Base Shields

The Mavor was the bestest thing ever. So satisfying to use.

Shields add something to the general feel of a base, as far as bases actually go apart from walls there is nothing to make your structures feel like they belong anyway except randomly placed structures in a frenzied state to get stuff starting to build as fast as you possibly can. Shields slow down this pace a little bit and absolutely does not promote bad gameplay, yes its not an all-and-all out brawl to the death and the one who is the fastest to the outter planets or asteroids win, no its not that high octane temp, but there is enough people that perhaps don't comment on this topic that much, that actually really love shields. Shields calm the pace down, and give you more time to react to people, if anyone ever played FA will know that the shields in that game never lasted long against AI, because the non stop nukes, the non stop bombardments would be absolutely relentless, you could never sit behind shields forever, the AEON had weapons that would completely disable the UEF experimental shields which eventually would absolutely break through.
Directional shields is a really good idea, but doesn't really work when you have walls which basically do that job already. I think its just a matter of balancing really then trying to re-define the entire way shield works in HP and cost-to-build as well as area-of-effect or perhaps just adding an up-grade ability to add shields to a wall section.

Aeon T3 rapid-artillery was OP.

Who knows, it's just an idea at this point.

The way I see them is that it would work like a big gun turret that you tell to point in a particular direction. Walls block pathing, but not necessarily fire. A shield could do the opposite, and could be re-oriented at your command.

What made [bubble] shields horrible in other games was that they could stack super efficiently. A lone shield was never ever a problem. Multiple shields protected every direction and protected each other. Take that away and we have to completely re-evaluate whether shields are good or bad for gameplay.

Actually I kind of read that wrong. I thought it was talking about a unit that made a shield. Like the para-shield.

You'd need a lot of power to use all those shields. A prime target for the enemy.

Dune shields went atomic when hit by lasers... not sure if that detail made it in to Lynch movie (something of a book purist I'm afraid).

Obviously you should have invested money in cloning yourselves so you wouldn't have this problem. I'm pretty sure that should have been a stretch goal.

I see no problem with this. ^_^

This discussion has been done over and over again.

And I stand firm, in my years of playing strategy games that shield structures are either one of two things, and that they are usually both:

1: Strong enough to prevent any damage getting through, thus making them completely overpowering in every situation as to require the blatant over use of their counter, or by simply countering them with even more weaponry.

2: Are easily broken through, and thus can be ignored as a waste of money.

Shields are the wrong answer to the supposed problem they fix, and are absolutely not needed.

I am absolute in my opinion of this, that the bubble shield can never be balanced, nor are they ever a solution to any problem.

The enemy would just go after your power. And if you try putting all of your power and stacked shields, you won't have room for anything else.

Agreed this would have to work and apply differently to supcom shields. I'm kind of liking the idea of shields built ontop of wall sections directionally... as mentioned by the Dune comment. A Defensive arc but really I dont know if that would really be better then what we already have with walls now. Personal shields just means everyones units last too long under fire. I think making them strong, but not too strong where units could hammer down a shield in a group easierly would help balance...

This is interesting, after realizing that I can build pointdefenses and arty that is pointing to a specific direction, I actually expected those units to have a limited slew ability.

There's a really obvious solution here:



Either
A) Do not allow shields to overlap at all.
or
B) Do not allow shields to cover shield generators.

One of the reasons why I think shields in other games are 'broken' is the fact that you can shoot through your own shields. Take that out and you end up with something interesting. Is it going to be fun? I have no idea but I think it would be worth trying out even if it is just a mod.

Lets be honest, crossing the streams saved NY...

but seriously, A & B are good suggestions

I dont agree, shields will just ruin the fun of Planetary Annihilation.. And i have seen this question allot.. answer was always that the devs dont want to implent it cuz it would take away where Planetary Annihilation stands for.

And I preffer not to owe a planet with blisters Lol...

Ok, don't build shields.

That's a very good idea one of the best ones I've seen yet. You could always enable a game option in the Lobby area to disable shields too for the people that don't want them. That way people who don't want shields don't have to deal with them in their games and vise-vesa for people who do like them, any competitive ladder games though don't have shields enabled.

Well as many ideas you will see.. it wont happen