On defensive structures, and shields

If Devs decide to go in a way of personal shields then I think it should be kept simple - each unit got it's own shield poll which is a percent-based value of unit health. Each shield generator can provide only certain amount of maximum shield points and it takes time to regenerate them (so if unit goes out of range and comes back in range - still for few seconds remains unprotected and then slowly regains it's shield power).
So "stacking" of shield generators would cause not the increase of protection, but the amount of units that may be protected. Also the larger units take more shield points from generator then the smaller (in early game one generator can provide shield for stack of units, in late game barely few) - as the amount of shield depends on HP.
Shield generators should also have an option to set priorities - Buildings, Large units, Small units - in terms of where they should "pump" the shield points.
Oh, and in this scenario shield generators shouldn't take any power from resources as this would lead to some insane jumping in power consumption each time someone decides to make a carpet bombing, what'd be really annoying and counter-productive (ppl would just play always having large energy overhead - just to support enemy attacks).

Wait.. If there are no shields, how do I defend my base from artillery? :|

Perhaps. But I think the basic premise has enough merit to warrant further discussion.

So... perhaps we look for a way to force the issue regarding building a single merged field.

Lets say you need to build multiple 'pylons', rather than a single building, to get a shield up.
A shield will form between pylons a reasonable distance apart, but it doesn't extend all that far past the pylon itself, this should make them more vulnerable.
Total shield strength is dictated by pylon density, more pylons equals more protection.
But to curb 'shield pylon spam', resulting in huge high-power shield, you could try a couple of things; hard upper limits, diminishing returns, large building footprint, or a combination thereof.

So here's an example of the above on a hex-grid (easier to make things round).
In this one I ran with pylons (dark blue) within a 4-tile radius of each other link up.
Shields (light blue) extend in a one tile radius around linked pylons.

First pylon down and nothing much happens


Another within 4-tiles and they come to life


Add a third within range of the first, but not the second, and you get a L-shaped bubble


Starting a separate shield in the bottom left...


...to perhaps cover a fire base but it's too far out link with the main one.


Best fill in that L as the base expands.


Then beef it up a bit.

I really like this idea

Or perhaps something like that: Each pylon can connect to 3 others, no more. Any additional pylons (shield generators) would stay inactive until there's a free "slot" where they can connect. If one generator gets destroyed - an other station may start establishing connection, but this should take a while (30 sec?) - let's say that in this time you got an animation of very slowly rotating dishes and devices on shield generator, when they are adjusted a beam of energy goes from one generator to another, which later slowly raises up and creates a new shield bobble.

This way only advantage from shields stacking would be that you don't need to rebuild stations of one gets destroyed. No bonuses to the power of shield, and no way to create walls of overlapping shields.

Also in this scenario destroying a single shield wouldn't force entire system down - which I really like.

Great idea ooshr32

how about... shields can take a certain amount of damage before the generator fails- which can be determined at a later date- which damage the generator itself, which would have a huge amount of life b/c of that. Then, it'd tell you to shut down the shield at 10% 'life', because when the generator/containment fails... It'd blow up like a nuke

So you could 'override' the shield to keep it online, but destroying it when active would cause it to go nuclear- when inactive, doesn't do that.

Wouldn't that be cool? Imagine, after a long artillery shelling, maybe shooting a nuke at the shield- it finally buckles, and you see the plasma/whatever it is collapsing down to the earth, in a broken glint- followed by a huge, massive explosion in the enemy base.

Cheers.

Something like that could work too, although I'm a little wary of putting a form of redundancy in, as it could result in issues similar to the heavily overlapped and layered SC shield.

I should add in my example above, the big shield is the stronger of the two, since it has a higher ratio of pylons to area covered.

First of all i want to comment, if you think it's "micromanagement" to place your shields in a workable manner... then you're not a player who will be using shields. now that that's outa the way

I really like the pylon idea, but I do NOT like the 3 generator limit. These planets are gonna be very small to super f-n massively huge, any hard set limit is NOT gonna scale AT ALL. Rather make each pylon take a significant amount of energy to run. I also like shields as buffs rather than barriers. Shields could give a +50% armor to units under them, and will be able to power every unit under said shield, but it's only 50% armor so it's not like you'll have this ever ending turtling effect, just alot beefier units and buildings directly underneath the shields. Gives you more time to respond to incoming artillery/strikes, can't hold our indefinately.

in anno 2070, if you build shield near other shield, efficiency of them get down. If you build 2 shields rly close they wil work with 75% power. 3 shields reduce to 50%. And if you build shields far, but they are still conected, power will be reduced to 95%. The closer they are, the less well they working

Oh, I think you misunderstood a little bit what I had in mind - the redundancy would be limited to a degree where you won't be using resources to the construction.
If destroyed a start-up time of next pylon would be nearly as long as building the new one, giving plenty of time for enemy to breach in and destroy not only generator itself, but also everything around.


So there wouldn't be any overlapping generators causing layered shields at all (soap-bubbling comes in, only destruction of one generator won't kill all the shields in base, instead it'll wipe the shield from a local area allowing free combat).

At any point shield total power would be equal to power of a single generator. All damage goes towards decreasing energy of nearest generator - when it collapses: local part of shield goes down. If there is any redundant generator around - shield will try to re-adjust and build up a new connection with it expanding shield back in the area, although it'll be such a long process that in real combat it'll happen very rarely.

More shields you build == more future-proof your base is. But there are no other advantages in it. You won't get more powerful shield. You won't get overlapping shields. You won't get shields that last infinity cause you can instantly switch from one to another.

I like this idea too, maybe combine this and pylons? Generator has to be "connected" to pylon lines, and when the shields pop, maybe have it actually damage the generator? the overload of having shields compromised would cause the generator to take physical damage and be off-lined untill fully restored (like the generators in Tribes, they don't go away but they need to be fixed back to 100% before turning back on) have the generator auto-rebuild at a slow pace, but can be quickened by techs (but have tech help limited so it cannot be rebuilt past a certain speed) thoughts?

(Images removed) Kudos ooshr32, this is brilliant.

I don't have a problem with anything. Only things I would add/emphasize are:
- Small size
- Very low health (unstable due to energy concentrations)
- Very high upkeep
- Moderate build cost
- Minimum range limit
- Diminishing returns
- Very slow regeneration after shield is destroyed

In regards to how the shield is damaged, I think it should stay like we had it in SupCom. Each shield has its own area of coverage.

OR

Shields share strength, but all fail when it is depleted. The entire array will have a large health pool, but the diminishing returns for each additional pylon and upkeep cost per pylon would prevent too many from being linked together. Also, when the health pool is depleted, the entire shield would fail.

~

There would need to be some visual effect when placing pylons to show ranges and coverage.

~

@Generator idea

I think this will complicate the use of shields too much. I like the idea, but not sure if it fits.

Instead of generators, what if, when the shield is broken, it destabilizes the pylon and causes damage. If the pylon is destroyed from this, it produces a burst of power which damages surrounding things. Also, what if the failure of one shield would damage surrounding shields, since the surrounding shields would suddenly need to increase their coverage to make up for the loss of one of the shields.

I think this is the the real question that needs to be answered because this is what shields main function was in supcom.

Personally I like the idea of being able to build buildings underground. This way you can protect important base structures without protecting your base defenses and enemy armies would have no trouble hitting these buildings because they are close enough to not shoot over them (this only works for TA's artillery which has a far lower attack angle than supcoms)

Also I liked how shields worked in supcom and wouldn't mind if they remained unchanged, they never seemed too good in my opinion.

I'm glad the pylons as a concept have been well received.

However, they were born out a desire to produce a single compound-shield mechanic, once the shield array is overwhelmed it all goes down.
Destroying a pylon and you reduce the coverage area. Get the right one and it could be quite considerable.

Going from this:


To this:


So some forethought about your placement and designing a robust would clearly play a part.

Let me throw out a different perspective on this. While I personally thought that shields in SC worked pretty well I'll set that aside for the moment. There are some decent arguments against them. What I don't think is being taken into account is scale. In a game with a single map and a single vector of attack. I.E. from within that planets atmosphere shields can cause stalemates. Then you end up with a 40 minute artillery war decided by whomever could pump support commanders with their resource augmentation faster.

In PA we have a whole different ballgame. I submit that not only would shields not be a serious problem in PA they are essential. The idea of the game is managing numerous bases on different planets (maps). At any given time in say a 4 player game you could have 2 bases under concerted attack by 2 different players while trying to build a 3rd. If there is no way to at least initially protect assets so you have time to get to the points under attack then it makes any sort of defensive strategy almost useless. I submit that shields are difficult to build initially but I think your trying to nerf them far too much.

The idea is this. Shields are used to defend established bases. I imagine this game will have numerous cases of orbital assaults made unnecessary by one side having occupied a planet without any resistance while their opponent occupied a different one. In this case as in actual warfare the defender with the longer time on the map should not be at a disadvantage. If you;er going to have one player manage several separate bases all of whom could come under attack at any time you need a reasonable way to defend them from harm while your not there.

I don't think the super defense base of SC is going to be feasible anyway. To win your going to have to expand and take resources from other planets. And if someone wants to claim one large planet for themselves and turtle it while making solar system scale artillery so be it. Their opponent will be able to expand and overwhelm them with forces.

I suppose my point is that shields for established bases are going to be vital to this game being workable. Sneak attacks are fine, and so is trying to overwhelm one players combat micro abilities with multiple fronts. But that player needs to be able to have enough time to at least jump to where he is being attacked before he loses half of a base.

I like the idea of shields.

In TA there was no shields, sorry they didn't exist. If you wanted to protect something from artillery you simply put the tier 3 wall around it. Due the low angle the Big Bertha or core equal had, it made sense. Course these walls would be destroyed after a few hits.

In Supcom1/FA- shield were introduced and had various tiers, for size and strength. They required energy to operate, no energy no shield.

In Supcom2- Shields were only of one tier had to be researched in order to build, unless your talking about a factory shield. Did not require Energy, and had strength and radius to be rather ineffective.

Result. Shields or defensive structure were not entirely effective. SupCom 1/Fa had the best system in place.

Improvements- User defined shields. Have the ability to define how much energy a shield will consume per second, and make it scale-able. Ie a small radius weak shield would not require much energy to run. On the other hand a Large shield, which had high damage absorption would be expensive consuming large amounts of energy. This would allow you to have large coverage shields with small absorption for damage for min protection, or large shields with high damage protection but be massively expensive to operate. In the formula for these shields you can make them exponentially expensive for the radius, and damage absorption. Ie when you go to place your shield generator, you place then select radius. Once the shield is built you can manually select the structure and define both the radius and strength.


Defensive structures- Walls.

I want to be able to build walls. Like in TA, walls served a purpose to control enemy movements, and fortify defensive structures. Depending on how many tiers of units this game has I would like to see that many tiers of walls. Should be relatively cheap to make, and take high amounts of damage.

Defensive structures
-Towers. In TA you had light laser point defense, and heavy laser point defense for relatively short range. Then you had guardians and core eq/ missile towers for long range defense. In other words you always had a way to play defensively. Unlike in Supreme commander 2, there is no way to defend against a fatboy, or a megalith, other than have air to bomb it, or a large enough land army to fight it. Supcom 1/Fa made it possible to defend as well. Seems to be something Supreme Commander 2 lacked most, than the other series.

In other words if the enemy can dish it out at you, you should have a way to defend against it.

The alternate solution would be a point defense system. There's no real difference between shooting down a small missile and shooting down an artillery shell. A point defense system would be different from a shield in that you could overwhelm it instead of knocking it down. With sufficient volume of fire, some shells would get through and impact. Conversely, a shield blocks everything until it goes down, then it blocks nothing.

Completely agree. If we were to pick one or the other, I'd support this over shields.

Plus, a C-RAM would look pimp as ****.

A couple of good ideas here.

In particular, I like the structure that generates personal shields for all structures/units in its radius. I also like the anti-artillery point defense (perhaps a laser?), and I think that would work better than shields for base defense. It would also mean you had to put some thought in where to place the structures, as while shields defend from all directions, if you only had artillery point defense on one side of your base, and your opponent builds artillery behind you, you would still be hurting.

Indeed