Building Fighters with Shields

[jspiers667x]

So, there isn't any even remotely updated info on this. I see fighters with shields all the time. Is there something special you have to do to build fighters in a fighter factory for them to actually have shields on them? I ask because just making sure the design has shield blocks doesn't seem to be enough.

[bpleshek]

My understanding is that the design and/or blocks of a fighter design are ALL for display only.  There is no functionality to any of them.  The only way to assign "properties" to the fighter is by using the point system. 

[jspiers667x]

Well, except that I've seen fighters for sale in the shops that actually have shields and are much more survivable than the ones without. So I'm wondering, again, what do I need to do to build a fighter in a fighter factory that is actually going to have shields on it. I'm about to build a 27m credit fighter and the tooltip doesn't show shields at all even though the ship used for the fighter does, in fact, have shields on it.

[SneakyTacts]

There’s no way to have shields on fighters, as far as I know. Bpleshek’s information is all I’ve ever found about this topic. Haven’t noticed shields on station-bought fighters, but I’m sure that’s just a visual bug.

[Gorbald]

I would like the disagree with the statement that design has no impact on properties.

 

While this is true for fighters made of turrets, crew shuttles get more points and much more durability if the fighter design is made of avorion only.

[SneakyTacts]

I would like the disagree with the statement that design has no impact on properties.

 

While this is true for fighters made of turrets, crew shuttles get more points and much more durability if the fighter design is made of avorion only.

 

I think you mean that if the material of the turret for the fighter blueprint is of Avorion, then the fighter gets more points. That’s what you meant, right?

[jspiers667x]

The worst part of it is that nobody actually knows and the Devs are pretty silent about it, even on their own forums. Just today I found some garbage fighters for sale on a Fighter Factory that actually had shield stats. Unfortunately, the material and DPS stats for a combat fighter were, as I said, garbage. This leads me to believe that fighters can and do have shields, at least when they're bought rather than built. Some confirmation from the devs would be nice on whether they actually CAN be built with shields or not. I attempted to build a 27 million credit Xanion Railgun Fighter with shields. The design had shield blocks, and what I ended up with was a 27m credit glass cannon that takes 3 hours to build with an excessive amount of assembly volume.

[jspiers667x]

So since it's been crickets in this post and the devs don't seem to respond in the forums, I thought I'd make an update..

 

Out of nowhere, my buddy's ship with an assembler started producing the original fighters we had built, but now they're being produced with shields. No rhyme or reason for it and certainly no explanation.

[FuryoftheStars]

I don’t think I have much to add to this. I’ve used custom models where some have shield blocks (and when launched have shields) and some without (and when launched they don’t have shields).  I haven’t payed much more attention than this.

 

That said, if it was determined at one point that they’re cosmetic, I wonder if there’s more behind this that’s been lost. IE, is the fighter’s HPs during design split between hull and shield?

[jspiers667x]

Well from what we've seen, the combat fighters that we built started off with shield blocks, and at first they didn't have "Shield" in the tooltip stats. Then, out of nowhere, some of the ones that were built from that same blueprint actually ended up with functional shields. We took one of the built fighters that actually had functional shields and made it a blueprint in the carrier's squad. From then on, every fighter built from that ship's assembler with that blueprint had legitimate fighters with shields.

[SneakyTacts]

What a mysterious game. Someone please make two identical fighter blueprints except that one has shields in the design, then test and observe in multiplayer or singleplayer.

[FuryoftheStars]

Well...

 

So after this, I paid better attention to my fighters. The design is all iron. No shield gen.

 

I make a salvaging fighter with it and a naonite salvaging laser. Admittedly, I didn’t pay attention to the original fighter this created, but I did look at the blueprint and the fighters created from this blueprint. Blueprint shows no shields (or perhaps rather shield stat is 0). But the actual fighters have a shield.

 

Could it have to do with the material of the turret used?  Anything naonite and over automatically gets shields?

[Strela17]

What a mysterious game. Someone please make two identical fighter blueprints except that one has shields in the design, then test and observe in multiplayer or singleplayer.

 

Sounds like a plan, I'll give it a try. We should try to get more people on board, as a wider panel of studied cases will give us better results! Plus, we can either all try the same fighter blueprints, or experiment with different builds, all in both shielded and unshielded versions, as to see if the results are the same, or if other elements play an important role.

[SneakyTacts]

What a mysterious game. Someone please make two identical fighter blueprints except that one has shields in the design, then test and observe in multiplayer or singleplayer.

 

Sounds like a plan, I'll give it a try. We should try to get more people on board, as a wider panel of studied cases will give us better results! Plus, we can either all try the same fighter blueprints, or experiment with different builds, all in both shielded and unshielded versions, as to see if the results are the same, or if other elements play an important role.

 

I followed my plan and here's what happened.

 

In creative mode, I constructed four fighter squardrons with these stats:

Squad 1 (Ogonite Regular)

regular design

ogonite rare turret

extra HP and speed but nothing else

Squad 2 (Ogonite Shielded):

same design but with a 1x1x1 avorion shield

same ogonite rare turret

same points

Squad 3 (Naonite Regular):

regular design (like squad 1)

naonite rare turret

same point distribution

Squad 4 (Naonite Shielded):

same design but with a 1x1x1 naonite shield

same naonite rare turret

same points

 

When the shielded fighters were released, I noticed that they had a shield animation as they left the hanger. The animation looked like the animation that plays when your shield is defeated (at 0 HP). Aside from that, all fighters appeared normal and had only a hull HP bar and hull HP points—no visible shields. The icons of the squadrons looked ordinary—still no visible shields.

 

I spawned pirates in my civilized sector to observe my fighters in combat. It was difficult to select and follow the fighters by rotating my view from my ship. At one point, I released only one fighter so that pirates would focus on that one fighter (and the local navy). The pirates had no anti-fighter weapons, I noticed.

 

I never saw a shield animation on the fighters when they were hit. Although, I also don't recall seeing a round strike a fighter, either. Some fighters were destroyed, others were only damaged.

 

What else I learned:

-Fighter production consumes all required resources at the beginning of production.

-You know how assemblies need to be separated for simultaneous production? Well, the size of individual assemblies does not affect the rate at which a single fighter is produced. This means you can build 1 big assembly block and 2 small ones and have 3 simultaneous productions. BUT, production is equal for all simultaneous productions, so an advanced fighter will take more time at the same rate.

-Fighters are instantly healed when they return to the hanger; their HP is full when released.

-In case some of you don't know, I'll say that you can control a fighter. Just select it and press 'T'.

Edit: -You can auto-target or manually target your own fighters, but they cannot be damaged.

[Strela17]

Great, thanks for the feedback! I've  got work right now, but will do some experimenting this weekend and will tell what I'vefound out, it'll be interesting to see if this corroborates what you wrote.

[SneakyTacts]

Great, thanks for the feedback! I've  got work right now, but will do some experimenting this weekend and will tell what I'vefound out, it'll be interesting to see if this corroborates what you wrote.

I had fun doing it. I suggest searching for fighters in stations with shields, although I doubt you’ll find anything with functional shields.

[WSY]

First, the devs are very quiet on a lot of stuff right now:

 

Movement

Fighters

Balancing.

 

 

It may be they like it where it is, or if they are wanting changes....we have not heard anything on this despite a lot of feedback from the community. They brought in a community manager, but does not respond to everything and feels like there is a bit of pick and choosing on responses. Which they could just be busy, or maybe the best way to get answers is join the discord, I don't really know on this.

 

But, they do read a majority of not all the posts, or so they state.

 

They need a roadmap.

 

They have been working in this game a long time. And really it has a lot of wonderful things going for it and for the most part is pretty good, would be an absolute gem I feel if they just addressed a few things. However those things are subjective and based on individual.

 

As for fighters with shields:

 

Sometimes my own fighters suddenly get shields that didn't have them before. At one point I thought there was a post that covered why as someone figured it out, but generally it's a specific sequence of things that happens while fighter is deployed and per fighter they can get a shield.

 

Thanks to rng system not being perfect, sometimes fighters with shields show up today in the shops.

 

Hope this helps.

[Gorbald]

SneakyTacts no. What I meant is that fighters that are NOT produced from turrets (cargo and crew shuttles) have their stats based on the material of the blueprint.

You can try it yourself. Make an iron design and an avorion design and try creating a crew shuttle from both, you will see the difference :)