Clarification on Shields

[Jesus Cat (Fwyrl)]

I built a shield on the Shattershield dome island, expecting that it would protect the buildings there. Instead, I found that after enough strikes (the storm kept hitting it because of the shatter shield), shields fail anyways, even if you still have power in your batteries.

Is this intentional? Is it because there was a shatter shield involved? I can't recall if the shield in question was a medium one (ie. able to cover the shattershield dome), but I believe it was.

[Lavan]

Sounds like a bug.

You don't want to combine shields and shatterdomes anyways, shields are for letting the storm pass over and continue, shatterdomes hold it in one spot to slow it down or to allow turrets time to hit it. Trying to combine them just means the shield takes more hits than it should with no benefit.

[Jesus Cat (Fwyrl)]

Originally posted by Lavan:

Sounds like a bug.

You don't want to combine shields and shatterdomes anyways, shields are for letting the storm pass over and continue, shatterdomes hold it in one spot to slow it down or to allow turrets time to hit it. Trying to combine them just means the shield takes more hits than it should with no benefit.

In theory, a shatterdome (protected by a shield) and a shield with enough juice would let you stop the storm in place forever.

I did have enough juice last game that I could have *easily* stopped multiple storms in one spot forever. Spamming upgraded Epic generators will do that. (Upgraded Quark labs drain a LOT of power - 20/s)

[Lavan]

Just tried it out, does appear to be intended behavior since the shield shows its weakening right before failure.

Originally posted by Jesus Cat (Fwyrl):

In theory, a shatterdome (protected by a shield) and a shield with enough juice would let you stop the storm in place forever.

I did have enough juice last game that I could have *easily* stopped multiple storms in one spot forever. Spamming upgraded Epic generators will do that. (Upgraded Quark labs drain a LOT of power - 20/s)

Go try it again, had 4 layers of shields and the storm blew right through them while i had 10k spare energy saved up. Shields appear to fail for the night after a certain number of hits. You could try to reduce the number of hits or just kill them before it hits the threshold but at that point you probably don't need the shatterdome/shield.

Edit: Correction, once a shield goes down it appears to stay down, doesn't recover the next night.

[YYZ Studio]

Hey there, shields last for exactly 20 hits - this is to prevent an exploit where you can place a shatterdome inside a shield and the storm will forever be stuck striking a shielded shatterdome that is indestructible!

When a shield is close to failure, it turns red.

Exception to this are "starter shields" provided by the "starter shields" research - those shield for 1 hit only.

Laven is correct to say that shields are for protecting crucial structures like fully upgraded farms or epic buildings, while shatterdomes are to slow down a storm, which I usually strategically place before a bunch of turrets to maximize shooting time.

However, with this information, you could combine both strategies, alternating shatterdomes to be inside shields. Each shield extends the 'life' of a shatterdome by 20 HP per shield in that regard, allowing you to stop the storm for an extended period - not indefinitely, just much longer than purely spamming shatterdomes I imagine. I've not tested the effectiveness of this strategy so don't quote me haha.

To improve on the confusion, I have added a description to the end of the Small Shield, saying "Withstands a max of 20 hits." I have already finalized this week's update so it's not able to go into this week's changes, but I've already made the appropriate changes for it to reflect in next week's update! Sorry for the confusion!

-YYZ

[Jesus Cat (Fwyrl)]

Ah, that makes sense! It would be kinda OP if you could just stop the storm wherever you wanted. if you had enough electricity.

Thanks for the description update!