Shield mechanics and Combat gameplay dynamics

[Morbo513]

Edit:

I've removed the other suggestions I made in this thread, since the discussion is almost entirely focused on shields.

 

Here's what I said on shields originally:

I find shields to be the biggest thing undermining the game. Right now, they serve as health your ship will always have, so long as the shield generators stay intact and are given time to recover between each battle. Many AI ship battles involving shields I've seen have dragged on well into the territory of an hour, and it seems they're generally much too powerful to be overcome by a single ship's firepower.

To address this, I'd recommend making shields begin to plateau in effectiveness beyond say 50% of a ship's hull strength, as well as possibly being less powerful the higher the ship's volume. This means a ship's shields will rarely be as strong as or stronger than its hull, and reduce the degree to which a shielded ship is more powerful than an unshielded one.

 

The key points:

Shields work against dynamic, opportunistic combat,

Shields are currently the best and main method of protecting your ship, outweighing other factors such as speed, maneuverability, armour, hull strength and pilot skill. Therefore, shields do not present themselves as a choice with drawbacks, but as a necessity you must account for to survive in combat. In turn, combat revolves entirely around being able to take enough damage for long enough to do enough damage to the enemy's shields, before they can do that to you. Shields can easily be made, with few drawbacks, to take that amount of damage for such a ridiculously long length of time, undermining the necessity of all combat principles beyond "shoot gun at enemy [if the numbers are on your side]".

 

The suggestions to address this:

Diminishing returns based on ship volume

Diminishing returns based on an upper threshold of shield strength, depending on ship volume

Energy production/consumption being affected by damage taken to shields (Active, manual shield raising/lowering)

General nerf to normal shields, with introduction of stronger but more limited directional shields

 

See post #11 for elaboration on these

[Subquake]

Nice suggestions except the shields part.

 

If your battles take an hour, it means that you lack firepower. You have to understand, that mid/late game you can't rely on having a small and agile ship with few powerful guns and if you want to be an effective killing machine, you need to upgrade your ship and size, so that you have more internal system slots for turret modules, that increase your max turret count. The more turrets you will have obviously the more dps you will deal. In a similar game series X3 you also had large battleships that you could fight only with a well equipped equally classed ship.

 

Some guns deal more damage to shields, some less (modifiers), that's the meta game of turret management. I personally am at Trinium/Xanion zone and with 18 turrets (blue and orange quality mostly) I have no problem fighting against any odds, even vs 15+ pirate ships and dealing with all of them would take me about 15 minutes tops, some die in seconds, others are beefier.

 

Stats of my ship:

 

What I would like to see dealt with relating to shields is that they should negate and soak up all collision damage before the hull.

 

 

[Morbo513]

If your battles take an hour, it means that you lack firepower

 

As I said, this was a battle between shield-equipped AI ships. I don't like being locked out of being able to make those small, fast and maneuverable ships because "the meta dictates it". There should certainly be drawbacks to doing so, and I already feel them, but there should also be drawbacks to building behemoths, beyond their lack of speed - That lack of speed means nothing if faster ships have to enter their range to engage, and in the short time such a faster ship is able to remain there, they won't dent the shield, never mind burst it and start doing hull damage. It's simply ridiculous how much damage shields can be made to take, and it's nowhere near proportional to the level of firepower usually available, to AI ships or yourself.

 

Shielded ships are essentially invulnerable until a certain threshold of firepower can be brought to bear on them for a certain period of time. This limits creativity and player expression through different play- and building styles

[Subquake]

You do know that there are bosses in this game too? And some spawn minions as well. Yes, you could be efficient with a small craft, but in lower tier sectors with higher tier guns.

 

Drawback of having big ships is the large upkeep cost. If you are not familiar with X3 series games, you won't get it.

[Morbo513]

You do know that there are bosses in this game too? And some spawn minions as well. Yes, you could be efficient with a small craft, but in lower tier sectors with higher tier guns.

 

Drawback of having big ships is the large upkeep cost. If you are not familiar with X3 series games, you won't get it.

 

Re: Upkeep, I find it a similar argument as with the ubiquitous sniper rifles in FPS that are capable of one-shot-kills, but have a slower refire rate/reload/higher recoil/movement aim penalties - In that case, if the shot hits, it doesn't matter to the target if it takes 10 years for them to have the next shot ready, cause they're already dead.

 

Likewise, so long as your logistics are good, the cost of maintaining that ship don't matter once you're in combat. It doesn't directly offset its performance, and a ship with shields will always be able to out-damage and therefore out-resource an unshielded or significantly worse-shielded ship. That's not a problem in and of its self, it's the degree to which it's the case. Besides, those shields will prevent you from taking significant hull damage as long as you don't make any awful misjudgements in a fight, rendering repair costs null.

[Subquake]

If you are not satisfied with the balance of the game, you do realize, that you can change the difficulty to a lower one if you are so eager to fight enemy ships with shields with your un-shielded ship.

 

Your suggestion for shields is biased and the game feels too hard for you and you want the game developer to nerf shields so that enemy ships are weaker. Well deal with it and adapt to the situation, adjust your designs, make them better, more efficient.

 

I like a good challenge and many other people would surely back me up on this if necessary. Sniper rifles in FPS games require aiming skill and precision of the shooter, you can't just burst them aimlessly like other guns and it takes time to master them and those who do get to enjoy them.

 

Here's a food for thought: Since I finished the game once already, before my friends servers SSD died, we started over and I managed to go from Titanium to Trinium zone with no shields and I could die in 2 shots easily if I was careless, my ship was like a fly compared to other ships, but I didn't die. Slowly I helped NPCs, gathered turrets and didn't pick fights that I couldn't win and slowly built up to that level, that I showed you above in this discussion.

 

If you want to take on a large battleship with a small fighter spaceship, it's expected for the fight to be a few hours long at least, it's not Star Wars bs, where you can land a single deadly shot and a death star explodes.

 

The more you will kill, the more loot you will get and slowly you will gather up better quality turrets and you will notice, that enemy shields are nothing special, heck, in my opinion they are too weak.

 

Also your suggestion about shields is bad, because it would limit the creativity of small and ressiliant craft, that have low healt, but large amounts of shields - which is what I do with my miner NPCs ships, that I have built, they have around 3000hp, but 100k shields. Think about it! Plus you can build your own fleet and order them to escort you and help you in fights (a hassle to manage though).

 

Basically you are shooting yourself in the foot if you want to nerf the shields, because they will be nerfed for you as well, not just other NPCs, and it will limit the creativity factor and people will be forced to build big and bulky ships to have more shields, it's silly, admit it! That's why there is a block in game called Shield Generator, the more you build them, the larger the shields and it's up to the player what they want to do with them. It's a sandbox game, people can build whatever they want. If you want to play with small fighters, then don't leave Iron/Titanium/Naonite zones, no one is forcing you, but if you do want to move closer to the center of the galaxy, you have to adapt to the environment, don't ask the developer to change the environment, because you personally feel its unfair for you, that you can't play through the game with your nice little ship, that you built starting the game.

 

What's in the center:

 

End game boss has around 18 million shields and 18 million health points and it periodically spawns around 15 minions, some of them have 1 million shields and health.

 

It took me two hours to kill him solo in my first playthrough. And your ship will need at least 1 million shield for yourself if you want to survive.

 

[Morbo513]

You're making a hell of a lot of assumptions about how I'm playing the game and how I approach difficulty. Which is not what it's about - I love the fact that I'm mincemeat if I stay in an enemy's line of fire for more than 5 seconds. It's that in those 5 seconds those shields can barely be dented, and that goes for all the AI ships in the area combating one another. These faction ships are tearing into each other for 20 minutes, but nothing's changed because their shields are holding. When two or three gang up on a single target, its shield still takes ages to come down yet once it does, the hull is shredded within 1 minute. The difference between hull and shield damage, is damaging the hull actually does something to reduce the target's capabilities so I'd rather be in, and against, ships with low shields and high hull than the other way around.

I want to avoid combat becoming solely a game of "Is my damage number big enough to overcome their shield number", it takes a lot of skill out of both combat and building - the former because said shielded ships are too slow to pose a hard target, as well as the fact that a player can stay static without real worry; the former because you no longer need to worry about building principles or component placement. It also renders armour pretty much moot. Yes, there should absolutely be ships that can tank a lot of damage and come out okay, but shields so far make incoming fire far too trivial so long as it's not depleting faster than you can kill or evade your attackers. Again, you can fight countless battles without taking a single point of hull damage if you manage your range and the number of enemies you're facing at once. That's the easy part, and if the meta dictates combat should consist solely of that, it's not engaging.

 

So while we're still making assumptions about one another, it's easy to believe that your vehement defence of the current state of shields is due to the advantage you gain from prioritising them over all else in the design of a ship being diminished were they to be nerfed.

There is a nicer solution. Buff hull and weapons.

 

Basically you are shooting yourself in the foot if you want to nerf the shields, because they will be nerfed for you as well, not just other NPCs, and it will limit the creativity factor and people will be forced to build big and bulky ships to have more shields, it's silly, admit it!

The suggestion included the idea of having additional/larger shield generators give diminishing returns. This encourages players to design their hulls to better protect those components, including the shield generators themselves.

 

Oh, and for reference my current ship's mostly Trinium, with a Naonite shield gen for ~1k shield HP. Can't remember hull values, and I think ~700 firepower. With the mobility and small profile it has, I can evade enough enemy fire to kill me ten times over, and be saved from that one salvo that does manage to connect, the hull can take a fair beating but won't hold up to sustained fire. I like how vulnerable I am, I don't like how invulnerable the ships I've encountered, and again, seen battling one another, have been.

 

Also your suggestion about shields is bad, because it would limit the creativity of small and ressiliant craft, that have low healt, but large amounts of shields - which is what I do with my miner NPCs ships, that I have built, they have around 3000hp, but 100k shields. Think about it! Plus you can build your own fleet and order them to escort you and help you in fights (a hassle to manage though).

 

The suggestion also contained the idea of shields being weaker the higher the ship's volume (With some thresholds to reach and such, there are a lot of variables that could plug in). I think it makes sense for larger ships to need more shield generators to cover their larger surface, while the same size generator on a smaller hull spreads its shield less thin. This would make smaller ships closer to being as viable as huge ones.

[SageThe13th]

I'm not sure what game you're playing but NPC ships almost universally have higher Hp than shields by a lot.  Also once their shields go down their hull lasts just as long or longer depending on what weapons are being fired at them.

[Morbo513]

I'm not sure what game you're playing but NPC ships almost universally have higher Hp than shields by a lot.  Also once their shields go down their hull lasts just as long or longer depending on what weapons are being fired at them.

 

I don't know, maybe it's a special case where, for whatever reason, the NPC ships being generated have some real powerful shielding but not a lot of firepower. There's also the "meta" for players, ie shield-heavy ships always being the go-to because of the reasons above. I'm not arguing that shieldy-tanky ships should be made pointless, but that their shield strength should come at a greater cost in terms of the ship's other stats - mobility, maneuverability, energy consumption etc. and/or more depth be put into the way the shields themselves work both in building (ie diminishing returns, strength dependent on ship volume/surface area) and combat (Weaker shields overall, but regenerate faster?). Another couple possibilities are directional shields, and specialised anti-shield weapons.

 

The point I'm trying to make is I feel shields should be a small buffer for damage you'd otherwise take to your hull, and to make it anything more than that one should need to make a much bigger trade for that capability.

 

[BlackWyvern]

I know it's a few days late, but I'm going to have to chime in, and just say, bluntly, that's dumb.

 

If you have trouble with shields, it comes down to two things and nothing more.

1. Clearly, your firepower is lacking. Craft some exceptional turrets, cannons and railguns specifically.

2. Shields do not recharge while under fire.

That's all there is to it.

 

Even if an enemy had 300k health, instead of 150k shield and 150k health, it would take exactly as long to kill said enemy with the same firepower. If you can't kill a shield in time to not die, you can't kill armour in the same time. The only difference is you have to focus your targets with shields or they'll recharge.

 

As for anti-shield weapons, they're called Plasma Turrets (which sadly are actually inherently pretty weak) or there are stations that can craft turrets with % to pierce shields, or +% to shield modifiers.

 

I have a small frigate with 12 crafted Triple Railguns with 600 damage, 10% chance to pierce shields, and 50% bonus damage to hull. 2-3 shots are enough to kill any pirate, Xolitan, or anything else I really point myself at, even in the Xanion/Ogonite zones. I can literally shoot the shield generators off of stations while their shields are still online, and do 2-300k damage per shot due to projectile piercing. Granted, this costs a fair bit, and you'll spend time collecting all the materials, but it is definitely worth it.

 

However, even with all those, I still have to have a 13th turret with faster fire rate to keep the shield cooldown on stations in check while the rails cool down, otherwise they'll start recharging at 1-3% per second. (Which when they have 14 million shield is a lot.)

 

As for the faction fights lasting forever, that's based on difficulty. On easy, enemies only do 20% of their equipped firepower damage. Throwing 1-300 damage rocks and potatoes at each other will definitely take a while to actually do anything to 100k+ shields.

 

But coming out and saying that the entire game dynamics needs to be redesigned just because YOU don't like using shields is ridiculous. Hull is inherently weak. You can help increase its survivability with field generators, but it still comes down to the fact that if you want to play in the higher level areas, you are going to have to use shields.

 

As it is, shields have a high base cost, both in raw materials, but power requirements, crew requirements, and are usually pretty heavy. And the hassle that in order to maintain those shields, you have to have powerful enough generators, which require their own costs and upkeeps. And then because they're some of the most fragile blocks in the game, you have to fortify them or else the first stray cannon shell that comes across with shields offline, or a shield breaking railgun will obliterate your shield systems in a single hit. Armour tanking is not a mechanic in this game, and lets face it, realistically either.

 

Every game, movie, or whatnot that depicts combat in space without shields is scientifically inaccurate. Railgun projectiles accelerated to even 3% the speed of light hit armour with the force of a multi-kiloton nuclear detonation. Unless you have some impossibly resilient armour material, either that bolt is going in one side and out the other, or you just got blown in half.

[gblnk]

There seems to be a disconnect here. The point OP is trying to make about super powerful shields is they discourage dynamic combat. The responses are mostly criticizing him for not fully embracing the current meta, which is all reward and no risk.

 

I just restarted the game on insane thinking it would add some challenge, but sadly it hasn't. Shields aren't the only reason, but they're a big part of it. In a very short time I was able to go from a tiny mining craft to a fast agile ship with 50k shields. And every time you start to struggle you just make it bigger, add more shields and weapons, and you're good to go. Being insanely overpowered is fun for a little while but it usually isn't good for game longevity.

 

Shields and scaling aren't the only problem though. NPC ships are slow and awkward and the ai is severely lacking. Even if you do get in over your head it's almost impossible to die because nothing can chase you down.

[Morbo513]

There seems to be a disconnect here. The point OP is trying to make about super powerful shields is they discourage dynamic combat. The responses are mostly criticizing him for not fully embracing the current meta, which is all reward and no risk.

 

These are the key points to take home, thanks.

A lot of you are trying to use this as an opportunity to tell me I'm bad at the game. The only challenge regarding combat once you have shields is making sure they're enough to take the fire you receive, if not, gathering the resources to do so - unless, like me, you build your ships purposefully weak, so as to make evasion an important part of combat.

 

 

As for the above poster's assertion that the target being all shields or all armour makes no difference, you're wrong. As I said before, an unshielded ship is subject to degrading firepower, maneuverability and speed due to the destruction of components; a shielded ship can't suffer any of this until those shields are down, making combat a very mundane affair until that happens.

But coming out and saying that the entire game dynamics needs to be redesigned just because YOU don't like using shields is ridiculous.

Is that not the nature behind making a suggestion? I never said I don't like using shields, I just don't like how easy it is to make your ship practically invulnerable with them.

 

Shields and scaling aren't the only problem though. NPC ships are slow and awkward and the ai is severely lacking. Even if you do get in over your head it's almost impossible to die because nothing can chase you down.

 

Part of it is definitely the way the AI work - Close the distance and stay there until they or you/their target are dead - there's zero dynamism and it becomes a game of watching those hull/shield values dwindle down. They do nothing to present themselves as a difficult target (Except through wonky needle-ship designs that turn ridiculously fast on the spot, to the point of messing with hit detection) at the very least.

 

As for the simple numbers question of hull vs shield health, armour is to receive a buff according to koonschi

 

Every game, movie, or whatnot that depicts combat in space without shields is scientifically inaccurate. Railgun projectiles accelerated to even 3% the speed of light hit armour with the force of a multi-kiloton nuclear detonation. Unless you have some impossibly resilient armour material, either that bolt is going in one side and out the other, or you just got blown in half.

 

Railguns notwithstanding, deflection is a thing. Were it modelled, it'd make for some real interesting dynamics in terms of shields vs armour, and how each class of weapon plays in to it. Typically, energy weapons would be good for destroying the armour block its self, while cannons and railguns would have a better chance of penetrating, and chainguns/bolters have a higher chance of being deflected while doing a lot of raw dps to exposed hull and components

 

I'll flesh that idea out and make a thread for it, since this one's pretty much entirely focused on the shield debate. So while we're on the subject, as food for thought I'd like to bring up how they work in a game some of you might have played (And if not, I recommend): Starsector

 

Now, the systems behind how shields work in Starsector are pretty much completely different. Each ship has "flux" - your weapons generate it, your shields generate it when raised and when hit, and each ship has a different capacity, the rate at which it dissipates and can be actively vented.

So, when you're in a fight with other ships, you will be trying to overload their flux, while preventing them from doing the same to you - by hitting their shields with kinetic weapons, making them miss their shots by use of maneuvering, or simply tanking it due to huge flux capacity/dissipation that comes with the larger ships, upgrades and skills.

Anyway, when the target's flux capacity is overloaded, their ships are sitting ducks - they can't shoot, they can't raise their shields, their maneuverability is compromised and they can't use any active abilities (eg. phase skimming, a short-range teleport), leaving them open to armour and hull damage. However, to avoid this they'll periodically drop their shields if you're out of range, or even while under fire if taking the armour hit wouldn't be as bad as an overload. They'll maneuver to make you miss, they'll hit you in your shields so expending flux to keep fire on them becomes a greater risk. Oh and I forgot to mention, shields don't (always) cover the entire 360 degrees around the ship - There are several variables governing a shield's effectiveness and how it'll help determine the role of the ship: Its coverage in degrees, its flux cost per second just for being on, how long it takes to reach its full arc on being activated, the flux capacity and dissipation rate and any hullmods that give bonuses to any of those aspects, and the flux-cost for firing the ship's weapons and how you manage this in all aspects of combat - doing so is a good 70% of combat in Starsector. Instead of just beating at each other reducing these values in a long and linear fashion, quick and decisive action can cripple a ship, such as outmaneuvering or flanking the target, committing to an alpha-strike to overload then stick him with some torpedoes, or bullying harder targets into being unable to fire for risk of getting overloaded, to do the former two to a weaker ship in the fleet, all while doing as much as you can to deny the same opportunities to the enemy.

 

In other words, combat in Starsector is decisive, brutal and opportunistic - which while we're making comparisons to reality, is about as close as it gets. Combat in Avorion more a numbers game than anything else. Right now, maneuverability, speed, piloting skill and small profile don't quite add up to the value of shields alone. There is no reward for prioritising the former group, except for making combat more challenging and engaging for one's self - Regardless of what type of ship one builds, you're given no means to exploit a big ship's sluggishness, a small ship's lack of firepower, a heavily shielded ship's energy consumption, a heavily armoured ship's trade for shields.

Using them is a foregone conclusion - the mechanics dictating how they affect combat and ship design leave no room for a decision, a trade-off to take place, and for that reason they lack - no - remove depth from the game.

 

 

 

[Hale]

After reading all of this I do agree with morbo somewhat.  Shields are very easy to use to the point that all you really -need- to do is -build- one and you've got a lot better chance of surviving.  Having more facets to shields would make the game more exciting, but my only question is how they would be implemented into NPC play while still being dynamic and exciting.

[Morbo513]

After reading all of this I do agree with morbo somewhat.  Shields are very easy to use to the point that all you really -need- to do is -build- one and you've got a lot better chance of surviving.  Having more facets to shields would make the game more exciting, but my only question is how they would be implemented into NPC play while still being dynamic and exciting.

That's a good question, the answer depends on AI development, which I imagine would follow rather than precede establishing how they perform in gameplay.

[GrimJahk]

I think there is a solution (or the seed of one) to this problem... Make a certain (undervalued) weapon type inherently stronger against shields, with the possibility that it makes them weaker...

 

I.E. All plasma guns do <base> +50% damage to shields with random chance that they weaken (effect: all weapons gain 10% penetration for 10 sec) the target.

 

This has the effect of making you vulnerable, and forces you to prioritize targets better.. and pay attention in case some of your systems have been hit/destroyed.

 

This also encourages more variety of weapons used by players...

 

You can also (for example) make certain weapons useless against shields (just as salvaging lasers are now)... to encourage more tactical approaches (better selection of weapons)

 

This would making farming Pirates all the more interesting... Middle of a fight and a shield crippler catches up to the fight... suddenly you are taking hull damage and you have to re-asses your target priorities, or run like hell...

[DivineEvil]

- Shields are not overpowered and not special in any way. You can use no shields at all. The only advantage they provide is that they do not manifest into increased ship mass.

 

- Shields are extremely expensive. Overall, Armor plating provide much greater durability with respect to resources and credits spent.

 

- Shields do not regenerate under a continuous fire. Hull is always repaired regardless of circumstances.

 

- Shields take up a major part of ship's energy upkeep. Armor requires no energy at all.

 

- Shields are recovered just like the Hull is. Hull is passively repaired until 100% intact, at which point you only need to pay for the parts, that was physically destroyed or shot off.

 

- There are weapons, that deal additional damage to shields or hull. Damage bonuses versus shields are on average 5 times greater.

 

- There are weapons, that can penetrate shields. There are no weapons, that can penetrate armor.

 

- Considering the functionality of Integrity Field Generators, using shields on large ships is a complete nonsense, however it still also a deliberate design choice.

[cy414]

imo, shields would be better if they worked like SIF blocks. ie, bigger block = bigger field not more hp.

combine that with power use from taking damage and linking block chance % to shield hp% and they would be fine.

[Falkenherz]

I think the devs could have an open mind towards this debate. After all, they nerved integrity fields because they did not want them to make the ship a uniform damage block. The entire mechanic could be made more complex. For example, instead of being a "single-block-damage-field", they shield could just dampen incoming damage and they could become directional/locally limited. Fields would add hitpoints to blocks. The combination of the two would make ships more powerful, but still have varied damage effects on ships, which is a strong goal of the devs.