Shield status

[fivemilesmile]

I'm having a slight confusion over finding out a ship's shield status. What I mean is a shield covers a ship all around; up, below, front, sides and the back. To show the shield's status, we have a status display and it is very useful: you can see how much damage one side already have, so if you turn your ship, you can mitigate damage, meaning you can face untouched shield towards the enemy fire, let the damaged part regain its strength. The only problem with this is that it does not show the top and bottom sides of the shield, only the front, sides and back part. So while the shield is in three dimension, the display shows only a two dimensional presentation, like you could not be attacked from above or from below.

It became apparent to me in my latest fights: I'm using the WASD+QE keys to navigate the ship while in turret mode I'm shooting in different vectors, constantly monitoring the shield status on my hud display and turning the damaged side away form the heaviest fire. This is when the lack of top and bottom shield status display handicaps me: I simply cannot tell if I can present my belly or my top side to an incoming fire, because I have no idea about the shields there.

Maybe two more indicator line could be added on the status display: one to the front - indicating the top side (so there would be two indicators on the front; one for the front shield and one for the top side), and one to the bottom - indicating the bottom side (similar to the front: two indicators), doing the same for the enemy ships' scan display. As for the full tactical display that you can summon up around your ship in real space...that I guess would have to be 3 dimensional to show the shield status correctly.

[Kele - Starpoint Gemini 3]

The top and bottom of the middle area of the ship are divided by left and right shields. The front and rear completely cover their side.

Adding top and bottom shields would pose not only a great challenge for UI...

(it would also likely mean designing and implementing the tactical overlay, the quickscan, the shematics and the context menu panels from scratch. Just adding additional bars would be confusing as most people are used to just 1 shield from other games)

... but also for balance, as more shields add more overall shield capacity and regen (if you're efficient). NPC's would need to have their AI adjusted accordingly.

Other than that, i imagine we would have to adjust many hardpoint positions for ships who dont have top and bottom facing turrets. The point is to keep combat feel fluid in the sense that you need to balance shield and battery consumptions for maximum effect.


I'm afraid it's too much work for a smaller addition to gameplay at this point. But we'll consider that design for a future sequel.

[fivemilesmile]

I do not think it would worth the amount of work...So I just have to calculate in the left top/bottom shield quarter taking damage together with the left side for example, right. It is fine with me :)

Many thanks for answering!