My Thoughts on Shields

>quoting Nietzsche

you are now my favorite

I'll do my best to answer each individually. I hope this helps lead into a more healthy debate about the role and validity of shields. Despite my admiration for everyones vigor and enthusiasm I've not enjoyed reading most of the discussion so far, so I genuinely appreciate the candor of your response and hope we can keep things this positive.

In my eyes these two lines are essentially the same thing. While "stabilize gameplay" is fairly ambiguous I think you are suggesting that the pace of combat should be a little slower and more controlled. Right now units feel like popcorn and a battle can be won lost before you can blink. I agree with this. As an immediate alternative I think ground units and most buildings should have at least 3 times the health and a slightly slower movement speed. You should have time to click on the alert before the battle is over, and if your attack is loosing you should have time to retreat, likewise, if your position is failing you should have time to reinforce.

This is a decision that favors tactical play over strategic because you have more control over the details of a battle rather than simply choosing when and where. I like tactical play and think we could use more of it, but I also acknowledge that the game pushes hard to be as strategic as possible, so I could understand if other players shoot down the idea. On the bright side there are already mods promising this exactly and I plan to make one myself.

This is fairly ambiguous again... I'm really not trying to be a douche about it, but for a meaningful debate to be possible we really need to be as specific as possible. I'm going to infer a meaning here, but please do correct me if I am reading it the wrong way.

By "cover up" I am pretty sure you mean "Improve my defenses" or "further entrench". In most cases we can do that simply by building more layers of walls or more defenses. Adding flak towers, catapults, umbrellas, and anti-nukes all go a long way to supplementing the common wall/laser/missile combos that make up most spot defenses.

The only thing we can't effectively defend against is an enemy Holkins build just out of range. No amount of extra defenses will shelter you from it and even if you have your own built they could build there's just 10 inches too far away for yours to fire upon... now the rest of your strategic location is vulnerable.

With this in mind I DO advocate some form of anti-artillery defense. To shoot down incoming shells and missiles is very realistic and we have weapons in today's military that excel at it. In other posts I have advocated giving radars a smaller secondary detection radius that can "track" artillery shells and tactical missiles. Once tracked any AA weapon should be able to intercept them.

Alternatively we could have a dedicated anti-ballistic defense, but I would rather not introduce another "anti-" unit to the game, I'm not a fan of the current nuke/anti-nuke dynamic.

I'm not sure that goal is a good one... walls and towers provide a similar defense against basic bots and tanks, but I don't think that the defender should ever be truly immune to attrition damage. At least walls need to be repaired during battle so there is a measurable cost to their use. If shields drained an amount of energy from your reserve directly proportional to the damage prevented (in addition to having running cost and limited health) it would at least be some cost, but I am still not comfortable with it.

If the defender had an effective defense against long range bombardment, such as what I suggested above it would force the attacker to make a more direct and meaningful attack. If that is already the case I don't think the defender should be able to ignore it.

There are lots of ways to deliver "more" options. Giving the attacker the unit cannon, orbital carriers, or heavy units would also add lots of options. My prefered choice here is an overhaul of the nuke/anti-nuke system that makes it much easier to intercept nukes with several different very affordable structures and units, but the nukes themselves should be much cheaper. Nukes would be purely situational weapons, but would see much broader use in defense, if you can destroy the enemies mobile anti-nuke you have an excellent opportunity to use your cheap nukes. "More strategies" can be run in many directions.

We're assuming you've already packed as many defenses as you can into this area... A small group of patrolling combat fabbers has a dramatic effect on the life expectancy of your defenses. Also, supplementing your defense with a patrol of skirmishing disposable units (t1 bots) draws a lot of fire off your defensive line allowing them to live longer this inflicting more damage, while also delivering some damage themselves.

I feel like in the game today defense of a base is pretty well balanced, but defense of a whole planet is blatantly overpowered. I really do worry that allowing the defender to bunker down even harder than he can right now will lead to some obscenely hard to crack planets. Perhaps when asteroid belts and the unit cannon are added the situation will change, but until it does I have to stand by my feeling that we need new ways to attack much more badly than we need new ways to defend.

Rather than a blanket solution I really think the "cheesy" tactics should be identified and nullified individually. An example being the SXX insta-snipe. Delaying the SXX for a few moments when it first comes out of interplanetary travel would go a long way toward giving the umbrella time to do it's job and would shut down at least one cheap kill.

Most cheese tactics involve killing the commander in some obvious but hard to counter way. Massed aircraft used to be a quick kill but flak guns shut that down pretty hard. Stacking nuke drops until the anti-nuke is overwhelmed is similar. I've seen Brian mention Commander Stealth several times, and it would help, but I think we should have the option to build a "command bunker" where we can stuff our commander for a huge HP boost, but we would loose his sweet fabbing assistance and he would be unable to shoot back if cornered.

That's totally fair, and I appreciate the candor. My feeling is similar, that shields could be added and might offer some good, but that they really are not needed. I do have serious concerns about unintended side effects however. Planet vs Planet is practically forcing a superweapon stand off with todays balance, and any shift in balance that favors the defender will make it even worse.

I would never deny you the right to disagree, it's ungentlemanly. I sincerely hope this helps push the debate in a more healthy direction.

Also, now that we can finally run some server side mods I will be starting up my own balance mod in the near future so any discussion here will have a lot of value to my future pursuits.

this is my layer shield in a nut shell. but it can stack up shots up to 6 on the advanced shield

point defense shield

looks cool, is not a traditional bubble shield and has many 'nobs and dials' to play around with mechanic and balance wise.


I also really support the idea of making radar coverage interact with gameplay mechanics and units more.

well we had one but it devolved into shitflinging and got closed. we scattered as a result for a bit and now we have this thread. if you dont want to talk shields you dont have to.

so far vanguards haven't been very constructive at all in any of the threads and have actually contributed to a lower standard of discussion. we have elevated the argument greatly in this thread please do not contribute to harming that progress.

thank you.

I never liked that unit. a special 'anti shield' unit with a bonus against shield tacked on to it's attack is a very lazy solution to over powered shields.

I prefer to make counter play based on unit mechanics (layer shields being countered by high rate of fire or multiple projectiles) rather than an arbitrary anti shield unit.

the interplay of mechanical dynamics as a primary balance tool is 1000% more interesting and strategically deep than arbitrary statistical balancing (starcraft damage bonuses)

Report away. I hope you're ready to report @tatsujb - who I was talking to there, not you - for posting the same thing.

1. Walls could theoretically be built in the orbital layer. Above the orbital layer. Below the orbital layer.
2. Hitboxes can be modified.
3. Area can be modified.

Remember, as I said at the beginning of all this, this debate is dependent on the notion that the existing Wall mechanic can be expanded.

I said it at least twice, for the record.

Walls cannot function like a dome (again, unless you made one like that). That means it has limitations. You want to have Shields . . . . because it doesn't have those limitations (in exchange for "other weaknesses" which are entirely economically-dependent)?

Technically another weakness is enemy units can run straight through it, and that there is a single place to attack as apposed to multiple walls to attack.

Well, you can run around a wall too....so yeah.

But can you run straight through it?

again I won't address the sensible matters I think it just makes matters worse, if you look I did post a message about me having been misunderstood and that there was no harm intended and that i was a subject as well in that sentence. I also went and made another post saying i'd edited it and asking if it was fixed.

You could go look at what it's like now, I've feel I've removed all possibility to interpret as aggression.

let's drop it, I like this thread, I want to keep the debate constructive.

Walls block off units .... shields don't.

here's a video i made a while back that tested how the supcom commander fared agaisnt t1 units and what kind of a push t1 could make vs shield and shield + walls.

the second part is what interests you. You'll see that wall's are really the basic to shield's specialized. = the shields are very good versus a certain thing, but walls are much better at a more general task, however both together are extremely complementary:
20:50 is where it gets interesting

also full screen and HD otherwise it's soup.

(also yay @igncom1 like # buddies! )

Economically dependent defense is exactly what the game needs though, i case you haven't noticed there are precisely zero sinks for any resource except more units, which is arguably what the anti-camp wants but which ultimately affects frame rate (for now), secondly consider that even though it shields or an alternative (defensive barrage, missiles etc..) might consume energy (or energy and metal) as their primary draw-back (though units passing through them and thus ignoring their defense is a big one too don't you think?) a turtling player (ie the pa bogeyman) will still be significantly weaker in all but planet-wide dominance scenarios and in that scenario, i will take a leaf out of the anti-shield camp and say its your fault you should have scouted more, etc... and stopped it...

All things considered I won't cry if shields don't ever emerge, nor will I if they do so I just don't get the hyperbole.

I have been asking for energy dependant defences for ages.

Yeah giving units a flat HP buff would resolve my problems there. However giving units more HP would mean that quickstrikes on unproteced areas would also not be possible anymore. I am not sure if this is actually a tradeoff or if it improves gameplay.

I am really loking forward to what the modding scene is cooking up for this game. I have seen some very promising ideas thrown around already. However I am unconvinced that a mod could replace an actual vanilla implementation. Reason being that a modder can just get up and leave any time he feels like it. He has no real comitment other than to himself to finish his work, and once he is frustrated by his work he may decide that his mod is just not worth the trouble. I have seen this happen to often to simply say that it does not happen. And I am sad every time a mod loses support. A thing that with an implementation by uber would most likely not happen.

No problem. I was not really making clear what I wanted to say, sorry for not beeing accurate enough. You did however get exactly what I was trying to say so I guess its all good.

I'm really unsure about things shooting down incoming artillery / rockets. On one hand that would solve most of my problems I have with the current gameplay, on the other hand there is no chance of them ever failing. A set amount of turrets will always shoot down a set amount of incoming shots.

I feel that with shields there are more chances for artillery to still deal damage, as shields will only deterr shots for a set amount of time and not run on 100 % efficency no matter the circumstance.

Well if shields are balanced the way I would like them to be they wont stop you from dealing attrition damage. You could still use shellers or GIL-Es to outrange the defenses and thus shoot down the shields of the defender long before the actual battle starts. The defender would only have a few seconds to react to the attack.

I have heard this multiple times now and I am unsure If I get wat you are trying to say, or if we are thinking of different shield strengths.

If you have 1 shield and 1 artillery shooting that shield, the shield will eventually break. Meaning that you ignoring incoming shots would lead to your demise. At least that would be my vision for shields

Now if you give turrets the chance to shoot down incoming projectiles you could actually just sit there indefinetly and watch shot after shot being destroyed by your countermeasures.

Of course you are right there. Its only that me and those advocating shields feel that with the introduction of shields we get the most desired strategies. But if you prefere different strategies you prefere a different kind of solution / unit. There is nothing wrong with that, we just have different outsets on what we want.

Yes, until that one lucky artillery hits dead on in the center of your combat fabber patrol and your defenses go down before you can react. Or if your combat fabbers are held up repairng a single pice of wall all the while turrets are smashed to pieces around them.

In my opinion combat fabbers do kinda sorta work but not reliable enough for my tastes.

Yeah shooting down those tactics should be top priority for balance. And once they are no more shields wont have to counter them anymore.

I dont know if a commander bunker would be the way to go honestly. It would certainly paint a huge target on one particular structure, instead of having to target an area and being able to move around in it.

Yeah interplanetary warefare is a huge mess right now. But I think that shields would help you create a beachhead just as well as protecting the planet itself, so to some extend both parties should have an easier job at doing their job.

I would like to take the time to thank you for responding in such a constructive demanor. I have shortend some of your points in order to increase readability, I hope thats ok.

Tatsujb has since edited his post and apologiezed twice about his words. He was simply not expressing himself accuratly enough since english is not his main language. I see no reason to report him other than that he was not making himself clear enough.

Seeing that you seem to take pride in being reported and refuse to edit your post, or even apologize I have no other choice then to actually report you. I had hoped that you would come around and join us in our debate but sadly that does not seem to be the case. I will now stop interacting with you entierly as I do not see any point in doing so anymore.

Once again I want this thread as clean as possible and I hope everyone else as well as me will try their best to keep the debate going as good as its going right now. I can see some really promising points popping up, both pro and contra shields and I would not like to have this ruined by some ill advised individuals, whoever they may be.

Point Defense Shields.

I would actually prefer that even large artillery bombardment could be 'ignored' if you have sufficient coverage to shoot down all their shots. the downside of this is if they manage to get any units in range of your shields they will go down very quickly. large amount of artillery are still a threat that needs a strike team to kill as if you lose shields you will be in big trouble.

It puts artillery into more of a unit support role and forces your enemy to build point defense shields (energy drain) to stop them from destroying your base. the more artillery you build (metal investment over time) the more your opponent needs to build shields (smaller metal investment but constant energy drain). I agree that winning by building a big map crossing artillery battery in your base is stupid. artillery should need friendlies near the target area to be effective.

put another way artillery vs shields become a way of exchanging your metal in the mid/short term to put pressure on your opponents energy production over the long term.

Why cant shields be layer based where each layer dissipates after a hit.. regardless of damage..

Regular walls are tied to mass and just absorb damage

"Advanced walls" can have multiple layers that each dissipate after a hit of any i.intensity
Make the shield a non buble but rather directional on construction..

want to protect against artillery\air.. fine you get 5 layers up.. but only one layer everywhere else.. meaning a shield unit which is a not covering all sides at once... meaning... you must make TACTICAL DECISION BASED ON INTEL


Mass based walls have nich for protecting against high quantities of shots

Energy based advanced walls are layer based and each layer dissipates after a hit regardless of hit strength. But fail at high shot volumes...

Tell me how that doesnt add depth to walls in general.. base deffence that can counter and be easily countered provided you have INTEL...

I actually really dig the "layer shield" that can absorb any 5 (or other arbitrary number) shots per X time. It's ideal for protecting against "lazy" artillery and laser sats while offering no defense against an actual assault. Functionally it's nearly identical to a point defense weapon with a limited clip size. Infact, I like the idea so much that several years ago I added a shield that did exactly this to my mod for Zero Hour. Mine had a clip size around 100, but that still got drained pretty quick by a large attack.

The caveat here is that for these shields to remain balanced any overlapping shields will have to share depletions. Stack 2 shields and both will collapse at the same time. Otherwise the players will layer them to abuse the mechanic.

Now, while this is an implementation for shields that I like a lot, I still stand by the premise that there are non-shield alternatives to every combat role that a shield could fill.

The real drive behind my posts has been to open up perspectives in both camps. If the anti-shield camp can acknowledge there are legitimate roles for shields to fill I consider that a win, and like wise, if the pro-shield camp can acknowledge there are other ways to fill those same roles I consider that a win.

I want to keep discussing these, but I have company tonight. I'll reply again in the morning.

You sir are a gentleman of debate.


I agree on the stacking that the regeneration could potentially reach silly levels if balanced incorrectly. the solution in my view is to make the shield radius fairly small. (In my layer shield posts I described ranges)

if you get the numbers right you can make it a physical impossibility to reach critical mass layer regenerating in one area. that is why i kept the arbitrary 'hit pool' number in the <10 range. conversely, you could also make the shields more expensive with a larger hit pool if the regeneration becomes problematic in testing.

could also do the combining of connected shields into a single pool with single layer generation for the whole pool. I am not as much of a fan due to the heavy diminishing returns of this but it is a workable possibility.

So, you vouch for the idea, that any thread that gets closed, can be remade a short time later if you feel like it.

Tsk, I don't get it, I am being constructive about it. But when I said "no shields" you quote just that clip, then call me a negative nancy and that "saying no isn't constructive". So let me get this straight, any "yes" answer is constructive, any "no" answer isn't. I wish that was how opinions worked.

Generally, nobody wanted "armor values" in the game either, but not having them exposed to unit jsons doesn't allow half of total conversion mods. So we technically needed those, just not actually in the game, nobody needs ants to do less damage to dox and more damage to buildings and dox to do more damage to ants and less damage to buildings and such. That stuff was good for C&C and even the fps Renegade, but not here. The same thing with shields, those were signature to another game but have their downsides. We need them in the engine, not in the game.