Guys, i think that that it would be cool to add shield generator as addon or turret for small ships (Atlas, Behemoth, etc.) How do you think, will it useful or not? If yes, then how do you imagine that?

I've heard a suggestion for something like this before. What would the shield strength be?

I think sheild generators are massive, and require a large ship just to house a small inneffectual one like the goliath. Small ships use maneuverability or overwehlming firepower to defeat their opponents.

I kicked around the idea of fighter-scale shields, years back, but as my current goals have firmed up around capital ships (most of which haven't been revealed yet), I'm feeling more comfortable with the current "large-vs-small" tradeoff, where only the big ships have shields.

But, that isn't to say there isn't room for some future addon or specific solution to certain cases, that has a lot of hard-tradeoffs. But they would have to be pretty damned hard tradeoffs.

One implementation that would make sense and be reasonably balanced is making the shield generator tied into the turbo power distribution. Breaking the shields with an appropriate amount of weapon fire would drop a ship out of turbo and shields would have to recover before turbo works again. This would let people take a small amount of extra protection at the expense of running ability and would work in favor of both the hunter and the hunted. Want to hold a ship in sector while extorting them? Break their shields. Want to get away from an attacker? Drop a mine or hit them with a swarm and then turbo away.

My 2c
I have played several mmo space combat games and this is the only one that does not have shields on all ships

They don't need to be big powerfull shields that stop you dieing just enough so that you don't have to dock every time you get hit

If you add a 2k shield to a ship just remove 2k armour so the damage to kill remains the same

I appreciate that automated self-repair is more convenient than manual repair and expense. But, then again, we have constructs also built around some of these mechanics. Like, repair guns, for instance.

Similarly, it would totally alter the mechanics of taking on NPCs and the like. Instead of having to actually kill a target, before being killed yourself, you could then play-for-time and go fly around mid-engagement until your shield recharged, creating an even more exacerbated "running" problem than we already have (except instead of just being PvP, it would be all the time). This would require all NPCs to be rebalanced, practically.

I would also argue that most serious players don't see a lot of "minor damage". You're either in the thick of it, in which case your "shield" would get burned off pretty fast and you'd be taking hull damage anyhow.. or you're not, in which case you probably don't get hit. So, I'd say that most of the time you're needing to repair afterwards without shields would be about the same as it would be with shields. (Exceptions would be things like farming bots, but that goes back to my paragraph above, about how it would basically make it worse).

What other games do, or don't do, isn't much of a motivator for me on their own merits. It's more about how the change specifically benefits our gameplay. I'm not sure that this does. It would totally change a number of game mechanics, if it were applied universally to all small ships.

Or, there would need to be some kind of massive "advantage" tradeoff, like Savet describes.

I'm open to continued ideas. But for now I'm still a bit "meh" on small ships having shields, at least as a common-case thing.

"so that you don't have to dock every time you get hit"

You already don't have to dock every time you get hit. That compulsion is purely psychological.

I like the concept of minor shield generators as add-ons, probably as turret ad-ons, making the disadvantages include (but not necessarily limited to) the sacrificing of other add-ons in the same fashion as utility add-ons like scanners. They should be heavy, and supply only very minor shields (stacking, in the case of multiple shield add-ons), and should probably cause a constant drain on the ships cell until disabled. A single shield generator add-on might provide adequate protection against say, a single collector attacking a mining boat. The ramifications of fitting these add-on style shields to already shielded ships would need to be considered though.

Alternatively, perhaps faction-specific versions of some ships might have minor shields in place of other ports/turrets, and/or other disadvantages such as stat based nerfs (increased mass, reduced cargo/thrust/armour, etc) could be introduced, though I like the add-on approach better, personally.

Something as small as a 5k turret shield would be great - protection from bots, but still gonna die if players arrive...

Not tied into turbo activation tho - that would be stupid ... However tying it into the power generation makes sense. Some numbers...

DPS MAX is around 4000 average for most weapons. So, a 5k shield can be overcome by sustained fire from most any two slots - but not so much basic lvl 1 weapons... Itt would allow invulnerability in collector sectors... But not so much anywhere else.

Up to three shields could be equipped on a small ship... And as such, it makes sense to mention that in this case, only the total max shield should stack, NOT the charging rates.

So, Full stats could be...

Turret slot
4,000kg
Max Shield : 5,000
Shield Regen Per Second : 5,000
Energy Consumption : 5 (continuously as long as shield is installed)

So a behemoth with a shield could no longer infiniturbo, but is otherwise able to move as normal, albeit slower cos of weight.

And, of course, a triple shield Behemoth... To show how multiple shields might stack

4,000kg + 4,000kg + 4,000kg
Max Shield : 15,000
Shield Regen Per Second : 5,000
Energy Consumption : 15 (continuously as long as shield is installed)

I think limiting your cells output to the rough equivalent of a free cell ought to be trade off enough...

And also, the usage of turrets for the slot would limit the usage to the big cumbersome ships, where a shield feels a tad more appropriate... A rag with a shield could be passable but a cent with a shield is just ridiculous.