Armor vs Shields

[zgrssd]

As it stands right now, armor has considerable disadvantages over shields. I thought I list them to start of a discussion of how this might be changed.

Disadvantages:
- Shields cover the whole section, without "gaps".
- Shields need a lot less room and mass/HP
- Shields regenerate, both in combat and fully out of it
- Shields block tons of secondary effects like EMP, Graviton Beams, Sublimator, etc.
- A single shield in the center offer a lot of protection to all facings.
- Shields regeneration can be boosted while in combat.

Detailed explanations:
Gaps:
When you armor a ship you have to dedicate the entire "surface layer" of each section to armor blocks. If one block fails all the gear behind it will be subject to damage. So armor "fails" long before the whole Armor HP for that section have been used up. Armor durability is based of the HP of one block, rather then sum of all units in that facing.

Room & Mass:
In SD2 all designs are Tile Space Limited. And naturally armor needs a ton more space then a shield. Armor is totally useless for Corvettes and Most frigates, while shields are very interesting for them.
Armor has as only advantage that it is cheaper for production cost. But cheapness of production does not mater if the combat performance is abysmal.

Regeneration:
With the exception of Pollop Armor, Shields have that insane regeneration. That means in many combats my ships will take exactly 0 Hull damage.
"Death of a thousand cuts" does not work if the enemies protection totally heals between combats. Much less in combat.
Entire fleets of small ships might have 0 chance to ever penetrate the shield of a bigger ship.

Secondary Effects immunity:
Beside the regeneration, this is the most interesting property. If you got shields up, you ignore EMP, Sublimator and a ton of other special effects totally.
Armor could get this perhaps. Except how would it work with armor pieces that have gaps?
The one thing that might give small ships a chance again is blocked too.

Center Shields:
Even 1 shield in the center of the ship blocks so many attacks for a laughable footprint and cost, I rather put the Bridge out of the center then not have it and need armor.


Possible Solutions:
Weaken Shields or give a dedicate shield breaking weapon
A single 3x3 Shield 1 generator offer twice the HP of a 3x3 steel armor plate, at a fraction of the weight, footprint to the entire section/ship. At the extra cost of less then one 2x2 Nuclear Power Plant.
You would need to use 20 1x1 Steel Armor slabs per section to even get total HP comparable to 1 sectional Shield 1. And you would still have no regeneration, full vulnerabiltiy to secondary effects and easily develop gaps (as each tile is a mere 1k HP).

Let's just make em closer to shields:
Right now damage appears to wander: Ship Wide Shield -> Sectional Shield -> actuall blocks in that section -> possible central section blocks behind the section.
How about if it would go this way instead: Ship Wide Shield -> Sectional Shield -> Ship wide Armor Layer -> sectional Armor layer -> actuall blocks in that section -> central blocks behind that section
In addition to having relevant HP as blocks (but less then now), armor tiles provide "armor strenght" same way shields provide "shield strenght".
The armor strenght could also repair during combat and especially out of combat. This simulates the blocks being actually storage rooms for spare armor plates and patches, stuctural support and the like for the actuall armor layer between shield and blocks.
Unlike shields they would have a lot of thier protection power retained in thier actuall blocks HP. Maybe only 50% of thier current HP should be converted into "armor layer strenght". That way placement would not become totally irrelevant and designs would not have to be redone.
This just distributes the armor strenght a bit better across a section. It might open up the ship designs to "central armor blocks" to armor all sides just a little. But it might be interesting to keep armor "sectional only".
Another thing of interest could be to allow a seperate armor layer between the outer and central sections. That would allow broadside ships with less danger of damage "overspilling" into the central section when one side is taken appart.

[Eldritch]

Shields draw a lot of power and still take up space. If you want to plop a few shield generators down and go without armor in favor of firepower, hope you destroy the enemy fleet before your shields give. If you use armor, it's all that HP right there on that spot. A center shield shares that pool of HP with all quadrants. So 10k HP per ship segment or 10k HP for the entire ship? That's the trade-off. Plus, Singularity Cannon.

I don't have any issues with how armor/shields work. My designs work fine as far as protection and firepower at any range.

[ThatOtherGuy]

Originally posted by Eldritch:

Shields draw a lot of power and still take up space. If you want to plop a few shield generators down and go without armor in favor of firepower, hope you destroy the enemy fleet before your shields give. If you use armor, it's all that HP right there on that spot. A center shield shares that pool of HP with all quadrants. So 10k HP per ship segment or 10k HP for the entire ship? That's the trade-off. Plus, Singularity Cannon.

I don't have any issues with how armor/shields work. My designs work fine as far as protection and firepower at any range.

Exactly,

Leave it alone, there are far more pressing problems to address.

[Chi]

Shields greatest disadvantage right now is that ships can fly under their protective bubble and then enemy ships can pull a Luke Skywalker on you. Titans, especially some of the larger ones, produce a huge shield bubble. I think the Opteris Titan has a shield projection that is almost as large as a Canopy Shield.

With the way fighters move a large group of fighters attacking a single target will ignore the majority of a large ships shields and tear the hull to pieces or at the very least destroy more than their fair share of modules which can sometimes cripple a ship while its shields are still mostly untouched. This is also an issue when the ship AI set to brawler as the ships will often park themselves so close that they are under the shield bubble and ignore them completely.

I really like to design and redesign my ships for the sole purpose of matching or countering my current best designs. While doing this I have found that if you don't take precautions against weapons that ignore shields, ships that are based around chaos cannons, singularity cannons, or employ the methods I stated above, will completely melt through even the most shield stacked of ships.

[zgrssd]

Originally posted by Chi:

Shields greatest disadvantage right now is that ships can fly under their protective bubble and then enemy ships can pull a Luke Skywalker on you. Titans, especially some of the larger ones, produce a huge shield bubble. I think the Opteris Titan has a shield projection that is almost as large as a Canopy Shield.

With the way fighters move a large group of fighters attacking a single target will ignore the majority of a large ships shields and tear the hull to pieces or at the very least destroy more than their fair share of modules which can sometimes cripple a ship while its shields are still mostly untouched. This is also an issue when the ship AI set to brawler as the ships will often park themselves so close that they are under the shield bubble and ignore them completely.

I am about 90% certain that you can only underfly canopy shields - not all shields by default.

[Kitsune]

Originally posted by zgrssd:

I am about 90% certain that you can only underfly canopy shields - not all shields by default.

And you would be wrong. The shields work off of a mesh collider component in Unity. The Unity engine does a ray cast from the firer to the target and returns the object hit. If its a shield then you get the expected protection. If its a ship then it treats it as if there are no shields because there weren't any shields in the ray cast.
Shields work fine as they are. They have their weaknesses and their strength. I do find shielded ships MUCH harder than those without shields but that is expected. In MOO2 I always rushed to get shield 1 as soon as I could because there was a huge difference between a shielded ship and an unshielded one.
Shields should be better than armor since it is a futuristic tech. We HAVE armor today. There's nothing futuristic about armor really.

[yeager]

Cons:

- there are shield piercing weapons (and bugged one's that still pierce shields though they shouldnt)
- shield tech comes late and there are only 3 (usual and 5 in total) kinds of them
- shields need energy, most armor do not
- it takes some seconds to break a shield if you concentrate firepower, but it takes much longer to penetrate (good) armor. Armor isnt useless.
- shields are not overpowered. MoO2 got reflective shields for example which doesnt exist in here (so far)
- the current concept works and makes fun
- an armor overhaul of the concept would lead to a total overhaul in the game
- there is just one dev working on it, much effort for a too small effect
- if this discussion would be about if ROCKETS make sense then I'd totally agree: they dont.
- there are more important probs in the game

[Dreadisan]

shields are better but you do know that
1. there are shield piercing weapons which makes them useless
2. there are weapons that are bugged like the gausscannon who do dmg to ship modules and shields.
3. EMP can still hit a ship with shields it all depends how big the emp AOE is and how far the shield from the hull is.

armor needs a buff but only a small one.

[zgrssd]

Originally posted by Kitsune:

Originally posted by zgrssd:

I am about 90% certain that you can only underfly canopy shields - not all shields by default.

And you would be wrong. The shields work off of a mesh collider component in Unity. The Unity engine does a ray cast from the firer to the target and returns the object hit. If its a shield then you get the expected protection. If its a ship then it treats it as if there are no shields because there weren't any shields in the ray cast.

The question remaining is:
Is this a bug, a feature, or a bug that is only kept around because it balances shields*?
If it is not a feature it will be removed in the future.

*Game programmers know that sometimes a bug should not be fixed because it is temporarily an integral part of the balance.

Originally posted by Dreadisan:

shields are better but you do know that
1. there are shield piercing weapons which makes them useless
2. there are weapons that are bugged like the gausscannon who do dmg to ship modules and shields.
3. EMP can still hit a ship with shields it all depends how big the emp AOE is and how far the shield from the hull is.

armor needs a buff but only a small one.

1. I know of one. The Black Hole Cannon. Wich is Tier 8 or so. Shields start at Tier 3, plus two more buyable levels. One late game weapon that you have to choose over other weapons is not what I call "solid counter".
2. And since those are bugged, they will be fixed. It is likely they have not been fixed yet because they keep shields in check.
3. that I did not know

Originally posted by yeager:

- an armor overhaul of the concept would lead to a total overhaul in the game
- there is just one dev working on it, much effort for a too small effect
- if this discussion would be about if ROCKETS make sense then I'd totally agree: they dont.
- there are more important probs in the game

Those are all non-arguments:
- I already gave an example of how to change it without need for a total overhaul
- I know there is only one dev. I am wh reminds other people of that. So I try to find low work solutions, rather then the best.
- Rockets are just OT for any discussion about shields and amor. You were not even trying to make usefull discussion with that.
- And the more important problems will be dealth with according to how important they are. The armor/shield balance greatly affects other areas, like the ship hull balance (especially across races). Zero decide wich will have the most effect for the time. Neither of us.

I think I answered the parts that were actualyl on topic with the quotes before that.

[Ozymandias]

What you should be says is armor and shields.....ehh...see what i did there? Seriously armor and shields ftw

Go forth and win because i absolve you.

[NandusMasta]

Great post OP, you excellently summed up the main problem and all the different views on it. I suggested in the thread for armor to behave like shields, because Zero would only have to copy paste the code, to make it work as is; but something more elaborated like you suggest is also a great idea. What can not happen is to continue with the status quo, the system has to be improved.

[Galactic Origins]

I use good armor and shield III. I like the way things are now.