Make chainguns immune to shields

[jasonthebadger]

Thinking out loud here, But a shield isn't effective against crashing into an asteroid right?

So how is it effective against a chaingun that's firing a real projectile?

 

Chainguns even late-game aren't terribly effective so it would make it a valid weapon option for the entire game.

 

To me, shields should only be effective aginst non-projectile weapons ( which is pretty much everything else )

Also, it would make integrity generators useful after you have access to shield generators.

 

EDIT: Cannons as well should be immune, going by my train of thought  ;D

[Hammelpilaw]

Your thougths are not wrong, but it would kill game balancing. We already have shield penetrating pulse cannons, thats good, but when all projectiles completely ignore shields it makes all non-projectile weapons useless and koonschi had to rebalance the whole game.

 

To me the weaps are currently well balanced. I just think the pulse cannons should be a little stronger, but howerver, this could be modded if really required.

[jasonthebadger]

I do agree with you, perhaps nerf the max damage a chaingun/cannon can do?

Although then they'd still be useless, especially late-game.

 

Actually i've got it, Make a critical hit chance which penetrates shields.

So, say a Chaingun ( As it's weaker ) can have ( Up to ) 20% chance of penetrating shields, Cannons say 10-15% and energy weapons say 5% max as a legendary. and scale down the percentages from there.

 

To be fair, it would make IFG's more useful after you've gotten to Naonite, Once i'm up to that, I always go SG's and never touch IFG's afterwards.

[nDervish]

Thinking out loud here, But a shield isn't effective against crashing into an asteroid right?

So how is it effective against a chaingun that's firing a real projectile?

 

It's actually a fairly common SF conceit, going back (in some form) at least as far as Dune, which had personal shields that would stop a hypervelocity bullet cold, but do nothing against a slow-moving blade.

 

The basic explanation for the effect is that the shield counteracts kinetic energy, not momentum.  Kinetic energy increases with the square of velocity, so something moving four times as fast (say a 4km/s chaingun projectile vs. a 1 km/s ship-to-asteroid collision) will be affected 16 times as strongly by shields.  But even though that asteroid has a (relatively) low velocity, its enormous mass still gives it extremely high momentum in the collision, resulting in horrendous damage.  (And, yes, I have enough physics background to be appalled at how fast and loose I'm being in my handling of KE, velocity, momentum, and collision mechanics here.)

 

Of course, if that's really the approach that Avorion is taking towards shields, then shields should provide some minor protection in collisions, with that protection increasing at higher relative velocities.  And, if collision damage increases linearly with velocity while shield effectiveness increases with the square of velocity, then there will inevitably be a point at which the way to take less damage in a collision is to go faster...

[Valshala]

I can see the point being made, but what about players like myself who choose to fly ships no bigger than 3 upgrade slots with quite low hull..  Pulse cannons are already a nightmare for me and I don't even gain the benefit of out flying an ai opponent as they just re-position turrets if they cannot spin on the spot.

 

I think shield ignoring weapons should have drastically shorter ranges to balance them just like they did with mass drivers In X2-x3.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Zankastia]

Actually no. Shields are particles around your ship? some times charged sometimes not. They are there to disrupt the path another particle would take if the particle is charged. The projectiles (in general, kinetic weapons) are propelled by gauss technology, and thus are charged. So the shield will deflect the kinetic bullet, but since they have waaaaaaay more mass than lest say a photon or even some plasma, well they cant deflect it very well.