Variable Shields

[Xaintly]

Lots of space combat games let you divert shield power to the front/back (or sides).
If shields get taken down in one half/quadrant, you can divert power to make up for it.
You could divert all power to the rear shields when trying to run away.

Perhaps cascade torpedoes only take out one section of a variable shield and you can shift power from other sections to fill in the gap.

(suggestion by donkeyduplex on reddit)

 

[Teh Smoo]

Just pretend that the ship does that automatically, and perfectly?

I mean... this would require a COMPLETE rewrite of very complicated shield code, and directional stuff. And for what payoff? This is complexity for the sake of complexity, on top of people managing modules and power distributor on the fly. I don't see how it would add anything but annoyance, if you lost a section and didn't notice until you took a lot of hull damage or died.

It WOULD make sense for megaships, though? That might work, at least, and it's an entire new system anyway? But again- what does it ADD to the gameplay, besides complexity.

 

[Xaintly]

I was actually thinking of it as a separate type of shield, like Normal / BiWeave / Prismatic / Variable.

The thinking was to reward a player who is willing to do a little more work in combat. Let's say they have the regeneration of Bi-weave with the strength of normal (when focused on one direction), or lower power consumption, lighter weight, something to make them attractive to people who just want to run away as well as people who fly highly maneuverable ships.

I hadn't considered the difficulty of rewriting the shield code, it looked kinda like they have an internal shield HP number represented visually as some rings, which didn't seem complicated.
I was imagining they would just break the shield ring into 2 halves (top/bottom) for peeps with variable shields (including the target display for when someone targets you). There would be a front-shield number and a rear-shield number (still represented as rings) and 3 buttons; divert front, divert back, equalize. You should be able to see an enemy's shield configuration when you're shooting at them and perhaps make adjustments (lead them a little more with projectiles to get ahead of their shield).

If peeps think combat is already too complicated, then yeah, it wouldn't help to make it worse.
I was thinking traders could get a size smaller shield than normal, hoping they could divert it all to the rear and run away from engagements.

 

[dm06]

Generally the feature won't help when fighting against swarm of ships (convoys, combat zones, thread 4[?] etc).

The thinking was to reward a player who is willing to do a little more work in combat. Let's say they have the regeneration of Bi-weave with the strength of normal (when focused on one direction), or lower power consumption, lighter weight, something to make them attractive to people who just want to run away as well as people who fly highly maneuverable ships.

Fast shield regeneration seems useless during battle, it is more usefull between battles and allows get into fight with less delays. The same is about shield cell bank.

I was thinking traders could get a size smaller shield than normal, hoping they could divert it all to the rear and run away from engagements.

The game does not insist the traders to visit "dangerous" places. FSD interdiction is rather easy to avoid, please correct me if I wrong. Basically you can fly without shields and have additional slot for cargo.