Suggest change: Landing gear or cargo scoop = Shields offline. And no instant charge afterwards either.

[Nicky the Hutt]

Suggest change: Landing gear or cargo scoop = Shields offline. And no instant charge afterwards either.

Shields are very powerful and handy, they're at full capacity when you undock, and prevent you from dying instantly and protect you from severe collisions with other ships, with stations, with the landing pad and on planets. They're great for safety. Thanks to shields in Elite: Dangerous, space doesn't feel like space and you can fly light armoured ships with standard gorilla glass canopy without risk.

I don't think shields should be on when you intend to engage a physical contact with any structure, hence I would really like it if FD went nuts on this one:

• Deploying landing gear will power off (edit: or lower) your shields.
• Retracting them will power on your shields, but then you'll have to see the whole recharge sequence.
• (edited post-feedback) shield restart sequence after "lowered" state would be shorter than after collapsed state.
• If you try to scoop cargo with your shields on, the canister will bounce away.
• Shields can remain powered on when firing weapons, CMS and jettisoning cargo, because the object motion is outwards.

Pros/cons:
+ More suspense during landing, docking and undocking.
+ An enjoyable difficulty among simulation fans.
+ More caution seen around stations, less speeding.
+ More value to hull modules, less tendency to go "all shields, no hull" in outfitting.
+ More value and reasons to using shield cell banks (traders especially).
+ Pirates will have to drop their shields to scoop cargo, improving the challenge.

- NPC's ramming habits will need to be patched.
- The change would cause irritation to players used to ease.
- Players will see their profit per hour rates affected due to new requirements.
- Jump ranges will be compromised for safety.
- Horizons explorers will be in trouble on high gravity planets.

I can't justify playing hundreds of hours in a game that makes our lives so easy with a magic voodoo shield.

 

[DragoonKnight]

I really dont see any gameplay benefit to doing this. Horrible idea that will just make the game more frustrating, not fun.

1. The only suspense during docking and undocking will come from wondering if some crazy suicidal NPC will now ram you to death. Players will get around this by not deploying their landing gear until they are hovering just a few feet away from the landing pad.

2. difficulty from what exactly?

3. No, there will be more griefing as now you will have players leaving the station who are sitting ducks without shields. A wing of griefers could easily rail gun them on their way out of the station while staying out of the reach of the station's guns.

4. HRP are already bordering on overpowered and SCBs have already received a huge nerf. There is no reason to provide incentives for players to favor HRP even more.

5. SCBs have no effect when your shields are down. And no trader in his right mind will sacrifice cargo capacity for SCB. Shields, yes. SCB, no.

6. There is no challenge in scooping cargo when your prey has left. Not to mention that piracy is already a very unprofitable activity so making pirates waste time waiting for their shields to recharge before pirating another ship is not a good idea.

7. Costs for equipment and ships in this game are already high enough. We do not need a nerf to our earnings.

8. Horizons explorers already travel with shields, thus compromising jump range, specifically for the purpose of mitigating damage when landing. Your idea would prevent it and make long term planetary exploration impossible.

9. If you dont like playing with shields then do not use them. No one is holding a gun to your head.

10. I love your logic: FTL travel is perfectly fine, but a force shield to protect the ship from damage is voodoo magic.

 

[Nicky the Hutt]

@DragoonKnight:
I appreciate you taking the time to comment really. I understand this idea inspires you horror, I don't mean to classify it as a buff at all, it is horror, but I think it's because we're used to ease. All the problems you listed show how powerful always-on shields shields are.

1. I covered that in OP, NPC's don't behave sensibly and was presented as "feature" by Frontier. Yet many aren't convinced NPC's should be suicidal. And keeping your landing gear retracted until later is fine if you want your shields, recharging when undocking will be another story of course.
2. Docking up for an instant recharge, no shield management whatsoever.
3. I agree, that would be a subsequent problem, so it would need a subsequent solution.
4. I both agree and disagree, there is enough variety of ships and roles for both HRP and SCB's to be interesting for everyone, but even if you're right about SC's being nerfed: I don't see the connection.
5. They have an effect when your shields are recharging from 50% after they're back up.
6. True, pirates will have to ask their prey to leave. It doesn't take that long to recharge your shields, if you can't wait a minute in Elite, you must be having a tough time in Elite. If pirates want more rewards, Frontier have probably heard their request to get them. Honestly there's a higher chance for pirates to get their reward buff if there's a major game-changing update warranting it. As it is now, Frontier deems piracy to be balanced and nerfing shield times is not that unmanageable.
7. I believe "we do not need a nerf to our earnings" comes from the heart, and I'll respect that. I feel differently about credits/hour.
8. I agree, the change will be tough for those with ASP Explorers (they have most internal slots). I will set course in a long term planetary exploration without shields to see how many landings I can make before my hull is critical. There are explorers out there who expressed that if you land smoothly and always check gravity, it is fine to explore planets without shields. Considering that what you said is often true, we don't know very much about it or if it's really that unthinkable to land several times without shields.
9. It's true, my suggestion is like my personal taste for horror trying to impede on everyone's gaming experience. And I will admit that it's the case. I want my wish to not only be in my head, but to be realized and affect not just me but everyone. Unnecessarily mimicking a whole power management for my own immersion isn't enough. Does that invalidate my suggestion more than the thousand other suggestions, including the past ones that were incorporated in the current Elite build? No.
10. I love my logic too, but not sarcastically hehe. I don't mind being given the FTL card whenever I make a comment on realism. There are grey zones in every topic.

 

[metatheurgist]

This would guaranteed reduced the limited number of miners to 0.

 

[Nicky the Hutt]

This would guaranteed reduced the limited number of miners to 0.

Haha, yeah that's not something I thought about. I guess I have to test mining without shields to see if that's viable.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

While I understand where you're coming from, and I actually like this idea.
It's still not a good idea.
There are far too many issues with landing and being rammed, that need to be fixed, and shields are your only protection from them.

Kinda of still like the idea though, but maybe allow shields to come back up to their previous state almost instantly.

So manually lowering shields, keep the capacitors charged up, so you only need a few seconds to restore them after take off, or cargo scooping.
But if your shields collapse from damage, then you get the usual wait.

That way, if you come in to land, you can keep your shields up, until you are almost ready, then drop them when you deploy your landing gear, and land.
If you're at a starport, your shields capacitor will get charged to 100%, but your shields will remain off. As soon as you take off and retract your gear, your shields do a quick charge cycle, then come up at 100%.
If you're just on the ground, they'll continue to charge at there normal rate, and retracting your landing gear will bring them back up to whatever state they would be in.

That way, you can do the star trek thing and say:
Shields up! When you encounter something. Lol

 

[Chrystoph]

Pros/cons:
+ More suspense during landing, docking and undocking.
+ An enjoyable difficulty among simulation fans.
+ More caution seen around stations, less speeding.
+ More value to hull modules, less tendency to go "all shields, no hull" in outfitting.
+ More value and reasons to using shield cell banks (traders especially).
+ Pirates will have to drop their shields to scoop cargo, improving the challenge.

- NPC's ramming habits will need to be patched.
- The change would cause irritation to players used to ease.
- Players will see their profit per hour rates affected due to new requirements.
- Jump ranges will be compromised for safety.
- Horizons explorers will be in trouble on high gravity planets.

I can't justify playing hundreds of hours in a game that makes our lives so easy with a magic voodoo shield.

Given that shieldless landing currently inflicts damage, I cannot see how this would be viable. Explorers would be limited to maybe 50 planetary landings, potentially 35 if they take maximum damage, before they were blown up by the process.

Additionally, your arguments about hull modules being more valuable is flawed since the current dynamic takes a percentage, not a set value.

Finally, the emotional arguments about player satisfaction are not shared by all players. I certainly don't want what should be a trivial event made into something worse. For me, that would INCREASE the frustration with the game. Since I've seen other threads talk about it as well, the community as a whole cannot be said to agree with your position.

 

[Nicky the Hutt]

@CMDR_Cosmicspacehea

Those are very sound balancing ideas, I saw that different outfitting give different start up and recharge rates after they've collapsed, so those vary already, if damage collapsing shields would be different then we'd see a distinction from just pausing it for landing or interacting with things.

Like you said, there are already issues, but also more that would need to be fixed if shields were to behave in such a way. My idea isn't to add that change before any other fix, but the opposite. Shields should not be a protection from bugs but from actual damage towards the ship through intention or neglect, and only that. When you actually want to get in direct contact with something however, you shouldn't have your shields replace simple caution.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

@Chrystoph, I don't understand what you're trying to say with the last paragraph. Can you clarify?

And yes, about the damage per landing I saw that the landing gear somehow takes damage that counts against the overall hull hitpoints. That is something I saw discussed, and it seems that me and a few others, let's say 3 people total at least, want the landing gear to be able to withstand landing and protect the hull. https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=212045 ; https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=212045 I'm not saying we should all get damaged at every landing by not mentioning this. Not all ideas have to include the hundreds of subsequent rebalancing fixes, that's why I didn't mention it. But I agree that my suggestion wouldn't be viable if it was implemented completely as is.

 

[Shadow_Frost]

OP do you know how long it takes to charge prismatics with two boosters? Every time I drop my cargo scoop or landing gear I have to wait for it to cycle back up? That's insane. No thank you.

 

[timbero]

I would just land on my shield then, screw the landing gear. Not like we leave our ships after we've docked anyways.. and let the guys loading my ship figure out how to get 720 ton of Palladium into my cargohold when there is a shield blocking their way. Maybe they can invent some sort of teleport device for my convenience?

 

[Archvillain]

I'm a miner and having my shields online is all but pointless 99.99% of the time I spend mining - having to take them offline for collector drones or cargo scooping would be no big deal to me, and actually an improvement on the gameplay. I like how the idea would make me pay more attention to surroundings - right now being in an "asteroid field" feels completely unthreatening - I can fly into a mile-wide rock and just bounce right off and only lose a ring off my shield charge. I'll scrape an asteroid without a care in the world. Having to take shields down to collect while near giant rocks would make mining less routine and feel more dramatic. (A corresponding buff in profits would be nice of course, but...)

I think requiring the full recharge sequence after every take-off and physical interaction is pointlessly punishing though - the recharge sequence was designed to offer a shoot-to-kill window during combat, and combat was the only time that shields were expected to go down. That lengthy recharge sequence serves no purpose when the shields are down for non-combat purposes. Instead, as suggested; shields "lowered" (as opposed to offline) to allow limpets and landings would work better - dropping the recharge penalty because they're already charged, they've were just lowered so they can be up in 3 seconds, not 30. Same as how FSD comes up after a few seconds normally, but takes a long time after an uncontrolled drop (like hitting a star or being interdicted)

 

[Archvillain]

Given that shieldless landing currently inflicts damage, I cannot see how this would be viable. Explorers would be limited to maybe 50 planetary landings, potentially 35 if they talk maximum damage, before they were blown up by the process.

No, if you land poorly, you have damage to repair. If you are exploring, then you repair it with an AFMU. If you are getting low on AFMU ammo, then you use an SRV to get more (since you just landed somewhere). If you want to limit your landings to low-grav worlds or don't intend to land, maybe you don't feel you need an SRV. How you roll - your personal style of exploration, risk and reward, it's all up to the individual.
Right now exploring, like mining, is too easy and unvarying. More trade-offs to balance, and more things that offer an intuitive way to screw up and more ways to respond if you do screw up - that's a good thing.

Under this scheme, it would be possible to land gently and not take damage, and there would be incentive to learn to land properly. (Currently I just come in hot in stations all the time because who cares; the shields will just take care of everything)

 

[DragoonKnight]

@DragoonKnight:
I appreciate you taking the time to comment really. I understand this idea inspires you horror, I don't mean to classify it as a buff at all, it is horror, but I think it's because we're used to ease. All the problems you listed show how powerful always-on shields shields are.

1. I covered that in OP, NPC's don't behave sensibly and was presented as "feature" by Frontier. Yet many aren't convinced NPC's should be suicidal. And keeping your landing gear retracted until later is fine if you want your shields, recharging when undocking will be another story of course.
2. Docking up for an instant recharge, no shield management whatsoever.
3. I agree, that would be a subsequent problem, so it would need a subsequent solution.
4. I both agree and disagree, there is enough variety of ships and roles for both HRP and SCB's to be interesting for everyone, but even if you're right about SC's being nerfed: I don't see the connection.
5. They have an effect when your shields are recharging from 50% after they're back up.
6. True, pirates will have to ask their prey to leave. It doesn't take that long to recharge your shields, if you can't wait a minute in Elite, you must be having a tough time in Elite. If pirates want more rewards, Frontier have probably heard their request to get them. Honestly there's a higher chance for pirates to get their reward buff if there's a major game-changing update warranting it. As it is now, Frontier deems piracy to be balanced and nerfing shield times is not that unmanageable.
7. I believe "we do not need a nerf to our earnings" comes from the heart, and I'll respect that. I feel differently about credits/hour.
8. I agree, the change will be tough for those with ASP Explorers (they have most internal slots). I will set course in a long term planetary exploration without shields to see how many landings I can make before my hull is critical. There are explorers out there who expressed that if you land smoothly and always check gravity, it is fine to explore planets without shields. Considering that what you said is often true, we don't know very much about it or if it's really that unthinkable to land several times without shields.
9. It's true, my suggestion is like my personal taste for horror trying to impede on everyone's gaming experience. And I will admit that it's the case. I want my wish to not only be in my head, but to be realized and affect not just me but everyone. Unnecessarily mimicking a whole power management for my own immersion isn't enough. Does that invalidate my suggestion more than the thousand other suggestions, including the past ones that were incorporated in the current Elite build? No.
10. I love my logic too, but not sarcastically hehe. I don't mind being given the FTL card whenever I make a comment on realism. There are grey zones in every topic.

I'll address each of your points.
1. You are ignoring the fact that the reason we have fast shield charging while docked is because the player community requested it for a long time. Go outfit a Combat Conda or Corvette with A rated shields. It takes forever for them to come back and even bi-weave takes a very long time. There is no reason to force this shield recharge downtime on players every time they want to leave a station.
I think the number 1 issue that you should address is how making docking and undocking more time consuming will be more enjoyable for the player.

2. I've never seen or heard of anyone dock for a shield recharge. It is simply not time efficient.

3. You should not introduce changes that introduces new problems unless you can also solve those problems.

4. It seems like you want to encourage players to use SCB or HRP. I am saying it is not necessary.

5. Also takes a very long time on a high end Combat ship and completely negates your reasoning regarding traders using SCB.

6. See my sig. I dont play elite to have a tough time. I play it to enjoy myself and enjoyment of a game requires balancing difficulty / challenge with accomplishing something in the game.
If you think shields recharge quickly then you need to fly something with strong shields and you will quickly see that it can take a long time for shields to regenerate.

7. What are you flying and how much are you making that you feel this way?

8. It is good that you are willing to try landing without shields and then you can see for yourself.

 

[Chrystoph]

No, if you land poorly, you have damage to repair. If you are exploring, then you repair it with an AFMU. If you are getting low on AFMU ammo, then you use an SRV to get more (since you just landed somewhere). If you want to limit your landings to low-grav worlds or don't intend to land, maybe you don't feel you need an SRV. How you roll - your personal style of exploration, risk and reward, it's all up to the individual.
Right now exploring, like mining, is too easy and unvarying. More trade-offs to balance, and more things that offer an intuitive way to screw up and more ways to respond if you do screw up - that's a good thing.

Under this scheme, it would be possible to land gently and not take damage, and there would be incentive to learn to land properly. (Currently I just come in hot in stations all the time because who cares; the shields will just take care of everything)

I have landed at the slowest possible speed, neutral velocity except for maneuvering thrusters, monitoring my pitch and yaw the whole time, and on touch down, practically no rocking of the ship even vertically, and watched the shields flare on touch down. Before it executes the landing dynamic, the game perceives that contact with the surface as an impact.

Even the docking computer can generate this effect.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

As long as the landing bugs are fixed, I'd be happy with an option to 'lower shields', with a almost instant recharge time, but requires power to keep them ready, and also keep the option to have them entirely offline, to save power, at the cost of a full recharge...

Currently I take my shields for granted far too often. I usually just pile my Viper, FDL, or whatever on to the pad in the hopes the pad will slow me down, and insta-dock. Lol
I'd be fine with landing gear, cargo hatch, and even fuel scoops, automatically putting your shields into the lowered state.
And restoring them once your gear/hatch/scoop is back up.

 

[Psycho Romeo]

The decision to scoop cargo or not is not going to be a meaningful one in 90% of cases. So adding this caliber of penalty to it to make it a meaningful decision 10% of the time is just outlandish.

 

[Shadow_Frost]

I'm a miner and having my shields online is all but pointless 99.99% of the time I spend mining - having to take them offline for collector drones or cargo scooping would be no big deal to me, and actually an improvement on the gameplay. I like how the idea would make me pay more attention to surroundings - right now being in an "asteroid field" feels completely unthreatening - I can fly into a mile-wide rock and just bounce right off and only lose a ring off my shield charge. I'll scrape an asteroid without a care in the world. Having to take shields down to collect while near giant rocks would make mining less routine and feel more dramatic. (A corresponding buff in profits would be nice of course, but...)

I think requiring the full recharge sequence after every take-off and physical interaction is pointlessly punishing though - the recharge sequence was designed to offer a shoot-to-kill window during combat, and combat was the only time that shields were expected to go down. That lengthy recharge sequence serves no purpose when the shields are down for non-combat purposes. Instead, as suggested; shields "lowered" (as opposed to offline) to allow limpets and landings would work better - dropping the recharge penalty because they're already charged, they've were just lowered so they can be up in 3 seconds, not 30. Same as how FSD comes up after a few seconds normally, but takes a long time after an uncontrolled drop (like hitting a star or being interdicted)

Shut off your shields or fly without them.

 

[Nicky the Hutt]

OP do you know how long it takes to charge prismatics with two boosters? Every time I drop my cargo scoop or landing gear I have to wait for it to cycle back up? That's insane. No thank you.

I knew but didn't realize as I don't have first-hand experience on prismatic shields, other than I have used shield boosters and had to power them off to decrease the restart time and then powered them on for the recharge.

I'll address each of your points.
1. You are ignoring the fact that the reason we have fast shield charging while docked is because the player community requested it for a long time. Go outfit a Combat Conda or Corvette with A rated shields. It takes forever for them to come back and even bi-weave takes a very long time. There is no reason to force this shield recharge downtime on players every time they want to leave a station.
I think the number 1 issue that you should address is how making docking and undocking more time consuming will be more enjoyable for the player.

2. I've never seen or heard of anyone dock for a shield recharge. It is simply not time efficient.

3. You should not introduce changes that introduces new problems unless you can also solve those problems.

4. It seems like you want to encourage players to use SCB or HRP. I am saying it is not necessary.

5. Also takes a very long time on a high end Combat ship and completely negates your reasoning regarding traders using SCB.

6. See my sig. I dont play elite to have a tough time. I play it to enjoy myself and enjoyment of a game requires balancing difficulty / challenge with accomplishing something in the game.
If you think shields recharge quickly then you need to fly something with strong shields and you will quickly see that it can take a long time for shields to regenerate.

7. What are you flying and how much are you making that you feel this way?

8. It is good that you are willing to try landing without shields and then you can see for yourself.

Unarguably good points in your entire post.

I flew small to medium ships, I don't have first hand experience on corvettes, cutters, anacondas and I managed a shield tanked Fer-de-lance knowing that smaller ships can have their ships back online quicker than larger ships, with better shields. So I don't know how it'd feel like with a large ship with insane amount of hitpoints to bring back up at any undock.

They're not prone to instant death like small ships though.

 

[Nicky the Hutt]

I have landed at the slowest possible speed, neutral velocity except for maneuvering thrusters, monitoring my pitch and yaw the whole time, and on touch down, practically no rocking of the ship even vertically, and watched the shields flare on touch down. Before it executes the landing dynamic, the game perceives that contact with the surface as an impact.

Even the docking computer can generate this effect.

I am currently trying landing on a dozen planets without shields, to see if it's the shield that gets hit more often because it's supposed to cover the ship and a bit farther out. So far hull damage happened because my left wing hit the ground at the same time as the landing gear.

I'm starting to be it is more manageable as I gather first hand experience.

As long as the landing bugs are fixed, I'd be happy with an option to 'lower shields', with a almost instant recharge time, but requires power to keep them ready, and also keep the option to have them entirely offline, to save power, at the cost of a full recharge...

Currently I take my shields for granted far too often. I usually just pile my Viper, FDL, or whatever on to the pad in the hopes the pad will slow me down, and insta-dock. Lol
I'd be fine with landing gear, cargo hatch, and even fuel scoops, automatically putting your shields into the lowered state.
And restoring them once your gear/hatch/scoop is back up.

That's also where I come from, I have/had a Sidewinder, Cobra, Viper, Vulture, Diamondback Explorer, T6 and then a Fer-de-lance. All my trips mining, scooping, landing, docking, have cost very very little thanks to the shields. Flying like I have rubber coating all around, using the station as a bouncy castle. And I see others do the same, at all ship sizes.

(...)

• Deploying landing gear will power off (edit: or lower) your shields.
• Retracting them will power on your shields, but then you'll have to see the whole recharge sequence.
• (edited post-feedback) shield restart sequence after "lowered" state would be shorter than after collapsed state.
• If you try to scoop cargo with your shields on, the canister will bounce away.
• Shields can remain powered on when firing weapons, CMS and jettisoning cargo, because the object motion is outwards.
  (...)

I updated the OP as I agreed with a few comments about how the reboot sequence for shields can be very slow, especially with shield boosters on. One comment pointed out that the community requested faster/instant shield generation and that it'd be the reason why it's so convenient to have shields, and one comment pointed out the nuance in "lowered" shield instead of collapsed or completely off.

So that's a good idea I'll add to my original post, raising shields from lowered state should be quicker than a restart from a collapsed state.

 

[Lestat]

You know Nicky the Hutt it never going to happen so you might as well stop. If you join a year ago when people whined about dying when NPC or player ships hit them and they are destroyed or when they crash into stations and such and died. Frontier change that. So that would not happen. So do you really think they will change the mechanics that you are asking for right now?

I longed for a real Iron man mode. Where Risk is as powerful as the reward. But it not going to happen. Why? Most of the people here don't want that risk. They want that bubble that protect them.