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Post by lucidsurreality on Jul 26, 2011 8:59:57 GMT 10
I'm curious about the shield health mechanics - from what I've seen so far, if a ship has two shields of the same class, they both take full damage from each shot instead of splitting it. On the other hand, I also noticed that shields of varying strengths all seem to drop at once, so there is clearly some splitting mechanism going on.
Does the game just use the shield strength of the single best shield you have and draw from that? Ie, if you have a 32000J shield and a 64000J shield, the pool would be 64000J, not 96000J?
Well, back to testing! Hopefully I can find some ships in the wild to experiment with.
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Post by Farbs on Jul 26, 2011 13:33:00 GMT 10
The health pooling is pretty simple, but I can see how it'd be difficult to figure out through observation. Here's how it works:
Shield health for each ship or station is stored as a single floating point number, between 0 and 1. Each time a shield takes damage that damage is divided by the shield's strength, and subtracted from the global health. That means that if a weaker shield takes 50% damage then all shields on the ship, including stronger shields, also take 50% damage.
I made this change to discourgage shield hoarding, since I found myself covering my ships in large numbers of weak shields. This slowed the game down and made my ships look awful. With this new system weaker or overlapping shields are far less useful, and in some circumstances detrimental.
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Post by lucidsurreality on Jul 26, 2011 22:54:10 GMT 10
Thanks Farbs! I was messing around with it a bit more and I noticed that my first theory was wrong. I was wondering if that was the case, and it definitely makes sense from a balance stand point.
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Post by Cpt. GrimResistance on Jul 27, 2011 5:30:43 GMT 10
So having a Hotel shield with a bravo shield in front of it isn't a very good idea, good to know.
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Post by sfsdfd on Jul 27, 2011 8:01:13 GMT 10
After due consideration, I've decided that this change sucks.  I played v0.4 for about eight hours yesterday. (Farbs, the region-oxygen improvement is AWESOME!!) During that time, I encountered two scenarios that were really unpleasant, and unfair: 1) While flying through a Juliet spawn area of space, with no enemies on screen while maximally zoomed out, I was hit by an entire volley of J-class laser sniper shots - launched from offscreen. Of course, the volley handily knocked out my entire set of J-class Planck shield and did one hell of a lot of damage to the side of my ship. Of course, this possibility existed in Forever and Successor (and often occurred in the endgame), as well as previous versions of Jameson. The obvious defense was stocking up on shields, but with the new shield pooling, there is no way to protect against this. The only way to avoid it is to NEVER enter Juliet-class space. (And even that choice is difficult, since nav stations are quite sparse at the fringes of space where Juliet space occurs, forcing the player to fly blindly many times.) You may characterize this as bad luck. I call it simply unfair and unpleasant - the possibility of arbitrary and totally unavoidable death (in a game with no save/restore feature) is not a pleasant game mechanic. It's as pleasant as losing your ship to a browser crash! It makes me reluctant to explore J-class space at all. 2) I found myself against an Echo-class guardian armed with an array of lasers, and my array of weapons was well-protected by a set of Planck shields. Suddenly, a lone boot jacker, hurtling through space at insane speeds thanks to a Mk2 booster, blasted on-screen and poked me in the butt with a single ramming spike... dropping the shields for MY ENTIRE SHIP. The end result is that shields are totally nerfed. Protecting a part of your ship with two overlapping shields is pointless - it adds weight without value. Indeed, it's probably better to surround your ship with layers of sacrificial girders than shields. I get your point, Farbs - permitting players to stock up on shields, to the point of completely invulnerable, takes the fun out of the game. But there has to be a middle ground between these extremes. Maybe make shields recharge more slowly as more are added? Or make shield generators very heavy, imposing a tradeoff of protection for bulk? |
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Post by Cpt. GrimResistance on Jul 27, 2011 10:20:20 GMT 10
Maybe make it so the more shields overlap each other the weaker they are, like they are draining energy from one another. You could also make it if your shield collides with enemy's shield they will drain each other. If one of you has stronger shields the weaker shield will turn off and the stronger shield will be drained by the amount of health the weaker shield had.
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Post by sfsdfd on Jul 27, 2011 10:28:23 GMT 10
Maybe make it so the more shields overlap each other the weaker they are, like they are draining energy from one another. In general, this suggestion - diminishing returns - is probably the way to go. One shield = (x) strength; two identical shields = 1.9(x) strength total; three = 2.75(x) total... etc. However, it'll probably be difficult to detect "overlaps." On the other hand, I really don't like the "all shields drawing from the same pool" concept, either: I really want my rear shield to operate independently of my forward shield. You could also make it if your shield collides with enemy's shield they will drain each other. If one of you has stronger shields the weaker shield will turn off and the stronger shield will be drained by the amount of health the weaker shield had. But that would encourage hoarding - even more than the old system. |
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Post by lucidsurreality on Jul 27, 2011 23:57:39 GMT 10
I agree that this change does make the game significantly more difficult. I've been playing on Cumulus, and what's really making it difficult is that I have yet to find a Juliet Upgrade station or at least a Juliet repair module. The other thing that would be lovely is a blurst shield station, as the bubble shield nerf makes those more valuable.
I've had the best luck so far surrounding three sides of my ship in blurst shielding, using bubble/planck shields only for the front to protect my laser array. Still, even this is dangerous - I lost half of my blurst shields in one go when I was pressed up against a ship. I'm assuming this wasn't some 'shoot through the burst shield glitch', but rather, a simple ramming spike again. Those things can be nasty! They're cheap, stronger than a respect girder, and they can knock out any component in one hit with sufficient speed.
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Post by Farbs on Jul 28, 2011 9:55:15 GMT 10
After due consideration, I've decided that this change sucks. Darn. I appreciate your honesty, and I'll definitely take the comment on board but obv. I need to gather a few more opinions before I make any changes. 1) While flying through a Juliet spawn area of space, with no enemies on screen while maximally zoomed out, I was hit by an entire volley of J-class laser sniper shots - launched from offscreen. Of course, the volley handily knocked out my entire set of J-class Planck shield and did one hell of a lot of damage to the side of my ship. I should make sure that never happens. Unavoidable unpredictable death simply isn't fun. I'll see if I can tune the laser ranges to get around this. I get your point, Farbs - permitting players to stock up on shields, to the point of completely invulnerable, takes the fun out of the game. But there has to be a middle ground between these extremes. Maybe make shields recharge more slowly as more are added? Or make shield generators very heavy, imposing a tradeoff of protection for bulk? Shields already have the tradeoff of being extremely heavy, which is part of the reason heavily shielded ships get a bit boring. They make your ship so slow! Massively overlapped shields are also quite ugly, which isn't great. I wouldn't consider the shield pooling system locked in or finalized, and will keep thinking about it. |
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Post by Admiral Kirana on Jul 28, 2011 22:41:44 GMT 10
Okay, quick suggestion for a modification... not sure if this will be good or not.
Potentially, when you have shields, there could be a "global health pool" for them. As in, put on a Bravo shield, that's 8000 J of shielding (I think), then put on an Alpha shield for the exposed area of your ship which adds a 4000 J shield, which increases both shields to 12000 J but as a tradeoff both shields take damage if one is shot.
Also, maybe make it so the shields are at a fixed size similar to the color of lasers? (E.g., a Charlie shield is the same size as an Alpha shield, Foxtrot shield is the same as the Delta shield, India shield is the same as the Golf shield, and Juliet's in its own class)
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Post by ggodeye on Jul 29, 2011 2:06:33 GMT 10
I haven't played CJ A4 yet, but I'll assume that the consensus here is correct and the shield mechanic changes have made the game significantly more difficult.
All I can say is: HELL YES!
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Post by moth on Jul 29, 2011 22:13:58 GMT 10
... I made this change to discourgage shield hoarding, since I found myself covering my ships in large numbers of weak shields. This slowed the game down and made my ships look awful. With this new system weaker or overlapping shields are far less useful, and in some circumstances detrimental. Isn't the resultant boredom a sufficient disincentive? I mostly build ships with just a few high level shields as that seems the most mass-efficient protection. But sometimes i find i really want lots of overlapping shields so i can out-tank high level wall-of-lasers ships. Maybe instead of letting bubble shields overlap you could make them push each other back when they start charging, or not charge at all if they'd be too far inside others. Here's an explanation of how i think this could work. It's easier to explain with round bubbles, but should be as do-able or even easer with polygonal ones. Algorithm: When it's time for a shield to charge, find the points where the edge of its bubble intersects with the full range of any other bubbles that are already up or charging. Find the line between each pair of intersection points. If this generator lies between any other generator and the corresponding intersection line then don't let it charge. If it will charge then: If the line lies between the two generators, subtract the segment beyond the line from each shield's range. If the other generator lies between this generator and the corresponding intersection line, snuff out the other shield. That way adding low level bubbles to a ship with high level ones would either add a weak spot, or do approximately nothing if it's too far inside the higher level bubble. Adding extra shields would still add some protection as there are now more sheilds to share damage over, but if any fall they will leave a vulnerable hole through to the ship's structure. If a high level bubble is knocked down, any smaller bubbles that it was suppressing may reach their recharge interval before before the high level one and start to charge, only to be snuffed out again when the large bubble begins to recharge. So the small bubbles would provide some protection but a bit random and less than before. More complicated is what should happen when a shield that is up reaches its rechage interval and finds that another shield that had pushed it back is now down or gone. I think the best thing is to make a new shield shape and start charging it from zero, but keep the old shield shape and drain it as the new one charges. Another detail is that when a shield falls or is removed, all intersecting shields need to start their recharge timers even if they've taken no damage. Or maybe this is just too hideously complicated. |
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Post by korvash on Jul 30, 2011 4:29:07 GMT 10
I personally didn't see the old shield system as a problem. I'm not really sure why all of this is necassary at all.
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Post by Farbs on Jul 30, 2011 9:54:59 GMT 10
The old system was fine with the old shield rarity. Now that Planck shields are found as wingtips on boot/jacker floatillas you can very quickly find a lot of them. This is where the problem stemmed from. Perhaps that's where I should address it. I'll give it some thought.
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Post by jayce on Jul 30, 2011 10:45:50 GMT 10
I don't really mind the current system, although as Moth said, it does limit your design options regarding tanking and the like.
Just to toss some another suggestion in to the mix:
Maybe split the shield behaviour - although it might not be intuitive - Bubbles can overlap but don't share health pools.
Planck shields as they are now but with one slight tweak; rather than having them share the same health pool, only have shared health pools on the ones that overlap.
Seems like a few more calculations mind =D
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evilc
Alpha Rank
Posts: 9
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Post by evilc on Aug 4, 2011 6:58:48 GMT 10
How about this rule for shields?
Keep the pool idea, but you have 4 pools.
Which pool each shield draws from is governed by which face of the command module it ultimately connects to.
Therefore, you have fore, aft, left and right shields.
Sound like a good compromise?
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evilc
Alpha Rank
Posts: 9
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Post by evilc on Aug 4, 2011 7:15:48 GMT 10
Oh, and it's really annoying when all the shields on a ship go down when you bolt another one on.
Not only because its all too easy to get shot after grabbing a shield from a fallen enemy, but also when designing your ship, it takes a while for any outline to appear at all and so makes working out shield placement annoying.
How about when the shield gets attached, it immediately functions if a bubble is already up, but the hit points of the shield are subtracted from the pool. ie the pool is immediately drained by the capacity of the shield to "charge it up".
This could still result in the bubble going down (say you have 1 beta so a small pool and attach a juliet, the juliet powering up would drain the pool so the bubble would collapse) but I think this would work better.
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Post by meoiswa on Oct 9, 2011 19:17:44 GMT 10
What about this: Each shield has its own shield pool, however said pool is calculated when the part is placed by subtracting any other overlapping shield's area. This way if you placed two shields that had an overlapping area of 50%, One shield would work at 100%, but the other would work at 50%, thus earning 150% shield power from 2 units. You can find information on how to calculate circle overlapping areas here: mathworld.wolfram.com/Circle-CircleIntersection.html |
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Post by iceciro on Oct 22, 2011 23:11:17 GMT 10
Realistically, what's wrong with people building tank ships? Not everybody wants to fly small nimble ships - I like the idea of flying a slow bulky behemoth that can flat out win in frontal engagements. The loss of speed and ability to explore without running out of oxygen really should be the disincentive there.
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Post by Farbs on Oct 22, 2011 23:32:54 GMT 10
I thought it would be, but I quickly found myself crawling around in ridiculous clunkers. The sad thing was that I hate flying slow ships, but like so many players do I chose what I felt was the most effective means of playing the game, rather than what I found to be the most fun.
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