Shield alternative concept

Sorry, but I don't see how that's possible.

It's true for one shield. But what about thirty of them? Your first shield blocks one-four shots and crumples. Shield number two is ready to take over. It blocks one-four shots and crumples. Shield number three is ready to take over.

Rinse.

And.

Repeat.

Your first shield is ready to take over.

Congratulations, you're back at where you started.


The problem is not a single shield. The problem is many shields.

So what do you do? You nerf the recharge time. But that only delays the problem until you build more shields.

What if you nerf that recharge time so much that it's impossible to fit enough shields under one shield bubble? Sure, that'd prevent shields from making you invulnerable?

Well... yes. That would be correct. But it'd be completely bloody pointless. Why have shields that can only protect shields? That's just dumb.

Mushroomars, my idea could have micro to shield multiple buildings during battle but the downside is that for 5 seconds you get no shields as it needs to charge up the shield on the new target for a few seconds before it appears. Unless you were referring to some other form of micro that I haven't thought of.

On the point of it being inherently underpowered, it can be boosted in a number of ways.

1. The number of targets that can be shielded could be increased
2. The shield itself could be tweaked(hp, charge time, regeneration, etc.)
3. The building itself's hp(it's already weak.)

One word bullet: read

@evolvexxx, take your own advice and read:

This has been talked to death a million times. Uber is not going to put SupCom style bubble shields in this game. Period.

There will certainly be a mod to add them in so you can always look forward to that.

Also, they MAY add in alternative types of shields. Nobody but Jon Mavor and the rest of Uber knows what kinds of "alternative shields" they are thinking about are. So in the mean time we should just be patient and try to think up more NEW ideas instead of just rehashing old ones forever. Maybe Neutrino is looking down upon us right now? Sifting through all the ideas proposed, searching for the perfect alternative shield concept...

The fundamental thing is that bubbleshields do not work well for balance. It's a layer of regenerating health, but works regardless of what is underneath.

Shields are just a layer of regenerative health. This means you need a certain amount of punch to get through to the health. This is fine. It works on a per-unit basis (IE: personal shield). The shield only works for that unit and can be balanced per-unit.

It doesn't work for bubbles. The very fact that it is unbiased towards the stuff that is underneath is it's major selling point, but also the game-breaking aspect.

Doing tricks to arty and damage bleeding and what not doesn't help. It's the same arbitrary extra armor to everyone.

Without bubbleshields, the game is more fun, more diverse. It means sniping stuff is an option. I played tons of TA and never felt like i needed bubbleshields. The insane arty damage and experimentals in Supcom means they're a ncecessity.

Supcom shields had absurd recharge rates that created this flaw. When they were down they gained a 5-6x boost to their regeneration rate. Thus, it came as no surprise that stacked shields screwed things up. While shields don't do exactly what PA needs, the prejudice over Supcom shields is due to allowing something that was obviously going to screw up.

Changing the restore time doesn't work for the shield's alleged role, but changing the restore value was effective. Setting shields to restore at 1/3 health made all the difference in the world, if the goal is a shield that eventually crumbles under sustained fire.

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This discussion really shouldn't be about shields. It should be about the role of artillery, what it is, where it excels, and what ways should it place pressure on the opponent. The only point of a shield is to push the purpose of artillery away from base siege, such that it is more useful targeting the field. But shooting random armies on the field is only so useful (and pointless if they're camping under protection). Without another factor, such as permanent planet damage or interplanetary warfare, artillery is nothing more than an overpriced gun with an absurd weakness to bombers.

Artillery has always been weak to bombers, but that really doesn't take away from the uses of static artillery.

The main use in my mind is to defend against enemy ships, providing a equal amount of fire power to fight back against an enemy fleet.

Artillery also excel in preventing base creeping in the standard sense, but then go on to promote an artillery creep, and that's not necessary that good.

So countering ships, softening up army's and sieging bases (Although the catapult is much better at this).

In the end the value is what the player finds in it, and in many cases the shooting of ships and army's is enough for me to build them.

This whole shield discussion always seems to get awry... I'll post my idea anyway.

To put this straight:
First: I love shields.
Second: I hate bubble shields (SupCom).

To understand what I thought, I looked at what the word "shield" actually means (from wikipedia): "A shield is a type of (personal) armor, meant to intercept attacks".

So should we not be allowed to have shields in a strategy game like PA? As said before in this thread, shields have been used in warfare since warfare was invented. I think shields are very, very, VERY important. What we need is a new way of implementing it in a fun way to encourage strategic planning and using as many different tactics as possible. Bubble-Shields just simply shield everything from everywhere. That is boring...

The technique described first in this thread does not actually do that. It only takes out a few bullets, in a way like an anti-artillery. And that sounds very cool to me. But it is not something that protects everything everywhere.

My five cents for this idea are these: Split it up into intelligence gathering and actually defending from incoming bullets.

Step one is to learn where the bullets come from. I am thinking of the overlay for the mini-map in SupCom where you could see where all the bullets are (The overlay in PA should be on the main view, of course). Now I don't like it to be just present. You should make a decision to actively see it. I imagine a structure like the radar, but it only tracks projectiles albeit at a long range. Lets call it a sensor. It should cost a lot more than a radar (x3?), and eat up a lot more energy to sustain (x10?). With this information, you know where the enemy is shooting from and can react accordingly. You can also use it simply to learn where that damn enemy artillery or battleship is hiding!

Step two is to intercept these projectiles. As proposed previously a building that actively intercepts incoming projectiles as if shooting a unit. Shooting it means that the projectile will still explode, dealing its intended AoE damage to whatever is near the detonation. It will just detonate some distance away from the shield. Shooting it also means that it can miss its target!

The questions still are: How to make it not overpowered? How to ensure that it does not make a base invincible? How to encourage different strategies and tactics?

I think about these steps:

• The interception does not work without the intelligence where the bullets come from. Taking out the sensor will immediately make ALL "shields" will stop working. Like the radar, the sensor has a limited but long range. But I'd like to add a few layers of detection: Huge projectiles (nukes, strategic missiles) will be detected at a very long range, medium projectiles (artillery, battleship) at a medium one and standard ones (tanks, large bots, bombs) only at short range.
• Note that small, gatling like projectiles will not be detected at all. Making rushes with small bots or small tanks a vital tactic.
• You also have to build sensors with their huge energy upkeep wherever you want to effectively intercept projectiles. As a further handicap all the information of the sensors has to be processed by your commander, limiting the total number of trackable projectiles to something like 100 (depending on balancing/size of the battlefield) or any other number that seems plausible. Overwhelming the sensors with projectiles will effectively shutting the system down because you only see a fraction of all the projectiles heading towards you, probably not the ones you need to intercept.
• Stacking many of these anti-projectile buildings will only have many buildings shooting many anti-projectiles at many projectiles. Most of them targeting the same FIRST projectile to come in range. All the later projectiles WILL hit their target.
• The "shields" need some time to lock onto the target projectile. It will lock onto one *take a second* shoot it *take another second* and then repeat the process. A rapid succession of projectiles will rapidly overwhelm the system. I think a balance like 1 shield blocking 2 artilleries, because they don't stack, should work.
• Not all projectiles will be hit. As it is the law with physics, not everything can be calculated perfectly. Some interception attempts simply fail. -- The projectile hits anyway.
• Attacking the enemy base from any side will overwhelm the number of trackable projectiles as well as the shields. A rush with any number of small units is the death of the shield as they can not track small projectiles. Wasting time and allowing the enemy to actually build up a battery of artillery... The shield wont help you.

After nerfing the shield that much, what is it still good for?

It is used to protect from stray projectiles. It gives your defence just that bit more survivability to react. It encourages others to plan their artillery/LRM positioning and production. It encourages to attack, instead of just harassing.

The sensor is still a very nice addition to gather intelligence about artillery and nuke positions. It will also show you where there is a battle going on so you can use the distraction of the others for your advantage (I am thinking 3+FFA).

It simply allows for different strategies and that tiny bit of turtling that every good enemy will crush anyway...

Alright, so I'm going to download that mod, but what I meant with this all is that you can't put nothing in the game to counter artillery... why don't you understand?
It's simply wrong...
Okay, you don't want bubble shields, but what's about those ideas?

- Dome shield
A big structure that generates an invisible, flat, dome-like barrier. When an artillery shot is hitting this dome, the shield activates. I imagined it like a figure formed with large exagons, which consist in the "sections" of the dome.
So, an artillery shell hits the dome, the damaged "section" glows up, and falls to pieces like glass... Then it may take a long time before that section glows up again and is ready to absorb damage another time. Every regeneration you should lose X amount of energy (much energy), but while the dome is inactive, no energy is lost.
You can't overlay those shields.
This has the intention of reducing the power of the artillery, but not literally block it's attacks. Some ways to increase/decrease it's power:

Increase
• smaller exagons
• more damage absorption
• less energy consumption
• bigger dome
• less recharge rate

Decrease
• bigger exagons
• smaller dome
• more recharge rate
• shells go through, but deal less dmg
• more energy consumption
• addition of a tracking radar to know where shells are from, otherwise it won't work



- Repair drone facility
A fabric-like structure that is constantly producing repair drones that fly around to repair every damaged structure. Drones production shouldn't be controllable, the fabric constantly produces them until they reach a number of 20 or so, then shuts down. The drones are really, really weak but don't cost that much, they also don't have attack abilities. Drones repair every allied, damaged, and in-range structures more slowly than a engeneer but there can be multiple drones focusing on a building to repair it more quickly. Maybe selecting the production facility you could send the whole swarm to help a specific unit.
Here is as always a list of things that could increase/decrease it's power:

Increase
• more drones
• less cost
• more resistance for the drones
• repair quicklier
• suicide attack capable

Decrease
• die after some time
• cost more
• less drones
• slower repair
• not controllable
• less range

Thanks for reading
~evolve

The Dome shield should cost Metal to "recharge", rather than energy.

This is not true as has been mentioned multiple times.

TA did not have shields. TA had great artillery. TA was amazing fun.

In effect, to convince us that shields are necessary you'd have to convince us that TA was critically flawed in regards to their absence which I'd say is almost impossible to do.

Very true, but TA didn't have high-arc artillery. That's the sticking point between games.
I don't agree that shields of any kind are the answer however.

I agree with the idea in the OP. I also think along with that anti-nukes and TMD need to be ditched entirely and replaced with a soft counter.

Thatsballsy, you could have saved this topic a lot of controversy by not referring to it as a "shield alternative."

I never understood why they allowed arty to have both firing modes. High arc mortars and low arc artillery should be two different sets anyway. (Limits breed diversity)

A low arc, high projectile speed weapon like the Big Bertha is a total different beast then an arty that has both firing modes. The Big Bertha can be avoided by many ways (most of them involve getting something with a lot of mass between yourself and the gun) while a high arc variant is increasingly difficult to avoid.

I agree. It's the reason artillery wasn't overpowered in TA; short range mortars and long range straightshot.

Sounds fine on paper. How well did it work out in practice? Let's check the history logs.

In Supcom, artillery was a massive 90K investment. The simple act of trying to build one was a quick way to lose. When it was built, bases were quickly flattened under the impact of 8K shells that individually covered half a base. Bases were helplessly crushed under the onslaught, unless they built a few shields which rendered the whole attack inert for a fraction of the price.

Firing artillery at the field was an exercise in failure. The weapon did not track or have accuracy of any kind. All kinds of forces could slip past an individual cannon without issue.

Firing artillery at the Commander was a decent option. Two or 3 direct hits could end the game, if you got them.

Overall the design was awful. It did not siege a base (hitting both extremes of absurd overkill and completely useless at the same time), and it did not function in any reasonable way on the field.
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Okay, so Supcom didn't work out. Maybe TotalA's bertha cannon will fare better. And it does.

At 5K metal the bertha cannon ends up a costly but reasonable investment (add about another 2K for the better part of a fusion). The cannon shell could kill most things and cripple factories. However, TA had AoE weapons with a linear damage drop. Anything short of a direct hit did vastly reduced damage. As such the bertha cannon was a lot like your typical RPG crit class- a lot of small hits until you got that one juicy cccccrrit that made it all worthwhile. The Bertha's glancing damage was fairly easy to endure, but every once in a while you got hit hard and it was a sore reminder that you had to respond.

The other great factor of the bertha was its low firing arc. This made it possible to hide behind various terrain features and protect various spots of your base from attack. In reality the gun could still hit over 90% of anything in its range, but those few shadow spots were enough to protect valuable assets.

Nostalgia remembers the bertha cannon best as a good artillery gun, and it did indeed turn out pretty decent. It was still largely unnecessary for most games, but it had everything that it needed to break a stalemate.

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But wait, there's more! Supcom also had a TML launcher, and TA had a small artillery gun. TL;DR: The TML suffered the same faults as Supcom's artillery, being both absurdly good against bases and equally useless after defenses go up. The TA mini arty worked out nicely as a high endurance cannon (hard hits, weak splash), but was a bit too strong en masse. It needed a larger footprint to limit how easy it was to pack them, and make them easier to counterattack at range.
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That's just a dome, nanolathe.

Cut this out. That's not the problem with shields, and that's not going to fix them in any reasonable way. If you want heavy weapon defense, the #1 best solution is to intercept the projectile. It works for arty, it works for bombs, and it doesn't interfere with anything else.

I know. I think an actual dome is cooler.

also TA had a mobile TML; an absurdly fragile, yet effective weapon against entrenched positions that lacked a "roaming" defensive force that kept the outskirts of your base clear of such threats.

TA was such a fine example of how to balance for interesting counter-play between players, without any one option being either overpowered or useless.

Yeah, TA had several great mobile TMLs - nothing was quite so annoying as using hover TMLs to take out shore defenses, and Dominators rocked on broken ground.

Personally, I think I'd prefer nanoturrets/repair towers as an area defense against artillery; same functionality (increase the time and/or volume of fire required to level a base) with fewer negative side effects. Could even give them a limited build menu - T1 mexes, power, AA, and walls. You'd still need engineers, but it would make basic maintenance of an area easier.

I think engineers themselves will be able to fulfill this function very well. I'm assuming good pathfinding in the final product and area commands. So I can set a command to engineers that they will keep an area always up to date, maybe even link a factory to it.

I select one or multiple engineers and draw a circle or rectangle over an area. I envision that those engineers keep the buildings repaired, don't wander outside their assigned area, reclaim wreckages in the way, rebuild destroyed defenses, try to keep out of harms way and if I link a factory to that area it would even rebuild those engineers.

So, limited automation based on an explicit order. Takes a load of micromanagement out of the players hand, but isn't doing anything that a player hasn't ordered.

Artillery would then be less of a base breaker and instead be more of a constant harassement unit that harms your economy through the cost of constant repairs and rebuilds that are necessary. (This presumes inaccurate arty with long range.)

So, more of a siege unit thant an assault unit. (Ofc. different arty could work different. )

☝That's a great idea. kudos.