Still that has Nothing to Do with wysiwyg. In fact, by not making it repairable, you wouldn't see the beam, which is by definition wysiwyg. It's inconsequent behavior at most, I can agree on that, nothing that would be game breaking at all. In fact if one tries to repair and can see that it doesn't work because there is no beam, one can easily come intuitively to the conclusion that it can't be repaired.
If you read the sources, there is nothing in there insisting shields will not ever be in the game. They were not at release, and that is all we know at this time. They may or may not make it into the game at a later point, in one form or another. So no, this alone is no reason to close the thread. That said, here's a blanket no thanks to shields from me. Again.
And how much will this mod cost, (yes that's right mods won't be free, stupid, we know) and how well will it work, how do you find out before forking over $300. The whole "don't worry it can be modded" argument I used to understand but as soon apply a cost to mods it eat's itself like a deranged pac man. Shields in the vanilla or expansion please.
Most mods are still going to be free, we already have an active modding community without money involved
Doubt it, at least they won't be included in the in-game marketplace and will be therefore so lacking with players they might as well not exist at all. And probably be naff anyway, otherwise why wouldnt they cost X bagillion dollars.
The in game marketplace won't only contain paid for mods, or at least there's been no indication that it'd be strictly paid for mod, we'll need to wait for an official word. My guess is that there will be a list of all mods, then tags to filter paid for mods, maybe even donationware mods. My other guess is that this will be moderated by either community members or the devs themselves, as it'd be silly to see a worthless mod for 500$.
Let's go back on track here. This thread was about: Shields that have a passive regeneration (or one fueled by extra power cost only) would be inbalanced, as they convert Energy to HP (wich works against the base rule of the game that Metal = HP). A shield that would have to be "healed" using metal would not have that one issue. A shield that could only heal themself (not also be healed by Fabbers and combat fabbers) could avoid somebody just investing too much resources to crack them. This thread is not about: Wheter shields can be modded in. What price (if any) mod in the future will have. And if shields are a good idea to begin with (totally different question). That you cannot heal shields would be as WYSIWYG as combat fabbers not being able to assit with building (except the stuff they can build themself) despite being Fabbers (like the normal Fabbers). Or that non-orbital fabbers cannot aid orbital ones. And so far I have heard no arguments against those "arbitrary rules" imposed on combat fabbers/ground fabbers (afaik it was added late when they were already around).
Combat fabbers can only assist what they themselves can build. As an "arbitrary" rule, it is acceptable.
It is an arbitrary rule implemented for the sake of game balance (they used to be able to help anything if I heard right). I am personally very fine with it, as it clearly defines ComFab roles as "healers". The same way the "shield emitters can only be healed by thier factory" would be a arbitrary rule implemented for the sake of game balance. That is why I made the comparision: Because it is the same concept we already have (limited ability to heal/assist building). This thread was about finding out if making shields be healed by metal (as opposed to self-healing/percentile power bar) had any issues that I overlooked. It does not appear to be so. Another idea to limit/balance them: What if shields persistently cost metal to be in use? This could be in addition or instead of the "healed by metal" thing and would be in addition the any energy cost. It could be handwaved as "the shield has to constantly repair the emitters". Lack of metal to feed it's passive cost could limit the maximum amount of shield strenght (only 1 of 10 metal avalible = only 10% Shield HP). Not sure where to put shields in the whole economic priority queue (before or after fabbers?), but it could still be a solution for the "Energy equal HP = not so ideal" thing.
actualy they said that they didn't wanted a shield like the one in SupCom... but if you think the SupCom shield is the only viable shield.
*Reasonable people present logical and factual information destroying OP's point* *OP replies with "But that doesn't fit with how I think reality works! You must be wrong."* *Conclusion: OP just wants shields because shields.*
Combat fabbers not being able to assist most things in the game, violates WYSIWYG so heavily I think uber should be jailed and the key thrown away.
Rename them to "Repair Bots" and new people should be wondering about them being able to build at all. Sooner or later people will propably come discussing if the build ability should be totally taken out of the "Repair Bots". WYSIWYG in this case is heavily dependant on how you name stuff. Personally I think this can be solved via a few ability 'tags'. SupCom had them already. "Limited Build Options" or "defensive structures only" would clear up any confusion about what the Def-Fabber can make. "Cannot be repaired by fabbers" or "only self repair" vaporise any "not WYSIWYG" arguments that could be brought up in a thousand years for my idea. But what about the whole idea of just making shields sustained via metal cost? Nobody having any idea on those?
Considering the facts that rusher lobby is almost all that remains from community by now, server-side unit modding API being still unavailable, and lack of SupCom-inspired mods' observable presence, I can say that it is highly unlikely that we will have something like shields, massfabs or experimentals for free. The best option now is to gather all SupCom guys who's left over here, and hire some skilled modders to make SupCom-oriented gameplay conversion mod by crowdfunding, but neither me nor pals from my LAN party don't have enough media resource to actually pull out the trick.
What are you smoking? All of that is very easy to get modding, and adding new units is actually quite easy. Crowd sourcing for mods, tsk tsk tsk, hilarious.