Massive Planetary Shield Bug

[geoschmo]

That's funny. I almost put in my post "Haven't you seen Star Wars?" I actually had it typed and deleted it because I thought it might sound mean and I was just trying to be funny.

Geoschmo

[Baron Munchausen]

This is an intentional feature of planetary shields. It was the same in SE III, btw. This is one of the ways that MM tries to encourage use of troops. Now, if only he'd change the way troops are handled during bombardment so you couldn't destroy them from orbit when there are no shields or the shields are down. If they could be stored in a 'special' way and only damaged gradually like facilities are damaged during population reduction you'd be pretty much forced into heavy troop-to-troop combat if you wanted to capture a planet in relatively good condition.

[Admiral Grover]

I do agree with what you are saying, I guess I just envisioned the Massive Planetary Shield enveloping the entire planet. If this were the case, then troops could not land on the planet, they would just crash into the shield. I guess then that it isn't a bug. Oh well. And here I thought I was on to something.

Regards,
Admiral Grover

[rdouglass]

I totally agree with your logic Admiral. If a shield can stop a DUC (just high speed uranium pellets) or missiles, why wouldn't it stop a ship?

However, I am glad the game works as it does. Without that feature (/bug?), it would definitely lower the value (and occurence) of troops (and troop combat).

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by rdouglass:
I totally agree with your logic Admiral. If a shield can stop a DUC (just high speed uranium pellets) or missiles, why wouldn't it stop a ship?

I suppose, if you feel you needed an explanation, the troops dropped through whatever opening the shield has to let resources generated off the planet.

I often wodered if the game would be more interesting if you could, effectively, blockade your own planets.

That is, if the defences are impenetrable -- if you mined all warp points, bases at warp points, are at war with all neighbors -- then no resources left the planets to enter your empire's economy, no resources entered to support your shipyards, and as a bonus, no intel was possible against the planet.

Meh, that's a different game than SE4, even I probably wouldn't like it

[ September 25, 2002, 19:01: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Arkcon:
I suppose, if you feel you needed an explanation, the troops dropped through whatever opening the shield has to let resources generated off the planet.

I often wodered if the game would be more interesting if you could, effectively, blockade your own planets.

That is, if the defences are impenetrable -- if you mined all warp points, bases at warp points, are at war with all neighbors -- then no resources left the planets to enter your empire's economy, no resources entered to support your shipyards, and as a bonus, no intel was possible against the planet.

Meh, that's a different game than SE4, even I probably wouldn't like it

I might like that game if it were on a smaller scale than SEIV. I could hanlde an empire with a half a dozen planet that I had to very closely micromanage like that. Only build with locally mined resources unless you had transports to take them between worlds. Seperate research queses for each laboratory that could cooperate, but at some loss in total efficency. That would be cool, but hard to handle with 150 worlds like an dSEIV empire towards the end.

Geoschmo

[PvK]

Perhaps the shields only stop objects incoming at very fast speeds, like DUC shots and meteors.

PvK