It would have to be at least 6. I don't know much about Star Trek Online, but lots of games simplify space combat by orientating everything with a fixed up and down. Dual Universe is a sandbox with a full 3D environment, so you'd need at least 6 "zones", one for each direction of a 3D axis.
But again, ships in DU can be any shape. What happens when I make my ship a perfect cylinder, 2 meters in diameter and 100 meters long. Does it still get a spherical bubble shield? If so, that is an enormous area of shielded empty space; essentially a full empty sphere, 100 meters in diameter, with a line going through it.
And if not, how does it work? Does it get a cylindrical shield that is present a small distance away from it's body along it's entire surface area? If that's the case, how do you define shield zones for that?
They could do it similarly to how Darkstar’s Defensive Shield mod for Space Engineers (a game where ships can be whatever) does things, where the shield’s shape morphs to fit the craft. For example, a cuboid ship would have a perfectly spherical shield, a 747-shaped ship would have a pancake-shaped shield, and a cylindrical ship’s shields would have a ovoid-sausage shape (not really sure how to describe it better than that). Then they could add in the idea of setting 6 shield zones for the entire ship.
I know I’m a bit late to the discussion, but this is an idea I like.
Ship Shield Mechanics
in Idea Box
Posted
They could do it similarly to how Darkstar’s Defensive Shield mod for Space Engineers (a game where ships can be whatever) does things, where the shield’s shape morphs to fit the craft. For example, a cuboid ship would have a perfectly spherical shield, a 747-shaped ship would have a pancake-shaped shield, and a cylindrical ship’s shields would have a ovoid-sausage shape (not really sure how to describe it better than that). Then they could add in the idea of setting 6 shield zones for the entire ship.
I know I’m a bit late to the discussion, but this is an idea I like.