Shields?
 

Can someone tell me what shields are supposed to do? I put a shield generator on my ship, but it doesn't seem to do anything.. Are there some weapons (besides phased weapons) that aren't affected by shields? (like, say, a depleted uranium cannon???)

Re: Shields?
 

Mhhh, no the shields should help defend aganist almost all the weapons in the game, certainly aganist DUC's. Damage as I understand it goes in this order shields (assuming the weapon is not "special" and ignores shields) then armor (again assuming the weapon does not ignore armor, I think the crystal-shard cannons are the only ones) and then it starts being random aganist the various ship components, checking to see how much damage each one of those can take. However, at a certain point the shields just can't take any more damage unless you also happen to have a shield regenerator in your design. Also I have found that sometimes there are "lucky" shots which just bypass the shields.

Jim

Re: Shields?
 

From what I've seen, the shields seems to work that way (altough I rarely fight ;-)

I had a stranger problem when testing my brand new Dragon class Light cruiser in the simulator. it had 2 Shield generators IV, 2 Cristalline Armor II and 3 Heavy (3x damage) Shard Cannons IV.
To test it, I put one of these in front of another one + a frigate and a destroyer (same tech level, less firepower).
The large weapons would do just fine, but I found out that I wasn't doing much damage, in fact, the shields were REGENERATING when the ship was hit by the less powerfull frigate and destroyer, but the 45 dmg/gun of the Light cruiser was enough to bring it down a bit.
Knowing that the Cristalline armor description says it channels 10pts of dmg to the shields, I was wondering if it is a bug or a feature...
(because when the sole Light cruiser wins to the 3 others because of this, it is really weird...)

I did'nt see it in actual battle yet, but I'll try...

See Ya

[This message has been edited by Paladin (edited 21 August 2000).]

[This message has been edited by Paladin (edited 21 August 2000).]

Re: Shields?
 

I know that some people have reported bugs using the Cristalline Armors... seems to be that have regeneration powers, when only the Bio Armor should have this power.

Re: Shields?
 

Another thing I would like to be able to see during combat is how many shield points/armor points I have left and how many shield points are being generated per round.

Re: Shields?
 

Actually, you have a nice Shields/Hit points meter on the right panel, righ over the weapons readout of your selected ship...

The little bars burn up as you deplete shields and hit points... (I think it's blue for shileds and red for hit pts). Either way, just right-click on any ship to have every info you might need (including "surprise" components... ;-)

What I'd like to see is a similar thing to see how much each ennemy ship is damaged at a glance...


------(other subject)---------
For the cristalline armor bug, its not really regeneration, only shield regeneration...
From what I read on the armor's description, it would mean that shield traversing weapons would still have 5,10 or 15 dmgpts channeled to the shields, or something like if the armor gets hit, some damage is channeled back to the shields...
But in this case, I got a ship with 2 cryst.ArmorII, so it seems 20 shields points are regenerated each hit, 5 more than the 15 pts of damage from the already powerfull Shard cannon... So I could theorically recharge my own ship's shields that way, by firing on them with less powerfull weapons...
So that only the real big guns could be a possible nuisance this way (or the shield-skipping guns...)

I sincerelly hope this is a bug, or else this is all too cheesy, or impossible (depending on the side of the Crystalline Advanced Tech you are).

Re: Shields?
 

Crystalline armor seems to contribute to shield regen even before the shield falls. As far as I can tell, it's something like

shield += MAX((shield_max - shield),
(5 * total_crystaline_armor (in levels)),
damage)

That is, I've never seen a hit *increase* the shields to above where the shield was before the hit (but maybe I wasn't testing with sufficiently weak weapons), but the armor still recharges the shield even if the shield held and the armor wasn't touched.

So a Battlestation with, say, 30 Crystalline Armor III components (600 KT if memory serves, but a BS has a LOT of space) and, oh, 4 Phased Shield Gen. V (560 shield pts IIRC, and not pierced by phased weaponry) would be effectively immune to most < 450 pt weapons until the total shield strength < 450. Temporal weapons would work, as would ramming (at least with cobalt warheads; don't know how ramming damage is calculated), but not a whole lot else. Figure Large (2x) is the best that fits on a cruiser, so one needs a base damage > 225 to even reach the armor, which is, er, rather steep. Shield depleters probably won't work, because the regen happens *after* damage is assessed but before the next weapon fires...

I don't recall "lucky" ships bypassing shields, but against such a BS, you'd better hope so. =) Or use an allegiance shifter or bording party.

The only saving graces would be that a) the armor/shields take up a fair bit of KT, so it's not going to have a dozen Massive Shard Cannon X's bLasting everything in sight, b) such a monster is hopefully going to be expensive and slow to build (but crystalline armor is cheaper than emissive, IIRC), c) it can't move, so if you can hit whatever it's guarding from the other side, you might make the BS rather moot.

------------------
-- The thing that goes bump in the night

Re: Shields?
 

Oh, bother. Make that MIN, of course.

Re: Shields?
 

The math seems to balance out, but I Assure you I've seen the shields regenerate completely...
After about 20 turns, I had this little colony in another empire's system, so I wanted to build a Killer defense station there. I took a basic space station, put the requirements, two Shield gen IV, 5 Crist. Armor II, 3 Large Shard Cannons IV (and a capMsl I think), all the latest I had this early in game.
Since my Phong AI "friend" also had crystaline tech, this was going to be rough... Still, they would need to make at least 50 pts of damage to begin to dent the shields... quite impossible this early in game, even with rocket packs...

Suffice to say, each and every attack on my station resulted in total victory, except for the fact that onc the ennemy came from behind and obliterated the colony's population ;-( but left the (endless supplied) Defense Station to hold the planet advitam aeternam...

I don't even bother to watch the cruisers crush on this baby like water on a reef...

Suffice to say, Cristalline armor really is too powerfull... As I said before, maybe if it wern't cumulative, like the combat sensors...

Re: Shields?
 

You forget the equaliser......Massive Shield Depleter......Interesting "special weapon"

Re: Shields?
 

I didin't forget the anti-shield (wich is a good thing, if only the AI could be better ;-) The point is that Crsystal Armor regenerates the shield BEFORE any damage is applied to the internal structure...

Fortunately, there are always ways to deal with this, but it's kind of lame to have Heavy weapons (Light cruiser or better) to destroy a single frigate equipped with Crystaline Armor...

And then There's always the Psychics...
;-))

Re: Shields?
 

(Battlestation notes -- for 26k minerals, you can get one with a Master Computer III, 30 Crys Armor III, 6 Phased Shield Gen V, 4 Shield Regen V, ECM III, Sensors III, Multiplex III, 3 (M) Shard Cannon X, and 1 (M) Wave-Motion Gun III. For the price, it's fairly hard (for most races) to kill. And, with a MC and pretty heavy shielding, it's going to be hard to subvert/board it, as well. Might serve well as a very tough resupply base for a warp-point defense, especially with a few attack cruisers for backup and a repair ship).

Shields are good if you're going *against* Crystalline folks, 'tho, considering that shard cannons pierce armor. Crystalline vs. Crystalline in a Black Hole sector would be a very, very nasty fight with all damage going straight to components... Shields also stop boarding parties, although I've never seen the AI try.


------------------
-- The thing that goes bump in the night

Re: Shields?
 

This battleStation seems a bit extreme, but it is fairly impregnable... (did you see the upkeep costs??)

On the other hand, I once had one of my advanced colonies toasted even if it had an equivalent baby (well, only 3rd generation, but that was more than all oponents ;-)

The station just happened to be on the far side of the planet, so the ennemy fleet just shot the colony to death, and was afterwards obliterated by the station...
I remained with a perfectly invincible defense base with endless supplies above a dead planet, holding off entire armadas of incomming ships... (it was no in ennemy territory ;-))

I can see it would still be feasible to get past one of those stations, like with a massive shield disruptor (say, model II with 2000 shield points) and boarding parties (lots of them, did I hear "SelfDestructDevice?" ;-)
On the other hand, I can barely begin to imagine the glimmers of the kind of AI that would be needed for this and I'm at my desk in an AI Univ. Lab ;-)

A human player could get around if he really wanted to, but a computer would have a real hard time to do so...
Maybe somekind of multiagent system...
(having the ministers as independant agents would be cool, imagine them "argue" over a course of action ;-))

[This message has been edited by Paladin (edited 24 August 2000).]

Re: Shields?
 

There seems to be some confusion about how shields work. Let me 'splain to y'all. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Each shield generator will create a specified number of shield points. Thus, a "100" point shield generator generates... 100 points of shields!

Shields take damage BEFORE non-shield skipping weapons do damage to either armor or components. The GENERATED SHIELD POINTS take the damage. Thus, a ship with 1 100 point generator will have 100 shield points. If hit with 2 40 kt damage shots, it will lose 80 points and only be worth 20. The next 40 point shot will kill the shield and "components" will take 20kt of damage.

Shields are not "randomly bypassed". Some weapons are listed as bypassing shields (eg, phased energy weapons). These do not reduce shields points, but rather ignore them causing damage to the ships components (unless, of course, it has armor).

There does seem to be a bug somewhere with some weapons vs shields where damage is "healed". I've sent Aaron a save file in which this happens reproducabley (sp?).

Hope that helps.

John

Re: Shields?
 

Someone asked about how to see your and enemy shield levels in tactical combat. During any part of the tactical round, you can select a ship by right clicking on it. You will get a "details" window up which will show movement, current shields, and damage (in kt). Clicking on components will list the ships components, with "damage markers" where killed components are. Right clicking on a component will list details about it.

Johnnyplaytester

Re: Shields?
 

Just an opinion question: What combination of shields/armor (amount) do you use early game (tech levels 3 or less)?