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Repair and shield systems


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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. 

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Shields:

 

I would love the Option for energy Distribution in generaly. Not just for the shields. (Scans,Engine,Weapons)

I also recommend the usage of cpus which controll the energy Distribution for example if you Switch in combat mod the most energy will evenly distributed to the shields weapons and other neccecary combat modules. Also you should be able to preadjust the cpus how much Energy which modul should receive depending on which mod you Need.

 

Another Thing which would be nice if the shield have more functions. For example there will be more type of weapons and you shield have to be configurate to the enemy wepaons otherwise the shoots will go through your shield and in the best case the shoot will deflected from your shields. A modul/CPU you can buy in the market should be responsible for that. Depending on the Quality/AI of the CPU/Modul and on the time how Long the battle takes as more efficient your shield will be aginst the enemy weapons as Long as the modul wont be damaged.

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Shields:

 

I would love the Option for energy Distribution in generaly. Not just for the shields. (Scans,Engine,Weapons)

I also recommend the usage of cpus which controll the energy Distribution for example if you Switch in combat mod the most energy will evenly distributed to the shields weapons and other neccecary combat modules. Also you should be able to preadjust the cpus how much Energy which modul should receive depending on which mod you Need.

 

Another Thing which would be nice if the shield have more functions. For example there will be more type of weapons and you shield have to be configurate to the enemy wepaons otherwise the shoots will go through your shield and in the best case the shoot will deflected from your shields. A modul/CPU you can buy in the market should be responsible for that. Depending on the Quality/AI of the CPU/Modul and on the time how Long the battle takes as more efficient your shield will be aginst the enemy weapons as Long as the modul wont be damaged.

 

The power system could simply be a priority list, you have preset mods that you create a priority list for. In combat it favors shields and guns, in emergency mod engines and lifesupport.

 

As for the modulation of shields, that may be a bit more to code for, but it would be interesting to see just not necessary. Depending on the tech of the shield you may not have to worry about modulation. There are some proposed shield ideas that would stop anything regardless. One is simply bending gravity in a loop around your ship, nothing gets in and its all directed back out. Its energy cost would be what it takes to create and sustain it, increased fire wouldnt affect its strength. Ofcourse this stops you from seeing so cannot run continuously. 

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I think you need to split your ideas up a little bit 'DD' you're asking questions that could lead to multiple debates all in the same threads. We could talk about either Shields, Repair bots, Repairing, Nano bots, Strength of armor, tier of armor.. Bunch of things from your idea.

 

Shields, I would like some way to create the shield area myself, not just have a predesigned shape that you get when you place down a shield generator. So that I could have a shield different shapes, maybe in a effort to better suit the buildings and ships I design, not just a 'bubble' around them.

 

The point of changing the power applied to the shields I like, if they manage to add that into the elements for shields I would imagine that would be controls by lua more than anything else, Lua would give you the options to change which shields get what power if your power is only a certain amount. Scripts FTW.

 

As for the orientation of the shield and the quadrant, like i said above, I'd like to define which parts of the shields are what, so i could have any amount of quadrants i want, where I want to better suit my and my fighting style. If i'm circling the enemy i want to define where i want the shields. Potentially creating a instance where you could Lua script the direction of the power in the shields to be between yourself and the enemies around you. That would be nifty.

 

Repairing is something i brought up in another thread and if there were going to be 'repair elements' but i don't think Nyz got back to it yet, so we don't know if there is going to be one or not yet.

The nano repair bots sound interesting but why not just have them as the material themselves ? if you have say 10,000 stone in your inventory then you have 10,000 stone nano bots and they repair the closest point to the 'nanostation' that is damaged, one voxel every 'tick', if you have 3 nanostations you will repair 3 voxels every 'tick'. Giving you the options to have multiple nano stations on captial ships so they can sustain more damage ect. Obviously you would need the power to run them.

This would also remove any issues with counting the nano bots, you would just need to make sure that there is enough resources available to repair the damage sustained.

 

Could actually be a area effect repair this way, so that if you dock to a space station and have several nanostations poking out the side of it you will have several nanostations worth of repair while you are docked. only works if the ship is block to block touching/docked with the station or the whole 'nanobot' idea breaks down because how would they get to the ship?... Then you can have the repair start from where the ship is docked and not where the nanostation is as they would have to travel from station to ship.

 

I kind of wrote this in a hurry so don't know if the reply makes sense or not, but hopefully it does. :)

 

nora,

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I thought about breaking it up as I was almost done. The shield's comment was mentioned to be a passing comment. I wanted the tread to be about the repair but I get carried away.

 

On shields: I think definitely. Your own shape could be pretty resource intensive which is why I left it out. But would be ideal.

 

Repair: I considered the nanobots being the resource themself, but then they would have to contain every material in game to have the materials needed to repair any damage. And it would be wasteful on other resources.

Having the nano bots just place the resources from storage makes more sense. But one time use or infinite use nanobots aren't realistic, hence degradation. (Although they could technically self replicate) and you would likely need a master control station hence the repair station, but its CPU would be limited, limiting the max never of nanobots used at once and in turn your repair rate.

 

I would love for a game to start utilizing nanobots to their full potential. Most books and movies fall short to what you could do with nanotech the Star Carrier book series as done the best job at this from what I've seen so far.

 

Nano bots could be used for mining, clearing, building, and repair. You could even have a nano weapon that disassemblds an enemy ship. My ideas for repair just begin to open up the uses of the tech. And I would say they have a range, but surface contact isn't necessary for a repair station. The nanobots can construct their own bridge to cross on and get there

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I would think repair drones would need a copy of the blueprint in order for them to know what to fix.

 

These types of details would be specific to the ship, and would need to be hard coded into the drone.  Therefore, a builder would need to supply the drones with the ship.  It IS interesting, and replacement drones would need to be purchased from the builder.  Thereby, generating another stream of revenue.

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@Ripper

Not necessarily. That would be one way, but any repair station onboard could broadcast the BP details to the support ships. But it would need to be somewhere.

 

It could also be assumed that the nanobots and controller are smart eneough to repair simple damage, holes and dents in basic hull, without a BP but not more complex things like systems and components.

 

I think the need for a BP is more because of the game itself. It has to cross check against something to know what is damaged and how you want it fixed. So onboard the ship should be sufficient t for the logistics. It would also allow for gaming systems to be implemented shutting down the logis ability to repair.

 

Another interesting side effect of this is the ability to morph your ship by swapping blueprints.

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I would think mesh based elements could be repaired, unless they're entirely destroyed.  This wouldn't require a blueprint, just the drone detecting the damage state.  In fact, all voxel elements could be repaired unless completely destroyed, without the blueprint.

 

But, repairs of destroyed voxels would require knowledge of the original construct.

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I could agree with that. I just said components would require a BP simply since their more complex, regardless if the game knows it or not.

 

Maybe a support ship can only repair damaged items unless it contained the actual no of that ship. I could go either way on this. But I think the ship itself needing a copy in the repair unit is a must. At least something that represents the blueprint, could be just a snapshot you plug in since you will likely be constantly upgrading and modifing it.

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I could agree with that. I just said components would require a BP simply since their more complex, regardless if the game knows it or not.

 

Maybe a support ship can only repair damaged items unless it contained the actual no of that ship. I could go either way on this. But I think the ship itself needing a copy in the repair unit is a must. At least something that represents the blueprint, could be just a snapshot you plug in since you will likely be constantly upgrading and modifing it.

 

You kind of just touched on another thing that could come from having the blueprint inside a nanobot station or repair station. Upgrading your ship blueprint.

 

If you want to upgrade your ship/blueprint without having to destroy and recreate you could change out the blueprints old for new and the bots would just got wild changing out all the materials, voxels, elements that would require changing or building, given that you have sufficient resources in the inventory to accommodate all the changes that happen according to the blueprint.

 

You would need some form of change percentage thought to restrict a user putting in a completely different blueprint and morphing the ship to much, it would have to be changes small enough to keep the basic functions of the ship intact. If you wanted big changes you would either destroy your ship and make a new ship (because it's faster than the nanobots) or make smaller incremental changes that the nanobots could manage.

 

I like this idea, would add a nice interesting way to generate revenue from blueprints that have already been sold, just upgrade them with new things or new voxels and sell them to the people again. Could even have a market section for upgrades and version numbers of blueprints, so you can check if your blueprint is out of date or not.

 

nora,

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Thats what I ment by morphyour ship. Could you imagine restructuring your ship in various combat situations. Especially small fighters. Morph to a higher verticle thrust configuration for planetary combat and all around thrust for space. Gatlin guns for dogfights and large missile launchers for bombardment in the same ship.

 

That truly shows the power of nanotech. And besides having the nano controller in the same location, why not let them change the whole thing. You have to wait for it to deconstruct and reconstruct but so what. I think it would be an amazing feature. A whole new level of design would be making multi purpose craft that can morph with minimum changes to reduce cost and increase change time.

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I think there are some good qoutes to take from devblogs here.  In the multiplayer ship blog

 

 

 

Besides the specialized weapons allocation to various crew members, the fact that the ship is a real object and not some formal 3D image allows for incredible things: partial structural damage that must be repaired (crew members racing to fix this broken hull - FTL anyone?)

 

So it sounds to me like they want repairing damaged components of a large ship to be an active task that players need to focus on.  Maybe there will be automated, less efficient ways of doing patch up jobs - these would be essential one man vessels, of course - but for a large ship, the best (only) way to fix something is by having a player go and fix it.  How this would work, I don't know.  Perhaps literally going taking voxels and putting them in place?  I'm not sure, as that wouldn't really make sense considering that there will be automated mass production of items using blueprints

 

Another interesting quote:

 

 

 

Players will always be encouraged to take electronic snapshots of their constructions, if not blueprints when appropriate (the difference is that a snapshot cannot be traded, it's a personal asset), together with insurances, in order to be able to rebuild if necessary. However, rebuilding after destruction is costly, as neither the materials nor the time required by the auto-rebuilder can be avoided.

 

That's not the only time construct snapshots are mentioned for repairing damaged items.  Auto-rebuilding is mentioned here.  But maybe physically re-building something is the fastest way to do it and in the heat of battle you want fast repairs.

 

About shields - I'd love for shielding to be completely modular.  Like you can have shielding around specific subsystems of your vehicles, shielding around specific sections of the hull - whatever design you can come up with.  Let's say there are 5 different sizes of shield generator and you can adjust how large an area you want them to shield - the larger the generator the larger the area it can protect but the more power it requires; the larger the area you want to protect the less shielding is provided; and the shielded area can be increased and decreased with manual or automated control systems and the power supplied to the generators too.

 

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About shields - I'd love for shielding to be completely modular.  Like you can have shielding around specific subsystems of your vehicles, shielding around specific sections of the hull - whatever design you can come up with.  Let's say there are 5 different sizes of shield generator and you can adjust how large an area you want them to shield - the larger the generator the larger the area it can protect but the more power it requires; the larger the area you want to protect the less shielding is provided; and the shielded area can be increased and decreased with manual or automated control systems and the power supplied to the generators too.

 

This makes me think about how Gravity Generators work in SE, you can select the size, in all X,Y,Z directions so you can have the gravity that comes off it influence one the portions that you want.

 

If it was like that but instead of affecting the volume area inside it, it affected just the perimeter so acting like a shield, this could work, you could then turn on and off different faces of the shield, so if you have two shields touching you can turn off the touching faces, or have power redirect to the face that needs more of the power ect. I think there is something to be gained of letting the players design and manipulate their own shields through lua and the like in a game like DU.

 

You could have drone shields maybe too, so you could set up like a wall in space that acts as a big planetary shield my chaining single faces emitted by individual shield generators on drones. Or even have a bunch of drones follow a ship and project a ship out further or create a duplicated shield where attacked have to go through several drone shields before they hit the main capital ship shield.

 

Don't know if that made sense, I'm quite tired and want to add my two cents before using the sleep :)

 

nora,

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This makes me think about how Gravity Generators work in SE, you can select the size, in all X,Y,Z directions so you can have the gravity that comes off it influence one the portions that you want.

 

If it was like that but instead of affecting the volume area inside it, it affected just the perimeter so acting like a shield, this could work, you could then turn on and off different faces of the shield, so if you have two shields touching you can turn off the touching faces, or have power redirect to the face that needs more of the power ect. I think there is something to be gained of letting the players design and manipulate their own shields through lua and the like in a game like DU.

 

You could have drone shields maybe too, so you could set up like a wall in space that acts as a big planetary shield my chaining single faces emitted by individual shield generators on drones. Or even have a bunch of drones follow a ship and project a ship out further or create a duplicated shield where attacked have to go through several drone shields before they hit the main capital ship shield.

 

Don't know if that made sense, I'm quite tired and want to add my two cents before using the sleep :)

 

nora,

I can set that as being a tactic, but with drawbacks. If you want shields extending way beyond your hull then you should need shield generators that are very large on comparison to your hull size and hence a comparatively large power source. So essentially your drones would be flying shields with virtually no fire power because there's no room left. That would make sense to me as there is push and pull, and natural balance.

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I think there are some good qoutes to take from devblogs here.  In the multiplayer ship blog

 

 

 

So it sounds to me like they want repairing damaged components of a large ship to be an active task that players need to focus on.  Maybe there will be automated, less efficient ways of doing patch up jobs - these would be essential one man vessels, of course - but for a large ship, the best (only) way to fix something is by having a player go and fix it.  How this would work, I don't know.  Perhaps literally going taking voxels and putting them in place?  I'm not sure, as that wouldn't really make sense considering that there will be automated mass production of items using blueprints

 

 

Sure you can repair a ship with your hand tool, but if you can fit the tech in your arm why would you think you couldnt upscale it and put one on a ship? I see the morpher as a bare survival tool. You will always have something to start over with, but I would expect it to be obsolete with better tech that you craft using it. A better repair system would be one of them. Ofcourse I would expect it to come at a cost though. 

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Sure you can repair a ship with your hand tool, but if you can fit the tech in your arm why would you think you couldnt upscale it and put one on a ship? I see the morpher as a bare survival tool. You will always have something to start over with, but I would expect it to be obsolete with better tech that you craft using it. A better repair system would be one of them. Ofcourse I would expect it to come at a cost though. 

 

Yeah, I agree with this. It's like SE now, you start with the welder/grinder ect ect, but you have the options to upgrade your tools and get better ones if you choose but you also have the option and ability to do everything with the start tools. This is how I see the morpher too, unless you just upgrade the morpher on your arm and nothing else, so if you die or something you keep the upgrades you have made.

 

nora,

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It has been that the morpher is limited in capacities. Something else will be needed to make more complex components. It was also mentioned that while the morpher can mine slowly you can unlock better tech to mine with. (I'm hoping it's not all just handheld and have some fixed or ship mounted rigs) So naturally I would assume that while the morpher can repair, there are better systems to use as well.

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I don't disagree with you about better techs and installing techs that can make repairs.  I'm just trying to figure out how "Hull Repair Engineer" might be a real player-held position on a large spaceship.

 

Ahh, well theres plenty that would work, like whats been said, upgradable morpher, nanostations, nanobots, better nanobots, maybe a station where the repair engineer can redirect the nanobots to a certain location (like hologram of the ship) by selecting damaged points and sending them there, or control repair drones and such.

 

Many different ideas out there :)

 

nora,

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I agree with Nora. I was going to suggest having a player direct the nanobots in areas most critical, otherwise maybe it is a nearest damage first mechanic.

 

Also since it is added skills will affect your efficiency at thing, maybe a repair tech running the station gives a boost to speed or efficiency. Same could be said for all aspects of a ship when looking at crewed vs AI controlled.

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