Your Queen would be barely solo-able with a silly ship. A well-equipped Prom/Wraith/Rag would crush one.

Your Levi Stats: 3mHP hull, 300kHP shield, 7kHP/s regen. [Edited]
3 [1 Law Neut, 2 Sun Flare, 2 Chaos Swarm, Heavy PC] Ragnoroks can deliver 3 * 143358 = 430,000 dmg in 10 secs
-- at which point they are basically out of ammo, but still have the Law Neut. Being able to miss an essentially stationary target with more then 10% of what are mostly homing and proximity munitions is hardly "perfect coordination" IMO.

For shields like we have at the moment, check out the Warhammer 40K universe by Games Workshop.

I like the way shields work now; it is refreshingly different from the gamut of previous space shooters, just like the rest of VO's combat model.

Why do you think the way shields work now is not fun (or as fun as it could be)? Please note I am currently reserving judgement on what "good" numbers would be as I cannot really play (i.e. more than half an hour every other day) for a few more weeks yet (drat!).

Is it possible we could let ships have multiple shields like we have now?
I think that would be really cool; each time a shield goes down a warning sounds and the countdown until it returns is set. E.g. a queen would have 2 shields, each with 6khp/s regen and 20khp, thus it starts with a total potential shield strength of 40khp regenerating at 12khp/s; if the first shield is ever broken (i.e. initial total shield strength is brought below 20khp), then both its max AND its regen are lost for 5-10 minutes.

This would allow a quick series of precise strikes to break a ship's shields, not just one big OMFGWTH attack. It would also allow for a diversification in the shielding available to ships -- are there several smaller generators which can each be brought back online quicker, or is there one almighty "you can't touch this" generator (or something in between)?

My suggested Levi stats put the recharge rate a 7k/sec, not 3. The law neuts at the end wouldn't do much with a 7k/sec recharge rate.

Queen:
Shield Strength: 80,000
Recharge Rate: 3k/sec
Recharge Time: 27 seconds

Levi:
Shield Strength: 300,000
Recharge Rate: 7k/sec
Recharge Time: 43 seconds

I don't see how the ship would make a differerence for solo-ing my Queen. Anyway you cut it, you'd need to deliver more than 80,000 damage within a few seconds and energy weapons wouldn't be affected by the type of ship.

I might like that idea of multiple shield layers. But with 20,000 strength, it would become easily solo-able. Knock out the first shield with a few rockets or missles and then the next. Am I understanding your suggestion correctly? It would be cool but would defeat the original purpose of the shields.

The difference in ship and loadout is that a LL 4/3/-/4/- pilot could potentially solo your Queen. Also, with your Queen, you can (relatively) take your sweet time breaking its shield.

I was counting your Levi as having a regen of 7khp/s (that is why 430k is only 60k over 370k at 10s instead of 100k over 330k); I fixed that now -- sorry for the typo.

A queen with 2x 20khp+6khp/s shields (for a total of 40khp + 12khp/s) would take many more than a "few" rockets or missiles to break. It would only be easily solo-able with Adv. Rails and Chaos Swarms in a Rag (or a similar high-level loadout), which seems appropriate to me. Even if you wanted to leave the Queen alone with its single shield, think instead about the Levi. Instead of a single 250khp+15khp/s or 300khp+7khp/s shield, it could instead have 4x 75khp+5khp/s or 8x 30khp+4khp/s shields! Breaking the first shield would be HARD (20khp/s or 32khp/s, respectively), possibly to the point of requiring an Avalon or another capital ship to break, but each successive shield would be easier to break as the battle wears on.

The point is that it would help move away from the current "insta-kill or bust" feeling. Cooperation would be even more necessary in the initial strike, but subsequent loses would be unfortunate rather than crippling.

How do these numbers sound for 4 sizes of capital shield generators?

Strength + Regen Rate (Reset Time)
Type-A: 15khp + 2khp/s (2 min)
Type-B: 30khp + 3khp/s (4 min)
Type-C: 50khp + 4khp/s (8 min)
Type-D: 100khp + 5khp/s (15 min)

I think it would be even cooler if a ship could have more than 1 type of generator, and that the captain had to give the shields an order in which they took damage -- do the small ones go on top, breaking first but hopefully resetting before too long, or on the bottom, primarily boosting the regen rate of the outer shield?

So a Queen might have 1 Type-A and 2 Type-B shields. A Levi might have 2 Type-D and 5 Type-B shields. A HAC might have 1 Type-D and 10 Type-A shields...

Would it also be cool to 1) let a captain delay the restoration of a shield so that multiple shields could be returned simultaneously and 2) let a captain voluntarily down a shield for a 1/4 reset time?

Well I think we've argued enough, lol. I'll let some other people chime in with what they think. I just fealt that the shields were recharging too fast and I know a lot of other players fealt the same way.

Remember, having any sort of recharging shields at all will make these ships much much harder than they were a week ago. Once you disable the shield you still have to go through all of the hull armor while evading/destroying the smaller ships that are protecting it.

I think we are going to have this basic shield system for a long time. By that I mean we're not going to get layers or any other added features anytime soon (although I agree that what you are saying could be very cool). For now the most valuable discussions and suggestions will be on how to tweak the stats of the shield system we have currently to make it optimal.

Aw, sad, 'twas fun, oh well.

I suppose I'll have to give it to you about being stuck with the current shield system for now... Given that, I would suggest approximately 50khp + 3khp/s per player that is expected to drop the shields (which strangely matches the Levi's current stats for 5 people...). That would put the Queen at 60khp + 4khp/s and the Trident at like 100khp + 7khp/s...

no one is stuck with current shields.

the devs have mentioned they've put it in right now so we can try 'em out and adjust them as needed in order to bring "something else" up to the next round of update(s).

i think shields will work out fine. they make sense on such large ships. they just need to be adjusted a bit.

the one thing i'm not too happy about is the fact that all nations & the hive got the shields on the same day. doesn't really make much sense but... some people have rp-ed something in for fun to somewhat explain that.

I don't understand this anti-soloable trend. Sure some monsters should be very very hard to solo, but I don't like impossibles :(
Instead of making them rock hard, make them a better fighter I say.

Instead of having the shield disable for 30 mins give it a constant lower rate recharge. But that's my take :)

Zed1985, that was my initial reaction too. I figured shields would recharge over the course of a few minutes. However, once I read Incarnate's reasoning behind having shields and having them recharge quickly, I understood and agreed that a fast recharge rate is more functional and practical.

That's why I suggested recharge rates between 2k/sec and 8k/sec. It's a compromise between having a nice steady recharge and preventing easy solo-ing.

lol.

Hum got a link to incarnate's reasons?

Sort of...

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/1/15308#192587

I guess really slow recharge rates would just eliminate the need for dock repairing. It wouldn't really add anything to actual combat. It'd be just like adding armor (and a pretty color).

ThinkHen: actually, Itani pilots by now in the story CAN sustain shields and fly a ship by themselves. I forget exactly where, but it's in there late in the backstory.

Here's my thoughts on shields. I think the huge recharge rates and heavy shield strength is somewhat appropriate for cap ships right now. But for player ships, I think shields should be a bit more diversified.

For example, right now we have multiple armored variants: light, heavy, assault, etc. I think the same should be applied for shields. For more defensive players and traders, I think a fast recharge rate and a permanent energy drain (when the shield is recharging) is a good idea (the shield should also have a set time before recharge if it's brought completely down). Only really defensive players would want to use this, however, because of the decrease in energy weapon functionality. More offensive players might not want the drain on weapon capability, and could choose shields that act more like a second layer of armor-lots of layers of protection, but a very slow recharge rate with a minimal energy drain.

Those are the two extremes that I think would be most common, and there could be a continuoum of the 2 variables resulting in interesting combinations. I think it should work like this: Lower HP (per se) for the shields = faster recharge rate. But, faster recharge rate = more energy drain. In addition, a shield with lower HP should have less waiting time for recharge if the shield is brought completely down.

This makes an interesting balance in combat. Fighters can survive defensively almost indefinitely taking 1-2 hits every few seconds, but cannot fire back as much because of the shield recharge energy drain. And if they are caught, even once with 4-5 hits at one time, the shield is down and the armor is gone in 1 more hit. This way , dogfighting can end in the blink of an eye, or go on for minutes. Makes for a very exciting battle!

For capital ships, those with heavy weapons would have a slow recharge rate because of weap. energy consumption. But the shield HP would be so high that a fighter (or even several) would be likely to get caught with enough fire that the cap ship would survive easily.

Again, the point of this is to force more choice (and diversity) in ship setups. Lots of shielding or lots of armor? High shielding and low recharge or low shielding and high recharge? Better shields or better weapons?

I think you're right, KenshinBt10. I hope eventually the Devs implement port add-on shields like you're suggesting and I think if they do, having a diversity of options to emphasize different player roles would be great. I agree that it really would enrich game-play and combat.

This popped into my head just now.
What if Itani had small port "energy focus" shield and the Serco had a large port shield generator. small port for itani since the energy focus would presumably be smaller than an actual generator while the serco would need a large port since the shield machinery would take up more space. Something could be implemented that would prevent a serco from buying the energy focus and an itani from buying the generators. Even if serco were still allowed to buy valks a serco pilot in a valk would be at a disadvantage against an itani valk pilot due to lack of shielding. Same would apply to an itani prom pilot going against a serco prom pilot.
[Edit]
The UIT could also rely on shield generators but them being less combat oriented would have less powerful generators that could perhaps be stackable (Serco "prom" shield and Itani energy focus would be non stackable). For example a UIT large port generator could be have 80% the effectiveness of the Serco generator but equipping 2 would boost strength to 150% of the serco generator. UIT could also have even weaker small port generators which might be 60% effective compared to the UIT large generator but equal to the UIT large when paired and say 125% compared to the Serco generator when tripled.

Hi, a quick response to recap the problems as I see them:

Large Ship Solo-ing.. soloing a really hard target should never be impossible, but should, for all practical purposes, be extremely difficult. As in potentially requiring specialized equipment that is, in and of itself, very difficult to acquire. If any high-level target, with specialized drops, is potentially solo-able by the average person with globally-available equipment, then the target ceases to effectively be very difficult. It's too easy to exploit weaknesses in hull shape, defensive turret positioning, or other potential "metagaming" type exploits.. and too hard for us to plug those holes. Thus, the simplest solution becomes "make the target require more damage per second than can be dealt by a single person with globally-available equipment". The current first-generation implementation of the shield system grew out of this.

However, there are some undesirable aspects of this solution, like FatStrat mentions. The one that bothers me is the inability of a user to really see if he/she is making any impact on the shields. It's very frustrating to assault something and see no effect whatsoever.

But then again, if we simply drop the recharge rate and increase the total shield capacity, you're back in the same situation you had before with "tough" targets like the Lev. I had that thing up to 15,000,000hp, just because people were so effective at finding some nook to wedge themselves into, and shoot the thing for 2 hours. Again, this makes it difficult for me to give any real gameplay purpose to a target that's supposed to be a "big group target" and is still solo-able by the average joe who either has a lot of patience or an effective script.

Multiple shield layers, as proposed on here (sorry, skimmed the thread), I think by LostCommander, would help the situation. However, you could achieve a similar effect by simply making the shields recharge on a curve instead of at a fixed rate. So, in other words, set "bounds" for a given ship's recharge rate.. say for the Lev, the "low" (fully charged) end could be 2k/s, and the "high" (nearly disabled) end could be 20k/s. Behaviour would depend on the curve used, but if you used something with a gentle rise to a sharp peak at the end, the ship would be relatively easy to impact for the first 150-200,000hp of damage, growing rapidly in difficulty thereafter.. until it really required a large group to do the final shield "takedown".

In this way, people would have immediate feedback that their hits were making an impact on the shield initially, but it would still require a large assembled group to actually disable the shields and destroy the vessel. The downside is that the user would have to get used to the kind "weird" scaling of the recharge rate, and that it would become much difficult to damage the shields as time went on. I'm not sure if this might end up being just as frustrating as what we have already. But anyway, I welcome the input and feedback. I'm going to re-read this thread more carefully on Friday.

Well as far as I was concerned a Teradon was unsoloable ;) but that's me with bad flying skills.

I guess in the good ol' days you could use swarms to deturret a sector then take it down SLOWLY using energy. I have never been succesfull (those missions usually ending up with "Would you like to buy you prevous ship?")

What bothers me now is that the Trident is completely unsoloable (from what I heard?) and it used to be fun to kill these dudes.

But all that nonwhistanding after some though I came to actually like this idea a lot. It now forces people to either use rockets (high dps) or energy (sustainable dps). I imagine that once we get player owned cappies, with which we can dock and home it will become really fun. A big nation battle would force the leader to ask his troops to equip different ships at the same time (say 3 squadrons of bombers and 2 of fighters).

So exept some few minor details; Good Job Devs!

I just read the thread and I have one question. Does the recharge rate take into account all the bots in the sector healing the Levi? And do the bots actually "heal" the shields or just the hull? Do the turrents have individual shields?

I've teried hitting the cap ship fully loaded with swarms and gems a rag and before i fired the 2nd shot it had fully recharged. There were alot of bots in sector "healing" it though. I don't think the Levi (haven't tried the others yet) is "soloable".

JB

Now that we have shields ingame how about sticking to a backstory a bit and giving Itani nation specific ships some shields?
You could cut their armor and give them some shields so they stay balanced.

Problem with shields is:

1. Joe Itani flies into combat with his Itani ship.

2. Joe Itani's ship loses his shields.

3. Joe Itani runs away until his shield recharge. Since the current Itani ships are the Valk and the IBG (both superb for running away within a sector) there's little chance of the enemy being able to re-engage and destroy Joe Itani before his shields come back on.

4. Joe Itani returns to the fray. His ship is good as new, while his enemy's is already damaged.

Until a way/weapon is made to effectively counter the shield, OR shields are given to everybody, I am totally AGAINST this idea. May I suggest you get some skills instead?

Now now, let's not flame people about their "skills" or otherwise.

I know the backstory says Itani are supposed to have shields, but it also says that learning to use an Energy Focus requires decades of dedicated training, and it's predominately used by the monk adepts. I intended it to be more of a character-driven thing than a ship-driven thing, and I always planned to balance it out across the nations with different types of abilities/equipment which could be pursued by top-level players.

Anyway, that said, let's keep this discussion about the capships for now. I am in no particular hurry to make shields available on anything smaller, as doing so would have a really dramatic balance-altering effect on gameplay, and some of it would be negative.. I'm not going to approach that until I have a lot more of the balance factors thought out. Right now I'm just trying to make worthwhile targets for teamed-up groups of players. Integration of the new technology into the storyline will be forthcoming. For right now, my biggest priorities are base gameplay: fixing problems with what we have, and adding new gameplay elements.