Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: creature on December 13, 2019, 03:05:47 PM
-
I know it has no place in vanilla, but if it didn't constitute too much internal rework, I think it might be interesting to add a moddable functionality to have some shields only block certain types of damage/projectile types/beams only, etc, while everything else passes through. I think it could add a new layer of depth to ship combat!
-
I'm not sure how useful that kind of mechanic would be. Ideally, you kind of want kinetics to blow straight through the shield. They deal high flux damage and it's better to invest that flux into your own weapons. Similarly, a shield that lets HE weapons through is completely useless. HE weapons are very effective at killing ships so if they don't get blocked, you die.
-
It would be very useful functionality for TCs that don't rely on vanillas HE/Kinetic/Frag mechanics and instead want to use their own.
-
To add, it would let faction mods differentiate themselves more. Oddly enough, I recently had the idea of another shield-type that always has 360-degree coverage, but takes longer to raise. During the raising, it progressively blocks more damage, otherwise letting some percentage through. (So at 25% effectiveness, it blocks 25% of incoming damage while letting 75% through; might apply to Flux efficiency as well.) This is for shield-centric factions, encouraging leaving your shields up and never dropping them unless you are well away from combat. (Armor and/or hull would be paper-thin as appropriate.)
So as a gameplay mechanic it might be questionable, but as a game-engine feature, it'd be useful.
-
To add, it would let faction mods differentiate themselves more.
This precisely. What brought this about was an idea I was percolating of some kind of "magnetic" shield, that only blocked projectiles and missiles, but allowed energy beams to penetrate with impunity.
-
This would need quite a bit of AI work to be at all useable outside of player-only ships. To take your example, if the shield only blocks beams and the AI doesn't know that, any AI-controlled ship that equips it will die to one HIL Sunder. Conversely, the enemy AI won't know they should prioritise firing beams against these ships.
-
This would need quite a bit of AI work to be at all useable outside of player-only ships. To take your example, if the shield only blocks beams and the AI doesn't know that, any AI-controlled ship that equips it will die to one HIL Sunder. Conversely, the enemy AI won't know they should prioritise firing beams against these ships.
Or they could just keep firing full throttle like they do now, beams included. It's not like the current AI knows to stop firing HE while the shield is up. Or maybe the STRIKE tag does that, I'm not sure...
-
Strike tag can do that iirc
Edit: either way put me in the "ehhh, doesn't seem like a good idea".
The only way i could see it work if it was on piliums or something similar and the missile speed could not be upgraded (so a dune shield thing)