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Shield Generators, but...


Musclethorpe

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...the more voxels you have underneath, lets say by percentage of the building space filled, the weaker the protection.

 

This way you aren't forced to make a cube anyway underneath said shield, or you could go voxel-free for a stronger shield, but would be in dire straights should they ever drop. I would like to think with proper balance, most people would be somewhere in the middle.

 

This, of course, doesn't address other glaring issues like targeting distance based purely on core size, and L weapons on XS cores, but it's a start.

Discuss.

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Shields are hard to balance and will just benefit cube ships even more. I suggest a radar scrambler that will affect enemy weapons just enough for them to miss half the time with scrambling active. The more voxels you have on your ship the higher the chances of still getting hit even if your enemy's aim is diverted away from your core. You should also be able to use these scramblers to reduce enemy detection range with them being none the wiser to avoid combat altogether.

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14 minutes ago, dumpeet said:

Shields are hard to balance and will just benefit cube ships even more.

Did you completely miss the part about them providing less protection the more voxels you use in your build space? This would benefit cubes less than non-cubes, and hopefully deter that particular meta entirely.

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2 minutes ago, Musclethorpe said:

Did you completely miss the part about them providing less protection the more voxels you use in your build space?

Did you completely miss the part where they can just remove voxels between the outer cube and the core to keep the same form factor while still getting shields too? It's not a solution because outside voxels are not equal to inner voxels.

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1 hour ago, dumpeet said:

Did you completely miss the part where they can just remove voxels between the outer cube and the core to keep the same form factor while still getting shields too? It's not a solution because outside voxels are not equal to inner voxels.

Explain to me how a hollowed-out cube is just as tanky as a relatively solid one. Especially when it comes to XS cores.

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From a lore perspective, DU has several centuries of technology advancement over real-life, plus whatever was done by the AI on the journey to Alioth. Currently weapons systems are VERY far behind in proportion to the other technology present in DU (Warp Drives, Pocket-Dimension-Based Storage, Teleportation, Respawning by using alternate-realities of the avatar, etc.) We have all of this, but current weaponry consists of lock-and-fire elements with less range than their real-life counterparts.

 

IMO space-faring ships should not use voxels as armor, as the weapons fielded by Noveans in space should theoretically be able to atomize anything they touch. 

The railgun is an example of a real-life weapon capable of punching through just about anything. One (or five) fielded in space would easily turn a borg cube into a block of swiss cheese just from shear ballistics alone, not including whatever exotic properties a railgun made with 2500s tech would have. Lasers, not limited by atmosphere, would be able to melt anything the beam touches. Also turning your borg cube into swiss cheese.

 

Because of this, I believe that shields should be the only practical form of structural defense in space. Your objective in constructing a combat ship would be to maximize shield health and efficiency while balancing power distribution between the shield and your armament, because once the shield is depleted, you and your ship are done.

 

This would eliminate the borg-cube constructions from a practical perspective, but would still allow diversity in how you design your ships, because weapons are able to easily destroy it without a shield no matter how much material you slap on the core.  

 

For atmospheric engagement, armor would be more effective due to atmospheric properties negating the use of railguns and lasers, as laser energy dissipates and railguns are damaged from the munition being heated by the atmosphere. This would limit armament to cannons and missiles, both of which would do substantial damage but not enough to disable a ship quickly.

 

This gives armor a purpose, protecting bases and atmospheric ships, but eliminate the practical use of it in space.

 

In order to stop borg cubes from being the imminent ships in atmosphere, NQ would need to make aerodynamics more of a thing, right now if you slap enough engines on a ship it will fly, but if you make them very hard to maneuver, they would be outclassed by more aerodynamic ships.

 

 

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15 hours ago, Confed said:

One (or five) fielded in space would easily turn a borg cube into a block of swiss cheese just from shear ballistics alone, not including whatever exotic properties a railgun made with 2500s tech would have. Lasers, not limited by atmosphere, would be able to melt anything the beam touches.

To be fair the game needs ship TTK to be higher than a few seconds, at least within the same weight class (M ship vs M weapon) otherwise the name of the game becomes "whoever shoots first wins". The devs could always implement specialized armor types that are extra effective against one damage type and do next to nothing against others but it shouldn't take priority over the glaring "L weapons on an XS ship" issue.

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Just out of curiosity how many here have PvP'd when making these suggestions? I've killed every XS cube I've faced, with the exception of 2 fights. One was a bug between my radar and what I was seeing in space. My gunners we reporting only misses even tho I was aimed at enemy so we ran back to safe zone.  The other was we had a fight 4v1 and we really fucked on the first XS cube bad, and it ran back to safe zone, but the other ships did a really good job laying damage on us so we retreated. Kudos on them for not showing their whole hand to get us to take what looked like a 1v1.  

 

N+1 will always be a thing to a degree, regardless if cube is meta.  I'm all for enriching the pvp experience to bring more ways to approach pvp but we have to be careful of kneejerk reactions. XS cores with L guns arent that big of a deal in my opinion, as they are easy to kill in a 1v1 scenario.  

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