What if Shield Boosters Weren't Protected by the Shield?

[Frenotx]

Just a crazy thought that popped into my mind: What if shield boosters weren't protected by the shield? The lore justification would be easy enough. You could just say they act like an umbrella: projecting shield around them, but creating a "blind spot" in the process. At a moment's thought, I feel like this would solve a lot of issues with the engineered super-shields, in an interesting counter-play sort of way. Having a hard time dealing with this super shield? Focus on trying to target the boosters. Gives ships a cool "peeling away the layers" sort of defense. Missiles would be very good at dealing with them, but that gives more reason to fit PDTs and ECM, thus further lowering the overwhelming advantage of shield boosters.

What do you guys think? Pros / cons?

 

[Loskene]

What if we just got rid of shield boosters instead. Or make it so shields have bleedthrough that mitigate instead of prevent hull damage, and the harder your shield gen is working (more boosters, more MJ) the greater bleedthrough you get as a tradeoff.

 

[Mephane]

What if we just got rid of shield boosters instead. Or make it so shields have bleedthrough that mitigate instead of prevent hull damage, and the harder your shield gen is working (more boosters, more MJ) the greater bleedthrough you get as a tradeoff.

Maybe we shouldn't complete redesign shields from scratch this long into the game. I definitely would have never touched the game in the first place if this is how shields had worked.

Regarding the OP, not a fan of this. Imo the last shield booster stacking nerf was a good idea, it only failed due to community resistance (because apparently anything below 3000MJ is considered literally unplayable on the big 3). It would reduce the top end of massive shield capacities without nerfing shields for every ship, and at the same time gave a little bit in return, namely freed up utility slots because running with more than 4 shield boosters would have been mostly a waste of slots.

 

[Frenotx]

What if we just got rid of shield boosters instead. Or make it so shields have bleedthrough that mitigate instead of prevent hull damage, and the harder your shield gen is working (more boosters, more MJ) the greater bleedthrough you get as a tradeoff.

I've been an advocate for that for a long time, but ultimately I think it's too radical to ever get done. I personally believe non-absolute shields would make the game a lot better, but many people have said that if such a change were ever made, they'd quit the game. :shrugs: People.

In lieu of that, I've been trying to come up with various other, less-radical solutions to "the shield problem".

 

[Mephane]

I've been an advocate for that for a long time, but ultimately I think it's too radical to ever get done. I personally believe non-absolute shields would make the game a lot better, but many people have said that if such a change were ever made, they'd quit the game. :shrugs: People.

It's just a matter of taste. I am sure the game could be just as good with shields that function only as a partial damage reduction, it's just not the type of game I would want to play. Specifically, I am not a fan of persistent, non-field-recoverable attrition, but I understand lots of players are.

 

[Loskene]

but many people have said that if such a change were ever made, they'd quit the game. :shrugs: People.

There will always be a few who say they'll leave if you make any radical change regardless of how beneficial it is for the game as a whole, so long as it interrupts their gravy train. To those I only say "there's the door"

 

[CMDR Corlas]

I like the idea, it's like a more accessible version of my "Anti-Shield Booster Limpet" idea, where you can release limpets that would try to attach to an enemy shield booster and "invert the polarity" of the booster or whatever, one-shotting the booster.

You idea is probably better though.

I mean, aside from the fact that it doesn't involve limpets.

I like that it mixes up module subtargetting a bit, so it's not just "all powerplant, all the time", and I like how it makes ship positioning matter a lot too.

One way to really sell the idea, I think, would be to figure out a way to make small ships do increased damage to shield boosters. Maybe small hardpoints get a damage buff to them, or something? Combined with the existing increased agility of smaller ships, that might be enough.

Give small fighters a niche, make combat more tactical, and fix the mega-shield problem? I'm all in.

 

[CMDR Corlas]

It's just a matter of taste. I am sure the game could be just as good with shields that function only as a partial damage reduction, it's just not the type of game I would want to play. Specifically, I am not a fan of persistent, non-field-recoverable attrition, but I understand lots of players are.

I like the idea of bleed-through damage, but I am with you on not liking non-field recoverable attrition. Hull repair limpets are a good step there though. Just need FD (or players) to scatter repair-oriented Tender ships around appropriately. And there was a way to repair someone else's modules...

 

[Mephane]

To those I only say "there's the door"

Well, us people on "the gravy train" could say the same to those dissatisfied with the status quo, which goes to show how quite silly this argument is. People buy and play any particular for lots of different reasons, preferences etc., and it is a legitimate stance to call it quits if certain core game mechanics were altered in a fundamental way.

 

[Frenotx]

It's just a matter of taste. I am sure the game could be just as good with shields that function only as a partial damage reduction, it's just not the type of game I would want to play. Specifically, I am not a fan of persistent, non-field-recoverable attrition, but I understand lots of players are.

The damage is field recoverable: repair limpets, and AFMU. Only a busted windshield, power plant damage (beyond the last 1-3%), and integrity (already not field-recoverable) isn't possible to fix in the field.

Either way, that's an entirely different topic. What are your thought on the OP?

 

[Majic-12]

If shield boosters weren't protected by shields, then we would need to buy shield booster shields to protect them.

 

[baqar79]

It doesn't sound like a bad idea; it also means that you end up with more holes in your shield wall the more boosters that you stack. But I kind of a agree with that the biggest attraction with shields is their absolute protection that is provided for all modules.

A hybrid idea is to perhaps treat shield boosters as individual shields themselves, and assign a "layer" to them.

Consider a ship with 2 boosters:

Base shield: 500MJ (broken regeneration rate: 4.0MJ/s)
Shield booster A: 50%
Shield booster B: 25%

Total shield: 875MJ ( 500*(1+.5+.25) )

Then assign a layer to them:
Shield booster A: 50% (Layer 1 - 250MJ)
Shield booster B: 25% (Layer 2 - 125MJ)
Base shield: (final layer regardless of layer settings - 500MJ)

During combat, layer 1 is the outermost shield layer that take damage first. Once the first 250MJ of shielding is exhausted it goes into broken recovery mode (Using the base shield broken regen rate), and so will not come online until it recovers 50% of it's capacity (this also means use lose any resistance bonuses conferred from that booster until it comes online again). During this time a small hole opens up in the vicinity of the booster that can allow weapons to damage the hull or modules.

Any damage that still hits the shield will take then from shield booster B's capacity until Shield booster A has recovered (by recharging to 50%, the same way the current system works).

Heh, just thinking about it however, makes me wonder if this would actually be more beneficial to the defender rather than the attacker. With multiple small shield boosters all placed into recovery mode, you may have many holes in your defence, but your regeneration rate is effectively additive. ie in the case above if both boosters go down you have two holes in your shielding, but your effective regeneration rate is 2*4MJ/sec or 8MJ/sec even if you don't see the results of those MJ's until your shield boosters come back online.

In the case that your base shield then gets taken out, while your shield boosters are regenerating, I think perhaps pausing all currently regenerating boosters until your main shield comes back online might be a fair compromise (eg, shield boosters work like shields as long as your base shields are still up; they aren't completely stand-alone shields in their own right).

Small fast ships with tiny bi-weave shields, and several resistance based shield boosters would probably become rather a nuisance to defeat, since by the time you've managed to peel away 2 or 3 booster layers, all of a sudden the first layer comes back online, and those small open holes in the shields will be harder to hit and close rather quickly.

hmmm....I don't know maybe this idea might make things worse

TL;DR:
-Treat shield boosters like full shields themselves that inherit the regeneration rates of the base shield.
-When the damage to the shield exceeds the capacity of the booster, have it go into broken regeneration mode and then open a hole up in your defences in the vicinity of the recharging shield booster.
-If your shield gets taken out while all your boosters are regenerating, pause the regeneration of those boosters until your shield comes back online.

 

[StiTch]

You know what...I like it...I like it a lot...

 

[Notwyn]

I do not like the idea.

I like the shield/booster configuration as it is. There is no benefit to reducing the effectiveness of shields, particularly on my cargo ship.

 

[CMDR BOSLEY]

Maybe we shouldn't complete redesign shields from scratch this long into the game. I definitely would have never touched the game in the first place if this is how shields had worked.

Regarding the OP, not a fan of this. Imo the last shield booster stacking nerf was a good idea, it only failed due to community resistance (because apparently anything below 3000MJ is considered literally unplayable on the big 3). It would reduce the top end of massive shield capacities without nerfing shields for every ship, and at the same time gave a little bit in return, namely freed up utility slots because running with more than 4 shield boosters would have been mostly a waste of slots.

This, that fix would have been great along with the increased hull hardness for large ships. There have been a lot of bad ideas floating around about shield boosters and ways to kill them and we had the perfect solution available once. Now with 3.0 we have the potential to up to around 70something% increase in damage through engineers as well as some increase to shield numbers so it will be interesting to see how that plays out.

 

[bigity]

Lower shields would prevent AFK-turret Conda wings from working in power play.

 

[NascentChemist]

In general I prefer the diminishing returns proposed to combat SB stacking. The proposal wasn't all that radical and the rate degradation could always be adjusted.

I'd worry about pack-hounds or high yield cannons being very overpowered at sniping SB's if they were unprotected.

 

[bigity]

In general I prefer the diminishing returns proposed to combat SB stacking. The proposal wasn't all that radical and the rate degradation could always be adjusted.

I'd worry about pack-hounds or high yield cannons being very overpowered at sniping SB's if they were unprotected.

Apparently it's not overpowered against hull tanks, so why would it be against shield boosters?

 

[NascentChemist]

Apparently it's not overpowered against hull tanks, so why would it be against shield boosters?

Putting the possibility of sarcasm aside, just wait until the 3.0 high yield cannons go live.

 

[kofeyh]

Boosters are a symptom, not an issue. Treating them like the issue, rather than the symptom, isn't really solving anything. The question is less why should boosters be protected; more, why does the game massively reward their use?

Shields. They are still the simple wall they started out being, and have had power creep ever since. 3.0 makes them stronger again. Instead of shields being part of defensive structure, with armour and other modules providing additional layers, we're now firmly in the "crack the egg" model that they fundamentally are the defense layer.

Shifting defense to a set of layers, means shields cease to be the automatic go to, and are, rather, part of the overall model. The resistance to change, in this space, is that if you yank shield effectiveness, hull and hardness then needs a sympathetic rework. The fact that people are so reliant on them now, means shifting that balance, has become very difficult.

If you're in a big old chunky transport, then cracking the egg means that's it. Game over for the transport pilot. Instead, if cracking the shell leads to the discovery that the egg is instead, hardboiled, and not all gooey, then this changes the dynamic massively. The need to have easily dispatchable AI hasn't helped here, either.

I don't profess to have the answers. None of this is easy; but I'd have thought more of an onion model for ship defense would lead to a better result than the egg. Shields being part of the solution; not literally the solution. Fussing with boosters, is really just admitting shields are a problem, and then ignoring that problem, rather than addressing it.