Due to the recent proliferation of nuclear weapons I believe it is time to create a sheild addon.

I think each one should provide roughly half the sheild strength of a hive queen and have a battery drain of about 25 allowing 2 to be equipped.

Ships using a sheild would not be able to turbo and recharge at the same time. They would be able to trade off a weapon for protection from the instant kill of nuclear arms.

nahhhh. just use more shield bubble turrets.

Didn't TU's just get 'nerfed'? I would expect their usage to drop of considerably. This would probably be game breaking.

Wow Fluffers, You are sounding like a liberal democrat with this nerf thing. Give it up.

Yes It would be game changing and I expect there will be some tweaking needed to get a decent balance between being useful and creating unkillable monster ships. This is why I suggested they start at half the strength of a queens shield. Shields would be a boon to all play styles.

One obvious permutation would be to make a shielded hog with CWM...
Botting in a shielded centaur will also be very different as well.

One way to help keep them under control would be to make then hideously expensive.
Having them drain the battery while the shield is up is also a mechanic that should be explored.
Perhaps this type of shielding would be unusable in ion storms.

The question in the end is how to allow shields for general usage in a balanced way.

Half a queen is ridiculous. In a small craft the shield should withstand only small number of successive hits.

Sorry, no.

-1

Well Pa, I don't think there is anything wrong with being a liberal democrat. That being said, I am neither a liberal democrat, conservative republican nor magical libertarian. And yet, somehow I am also all of them. I voted Johnson / Weld, not because I thought they were a good or the best choice, but because I could not in good conscience support Clinton or Trump. I didn't in fact vote for Johnson, I voted to break the Republican / Democrat stranglehold on US politics.

What I meant by 'nerfed' was that they are no longer reloadable for free on tridents and at 500k cr a reload, I expect their use will diminish to primarily defensive or specific target usage. How the recent change actually plays out needs time for us to have a clear picture.

As to the OP, in reference to what I said above (twice now), I think the 'proliferation' argument is not valid until we see how things evolve over the next few weeks / months.

As to the shield add on, I need a reason to believe that this would not break other game play. Such as a behemoth easily making it to a dock while under attack in a station sector by strategically using the shield / turbo to evade damage. How this would play out in a chase could be interesting, but my leaning is that it would have an overall negative impact. And then there is combat both environment and pvp that would potentially be impacted.

I'm sorry, but I have to give this a big ol -1 until I see a more thorough description or good arguments that counter my concerns.

-1 Small craft don't need shields

I have to -1 this as well. If you can't dodge weapons fire from bots then learn, and if you get boomed hauling stuff in greyspace, well it's greyspace. Shields should be capitol ship only perks.

-1. Just fly a capship.

Not everyone wants to plod slowly through space like its 2001 space odyssey....

Queen shields are not that hard to drop - at half that anything sporting more then 1 swarm launcher would still be a serious threat.

And don't forget this also requires you to give up a large port to use.

Fluffers, If we never added anything to the game that changed the overall balance then nothing would ever be added more serious then a new spoofer. Adding some shielding gives a much broader variety to the load out choices for everyone in the game. Adding a shield to a hog seriously curtails its firepower but also makes it capable of operating as a defender and absorbing both missile and gun attacks. This same trade off occurs on almost every platform. The largest game changer I think will be seen in rag usage. A shielded rag will be much more suited to survive during station conquest and still be able to carry enough firepower to do a considerable amount of damage. Shielding will also make passing thru the wormhole turrets a bit easier as well but again at the cost of damage potential.

At this point I haven't made a firm suggestion concerning the specs because I am still pondering all the different trade offs and potentials possible. Feel free to make a suggestion of your own here. This is the time and place to try and rough out all the issues....

"Not everyone wants to plod slowly through space like its 2001 space odyssey...."

That plodding is what makes it balanced. You trade the ability to escape quickly for the ability to shrug off most smaller attacks. This lessens the danger of random people being able to harm you, but the slowed travel increases the danger that people will launch planned attacks. That's balanced -- the danger isn't really reduced, just shifted from one kind to another. What you're proposing, on the other hand, is trading your ability to harm anybody in exchange for denying them the ability to harm you. That is not balanced, since it still lets you engage in non-combat activities like trade with barely any risk. Yes, the shield wouldn't be perfect, and yes, you'd be giving up some mobility, but it wouldn't be enough. In the majority of cases you'd still be able to dodge swarms in a straight-up fight, and even with the loss of 25 e/s you'd still be able to escape the sector if anybody encounters you without either a PCB or some heavy ordinance.

Besides, this would encourage more people to carry swarms "just in case", which would make the game less fun instead of more fun. Swarms can be fun to fight, and sometimes they're even fun to use, but only in moderation. It doesn't take long at all for them to become boring.

I don't inherently object to shields on non-cappies, mind, but they'd need to be weak enough that somebody with, say, a pair of neuts and an FC could drop them if they managed to land a coherent stream of hits over a span of a couple seconds. Yes, that's extremely weak compared to a capital ship, but you wouldn't be equipping them on a capital ship. You'd be equipping them on a much cheaper vessel, and one that is much smaller and more mobile, meaning it's harder to hit in the first place. The shield would serve to save you from a few mistakes, particularly if you get caught by surprise. It could make the difference if you stumble into a minefield or try jumping from the sector while a pirate's within range to shoot. (I kill a lot of people that way. They run, and I catch up just in time to kill them while they're trapped by the jump sequence.)

The trade off for a weak shield for a small craft could be weight. Adding 20 to 40k kg to a taur or moth would make it easy to hit and drop the shield while minimizing it's combat or escape capabilities.

Another cost that would be unique trade off for any future utility gear would be a subtraction from the power cell charge rate.

Example:
A shielded moth moves like it's hauling a couple ffssa and can't infini turbo.

You are shifting the goal posts Pa. My responses are based fundamentally on the premise of your op "Due to the recent proliferation of nuclear weapons I believe it is time to create a shield add-on."

You are also implying that I am consistently opposed to new items being added to the game because I am not expressing favor towards your idea in what I can only interpret to be meant in an insulting way - "liberal democrat". I don't think I need to defend my record on this forum.

Now as to the moved goal posts, I am not swayed. A shielded rag in station conquest or shielded ship at the border turrets, neither of which based on the OP can turbo are effectively dead in the water and easy kills. As to the shield on a hog defending another ship / object, again, it can't turbo while the shield is active so would have trouble being in position to actually defend. And then there is the question of just how far out do we expect these shields to extend from the hog??? Do you really think a pirate or npc is going to necessarily change their target from prey to defender- especially when the defender is weakened by having a shield taking up its large port??? Honestly, I usually consider your posts to be of value to the discussion but this one just doesn't seem thought out and you seem to be taking offense that I specifically have dared to disagree with you on the matter.

Otherwise, what Pizzasgood said. I also am not against the idea of shields for smaller ships in principle. However, the OP needs work fit Pizza's general criteria before my opinion will start to shift.

Your a bit confused fluffers, The liberal democrat remark was clearly aimed at your whining over the reloads issue..and yes I was being insulting, I actually expected better from you.....

I cant say exactly how shields will play out in combat - No one can. Until they actually get in game there is simply no way to really know.

At half the strength of a queen nuets and a FC batt actually would be pretty close. I have seen a few come very close to taking down a queen using only energy.

Not going to happen.

+1 For something new and unusual, make them bloody expensive and It'll be a right laugh to see VO's lighter=better dynamic switch for a bit.

Alas this is the state of our society. Sorry to have disappointed you. I must have become normalized to whining by the last 8 years of conservative republican rhetoric. I do apologize. Or maybe just maybe a great deal depends on ones perspective. lol

True the dems aren't the first nor will they be the last....and their replacements may actually be worse.

Heh.. We shall see whats next in 8 years.

The first units should in fact be extremely expensive.... Like 500k each :}
After all the development cost need to be recouped and theres all that testing to be done....

i see the pros and cons of this.

why does it not have like a percent it has, with all said above(counting i did not miss anything). why not make it active on a trigger but always keeping a passive no turbo and that other stuff, but when its active it drains its percent it(more if its being shot at) like lets say its at 100% and a guy sees seiger for an example, he turns it on and its slowly loses it % of the shield, and seiger then fires on the guy and the % goes down faster(it could go faster on what gun, like compare being hit by a MP and a charged cannon, it can be different). after the shield is out of its % it needs to recharged, i think it should get it % back from either their ship or station, or to make it interesting it could only recharged in an ion storm but can not be used in a ion storm. also it could have a delay timer for a 'start up' and 'shut down' like maybe 1.5 seconds for it to turn on and off, could be longer if the person with the shield is in combat(counting person was shot). could there be a 'how much is it damage compared to my hull %' so if you had 100% hull you have 100% shield, but if you had 75% hull you have 85% shield? if this idea of pakettle comes into consideration those hull to shield % could be changed. that's all i got for now, i am typing this at 12:10am at midnight so i might had missed something or it has a hole in it.

Indeed. If nothing else, the next four years promise to be interesting. People tend to be averse to change, hence much of the current and past over reactions. I'm of the mind to wait and see what happens. Albeit nervously. Very very nervously! lol