Hi there, i've bought Starfarer and it was worth every Öre (We don't have pennies in Sweden
). I have played it for like 24 or 36 maybe even 46 hours, i think i've slept some in between.
Before i start with the topic i would like to clarify the Hull modifications im talking about.
Accelerated Shields: Increases the turn rate of the ship's shields by 100% and the rate at wich the shields are raised by 100%.Omni Shield Emitter: Converts frontal shields to omni-directional at the cost of a 50% reduction of the shield's arc.Ok here comes the topic.
Omni shield could be too powerful in the sense that it can be activated anywhere.
Even if it's already active at the front you can deactivate it and then reactivate it in a different position
rather than turning it around, if say a missile is trying to hit you from behind.
Imo this makes the Hull Modification; Omni Shield Emitter very essential even with its very high Ordination point cost, if the ship didn't have omni to begin with.
The fact that you can deactivate it and almost immidiately reactivate it anywhere else makes another hull modification;
Accelerated shields, not so useful because you would most of the times just deactivate it and reactivate it rather than turning around the shield.
Another note about the accelerated shields mod, i suppose the Increased shield
raise rate could be useful,
but if say a bunch of missiles comes from a general direction, you could just do the deactivate and reactivate trick to block them all.
The base rate is fast enough for that, if the missiles come from all directions you are screwed anyway.
That would imply that your shield is not full 360, but imo full 360 shields are bad because they always start at the front (i think they always start at the front, omni-360 would be overkill
)
and are slow to reach the full 360. And IF you reach the full 360 they soak up
ALL fire, even those that drain the
shields alot (Kinetic). Either forcing you to turn off the shield or overload.
Omni is much superior in flux management just for that sake.
You can activate it for a second or two and then deactivate it to Vent some flux or just wait for the passive venting, untill the next barrage of missiles or non-kinetic salvos.
These are the reason why i think omni shields are, well, not exactly overpowered, but imo much too "useful".
Suggestions:1: Something that would sortof Nerf the omni shields a bit as well as making Accelerated shields useful would be to
make it always activate at the front, and Then you would have to turn it around, this makes it harder to prevent flanking missiles.
But still, flanking missiles are Supposed to be able to flank, right?
2: Make the delay longer to reactivate the shield after it have been deactivated, this might make more sense to keep the "Omni-ness"
of Omni shields. If it's long enough you might think twice before deactivating it. (Are there lots of missiles just around that corner? should i keep it up just in case or manage some flux?)
3: Something that would exploit the weakness of the omni-shield - the small arc (they are like 90-160).
Something i can think of is a missile like the Hurricane MIRV launcher, but instead the small missiles that explode out of the main one are like super fast, spread out around the target, and when they are evenly around it they strike at the same time from all sides.
That's my 2 Öre at least. (We don't have cents either).
I hope some dev reads this and i hope it helps.
End notes:
Yeh.
TL;DR: if you cba to read go do something you think is fun.
