or whatever. The tripedal attack droids (which are immensely awesome) have bubbly personal shields. So if they have to be bubbly, let them be bubbly of shape. Just make them work only for that unit.

I don't think they have to be the unit's ONLY strength. One could have an arty unit (think Siege tank from Starcraft) with a Turtleshield (massive charge, supremely low recharge) or an Assault Bot with a rapid recharge shield that makes it survive incidental fire but it blows up under slightly more fire.

I do kind of like the units not having their own personal shield though, makes the action that much more desbrate sometimes because you dont have units that can just sit there and tank a ton of stuff. The shield units would just act more of a buffer then anything and what i mean by their only power is the shield, probably should have been a bit more clearer with that, was that they cant fire or anything, the shield is their only ability.

shields are bad because they encourage you to build uber-conservative risk averse bases and games

Actually the shields on spaceships in Star Trek had expandable shields which could be expanded at will over other ships and objects. I think this was also true in stargate but i can't be certain.

And so all other forms of protection and reaction that could be in the game shouldn't? I believe I said earlier that multiple ways to resolve problems encountered on the battlefield is better than a single way. This hasn't become less true.

I never said it was bad, I identified it as a "problem" that shields solve, I don't think misdirection is bad, but you need to be able to answer it with an equally viable tactic.

Not usually possible.

This is exactly what harassment and raiding tactics are meant to do, distract you so that your attention wanders from where it would be most effective. The counter to this tactic isn't ignore the raiding, that's the worst possible strategy to employ.

Your making the assumption that my point was that shields are needed because bases are close, which isn't what I was saying. It was one of many problems that "can" occur. And once again having shields be the "only" solution would be as bad as simply not having them to counter the "problem" needing a solution.

You start by saying turtling is easy, then move on to prove otherwise. Turtling clearly isn't an effective strategy currently if you can enter a turtle's base and destroy their critical asset whenever you feel like it. And for the record, yes I believe turtling should be improved until it is as effective as an aggressive and expansive playstyle. This is called balancing.

(please remeber changing planet size and starting positions isn't a solution to encountering a problem in game, as you have to do that before the game starts assuming it is even possible)

or build a shield generator(s) / have inclusive shield generators
-along with your reactive element, squad of bombers / land army / artillery piece

Scouting alone isn't sufficient, you need to be able to react and absorb, not just react.

Regenerative Building and Unit HP isn't a bad idea, the developers themselves even mentioned it as a possibility when talking about how they were handling repairs and engineers patrolling. And I wasn't suggesting it as a way of dealing with "problems which shields are required to solve", but as another way of handling the necessity of shields, and they are just that necessary.

Oh no no no no.

Shields can come in many ways, shapes and forms. A Turtle shield is strong but regenerates slowly. That means it can be a good Tank (perhaps literally) and soak up a bit. Whether "turtle" means that it has 3x as much shield as it has health, or just 50% of it's health as shield, i don't know. That's what playtesting is for.

A rapid recharge shield can be as much as a health bar or as little as just 10% extra health.

You don't need (say a bot is 10HP) 1000 HP shields or anything for it to be a Turtle shield. A unit with a shield bar as big as it's HP bar would have a full 100% extra surviveability. 10% shield of rapid recharging would already make a world of difference.

So yea, shields don't have to be insane to be fun, or useful, or effective.

Before I go into detailed ramblings of my opinions I want to qualify my comments, in that I've been gaming for over two decades with reasonable experience in mainstream real time strategy and turn-based strategy games. I wish to cover a few other topics before covering shields specifically.

Complex strategy verses Rushing tactics:

The mechanics for some RTS games are optimal for rushing and out manoeuvring your opponents. Red Alert, Starcraft and many others were a good example of this. While a person could rush in TA, successfully I might add, TA did not feel like a rushing game. There was far more going on than just dumping down some ore processors and pumping out battlemasters enmass. In the same spirit, rushing is a possibility in TA,SC/FA however there are still a number of things that need to be managed. SupCom2 was certainly more "dumbed" down but hadn't fallen to RA levels of rushing.

If PA is being developed in the spirit of TA, I'm sorry but it's falling very short of that goal. PA, to me, right now is Red Alert with Total Annihilation units on spherical battlegrounds. PA is a rushing game and not a complex strategy game. Total Annihilation introduced me to and got me hooked on the idea of turtling. Forged Alliance solidified that position. Planetary Annihilation actively discourages turtling, thus discouraging me from playing. I pledged with the belief that I would play a far more in-depth interpretation of Total Annihilation, and I am currently disappointed with the results.

The Turtle:

There are a few ways to play as a turtle, and being a turtle is exceptionally challenging when playing against human opponents. Turtling is the skill of using your resources with the least amount of losses, forcing your opponent to expend a greater quantity of resources than you, but achieve less. If I haven't made it clear yet, as an isolationist turtle, PA has left me and those like me out in the cold. A good turtle can be near impossible to break or stop their slow advance to victory.

I truly enjoy a good old fashioned comp stomp with my friends, even if frequently the AI pushes our poo back in. You pretty much have to turtle when you're against six cheating AI.

However, my impression, and I hope that I am wrong, is that neutrino does not like the turtle style of play and wants to actively discourage it. No shields and no moho metal makers pretty much takes the shell off the turtle. My management style is best for slow controlled expansion, not rush expansion.

Unit Balancing:

Unit balancing has become a real pet peeve for me, especially how often it is thrown around. World of Tanks is a great example of the problem with balancing. The historically superior tanks have been balanced to a fraction of their capabilities to make it fair for everyone. So what ends up happening is the lowest common denominator complains until a tank is modified or in some cases removed. No effort is made to learn how to counter or exploit weaknesses, no, just post on the forum until the big mean too hard to beat tank is nerfed.

Unit Balancing as a concept is flawed when it comes to a game that pertains to combat. In real life combat and war, we use every resource and every bit of technology to gain the edge over our enemy. When Germany produced tanks that tore the Sherman's to pieces, the allies didn't cry foul and run to the forums. They stepped up their production to overwhelm the superior machines. They took frightening losses, but they won.

So if you're going to try and use unit balance as an argument against shields you might as well stop, because you don't actually understand how hard it is to be a successful turtle.

Resource Balancing:

This, to me is the only acceptable means of balancing. The level of protection and firepower should be proportional to manufacturing and operating costs of a unit or structure.

Shields:

It was acceptable in TA, that there were not shields and for a number of reasons. One being that TA was very advanced for its day and the careful turtle could establish a base that kept the enemy at bay indefinitely. When I played SC/FA for the first time I was devastated that there were no air construction units, but I welcomed the addition of shields because, frankly, they make sense.

The concept of using ionized gas as a form of shielding isn't new or science fiction. We do not yet have the technological prowess to commercially produce bubble shields, yet. The basics of making a shield can be found in a Tesla Coil. Curiously enough, what little misinformation I've read online about Tesla based shields suggests they would be a bubble shaped sphere equidistant to the top load of the emitter array.

So, in PA we are playing in a future war that uses energy driven nano-lathing technology and you're going to suggest to me they have not figured out how to design and build shields? Do you think that either side would not investigate the feasibility of offering blanket protection to their units and structures?

In closing:

I believe there is room for turtles, rushers and adapters. Shields won't take away from that, what they will do is give the turtle somewhere else to dump his resources and force the rushers to pick their targets and out think the turtle. The adapters will have no problems with or without shields. I could live without one or the other, but I need either shields or moho metal makers please.

You have a good and well-though out post.

There are two things i am wondering:

-what are your opinions on walls in PA (are they useful?)
-would you settle for a non-bubbly shield?

And with that I just asked steam for a refund on PA, I'll just go back to forged alliance and pretend this game never existed.

Until someone mods shields in.

Lol, that response.

I'm kidding, I really want them to keep making games so I'll support this one as well. But I don't think I'll like it nearly as much as supcom...

Game runs a bit slow too, but that's to be expected imo. Beta after all.

Well dude, its hard to see sarcasm through text.