Now that capital ships (at long last) possess defensive shielding, I think we should consider some of the more advanced mechanics of the latter's operation. Considering that there will soon be a deluge of threads regarding shields to one degree of another, I suggest we consolidate such threads in a single relevant thread (such as this one, or one posted by the devs). So that this post isn't entirely off-topic, I'll state my thoughts on shields in the paragraph below.

*ahem*

Thus far, the Devs have done a fairly good job on shield mechanics, despite their teething problems. However, there is one aspect that I find irritatingly missing. It is impractical to maintain a shielding 'bubble' around a ship all the time, as even with a capital-ship sized reactor, such a system would have truly demanding energy requirements.
Therefore, it can be assumed that ships use a more efficient directionally-responsive (DR) shielding system. Slimly stated, a DR shield system detects incoming ordanance/ships/debris/etc and rapidly erects a temporary field between the ship and the incoming object, depleting energy from the shield reservoir (SR).
However, no matter how much energy you have reserved for this purpose, it is only feasible to erect so many fields within a given period of time, and in cases of extreme fire something is inevitably going to get through. This is known as a defensive threshold (DT).
A larger ship will have a higher threshold than that of a smaller craft, as there is more surface area on the ship's hull on which to mount shield projectors, but the DT:SR ratio shall typically decline, as more surface hull area means more area that necessitates protection.
The value of the DT itself would be derived from a fixed percentage of the SR; thusly, as a ship's shields take a beating, the same's DT will decrease accordingly.
The Countering factor to diminishing DT would be to have the SR constantly regenerating at a given rate, possibly derived from the status of the ship itself. Therefore, if a ship's shield is damaged, thusly reducing the SR and, in turn, the DT, it shall mend on its own if given the time.
This system, although more complex than the current one, is more encouraging of teamwork to take down capital craft. A lone player would indeed be hard-pressed indeed to take down such large ships, but the capability to do so would increase exponentially to the number of players making the attempt.

Discuss (& Debunk),

on the looks of shields...

a slighter less opaque shield color would make the ship details a bit more visible. currently, both faction ships in deneb b12 look the same: ghosts.

perhaps we could use different shield colors or simply make them more translucent.

I dun like them shields! 2 rags with 3x HX canons and 2 chaos swarms couldn't break the shield :( (of a teradon)

Really? I got it down with 1 spamrag and 1 person firing a plasma HX.

Directional shields are fine and good, but for now while the kinks get worked out omnidirectional works. We could leave omni for the largest capships (and, dare I say it, player-owned stations!) and give directional to the smaller capships and maybe even the largest single-seaters (a rag, maybe, but not a moth, since the latter is not a warship). Of course, all values have to be tweaked.

I actually like the omnishield look, though I wonder how much more system-intnesive an actual "bubble" would be.

Hum we had 2 rags spam and shoot 3x HX at it, timed quite carefully too. It did get really close to 0 but had time to regenerate...

What happens once the shield drops? How long does it remain "dropped" before coming back with vengeance?

My thoughts on the matter... For one, I think the shields hug the ship too tightly.

I definately like the idea of the shields only popping up when the ship is struck, especially since I hate having the HACs look all blue (or for the Serco, purple) all the time.

Speaking of which, what do you think of having the Serco shields Red and the UIT ones gold?

jex, i thought about the bubble thing (aka, as seen on st:tng) but there are issues with that.

i assume the number of vertex to draw a spheroid is harder on the vid card than mapping the same hull shape.

plus, the hull shape thing basically is just a scaled version of the ship wich therefore also inherits the same collision map and thus is simpler to manage than a whole new object.

Speaking of shields...

Suggestion for implementing itani shields similarly to the way the caps are done, on a much smaller and less powerful scale..

to give the other two races their supposed advantage, UIT can buy/sell slightly lower/higher, since they are the supposed merchants.

And the serco should give a slight hull benefit to their ships (since serco with implants shouldnt have any trouble operating in vacuum for short times).

These effects would have no bearing on the type of ship, give the itani a 1% boost in shield output on their ship, and give it the "glowy bubble" similar to the capship shield..

The serco, no matter what ship, should be able to survive with a 0% hull for a few more hits, to simulate being able to survive in the vacuum even tho his cockpit has depressurized, etc.

And the UIT should get monetary bonuses from trading, this will allow the UIT to simply buy better more expensive equipment faster, and therefor should be able to keep up with the serco and itani people.

"The serco, no matter what ship, should be able to survive with a 0% hull for a few more hits, to simulate being able to survive in the vacuum even tho his cockpit has depressurized, etc.

WTF?

okay, well considering ships can't be disabled without being destroyed, I'd say that's a bit pointless and... no... no, let's not go there.

The overall idea of shields is great. The concept of how they act like damage reducers for a certain amount of damage per second and can absorb x amount of damage before failing is excellent.

I just wish they looked better. I know, it's only the first iteration. The look will improve.

There are plenty of places on Teradons where the shields don't "cover" everything. I'm sure that this will be addressed.

I think the shields need to shimmer or something, something to give them an appearance different than a ship being encased in a block of ice. I guess I envisioned shields as almost-invisible until something impacts them, then the energy bolt or missile or whatnot is stopped short, and you see the shield shimmer in the area that was hit.

Plus, I think that the impact of something hitting a shield should be different than something hitting the hull of a ship. Something duller and less spectacular.

Here's what I wrote in the "Welcome to VO 1.7.7" thread. I thought It'd be valuable to copy it to here.

I think the shield strength and recharge values should be tweaked. I used the Queen and Levi as examples, but the values can be applied to Cap Ships too. I'd say a trident might be similar to the Queen and a Connie might be similar to the Levi.

-------------------------------------------------------

FC Battery recharges at 50/sec
Plasma HX gives 2750 damage per second @ 40/sec drain

2 full loadouts of Chaos Swarms (80 Missles @ 850 each) = 68,000 damage (7.5 secs to fire all)
3 full loadouts of Sunflares (36 missles @ 1500 each) = 54,000 (12 secs to fire all)
(rails would take 48 seconds to fire an entire loadout and would therefore not be useful)
122,000 total damage possible per Ragnarok (with ammo weapons)

Currently:
Queen shield strength = 30,000
Levi shield strength = 250,000

Currently:
Queen @ 12k/sec recharge rate = 2.5 seconds to fully recharge
Levi @ 15k/sec recharge rate = 16 seconds to fully recharge

I think the Queen's shields should be increased closer to the 122,000 limit, maybe to around 80,000. You can reduce the armor a bit to compensate if needed. Its recharge rate should be brought way down to around 3k/sec. It could still be killed by a single player using a missle/rocket Rag. It would then take the Queen's shields 27 seconds to fully recharge.

I think the Levi's shields should increase only a little, to maybe 300,000. Just decrease the recharge rate to around 7k/sec. Maybe increase the Levi's armor a bit to be closer to what it was originally if you want to keep it harder. It would then take the Levi's shields 43 seconds to fully recharge.

Can someone please confirm my math? Also, do people agree that these stats seem more reasonable than what we currently have?

Cunjo, dont take my statement out of context please.. if the itani get shields, then they'll be able to take more damage as well. but perhaps the serco should get a slightly higher damage output or something.

Itanis can't even have shields unless the devs make a 2-person fighter. (I noticed you left that bit of the backstory out.)

Besides, Itanis fly light ships. They are designed to evade damage, and kill the opponent. Many Sercos use heavy ships that are meant to fly into battle and get up close to opponents. If you put a shield on a valk, it gives it too much of an advantage. It's already the fastest and lightest ship; theres no need for more armor.

Also, it'd be incredibly annoying to fly with a shield. The current cap shields are so bright and opaque, imagine having to look through one in a fight.

-Nautargos

no, the valk is not the lightest nor fastest ship.

that was pre-nerf (and i still hold a gruge for that one).

plenty ships are now capped at 220m/s so including the valk so it's no longer the fastest. it's trust has also been reduced wich makes it quite puny the moment you bring a lunch bag in it.

the prom is way overpowered. and the valk, wich was supposed to be the ubber light fighter, is now a wet pussycat.

the last balance rounds they did only manage to worsen things so right now, i which they'd stop thinking about balance because they mess it further every time.

***** Single player Ragnorok damage statistics:

Max Alpha Strike Damage [3 Adv.Rail, 2 Chaos Swarm, Heavy PC] = 21100

Absolute Max DPS [3 Law Neut, 2 Mega Posi, FC PC] = 24253.83 {for 0.599 seconds}

Max Sustainable DPS [2 Plasma HX, FC PC] = 3437.5
+ 2062.5 DPS (5500 DPS total) for first 8.33 seconds

Best FC PC 5-sec damage [1 Law Neut, 2 Sun Flare, 2 Chaos Swarm] = 78479
Best FC PC 10-sec & 15-sec damage [1 Neut Mk2, 2 Sun Flare, 2 Chaos Swarm] = 138909 & 158546

Best Heavy PC 5-sec damage [2 Neut Mk2, 1 Sun Flare, 2 Chaos Swarm] = 90573
Best Heavy PC 10-sec & 15-sec damage [1 Law Neut, 2 Sun Flare, 2 Chaos Swarm] = 143358 & 168285

------------------------------

FatStrat85 - I did take into account the ammo each weapon carries, that is why the damage numbers drop off so badly as time goes by, and those are all correct.

The shield regeneration rate is the primary factor which forces cooperation against a shielded target. The lower the regeneration rate a shield has given the current mechanics, the fewer players are needed to kill the vessel. The point is that the ONLY way to solo a Queen at the moment is with the [2 Neut Mk2, 1 Sun Flare, 2 Chaos Swarm, Heavy PC] Ragnorok loadout (well, there might be another that gets in enough damage by the 7.5 sec mark when chaos swarms run out and uses thrust to favorably adjust initial impact timing). A Queen with a 3khp/s regen would be laughably easy to solo - anything with 2 PHX + FC PC could do it... A Levi with 7khp/s regen could be killed with 2 appropriately equipped Ragnoroks.

With the current shield mechanics, the maximum damage a ship can deliver is quite unimportant compared with how fast it can deliver that damage! Shields have to be overwhelmed to be brought down.

[Edit: Oh, and a spam Rag could do at MOST 25,500 damage to a Queen with an 80khp shield @ 3khp/s regen (the shield would drop at 7.5 sec). Does that even kill one?]

Right, but with the recharge rate brought way down, 7 seconds to empty your missles isn't as big of a deal. If you add the recharge of however long it takes to launch all of your weapons to the total shield strength, you get the accurate number of what you need to disable the shield of any given ship.

I guess I just don't understand the way you presented the numbers. I also suggested that we not only bring the recharge rate way down, but that we bring the shield strength (especially on the Queen) up. I don't see how you could solo a Queen with 2 Plasma HX's given my suggestion for increased shield strength. You would run out of battery power relatively quickly. 2 Plasma HX's have a combined drain of 80/sec. A FC battery recharges at 50/sec. I'll have to try it, but I don't see how it would ever be possible to solo a Queen with Plasma HX's, or any combination of energy weapons for that matter (even given a slow 3k/sec recharge rate).

And a fully loaded rag can easily give 122,000 damage in 12 seconds, even more if you load Screamers. In 12 seconds the Queen would recharge 36,000 with a 3k/sec recharge rate. Given my 80,000 shield strength suggestion + 36,000 recharge = 116,000 damage needed to disable the Queen's shields in one 12-second hit, which is just barely do-able by a single Rag carrying Swarms and Sunflares. "Barely solo-able" is exactly what Incarnate wanted for the Queen, so I think those suggested stats are just about right.

Also, given my suggested stats, a Levi would need to be hit with 384,000 damage within 12 seconds to disable its shield (300,000 strength + 84,000 recharge in 12 seconds). That would take atleast 3 fully-loaded, perfectly coordinated Rags, realistically 4. You would basically have to gather 4 bombers and 2 fighter escorts to take down the Levi with my suggested stats. That group size sounds about right to me.

LostCommander is correct. The shield regeneration rate is the most important factor here. The biggest reason I think they put these in is because killing a big ship (cap or queen/leviathan) in a small ship is more a matter of patience and persistance than skill. In that regard, the next thing to change is the way license levels work, so that they reflect actual skill rather than who spends the most time in-game.

Something interesting would be smaller shields for small fighter ships. The Vulture Mk IV, for example, has 8900 armor. It would be cool to have a shield version, that would have its armor stripped down to the minimum hull needed to protect the pilot from the vacuum of space and hold the ship together. It could have 300-400 total armor, and a 5000 hp shield that regenerates between 400-700 hp/sec. with a 10 minute downtime (numbers to be tweaked, of course). Sustaining the shield could cause a constant battery drain of 5/sec (no drain during downtime) and 20/sec to recharge the shield.

Because the shield would weigh considerably less than armor, the Shielded Variant of the Vulture Mk. IV would have a mass around 2800 (I know that's really light, but armor is heavy. We'd need to figure out just how much of the weight of a ship is armor to get the right number), a max speed of 68 m/s (unless speed is changed across the board, I wish it were increased a lot), a turbo speed of 230, and the same turbo energy cost, or alternately the same turbo speed but less turbo energy cost.

[2 Plasma HX, FC PC] yields 3437.5 DPS forever and + 2062.5 DPS (5500 DPS total) for first 8.33 seconds... With a 3khp/s regeneration, you are dealing 437.5 DPS more than the regeneration rate, so you will eventually break the shield.

The Queen is currently barely solo-able. Dropping the regeneration rate of shields makes it MUCH easier to kill something with few people; raising the shield reserve strength by any amount only makes the ordeal take longer, just like raising the base HP of the vessel.

With your suggested Levi stats, 3 Ragnoroks without escort could take down the shield in 7.5 seconds if perfectly coordinate, or in 10 seconds while missing with about 60,000 damage worth of munitions.

P.S. Small ship shields should not have longer than a 10 minute restoration time (preferably under 2-6 minutes) because that is just a silly amount of time to spend just sitting around. If you want it that long or longer, just require shielded small ships to dock to get their shields back...
Also, a shield system would not necessarily weigh any less than similar armor. And no changing top speeds because of a shield -- an unloaded ship has the same top speeds as a fully loaded one; changing the shield should not break this (plus it would be terribly confusing).

Ahh.. Ok, I didn't realize the HX's could sustain that much continual damage running on an empty battery. So you could just make it 3.5 or 4k/sec instead of 3. Even leaving it at 3k/sec would still make it barely solo-able which is what Incarnate wanted. Like you said, EVENTUALLY it would disable the shield. Plus, the Queen squirms quite a bit. It would be a challange to make every last hit land while its trying to dodge for any extended length of time.

You'll have to show your math for your Levi calculation. I'm not understanding where you are getting those numbers. Are you assuming the Rags can each give 150,000 damage? Also, I was just saying most groups of bombers are going to want an escort or two. Even just 3 Rags as the bare minimum (which is what I originally said anyway), coordinating perfectly, doesn't seem unreasonable to take out a Levi.

My whole point is that right now the shields are no fun. It's nice to see some progress. It should take more than 5 or 10 seconds for them to recharge. I've never seen any game or sci-fi thing have shields like that, and for good reason. The way we have it, there's either a full blue line, or none at all. You never see the shields in between these extremes for more than a second or two. I think the numbers I suggested give a more fun way to do this without sacrificing the shields' purpose; forcing player cooperation to take down big targets. I'm not saying the shields don't work the way they are now, they just aren't as fun. My shield stat suggestions not only work (prevent solo-ing), but are also fun.

Incarnate agreed with me on this issue in the other thread. He agreed that the recharge rates should be lower, so that shouldn't be the debate. I'm just trying to offer some stat options for the devs to work off of.