On defensive structures, and shields

Hey,
I just wanted to add a small request for shields and defensive structures in general, something that most of strategy games quickly skip, with very few actually incorporating valid defences.

First of all one of the most cool things I seen in TA were walls - buildings that forced enemy to go around, or slow down his ground forces significantly. They were also important in a way that building them forced enemy to push his large units with firepower closer the very front line what allowed friendly artillery to shoot back without bothering about whole tiny, low-level meat.
On Metal maps these walls were essential in tunnelling enemy units and to a degree preventing a zerg rush. I really loved them, cause they added a new dimension to exploiting terrain and natural opportunities created by it (yay for a maze in valley surrounded by sniping units! )

So I'd love to see walls - preferably these that aren't automatically targeted by player units, but rather require him to give an order to take them down (as sometimes it's better to focus on a real threat or production buildings then attack randomly placed walls around the map).


Second thing are shields. In Supreme commander we got structures capable of creating vast shields that could easily survive artillery fire. These were really amazing for a few reasons.
They encouraged enemy to move in with real units instead of relaying solely on an artillery to get rid of enemy or lethally cripple his forces. That makes 100% defensive tactics and building ultimate city-fortress pointless, cause you need to have a combat units to win the game, not just buildings. But at the same time it forces close range encounters or air attacks instead of relaying solely on most powerful, long-range tanks or ships. It also allowed both players to create stable frontline forcing them to experiment more creative approach then just racing for largest units and then simply spraying enemies with bullets. That's where nukes, massive carpet bombings, or stealth units come in play (which is a part I love most)
Only thing SupCom screwed in it was the fact that these shields still popped under heavy artillery strike - yea, several of them covering each other could withstand multiple towers, but at the same time they didn't created any noticeable "shadow" where you could build units safely from artillery, but not covered in any other way - which was a deal breaker for anyone trying to employ stealth attacks as enemy had to have everything covered with strong defences as well... otherwise artillery will finish him off. It also strongly encouraged artillery player to just keep on building artillery towers up to the point where they overwhelm enemy shields and wipe his entire base in few seconds - which is also a huge deal-breaker as essentially since then on there's no point for anyone to play the game any more - guy with so many artillery turrets can wipe out anything within turrets range.

So here's my suggestion:
- Create 4 different shields:
1. weak wide-area shield - this one should protect against air and ground attacks and be really wide, flat shield to cover large area of the base. Well developed base shouldn't need more then 4 of them to cover entire area, but at the same time it shouldn't be very hard to destroy by artillery units. Provides basic protection, and at the same time when taken down it makes huge area of your base a vulnerable target.
2. Strong spherical shield - something tall enough to allow enemy bombers fly though and bomb shield generator.
3. Mobile shield based on shield 2 - very good for preventing attacking force from being wiped out by enemy mid range defence turrets, and at the same time creating "shadow" for units behind it - that will encourage shield units being sent to the very frontline.
4. Ultimate shield - this should cover very large area, preferably triple the size of shield 1 - something large enough to cover a whole city. It should be able to survive unlimited amount of enemy fire with the cost of eating energy from reactors - so that firing at enemy would literally take away some part of resources from him. It should be really energy efficient to prevent situation where building a few long range turrets can defeat enemy. It's weak point would be in allowing any large physical objects to pass through - Asteroids, nukes, tanks, air units, sea units, all of them should be capable of passing through the shield easily encouraging enemy to begin real battle and take frontilne units to the enemy or use one of superweapons. The ultimate shield should be very very expensive so that it'd be used only by mineral-rich empires.
This shield should be something like a game-changer for players playing defensive tactics, and something essential for multiplayer games where one player is playing defensive and another offensive role bringing a whole new dimension to the gameplay.
If it'd cause some serve issues with balance - think about prevent units from inside of the shield to fire at these outside - it'll kill creating of the walls-of-guns although might lead to another issue - both sides waiting for another move next to the shield edge... I don't think it's very bad though - should be a thrilling experience ^_^

Some arts for inspiration:


Possibly there might be a 5th shield type:
5. Planetary shield. Something preventing bombardment from orbit (minus asteroid or whichever other large object), but nothing else - it should allow dropping units from space to surface, and any combat on the planet surface, including free usage of the air units. Make it roughly as expensive as a single ultimate shield and work on similar principle - damage to the shield takes small portion of the energy from enemy.


Oh, and the final suggestion:
If you make a shields, please, add a water-alike effect to them. It's the type I always loved most, but nearly never seen in games. Let the hit into shields cause ripples and distort light - same with any unit passing through shield, it should cause small ripple-alike effect. It's brilliant, cause makes shields feel more physical, nearly like a real object.

Shields were already shot down it seems for the initial part of the game, I do see mods putting them out.

Really?
Bleah... that sux.
Any idea why is that?

Yeah, no shields in this game at the moment.

Stay tuned in the following topinc (first post gets updated often):

viewtopic.php?f=61&t=34022

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments ... ?context=3

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments ... ry/c5ws504

No, they were not shot down, thats a false rumor. One of the devs just said, that the shields in SupCom didn't work as intended (shields were isdispensable) and that the shield system will be revised.

EDIT: zidonuke found the quotes i meant. Thats far from a refusal. Don't rely on that one forum thread, while it gives an overview over all the suggestions made, it's neither complete nor is it final.

But it's handeled as "will not present" atm. And I should say we take it that way until uber says otherwhise.

xedi is just an ordinary user and the list he made somehow reflects his opinion. Unless shields are denied by official side, there is no point in not discussing them.

I think shields just need to be more costly to operate. Most of the problem in SupCom was that energy was essentially limitless. Plop down a few fusion reactors and you're good for the rest of the game.

They mentioned fixing this issue, so there may not be a problem besides the ease of access to energy.

Otherwise, a network of shields covering an entire base should cripple your economy. Shields should be only used to protect vital assets, not every little outpost and structure you have.

I do think they're needed though, since they are essentially a direct counter to long range artillery (besides spreading out your base, but more options is better).

So what neutrino actually said is he'd like to put a new twist on shields.

How about we get to work on that?

Yep, seems like you are correct.

Someone raised an issue with shield stacking - well, that's quite easy to solve - two shields of the same type touching each other should cause critical overflow, possibly damaging both structures supporting them (should be really fun to see with mobile shields!)

Either way - no idea why people are so opposed to shields. It creates whole new dimension of the gameplay instead of usual zerg-rush and having a simple race in building as many units as it gets in possibly shortest time.
Besides that - it makes game more newbie-friendly as people starting with strategy games usually like being defended well, while shields done right can be a brilliant tool in preventing idiotic spray of Big Betha's and other long-range artillery units that I see in 50% of games.

Seems a little punitive and would result in a heap of micro to get the placement optimal.

Instead how about we think of them like soap bubbles, overlapping fields merge in to one big bubble, but when it's 'popped' they all go down at once?

Well, that leads to exactly the same issue with micro management for optimal shields placement As noone would want to have his entire base defence collapse when one shield goes down.

Different solution perhaps: Hold CTRL+SHIFT+ALT, then drag the shield generators across the map to place them in optimal distances, so that shields of the same type wouldn't touch each other. In case of other buildings: start construction in a grid pattern.
As far as I remember TA Spring got similar solution. (It was brilliant in some ways, horrible in others)

TA Spring had absolutely brilliant construction interfaces and PA should copy it completely. Being able to lay out tracts of wind generators spaced out by my choice to avoid collateral damage or to leave space for units was awesome. Being able to lay out defenses with even spacing so they overlapped 'just so' was also awesome.

How about a twist on the soap bubble, I can't think of an excuse for this mechanic, but these merged areas pop if one shield pops, but the other shield not merged area does not pop. This lessens the need for micro-ing of shield placement by not penalizing quite as much.

Also, what if shields only reduce damage, i.e. arty still goes through but at 10-25% strength? You can still walk in, or if you want do a really big alpha on a single target.

Edit: This reduction would not stack of course, so many shields is the same as one.

menchfrest - I don't see any difference between this what you suggested and this what ooshr32 suggested. In both cases - merged shields pop when one gets destroyed, and these separate do not. In both cases it has exactly as much micro management as my suggestion, only in a more weird way.

How about this:

Two shields of the same type touching each other should cause critical overflow, possibly damaging both structures supporting them.
IF shields are based on buildings then only one of these shields will be active at a time - forcing to turn on second one manually will damage both generators causing shockwave that will be able to destroy airborne units - no matter if friendly or enemy. If one shied goes down from the area - another building automatically starts to activate his own shield (where shield generator startup time should take several good seconds).
IF shields are based on a mobile units - they automatically try to keep apart from each other. When build they come out of production facility with shield off, then automatically try to find a right spot to stand in and activate shield. When their shield is manually disabled they are allowed to stay close to each other (allowing optional micro-management for people who enjoy it). As said - only shields of same type (distinct them with color?) interfere with each other, so mobile shield generator can stand under one of stationary shields (hence no issue with units walking away from your base just to activate stupid shield)

As far as I remember - Sup Com 2 got this for one faction. And it was a real nightmare, horrible idea. You constantly needed to fix all your units with stupid repair units what was not only needless micro-management (which you could throw on AI lucky) but also needless waste of CPU, as in general these shields in a long term did exactly the same thing as regular shields, only in a more annoyingly-sophisticated way.

Uhm, what about a different approach with shields? Instead of creating a bubble which covers all buildings and units some type of buff which grants all units in range of the shield tower personal shields wherby shields increase the resistance to shells and physical projectiles.

The base would become more resistant towards artillery without causing small buildings like point defense or AA becoming inpenetrateable like it was in SupCom. Also the failure of the shields on one unit would no longer cause the whole base to be defenseless, neither would shield stacking be possible any more. The power comsumption of shield towers should scale with the combined base health (and therefore shield strength) of units and buildings protectet.

+1 to this. I'd add in a diminishing returns law to prevent reactor spam creating impervious bases.

It's basically overdrive from Zero-K for armour.


Edit: Rephrased & Spelling

Yep, seen that in one game, can't recall the title though (or was it in Homeworld where Taiidan special unit did exactly that?).

It's nice in terms of mechanics, perhaps even very nice, although extremely... unspectacular. There's nothing nicer then seeing units moving under an umbrella of explosions ^_^. It also has this issue that you can't make any difference between shields covering you mostly from ground attacks only allowing air units to pass through striking targets inside, and wide-area shields covering from bombers in a price of strength against anything else. Finally it eliminates the "shadow" effect where shield generators prevent direct fire weapons to hit units behind them, while bombers or high-angle cannons can freely destroy them, what makes gameplay more varied instead of just focusing every bit of firepower only on a very front line.

I like both this and the overlapping shields create a bigger single shield idea, but I like this one a bit better. Personal shields on all units in range of the generator would also prevent planes from flying under the shields which I'm not a big fan of. SupCom had both personal and area affect shields, but if you had the tech for both, why would you build a shield that enemy units could move through?

A few thoughts on the shields.

If each unit in range of the shield generator did get it's own personal shield, would each unit's shield have it's own HP pool or would it draw from a common pool provided by the generator If the unit has it's own sheild HP, is it a percentage of it's normal HP or fixed amount?

If there is a common pool that the generator share out do close generators share that pool, then you might end up with the same situation of overlapping shields, but even if they don't share a pool, what's to stop someone from building 2 of them and when one goes down the next one takes over.

Shield HP... should shields have HP, or alternatively they could draw power when under fire. They could have a base maintenance cost required to keep the shield active, but when they take fire the amount of energy to keep the shield active could go up. This would prevent shield stacking because even if you did when your shields took sufficient damage, your eco would crash and all shields would go down, but it might be hard to balance. Early game when you aren't producing a ton of energy even a small shield could crash your eco. Late game when you have energy in abundance it might be impossible (or very hard) to take down your shield.

You could try to solve that by giving the shield gen a maximum energy draw, once that draw is exceeded the shield collapses. More advanced shield gens would have a higher max energy draw.