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[Hyph_K31]

Odd; I've never been able to get it to work that way - for me, turning fortress shield on for any length of time inevitably results in *more* hard flux than if I'd just stopped firing without the system.  Yes, it may result in total flux going down a bit faster - but never by enough to be worth the extra hard flux.  It does still have one use: absorbing alpha strikes (torpedos, bomber runs, shots from slow-firing kinetic weapons or sabot SRMs, that sort of thing) where you can flick it on and then off again.  But that's all I've found it to be good for.

Personally, I'd prefer a fortress shield that had a very low maintenance cost, but some sort of either cooldown once turned off, or activation cost, or something to make it more of a "turtle" device than a "momentary shield" device.

+1

[xenoargh]

Odd; I've never been able to get it to work that way - for me, turning fortress shield on for any length of time inevitably results in *more* hard flux than if I'd just stopped firing without the system.  Yes, it may result in total flux going down a bit faster - but that's simply not worth the extra hard flux.  It does still have one use: absorbing alpha strikes (torpedos, bomber runs, shots from slow-firing kinetic weapons or sabot SRMs, that sort of thing) where you can flick it on and then off again.  But that's all I've found it to be good for.

Yeah, that's generally been my experience, too.  

I can see Thaago's point about simply stacking Flux rates so low that you can use it to extend burst DPS, though; that's a legitimate way to boost Soft Flux for burst DPS.  If, and only if, you aren't already taking so much DPS that your primary requirement is to start killing the stuff that's delivering said DPS.

Problem there is that it's very situational; if the AI needs a really specific build before it can use this System about as well as a human, it's probably not working right.

Anyhow, I didn't want to start anything remotely like a flame war about the utility of the System in Vanilla; the fix I've made fixes it for my mod, where due to some of the other major changes I've put into place, the need for Fortress Shield to be a genuine reprieve is much more acute

[Alex]

That may be the intended use, but what tends to happen is that I surround the ship, pile on DPS, ship raises Fortress Shield, gets Overloaded anyway, starts dying.  

It's not like 1 Paragon is usually duking it out with 1 other capship in actual Campaign play; usually, due to slow speed, it's at the tail end of the drips and drabs, gets deployed late, and if you can take it on at all, you can surround it.

Honest question: doesn't this just boil down to "system not useful when in hopeless situation"?

A lot of dynamics aren't quite as apparent in Vanilla as they are in my mod, where a lot of your opponents are not going to run out of Flux unless you shoot back.

Wait, are you basing your assessment of the fortress shield based on the balance in your mod? That's kind of an important detail not to mention I get the sense that in your mod, weapons don't generate that much flux - meaning the soft flux level probably doesn't spike above the hard flux level that much - and since that's where the system gets much of the usefulness, yeah, sure, it'd lose a lot, and changing how it works makes perfect sense.

Question: does the ship drop FS and fire when it has only hard flux left, but also has room left in the flux reserve?

It takes the relative hard and soft flux levels into account when using the system, yeah. So it'll be more inclined to use it when the soft flux level is significantly higher than the hard flux level. It'll still use it when hard flux = soft flux if the incoming dps is high enough, though.

Odd; I've never been able to get it to work that way - for me, turning fortress shield on for any length of time inevitably results in *more* hard flux than if I'd just stopped firing without the system.  Yes, it may result in total flux going down a bit faster - but never by enough to be worth the extra hard flux.  It does still have one use: absorbing alpha strikes (torpedos, bomber runs, shots from slow-firing kinetic weapons or sabot SRMs, that sort of thing) where you can flick it on and then off again.  But that's all I've found it to be good for.

Personally, I'd prefer a fortress shield that had a very low maintenance cost, but some sort of either cooldown once turned off, or activation cost, or something to make it more of a "turtle" device than a "momentary shield" device.

Yeah, hard flux goes up while soft flux goes down. Soft flux goes down faster, and faster than it does w/ shields up and not firing. If you're under fire, it's definitely worth it - once you factor in the flux from taking extra damage on shields, it ends up taking you *much* longer to dissipate a useful amount of flux, compared to turning the fortress shield on - meaning you end up gaining more hard flux in the process, too.

It'd probably simplify things to have the hard flux cost of it be the actual shield upkeep cost, though - instead of a separate-but-about-the-same value, which just makes it more difficult to evaluate.

[xenoargh]

Honest question: doesn't this just boil down to "system not useful when in hopeless situation"?

I guess it's somewhat in the eye of the beholder   A really good System should be the difference between "hopeless" and "a smallish chance, if you make good choices".

Given the name, I was expecting it to be more useful as a defensive tool, not as a tricky way to boost burst DPS.  The name, the way it looks, all suggest you're about to get a really nifty defense, but used that way, given what it does, it is pretty much a last resort, hope-the-cavalry-arrives sort of thing.  It doesn't really work like you'd expect, and, as Thaago pointed out, you need to stack for it to really reap the benefits. 

If the intended use case was always to be a micro-heavy Flux management tool, not just a burst-damage soak, why not drop the shields and allow it to shave away Hard Flux without Venting?  I haven't tried it that way, I guess I'll see if that works.

But, tbh, I've never seen the AI really get a lot of mileage out of this System in Campaign situations; I've seen the AI put up Fortress Shields at the start of battles, when there's nothing anywhere near it, and put it up when approaching the enemy but it's not carrying any Flux, but it doesn't seem to use it in the sin-like way that you'd really need to get maximum efficiency from Hard / Soft Flux tradeoff.

Wait, are you basing your assessment of the fortress shield based on the balance in your mod?

The mod just makes things a lot more acute, because there's no "pause" or "slowdown" when everybody's hitting the soft-flux wall; ships can and do hit the wall, but it's a lot rarer and much more about whether a ship's built around burst DPS via certain weapons vs. continual DPS than in Vanilla.

That said, I saw these issues in Vanilla, but I hadn't gotten around to tweaking this System, so I was thinking about why I felt like it didn't work for me in Vanilla and why it's extra-broken now that I've made big changes

[Wyvern]

Yeah, hard flux goes up while soft flux goes down. Soft flux goes down faster, and faster than it does w/ shields up and not firing. If you're under fire, it's definitely worth it - once you factor in the flux from taking extra damage on shields, it ends up taking you *much* longer to dissipate a useful amount of flux, compared to turning the fortress shield on - meaning you end up gaining more hard flux in the process, too.

I'll admit, most of my testing comes from playing through "Forlorn Hope", which may be biasing the results some.  However, in that context, using the stock Paragon, the results I observed was that trying to dissipate soft flux with fortress shields active was always a mistake - even when you've got fighters and frigates swarming all around you, you're better off just hitting "hold fire" for a bit.  Maybe the opposition in that mission just can't generate enough sustained damage output to make fortress shields be worth using for more than burst damage?

[xenoargh]

I tried one more variation:  no flight, no shooting, but a slow bleed-off of Hard Flux while using it.  It can be overwhelmed, but it takes serious DPS to do it, and in most cases, it's temporary invulnerability.  This appears to be a variant that the AI can use fairly well, probably just needs cooldown tweaks.

Code

Fortress Shield,fortressshield,,,-0.03,,,,,,1,,1,5,TRUE,,,TRUE,TRUE,,TRUE,TRUE,,graphics/icons/hullsys/fortress_shield.png

Java code:

Spoiler

Code

package data.shipsystems.scripts;

import com.fs.starfarer.api.combat.MutableShipStatsAPI;
import com.fs.starfarer.api.plugins.ShipSystemStatsScript;

public class FortressShieldStats implements ShipSystemStatsScript {

	public void apply(MutableShipStatsAPI stats, String id, State state, float effectLevel) {
		//stats.getShieldTurnRateMult().modifyMult(id, 1f);
		//stats.getShieldUnfoldRateMult().modifyPercent(id, 2000);
		
		stats.getShieldDamageTakenMult().modifyMult(id, 0.05f);
		//stats.getShieldAbsorptionMult().modifyMult(id, 0.2f);
		stats.getShieldUpkeepMult().modifyMult(id, 0f);
	}
	public void unapply(MutableShipStatsAPI stats, String id) {
		//stats.getShieldAbsorptionMult().unmodify(id);
		//stats.getShieldArcBonus().unmodify(id);
		stats.getShieldDamageTakenMult().unmodify(id);
		//stats.getShieldTurnRateMult().unmodify(id);
		//stats.getShieldUnfoldRateMult().unmodify(id);
		stats.getShieldUpkeepMult().unmodify(id);
	}
	
	public StatusData getStatusData(int index, State state, float effectLevel) {
		if (index == 0) {
			return new StatusData("shield absorbs 10x damage", false);
		}
		return null;
	}
}

[close]

[Thaago]

Yeah, hard flux goes up while soft flux goes down. Soft flux goes down faster, and faster than it does w/ shields up and not firing. If you're under fire, it's definitely worth it - once you factor in the flux from taking extra damage on shields, it ends up taking you *much* longer to dissipate a useful amount of flux, compared to turning the fortress shield on - meaning you end up gaining more hard flux in the process, too.

I'll admit, most of my testing comes from playing through "Forlorn Hope", which may be biasing the results some.  However, in that context, using the stock Paragon, the results I observed was that trying to dissipate soft flux with fortress shields active was always a mistake - even when you've got fighters and frigates swarming all around you, you're better off just hitting "hold fire" for a bit.  Maybe the opposition in that mission just can't generate enough sustained damage output to make fortress shields be worth using for more than burst damage?

Well, the system generates .025 * base capacity = .025 * 25000 = 625 hard flux per second.

While the FS is active soft flux dissipates at its full rate from 1250 -> 1750 + 125 = 1875. Lets take just over halfway between: 1625. Then the net dissipation with FS up is 1000 F/S minus some very small amount for incoming fire (might become noticeable with two onslaughts firing) and +625 hard flux/second.

While the FS is not active soft flux dissipates at 1625 - shield upkeep/2 (Paragon's should use stabilized shields.) = 1625 - 375 = 1250. However incoming damage is not reduced. The Paragon has a shield efficiency of .6, make that .54 with a veteran crew.

So, 3 cases (while holding fire):

1) Incoming damage < 463 (against shields)      : Fortress shield is a pure loser - flux dissipation is less and hard flux increases.

2) 463 < Incoming damage < 1157                   : Fortress shield has greater net flux dissipation, but hard flux increases faster. Situational.

3) 1157 < Incoming damage                            : Fortress shield pure winner.

Assumptions: Flux resistant conduits, Stabilized shields, 25 Vents, veteran crew.

[Edit] This also assumes that there is soft flux left to vent. If there is not then only case 3 is an advantage for the fortress shield... but you should probs drop and fire for a bit anyways to take advantage of the soft flux under fortress dissipation.

...  
This appears to be a variant that the AI can use fairly well, probably just needs cooldown tweaks.
...

To be honest I feel the AI can use the base fortress shield pretty well too - if you build a variant that takes advantage of it. Of course whether or not a system is good if you have to build around it is up for debate. I personally think its fine.

[Alex]

Nice analysis. I think it underscores that making the system hard flux buildup dependent on the shield upkeep would be a good idea - it'd remove the #1 scenario entirely, so it'd always be either #2 or #3 (as it is now, if you do NOT use Stabilized Shields - but, as you point out, you always should). I'll add this to my list.

Honest question: doesn't this just boil down to "system not useful when in hopeless situation"?

I guess it's somewhat in the eye of the beholder   A really good System should be the difference between "hopeless" and "a smallish chance, if you make good choices".

Well, that just pushes back what "hopeless" is, doesn't it? At any rate, I don't think how it performs in the hands of the AI in a specific situation has much impact on whether it's useful for the player. That said, though, I'm not seeing the AI issues you're pointing out, and think it actually does well - maybe some of it is specific to stats being so different in your mod. Well, I'd like to make system AI moddable at some point, so you should get a chance to make it do whatever you want!

And, oh man, have we ever gone off-topic.

[naufrago]

Nice analysis. I think it underscores that making the system hard flux buildup dependent on the shield upkeep would be a good idea - it'd remove the #1 scenario entirely, so it'd always be either #2 or #3 (as it is now, if you do NOT use Stabilized Shields - but, as you point out, you always should). I'll add this to my list.

Honest question: doesn't this just boil down to "system not useful when in hopeless situation"?

I guess it's somewhat in the eye of the beholder   A really good System should be the difference between "hopeless" and "a smallish chance, if you make good choices".

Well, that just pushes back what "hopeless" is, doesn't it? At any rate, I don't think how it performs in the hands of the AI in a specific situation has much impact on whether it's useful for the player. That said, though, I'm not seeing the AI issues you're pointing out, and think it actually does well - maybe some of it is specific to stats being so different in your mod. Well, I'd like to make system AI moddable at some point, so you should get a chance to make it do whatever you want!

And, oh man, have we ever gone off-topic.

If you combine Stabilized Shields with Front Shield Emitter, you get 0 flux/sec upkeep for shields. If Fortress Shield's hard flux buildup rate is dependent on shield upkeep, how might you change things based on that, if at all?

[Gothars]

Aside from he math, my personal experience with the FS is that it works great. This is a typical scenario: Blazing guns I thrust into the thick of the enemy and take out some smaller ships, my soft flux gets high but I take little hard flux damage thanks to my superior range. Now the enemy focuses it's attention on me, I get a lot of incoming fire. Normally I had to either drop shields and keep firing or try to retreat a bit. But now I can just activate FS and wait till my total flux level drops to about 1/3. Then start firing again to the limits of soft flux, FS change that to ~2/3 hard flux and than it's time to back off and vent.

All in all it roughly doubles the Paragon's staying power in heavy combat.

[Alex]

If you combine Stabilized Shields with Front Shield Emitter, you get 0 flux/sec upkeep for shields. If Fortress Shield's hard flux buildup rate is dependent on shield upkeep, how might you change things based on that, if at all?

In the dev build, percentile reductions are multiplicative specifically to avoid this kind of thing - even more potential cases come up with skill-based effects. Percentile increases are still additive.

So, if you have two -50% modifiers, the final result is 25% of the base value.

Also, +50% and -50% don't cancel out - the final result is 75% of the base value, since the percentile reduction is expressed as a multiplier and is applied to the final value after the percentile increase.

I've reduced some penalties to reflect this.

The formula is:
IncreaseMult = (100 + <sum of all percentage increases>) * 0.01
ReductionMult = product of (1 - <percentage reduction> * 0.01) for all percentage reductions
FinalValue = BaseValue * IncreaseMult * ReductionMult

[Thaago]

If you combine Stabilized Shields with Front Shield Emitter, you get 0 flux/sec upkeep for shields. If Fortress Shield's hard flux buildup rate is dependent on shield upkeep, how might you change things based on that, if at all?

In the dev build, percentile reductions are multiplicative specifically to avoid this kind of thing - even more potential cases come up with skill-based effects. Percentile increases are still additive.

So, if you have two -50% modifiers, the final result is 25% of the base value.

Also, +50% and -50% don't cancel out - the final result is 75% of the base value, since the percentile reduction is expressed as a multiplier and is applied to the final value after the percentile increase.

I've reduced some penalties to reflect this.

The formula is:
IncreaseMult = (100 + <sum of all percentage increases>) * 0.01
ReductionMult = product of (1 - <percentage reduction> * 0.01) for all percentage reductions
FinalValue = BaseValue * IncreaseMult * ReductionMult

Thats getting added to the Alex says page...

That makes some really non-intuitive things happen: multiple small penalties are better than a single larger penalty, while increases combine perfectly. However, penalties apply not only to the base value but also to all increases... could make for some interesting decisions.

[Reshy]

If you combine Stabilized Shields with Front Shield Emitter, you get 0 flux/sec upkeep for shields. If Fortress Shield's hard flux buildup rate is dependent on shield upkeep, how might you change things based on that, if at all?

In the dev build, percentile reductions are multiplicative specifically to avoid this kind of thing - even more potential cases come up with skill-based effects. Percentile increases are still additive.

So, if you have two -50% modifiers, the final result is 25% of the base value.

Also, +50% and -50% don't cancel out - the final result is 75% of the base value, since the percentile reduction is expressed as a multiplier and is applied to the final value after the percentile increase.

I've reduced some penalties to reflect this.

The formula is:
IncreaseMult = (100 + <sum of all percentage increases>) * 0.01
ReductionMult = product of (1 - <percentage reduction> * 0.01) for all percentage reductions
FinalValue = BaseValue * IncreaseMult * ReductionMult

Pfft alex, let us have some fun with shields that require no energy to operate!

[harrumph]

A really good System should be the difference between "hopeless" and "a smallish chance, if you make good choices".

By that logic, are there more than a couple really good systems? Maneuvering Jets and the Phase Teleporter fit the bill, probably Burn Drive and the Skimmer too, but most of the drones don't, the weapon-based systems don't, flares do only very situationally, etc. etc.

[Vulpes]

A really good System should be the difference between "hopeless" and "a smallish chance, if you make good choices".

By that logic, are there more than a couple really good systems? Maneuvering Jets and the Phase Teleporter fit the bill, probably Burn Drive and the Skimmer too, but most of the drones don't, the weapon-based systems don't, flares do only very situationally, etc. etc.

Teleporter type devices are awesome... love hopping around in my hyperion- not very impressed with the skimmers though.  In some situations drones can be very useful, point defence drones+ lots of fighters= "great success". 

Fortess shields are interesting- sometimes they're extremely broken, others they are marginally useful.  One example would be countering an alien dreadnought's heavy weaponry in the Project Ironclads mod (a michigan can take one down solo without any hull damage).