Defense Shield Basics

This guide explains the changes to Defense Shields and how to set them up. A mod for Space Engineers.

DarkStar has now retired from Space Engineers, and the Defense Shields is now maintained by Ash Like Snow. New Defense Shield workshop location is at https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=3154379105

Version 2.0

Mod Design Overview

*Note* Mod is not 100% compatible with creative mode, but still mostly works.

[Unique Aspects]

Unlike other MODs I have decided to take a different approach in that a ships/stations may only have one of each block type active at a given time, all additional blocks serve as backup in the event the active block is destroyed. Another unique aspect is all of the blocks in this mod communicate with each other and add additional functionality to each other. Finally, unlike other mods the power usage of blocks in this MOD is not related to the number of blocks, rather its related to the amount of available power and how that power has been configured to be used.

[Multiplayer and Performance]

This MOD is designed to be highly efficient and performance friendly, supporting up to 1000 shields on screen at any given time. The MOD has also been designed and optimized specifically for an optimal multiplayer experience with large servers running over a thousand active shields. This is possible because of special code designed to put shields to sleep when they are not interacting with the world and to unload them entirely when no players or moving entities are around. In addition this mod is heavily multi-threaded, with good distributed utilization across 16 cores in testing.

New sections added to this guide July 25th, 2023

Chat cmds & HUD adjustments

There are new commands too that you can bind keys to to control shields and move the HUD icon now. Shield quick keys default to off, you must enable them with below commands.

/ds remap	remap the keys for hud movement and redirect control
/ds hud	change how the shield hud appears
/ds info	for info
/ds notices	Toggle Screen Text Notices
/ds disablehotkeys	Disables All Shield Hotkeys
/ds enablehotkeys	Enables All Shield Hotkeys
/ds setdefaults	Resets all client shield configs to defaults.
/ds bug	How to report bugs

The default keys are:

• Action Key: NumPad0
  
• NoShunting: NumPad5
  
• Left: NumPad4
  
• Right: NumPad6
  
• Shunt Up: NumPad9
  
• Shunt Down: NumPad3
  
• Shunt Front: NumPad8
  
• Shunt Back: NumPad2
  
• Kinetic: NumPad7
  
• Energy: NumPad1

If you use a controller, you can edit the config file to set the commands.

You can also move the HUD around and scale the HUD
Movement: Arrow keys
Scale: -/+ on Numpad

Defense Shield Basics

Hello, Engineers. This guide provides a overview of how the Defense Shields ModPack works, so here are some visual aids. The Control block controls your shield emitters, all settings for the shield are on that and the emitters will not work without them.
There can only be one active control block on each shielded grid (you may have more than one as backups, but only one will work to operate shields).

You may have more than one emitter, however, each emitter over 1 serves as a backup/standby emitter and does not increase shield hp (Active block's names start with [A] while backup blocks start with ). The emitters must also be on the hull (outside) of your ships/stations. The emitters need line of sight to work, if they aren't out in the open they will fail to operate and report that they do not have line of sight, both in game and in their block terminal. When the shields do not have line of sight you will see a graphical sphere form around the ship, orange lines mean no line of sight, while green mean those points are visible.

Structural Integrity mode makes the shield much more tolerant to brief grid max power reductions and also improves collision protection. You no longer take damage from voxel collisions until shields drop (good for mining), However you will take 16x more damage to your shields from weapons.

Shield health and HP

Shield Health

The inner set of hashes show you your shield charged percentage at 10% increments. When shield is fully charged the inner hashes will fully surround the shield icon.

Shield HP

To give your shield more power you will need more power production. More power = potential higher recharge rate and HP. Also, increasing the size of your shield will weaken it unless you add more power generation to the grid (Not true for stations with enhancer blocks). This default can be increased/decreased in the config file.

Note: Max Shield strength on right indicates the amount of HP you have vs what you could have without heat. So if it says 10, then you have 10% of your maximum hp (not tied to the 10 middle dashes indicating shield health).

Shield Color Identifications

**Color intensity reflects what settings you have on the modulator**

Orange means receiving energy damage.	Blue means receiving Kinetic damage.
Green is Structural integrity mode	White/Grey means balanced or not receiving damage

Shield Recharging and DPS Indication.

The green hashes are how fast your shield is recharging, the red hashes are how much dps your shield is receiving. For instance, if you are receiving damage and you have green hashes, it means that your shield is still gaining HP even though you are receiving damage. If you go to the right while taking damage and the red dashes fill up you are not gaining HP and your shields will be losing HP.

Shield Modulator and Enhancer

The shield modulator allows you to set which type of damage your shield is better at defending against. When you access the modulator on the terminal you will see a slider that sets it to either energy or kinetic protection percentages.
Ideally you want whatever number is lowest to be at “1” to reach perfect modulation to incoming damage. Modulating left or right will either bring you closer to that “1” or farther.

The modulator also has a password/frequency button where you set the password/frequency of your shields so that ships can pass through each others shields (This works even if a ship does not have a shield).

The modulator password MUST match whatever password is set in the Shield Controller generating the shield the ship with the modulator is entering, this will allow commandeered or neutral grids to enter the shield.

Also on stations, the enhancer block doubles the amount of power required to maintain the shield, but also decreases the amount of damage it takes from collisions and eliminates the scaling penalty.

Shield heat indicators and heat venting

The 9 dots and the 1 hexagon in the center of the shield icon represent heat generation:
for every dot filled it is 10% heat, and 50% recharge loss, so when all 10 spots are filled your shield no longer regenerates. Once they fill with orange, the shield is no longer recharging due to sustained damage. Once at 10 heat, there is a 20x reduction in regen, and once the 10 heat begins flashing recharge is now broken and you will not recharge until shields go down or stop sustaining damage.

(Heat sink Mechanic)
-Blue icon on top of it all indicates your heat sink is active.
-Heat is generated over time throughout consistent damage taken.
-Heat sink ability will cool your heat at the cost of restricting your Max shield HP to 90%. Subject to change with new heat sink blocks being added.

Shield Shunting and Structural Integrity

** Directional shields was added to give shield users active control over the effectiveness of their shields. Where skill and planning can be decisive, but mistakes are very costly.

Sides that show up as red flash are weaker and have their power redirected to the sides not flashing, not set to redirect.

The shunted sides will flash every 5 secs when Up, and enabled.



** Each shunted shield side allows shield pen on that shunted side, where 90% of the damage bleeds through and if the projectile continues on to hit the grid it will receive this damage.

** Each side shunted will improve the effectiveness of the other sides, proportional to the number shunted.

** Reinforced sides also receive shield pen prediction, the more sides shunted the more protection. If all 5 sides are shunted the remaining side can prevent full shield pen projectiles, partial shield pen projectiles will be blocked with fewer sides.

** The shield terminal does not currently display stats on the shield shunted feature, but it will in the future.

** This feature is in addition to shield energy/kinetic modulation, the resistance bonuses DO stack.

** Right now directional shields only affects WeaponCore Projectiles, it has no influence on collisions or vanilla weapons at this time.

There is a 2 second timer after any changes.. So if you make a change then make another change 1 second later, no changes will occur for 3 seconds, for example.

Structural Integrity

UI Turns green indicating structural integrity is on, you no longer take damage from voxel collisions until shields drop (good for mining), However you will take 16x more damage to your shields from weapons.

Modulation (kinetic/energy), Enhancer and Structural Integrity

The shield modulator allows you to set which type of damage your shield is better at defending against. When you access the modulator on the terminal you will see a slider that sets it to either energy or kinetic protection percentages.

Left side indicates Energy modulation protection. Right side indicates Kinetic Modulation protection.
Ideally you want whatever number is lowest to be at “1” to reach perfect modulation to incoming damage. Modulating left or right will either bring you closer to that “1” or farther.[/h3]

Structural Integrity Field mode can be accessed on ships via the modulator when a shield enhancer is installed. This mode trades protections provided by the bubble shield from weapon fire for direct ship hull reinforcement against collisions with voxels/the ground and other entities. This feature was mainly added for miners, but I suspect kamikaze pilots will also find it useful.

Shield Penetration Percentage

Shield penetration chance is now displayed on the left of your HUD next to the shunting bars. The higher this percentage gets the higher the chance that your shield will allow penetration from incoming rounds. Maximum penetration chance is ~55%. The more sides you shunt on your shields, the slower your heat will scale against your penetration chance for the defended side(s)

MORE useful information

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Extend Shield: Does it protect other ships? How far can it extend? How does this effect the shield strength?

ANSWER: expands the shield bubble which surrounds your ship. allowing friendly grids to be better protected by larger shield instead of needing to be within a close distance
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Spheres Shield: Yes it makes a sphere but to what advantage?

ANSWER: NO advantage, it's just round
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fortify Shield: What percentage does it increase the shield and in what way?

ANSWER: increases the perimeter of the shield barrier to better protect from damage and to increase hp boosts the ship shield by 33% for a single hit.(at the cost of moving fast, speed is limited to ~10m/s)

Shield Air Pressurizer

The Shield Air Pressurizer only works on station(static) grids, it has to be connected to the same grid the shield emitter is on and be connected to a source of ice. If shield goes down, all air in the shield will be lost (Buggy, due to keen changes).

[Abisius Xarvenius Carbensius]

@ATepidCupOfTea
in the main storage folder findeable under %appdata%\spaceengineers is a defenseshields.cfg which has all avaible balance settings.
please be aware that it will affect the shields of everything in all of the worlds created from that hardware where it is if you alter it.

[ATepidCupOfTea]

Are there any config options to set a cap on shield capacity?

[Abisius Xarvenius Carbensius]

last time i testet the shield pressurizer did work but was far less efficient than using bottles or just building a block based grid with the same internal volume and pressurize that via h2/02 generators.
it will also only work under a station shield and all the air is lost whenever the shield is going down which sadly includes a loss of shield strength upon world unloading, if i remember that correctly it was due to se limitations.

[nukeguard]

probably, but I'm not sure if the pressurizer works or not

[Noobinator]

are power efficiency modules what's meant for the shield air pressurizer small ports? Also I couldn't get this working, with or without the Keen bug fix.

[Abisius Xarvenius Carbensius]

@smokified
the "allow allied players" does from my experience only work with faction members.
you can set a shield password inside the shield controller/-table on the shield you want them to pass through and give itt to them to put it into a shield modulator to be able to pass through the shield with grids.
on "foot" they should always be able to enter the shield though they might have no dampeners.

[smokified]

I have a friend in a different faction that I am allied with. I have my shields set to "allow allied players" through the shield.

When he approaches the shield, he dies on contact. Is there something else that has to happen to allow allied players to pass through shields?

[Abisius Xarvenius Carbensius]

@smokified
if i remember it correctly form the last time i looked at that huge block the small yellow rectangles are the same as the small ones on a refinery and thus they are upgrade module slots.

[smokified]

Are the small 'conveyor ports' on both sides of the air pressurizer for power modules or something?

[nukeguard]

modulator allows you to set pwd on shield so only ships with modulator tuned to same pwd can enter