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Our most recent Devblog laid out NQ's plans for how base protections will work in non-savezone areas, and I've got to say I'm relieved. In summary... -Can use a Force Field Unit (I'd like it to be more of a structural integrity unit myself, as a forcefield implies it prevents entry, which so far the proposed mechanic does not). -Force field absorbs damage. When it gets below a certain threshold, it effectively freezes pvp for 24-48 hours, making everything temporally indestructible. You'll be able to predict when your defenses drop, and there will be a cool-down before turning it back on. -You get an Email notification when your stuff is under attack Yes, I know the EVE tryhards are going to cry and moan about this, but as an ex-eve player who really wants to participate in pvp in DU, I'm extremely relieved that there are solid protective measures like these. That being said, I don't expect these defenses to come cheap, they might require quite a bit of upkeep to maintain, and they might eat a ton of power or resources to turn-back-on after a cooldown. This means that not every rando player will be able to keep their stuff shielded 100% of the time. Pirates will have plenty to do while they wait on my shields to collapse. This also means that abandoned structures left by inactive players can eventually be purged, at the *worst* after about 48 hours. So what should this force-field be called?

I did not found any infos about shields so here is an idea how I would like to see it in the game (kind of) I hope it does not have a component that shields the hole ship. The shield should have some kind of radius where it has effect. If voxels are place to far away from the shield generator it will have no effect. The power consumption should be high in a idle state and increase even more if more damage has to be blocked. This would add a lot of depth to the game because the player has to decide which shields to activate or deactivate. For example if alot more damage is incoming from the rear of the ship to disable the ones on the front to get more power. Or even shut down weapon systems to get addition energy for the shields... what do you think? =)

After doing a search I wasn't able to find many discussions on shields other than 'twerks' long thought out post in regards to shield mathematics. Something I wanted to suggest is a mechanic that was used in Star Trek Online. Now I didn't care much for that game I thought it sucked really bad. But one thing I thought they did really well was the way your shields took damage based on which part of the shield was taking damage, allowing you to reduce power from aft to front or rotate your ship. This allowed for some really interesting combat and tactics. Naturally, on larger ships, you are going to need someone dedicated to looking after shields.

So I have been wanting to bring this up for a while. (well like the week I have known about the game) but I wanted to see what I could find on the topic already but so far no luck. So heres my opinion on some things we should have and I would like to hear what has been discussed already on the topic. I am curious what type of defensive systems we will have for ships. Shields: I will automatically assume there will be shields of some sort, but what kind. Will there be independent modules for capacity and charging (like starmade). This is useful since it allows you to customize the ship more. For a fighter it is useful to have fast recharge but lower capacity, since any decent hit from a large ship will likely wipe it out being smaller. But recharging from the small shots from other fighters and flak cannons is useful. Where a lot of capital ships will want large capacities to soak up massive hits. Will there be logistics systems, such as remote shield rechargers to assist the capital ships tank? What about directional shielding. I always like the idea of having multiple shield emitters covering your ships. When fighting head on you can route power to forward shields and cut back on the rear shields. To make it simple it could either be 6 quadrants, top, bottom, left, right, front, rear or 8 quadrants like a sphere cut into 8 pieces. Repair systems: I will assume that various materials will have different armor values, making the shell of your ship tougher if you choose to. But what about repairing damage? In something with PVP ships will always take on some damage, and for large ships sometimes small bits of damage are hard to track down. I know the nanoformer is said to have the ability to repair damage, but what about a larger scale automated system. I think having a shipyard with dual function would be nice. First would be to construct a ship from a BP, you put in resources it slowly builds a ship. The second would be to repair a ship from a damaged state back to the BP state. This could just take the resources required and energy or a nano repair item as well as I will discuss next. What about an active repair system for battles. We know we have nano technology, why not utilize this to its true potential. They could be actively repairing your ship as it takes damage. Maybe it would utilize a special control system for them that would contain the blueprint and always try to repair to that state. A lot of games will incorporate some sort of automated repair system like this, Eve included. However in a game where resources dictate everything, I dont like that it just takes energy. If parts of your ship were blown up you need to replace those resources. So it could have a storage system of basic materials used to repair the ship. If it doesnt have the material needed the control console flashes a warning and just moves on and repairs what it can. Furthermore, if we are using nanobots, they have to come from somewhere. The nanobots could be an item we manufacture elsewhere and store them ont he ship to be used when needed. The tier or even number of control units could dictate the number of nanobots it could control and in turn how fast it can repair. I wouldn't expect all of the nanobots to be consumed every time they repair something, but they would slowly break and deteriorate. This could be factored in by a % loss, so if it takes 10,000 bots to repair something you loose 5%. This would allow for multiple levels of bots with various durability, control cost, and work speed. If you start to run low on bots the repair speed slows down until you dont have any left. (And yes as far as we know the nanoformer we have on our arm never deteroriates and needs replenishment, but I think this is a good thing so you can always start from nothing again. And it could be explained that Earth knew how to make much better nanobots than we can now. ) I really think there needs to be repair systems to cover these scenarios. A stationary shipyard that works faster and can even assemble from scratch, as well as a system to automatically repair when you are out and traveling. Especially since not everyone will have a shipyard as they will be primary targets to cripple an enemy force. And as it is shown by other voxel spaceship games, repairing large builds by hand is a pain, and often leads to missed damage you cannot see to locate.