Shield Regeneration Lasers

[Rubbernuke]

Because I've played this game a few hundred hours since it launched, and spent most of my time in combat. With the addition of shield cells and the heat mechanic, and the complete nerfing of missles, it has become harder and takes longer to kill a ship of similar size... this healing laser adds another layer of protection to a ship or wing. Also, I didn't say "impossible".

BTW: Any comment at all on this or ANY future feature is based on an assumption. "This will be GREAT!" or "This will SUCK!" are both assumptions. The OP said "discuss", and that's what we're doing.

I thought missiles were getting a substantial buff? Perhaps the new 'meta' is for more damage dealing weapons to necessitate 3rd party shield regen?

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I think he ignored it

Lal la laa! I can't hear you! NPC wingmen are REAL!

 

[Weps]

At least make it so that it deals damage to a wing member when his shields are down (if fired by accident for example). How can the beam differentiate between the shieldless inert piece of hull of an enemy and the shieldless inert piece of hull of a wing member? I understand that in case of the shields themselves, there is some scientific property of the shield itself which enables the friend/foe recognition and recharge process (frequency, whatever), but how can this be the case for the hull?

In its current state the weapon is simply the best solution to friendly fire out there. If such a technology were to exist in the game world, then there is no reason not to have it expanded to all laser weapons. Countless bounty hunters would be thankful when accidentally hitting an authority ship in an extraction site. No more bounties and no more forum complaints! It would be inconsistent to have it just on one weapon.

 

[thorn-]

I thought missiles were getting a substantial buff?

Perhaps. But that result is another assumption, isn't it?

 

[Monk]

NPC Wingmen confirmed!

I think you missed the IF there Monk.

Do NOT interfere with my REALITY!

Who knows what will happen when it breaks

 

[Alex Traut]

Additionally the lore suggests you need to know something very important about the target shield to help out and that information is exactly what you don't want random ships finding out as it could be used to compromise their shields.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8PKyEfF9HA&feature=youtu.be&t=55s

 

[Garbarrage]

It only works against wing members. If you're not in a wing regardless of the reason (solo or otherwise) it's not going to be able to recharge any shields. It still will be a perfectly functional weapon however.

I think you're missing an opportunity for some comedic threads, where players confuse their firegroups and recharge an enemy's shields by mistake.

 

[Chris Simon]

This is exactly what will happen.

In a 2-player-wing vs 1-player PVP situation (assuming comparable/competitive combat ships), the single pilot will have little chance at winning the encounter unless the ship doing the healing takes some sort of penalty (for example, your ship looses as much, or more, shield energy as you gift via healing).

You are telling it like now it's different. A competent 2-wing of ANY two ships will wreck a single commander, anyway. I'd say it won't change in 2.1. Au contraire, I say if one of the wingmates will focus on healing the other, the single commander will actually have BETTER chance of defeating them.

 

[InMemoriamSirocco]

Definitely will stay in Solo forever now.

 

[Derath]

I thought missiles were getting a substantial buff? Perhaps the new 'meta' is for more damage dealing weapons to necessitate 3rd party shield regen?

They already mentioned missiles were getting a buff yeah, though we don't have any concrete information at the moment. They could for example buff their damage by 50% which would be substantial, but they'd also still be pretty bad

As to the original OP healing mchealerton lasers really aren't going to have any impact on the game for me, any competant 2v1 will beat me, any incompetant one won't, If anything I have a strong suspicion this will be the smallest of the issues new weapons bring I mean we are already getting heat lasers that work through shields, now they will either be balanced around solo players in which case a wings going to be able to bake any ship you fly or they will be based around a wing and in which case will be useless

 

[CMDR Argent Steel]

I can't wait for our newest faction: The Shield Rats

 

[Sandmann]

Not at all. If you have the wrong fire group you'll be hitting your buddy with normal weapons rather than the shield recharging one by accident. The weapon will always regenerate shields on a wing member if they have a shield active and if not won't do any damage to them at all.

Why the requirement for it to be a wings only tool? Why can I not I choose, as an individual player, to reinforce a player in a sidewinder being picked on by an anaconda in a noob area, or as a bounty hunter reinforce an NPC cop being shot at by NPC pirates? Why can cops who come to rescue me from bad guys not opt to heal my shields as part of the rescue?

Making it wings only seems overly restrictive and is very close to content not available (in any useful sense) to players in solo, and needlessly prevents emergent gameplay.

 

[Midnight Sun]

If you have the wrong fire group you'll be hitting your buddy with normal weapons rather than the shield recharging one by accident.

Confusion caused by the user interface is now an intentional gameplay mechanic?

Frontier taking game design into a whole new... frontier. Of intentional backwardness.

 

[DragoonKnight]

I can't wait for our newest faction: The Shield Rats

We need the hull rats. For all those explorers stuck deep in the black with like 2% hull and a canopy that is about to break.

 

[Khelder]

We need the hull rats. For all those explorers stuck deep in the black with like 2% hull and a canopy that is about to break.

Shame we didn't get repair limpets.

 

[John Ring]

This weapon is illogical. The transference of any kind of energy onto the shield of another ship weakens that shield, yet somehow this new weapon not only can repair a shield by transferring energy to it, it can also discern between a shield mounted on a friendly ship and a shield mounted on an enemy ship?

Anyone got any pointers to where the workings of this technology are explained?

Well, you could explain it by frequency resonance.
Light is basically photons traveling at a frequency. Lasers are basically focused beams of photons (usually all in one frequency).
The resonance frequency is basically the frequency of an object that has the least resistance to oscillation. So if the Laser frequency is tuned to the resonance frequency of the shields, you are basically transferring the energy of the laser onto the oscillation of the shield, recharging it in a way.

NOTE: The physicist under us would argue that resonance is basically a destroyer, and not a healer, as when you are resonating you are basically oscillating out of control, making it an effective shield destroyer instead of an healer, but lets leave it at that...

I basically try to physically explain everything in this game, to increase my immersion. For instance, the sounds I hear outside my ship (explosions and so on) are basically electromagnetic longitudinal waves that reach the hull of my ship (would also explain the huge weight of the sensors!) and are translated by the sensors of my ship into the human hearable sound range, as to aid to the surrounding awareness of the pilot. (which in my opinion is pretty critical in space).

But, as the use of the Shield Cell Bank has the negative effect of heat production, I would argue that this should be also the case when a laser is recharging the shields (maybe not in the same extend).

 

[Sandmann]

Well, you could explain it by frequency resonance.

[snip]

But, as the use of the Shield Cell Bank has the negative effect of heat production, I would argue that this should be also the case when a laser is recharging the shields (maybe not in the same extend).

I was simply amused that he was willing to accept magical energy shields that could stop both magical energy weapons AND unlikely projectile ones, but he was unwilling to accept a magical shield recharge device.

The game runs on suspension of disbelief... it all comes down to just how much disbelief you're willing to suspend, I guess.

 

[John Ring]

I was simply amused that he was willing to accept magical energy shields that could stop both magical energy weapons AND unlikely projectile ones, but he was unwilling to accept a magical shield recharge device.

The game runs on suspension of disbelief... it all comes down to just how much disbelief you're willing to suspend, I guess.

Well, the Van Allen Belts (earths magnetic field) is a kind of shield protecting us from charged particles of the solar wind.
Also an early concept on early spaceflight in order to prevent catastrophic collision with human made space debris (which are mostly metallic), was to use an electromagnetic pulse to diverge the space debris from a collision trajectory, which again is a kind of shield.
So an idea of an energy based shield is not so far fetched.

Yet, I accept the fact that it all boils down to how much you want to believe and/or disbelieve. (I'm a believer )

 

[Weps]

I was simply amused that he was willing to accept magical energy shields that could stop both magical energy weapons AND unlikely projectile ones, but he was unwilling to accept a magical shield recharge device.

Suspension of disbelief works differently for different people. Some are willing to only accept so much before the imaginary world starts feeling strange. There were several gameplay elements we all agreed upon when buying the game (hyperjumps, supercruise, undestructible escape pods) because the game won't work without them. Shields are also critical to gameplay, despite the fact that, as someone in this thread mentioned, a modern hull / plating approach could be modeled into the game world with success. It's just easier for the average player to recharge its shields after a battle and jump back into action, repeating the process indefinitely. As such we need to accept shields as they are. But when you start adding more and more inexplicable devices to the game world, people will feel the need to question their necessity.

Then there's also the problem of consistency. Adding such devices will often give way to questions such as "why couldn't the Eagles fly Frodo into Mordor?" You then have to come up with additional explanations for why things work the way they do, and more often than not, the answers are left for the player to imagine. I assume we'll have to come up with answers ourselves for these questions:

Why can't a ship use the advantage coming from the replenishment feature on it's own shields if needed?
How can the the beam deal no damage to the hull of the wingman if his shields are down?
Why is the feature restricted only to wingmen, when firend/foe recognition as well as data transfers are already present in the game world?
Why is such a helpful feature secretive and not widely-used? (I doubt we'll see NPCs using them)

 

[Jack Schitt]

At least make it so that it deals damage to a wing member when his shields are down (if fired by accident for example). How can the beam differentiate between the shieldless inert piece of hull of an enemy and the shieldless inert piece of hull of a wing member? I understand that in case of the shields themselves, there is some scientific property of the shield itself which enables the friend/foe recognition and recharge process (frequency, whatever), but how can this be the case for the hull?

Good point. To expand it further, what happens if your wingmate doesn't even have a shield generator fitted and you fire one of these things at him?

 

[John Ring]

Good point. To expand it further, what happens if your wingmate doesn't even have a shield generator fitted and you fire one of these things at him?

Hmm, good question. I would love it to be "Eject! Eject! Eject!". Makes Coordination in a Wing a necessity.

And yes, agreed, the "no hull damage" exceeds even my "suspension Bubble"...