Seeing as there is a poll thread about shields, and for one reason or another they seem to be kind of popular, I thought a second thread for discussion about various possible methods for implementation might be in order. I as yet have no opinion. Shields didn't really contribute much to SupCom except a way to counter artillery, which is acceptable, but they weren't that interesting at the end of the day. Ideally the artillery war will be such that a direct counter won't be necessary, but it might be a good option to have available. Controlling the intel game, and keeping the enemy scouts under control should give you reasonable protection from artillery without needing to build anything. I found unit shields, for example the UEF Titan bot, considerably more interesting, only because of the fast regen for a limited portion of the unit's survivability. Overhauls of the shield system from SupCom, anyone?
Here's my idea. Shield generators project personal shields onto all units in it's area; these shields do not dissipate when units leave the area but cannot be stacked and will not regenerate unless the unit returns to a generator field. Shield generators themselves cannot receive shields but have high health, enough to survive artillery fire when being repaired. Simple, straightforward, and gives shields tactical uses without having them be un-counterable.
I see no reason to "Fix" shields from SupCom. Without a T3 economy (only two tech levels), they won't be as spammable. And you've just turned shields from a defensive building into an offensive building. And either the shielding provided does not scale with unit HP, making it hilariously broken as you can use them to spam 2000HP LABs by the hundred, or they do scale with unit HP, making them useless for their intended purpose of protecting vulnerable base elements. Well done.
We have one of them already: On defensive structures, and shields That's what spawned the poll thread. Now the poll thread has spawned this thread. Do we get another poll thread next?
I'll just repeat in case you missed it: Or you could continue on with a duplicate redundant thread...
I believe in either regular shields similar to supcom (with adjusted stats but same mechanics), umbrella shields that only protect against fire from above (air and long range artillery) or no shields at all. We should, in any case, adopt a simple system. I believe the spirit of TA includes simplicity.
Wow, you're an endless fountain of bad ideas, aren't you? That's even worse. Now players have to continuously micro their own units around their own shields or they gimp themselves. And can't use shields to protect choke points as they'd prevent their own units from using said choke point. And they can't shield their factories or air repair pads or the shield would gimp every unit said factory would produce/repair. I eagerly await your next suggestion, as at this rate, it won't be long before you suggest an input method that uses Kinect and forces players to control the game using verbal commands while standing on one leg and only accepts orders that are in unique strict iambic pentameter and rhyming couplets.
Much simpler solution: Shields generated in this manner do not apply to mobile units. Would be nice if people would stop calling me an idiot for a minute and start thinking about how to make better ideas instead of jeering at me for trying =/
Impenetrable shields: Units can move through shields. Any projectile hits the shield no matter who shot it. So you can't protect your offensive/defensive structures but you can protect your economy. These shields should have shared edge to allow enemy units to destroy the shield generator when they get under the shield. What might happen is PDs just outside the shield repaired by engineers hiding behind the shields. However this will eventually kill your economy. And if this becomes a problem, repairing through shields could be disabled as well. You could use shields to protect your artilleries but you would have to decide if you want to shoot them or if you want to protect them. I don't like the unnecessary micro involved but I don't see any other way to have shields that are not broken like in SupCom.
Sad thing is he can string a coherent argument together. But just chooses to sprinkle them with personal insults.
Alright, how about the following. All "shields" are hard personal shields, that only affect a single unit each, and can be damaged independent of each other. However, an area of effect shield generator will have the effect of causing nearby structures to have a shield they would not otherwise have, and cause it to regenerate at a fixed rate. The shield generator has a fixed energy expense, and yields a fixed maximum shield to suitable units and structures in range, and does not stack. This seems to capture the desirable behavior of allowing shields to mitigate damage, while avoiding the problem of total area damage mitigation followed by wholesale failure. Now for the complicated bit. How it applies to mobile units. Mobile units must possess shield generators of their own in order to have shields. Mobile units that do not have their own shield generators are unaffected by shields, even if they are standing right next to a shield generator, they receive no protection. Mobile units that do have their own shields will have their shields restored at a fixed rate by the shield generator. Essentially, suppose that all structures have shield generators, and they require a nearby shield structure to be activated. For a mobile unit, the regen power bestowed by the static shield generator would be quite fast, as the rate is fixed, and the shield is scaled to be effective for structures. This would allow units to return into the area of effect of a shield, fill up their shields, and then exit and continue fighting. A major shortcoming of this model is the shield generator itself is only protected as much as any of the structures it is shielding, strongly encouraging focusing down the shield generator.
So the linking all connected shields together into one big shield with one health bar sounds good. So does making shields impenetrable so people can't fire in our out of them. Another option would be to make shields only protect upwards. So they'll stop artillery, bombers, missiles, or other indirect fire that comes in from above. But if someone comes at you with direct fire ground units then shields won't cover that. Also has anyone read the Dune books? Basically if anyone shot a laser at a shield it would blow up the shield and whoever fired the laser. That might be a little extreme but you could say that anything that fired a steady beam laser (the giant laser spider bot, the Aeon giant robot thing) would steadily do damage to itself and heavy damage to the shield. Even if the last idea sounds dumb introducing a special "More damage to shields" attack to a few units could help. Shields could be more like fences where you'd have to draw a circle around your base in shield generators to protect tings inside the circle. This way the shield generators would be at the edge of their own shield and shoot-able.
