but we are already using shields...

its the reaosn why your hull isn't breached as soon as you get 1 lasershot in.

but if you guys are so intent on shields, maybe the devs can impliment a shimmering field around ships and there you go instant shields...

they fire Xith.

As for the topic at hand:
I'm not philosophically against Shields. I just don't like the idea of
A) a crutch so that some people who haven't learned how to dodge, don't have to dodge.
B) long fights becoming even longer.

Shields are a bit like swarms, very little input, MASSIVE payout.

I think these problems could be fixed in the following ways:

A) streams of fire make it through the shield, so the shield only prevents maybe the first blast, then deactivates for a few seconds. In addition, it would only stave off a quarter of the damage from flares.

B) Make it so that it can't be equipped on light fighters, or on anything else which would abuse it.

Or just make the shield about 3X's the size of your ship.
Then how are you gonna abuse it?
YOUR A FREAKIN BALLOON!

And only about 2k max HP.

Make the shield like a weapon that has to be equiped, and has to have it's own firing button, and you can either shield from blasts like an oldworld shield, or you can attack with your weapons, but not both. AND, your shield only works as long as you have energy in your battery to fuel it, which would make you have to watch your energy usage even more, and would not be as effective with an FC battery. Give it an energy usage of say 25e/sec, so a full FC battery can only last for 10 seconds at best, and then you have nothing to return fire with, unless you are using ammo based weapons.

Anyone ever play that LAN game "super maze wars" that came out for mac oh, '95 or so? I like their interpretation of shields a lot:

Basically identical to what johnhawl suggested... i.e. shields have to be equipped in a large port (or a mod port if we ever get those) and require the user to "fire" the shields, otherwise they remain inactive.

While the shields are active they absorb damage up to a certain amount (and make your collision model larger?), but as a downside they also make you a beacon for seeker weapons while activated.

The only issue with that suggestion is the fact that in the backstory, the Itani are able to generate shields with their minds.

This has several implications, I think. One is that Itani shields may not have the ability to recharge, or at least, not very quickly.

The other, more interesting balance possibility could be if players could adjust the proportions of xith and steel in the xi-rite armor. Say that higher proportions of xith in armor will lighten the armor and reduce its vulnerability to energy weapons (say that xith radiates the energy efficiently, or something), but it loses the hardness that comes from the steel, making the armor more vulnerable to projectiles like railguns, flechettes, and explosives like missiles and rockets. While having higher proportions of steel in the armor will make the armor heavier, and less vulnerable projectiles, but more vulnerable to energy weapons.

So what would this do for shields and cloaking devices? Say that Itani shields are more efficient (more powerful) when there's more xith in the armor (less techno-babble interferance from the steel), or Serco cloaking devices are more effective when there's more steel in the armor.

So the player could make his ship with a high xith content to get the most out of his shields, but if he encountered someone who could knock down his shields with rockets, he might be screwed. Similarly, a Serco could have a high steel-content armor for a good cloaking device, but would be screwed against weapons. So the players would have to balance xith/steel content with their nation's abilities.

As for nation advantages for the UIT... I'm thinking about that one. Maybe they've figured out how to make armor stronger in general, so while they don't have shields for more protection, or cloaking devices to reduce hits, their armor is simply stronger with an average weight, and while the xith/steel content can be adjusted, it's through much tighter bounds.

First off Shields are an integral part almost all sci-fi

Second Shields could simply be added by having one of the nuetral corporations discover how to create the Itani shield without the need for a meditating monk. This would give a reasonable way for shields to be created as well as make them available to all players, since that kind of revolutionary technology could not remain secret for very long. Especally when a money hungary corporatin is involved

Phaserlight, I found that game on some old game repository. I used to play that alllllll the time as a little kid. :D

Ok.... I was just reading that auto repair in space would be bas, because of the PvP, and now I read that shields would be bad for combats !!!!

Some combat-people seams to be unable of doing anything !!!!!! What about consider a pre-historical scenario game where you fight with hands and tooth?

Others would learn how to combat with shield and repair and OTHER things... just a little brain work... like this: you must choose and balance equipment to be able to teleport the ship from a combat area, to auto-repair, to shield it, to who knows what... and ALSO have good weapons....how many more option the better, it makes the game better.

Shields could have a cool visual efect around the ships, under attack, with differnt colors, etc.

Various shielding options would be very welcome, it would be nice to be able to fool around some more with your ship loadout, just as long as things remain fairly balanced, I see no problems bigger than life.

There have been many shield and armor type suggestions on the boards, well, bring them on! A ship can only take so many things bolted onto it before sacrificing maneuverability altogether, so it's up to the pilot if it's gonna be a shield/armor laden snail, or a fast offensive flyer, or whatever they can come up with that they feel comfortable with.

Oh and on a personal aesthetic note, I hope not to see any ovoid shield shells with some frivolous transparent texture around space ships in Vendetta. The ships have always had this nice feel to them of "this chunk of metal is what you work with, if it's get shot, pieces go flying". Which works well to add tension to the combat, which would be ruined by some catchall shield thingy.

Shields, okay...

CP's idea sounds pretty reasonable.

This is a slightly tangential suggestion, but doesn't the backstory describe that the Itani had developed a force shield? This begs two questions in my mind:

1) Why don't the Itani craft in the game currently have force shields? This is something they were supposed to be able to do at least three hundred years ago.

2) Why would the Serco or UIT craft have shields? The Itani spent close to 1800 years working on the mental disciplines required to project shielding. Itani pilots should be the only ones with shields, according to the backstory, and they should come only at a certain combat rank (indicating that your pilot has trained long enough to have the mental discipline to hold the shiled under combat conditions). Perhaps the shield can be an activated thing, with three second's shielding at combat three, nine seconds at combat six, 27 seconds at combat nine, etc, which demonstrates your pilot's gradual understanding of the mental processes involved.

Serco, to keep the game in balance, should move in an entirely different direction: ultralight body armor and weapons, allowing for ridiculous craft hit points (due to armor) and heavy hitting power. The Valk and Prom are good steps in these respective directions.

UIT craft would have to be a blend, less armor, but perhaps faster craft to make up for the lack of shielding and the ultralight plating used by the Serco.

I'm thinking something like Starcraft. Protoss units generally had poor hit points, but their rechargeable shields meant that they could absorb damage, leave the fray for a few moments, and then return, as good as new. Humans sort of fit the UIT mode, relying on technology without special powers. Serco don't really fit as a comparison to the Zerg, technology-wise, (although their genetic and surgical augmentation and adaption DOES) but I think the analogy makes as much sense as any.

I really support any moves the devs make to create nation specificity. While a certain amount of blending in craft and technique is to be expected, I don't think after close to two thousand years of separation that the Itani and Serco would both use Cents as their primary border guardian craft, for example.

Heck, look at the differences in designs of aircraft from WWI to WWII. In WWI everything was modeled after the biplane, with the exception of Fokker's revolutionary triplane. By WWII there were literally dozens of styles and shapes of aircraft, Axis and Allied, with hundreds of roles, and very little similarity from nation to nation. That was 1918 to 1939, just 21 years. How different would technology be between two vastly different races after a hundred times that length of time?

~D.
"Nigel"

One might also believe that Itani scientists, once it was known that shields COULD exist and that major combat was on the horizon, might have developed technilogical shielding in under 300 years... As such, it would just be another piece of equipment whose designs and production would be kept highly secretive, but could still be stolen. I mean, when something natural and useful is discovered nowadays, it is replicated by science in a matter of decades; 300 years ought to be plenty of time to make an artificial shield generation unit.

Here is a list of shields I heard and thought of:

Filter Shield. Continuous, even drain. Filters a certain percentage of damage.

Bubble Shield. Stops all damage unless it receives a certain damage/second number. Then it pops. The shield goes away and the target is open for damage. After a certain period of time the shield comes back.

Bubble and Filter Shield. If the bubble is compromised then the filter kicks in until the bubble regenerates. The bubble in this shield is weaker then the bubble shield. The filter in this shield is weaker then the filter shield.

HP recharge shield. The HP takes the damage. After a certain period of time of not being damage it recharges. Exactly like the Halo shields. They have two drain rates. One is when the shield is not damaged and is kept on. The other is when the shield

Bubble and HP recharge shield. The bubble stops the damage unless it is over loaded, the HP take over. The bubble is weaker and there is less HP.

HP and filter Shield. When the hp reaches zero then the filter takes over. After a while of not firing then the hp recharges.

HP shield. These do not recharge and have many times the HP of an HP recharge shield. These can only be refilled at space station and capital ships. These shields have the lowest drain of all the shields.

Filter HP Shield. This shield has a weaker filter then a filter shield and less HP then an HP Shield. The filter filters damage before is goes to the shield

Bubble HP Shield. The bubble stops all damage until it pops. Then the HP shield takes the damage. After awhile of no damage then the bubble starts again.

All shields should make the ships have a larger cross sectional area. One of the statues of the shield should be how small it can make the increase in cross sectional area.

This is also a great time to introduce equipment slots because shields should not go over “weapon” ports. On that note, when I say slots I mean it a ship has 4 slots it can’t equip a shield that takes 5 slots. If the shield takes 2 slots then the ship would have room for other equipment.

I also have the idea of capital ships sheilds being designed so fighter can fly inside them. There could even be a special type of shield that just puts a wall in front of the cap ship for the fighters and of course the cap ship to hide behind.

As someone suggested, a long time has passed and somebody is bound to have discovered/developed a tecnological form of shielding, could have been the UIT that did it. Shields, perhaps have a module, when activated, that boosts the shield health, for what I know, you could have a similar module for those armortanking users only, make them have a module when activated it repairs the armor, nanoboots scurring around the ship repairing. Of course, these modules would rely on how much energy you got in the battery.

Shields don't have to be an additional buff to every ship. Rather, I'd suspect that using some sort of energy based shield would be far weaker than just plain, old fashioned alloys. The obvious difference between the two types of protection is just that shields regenerate. While some might say that this means you can dodge in, shoot a little bit, and dodge back out, that does't really offer much of an advantage, since your opponent can recover just as quickly as you can. You still have to risk putting your ship in the line of fire to land any hits yourself. All in all, I'd say it just come down to a matter of preference, whether to use a ship with strong shields or armour.

Take the Serco; the Prom's got enough armour that it can shrug off pretty solid attacks. With the Serco and their fleets of HAC's, it can just go dock and repair should it turbo into a couple volleys of Jackhammers, and most Serco I know like to use weapons with limited ammo so it works out. Then the Itani with their weak armour, if you get caught 'flat footed' in an IBG you're already toast before you know it. Fortuanately, with the speed of those ships you can avoid being hit hard if you choose to. Usually it's the attrition from those darned AGT's that wear you down.

So really, there's advantages to both sides. Armour would want to get in close and end a fight quick, and could be quickly repaired with Cap-ship support. Shields would be useful for extended, strategic battles, and when you don't have a station or cappy to restock at. Most Valk pilots I see use an all energy loadout, which would go swimmingly with an energy based protection. But yeah, if wearing a shield meant you had less protection than armour but you could recharge (slowly) I don't really think it'd change combat. You can already take time out to go refill your HP's by means of heading to a station, so shields would only be unfair if the stats were balanced terribly.

I will admit firstly, I didnt read all the posts prior to this one, but here's my 2 cents.

I think the shields of a vessel should be inversely proportional to the offensive capabilities of the craft and the maneuverability of the ship.
For example, the Centaur should have superior shields to say a Vulture fighter. It also should go without saying that as the version of the vessel climbs, so should the shields, regardless of the "Light" vs "heavy" variants, as shields are not a physical manifestation.

I would say that the fighters should have bare minimum shielding, centering on the age old idea of more maneuverability = less defense. Take Japanese Zeroes from WW2, they had almost no armor, and could easily outmaneuver American fighters that had armor.

As for the idea of ships having generators as addons, I'd suggest that there be a stock level of shields, that can be upgraded through the use of "Shield Amplifiers" added in place of weapons on a ship's hardpoints. You could argue that the Amps work by directly injecting power into the shield generator, as opposed to routing through the ships main power core.

As for recharging shields, I'd recommend as others have that the shields draw power from the power core to recharge, but that they are only able to recharge at a fixed rate from the core. This would prevent the problem of say, a single-blaster fighter going up against a Fast-Charge Battery equipped ship and shields. The single shot ship would have problems penetrating the FCB ship, while the FCB would be able to engage outwardly and kill it's attacker.

the large capships and hive bots all have sheilds so they are in fact in-game already.....

I APPROVE

Jim Kirk

Dammit Jim I'm just a poster, not a Game Developer.....