2018-07-10 Shields

[Haxus]

http://hazeron.com/vid/ShieldHits.mp4
http://hazeron.com/vid/ShieldBaseAtlantisLanding.mp4

Military Shield Projector
Military shield projector building is now operational.

• Shield bubble appears at the proper radius; it was previously incorrect.
  
• Shield protects its contents where they literally reside inside the bubble. Parts of buildings that extend outside the bubble can be targeted.
  
• Shield projector recharges its capacitors every 10 seconds. Energy is taken from power plants connected by ground.
  

The Bubble is the Shield
Previously, shields were treated as surface armor. The bubble was there only as a visual cue that shields were present. This was confusing to players who perceived the bubble to be the shield itself. Now, the bubble is the shield.

This caused some things to change.

• Shields block weapon fire that originates outside the bubble. Weapons hit on the shield bubble, not the hull.
  
• Shields do not block weapon fire that originates inside the bubble. Weapons inside the shield can fire outward.
  
• Shields do not block explosives used to open doors because the blast originates inside the shield. This is a change from old style ships, where hull doors were protected by shields.
  
• Shields block objects that enter the shield too fast. An object is blocked if it enters the shield with a speed greater than 150m/s relative to the shield. This one is going to kill some people.
  
• Shields do not block objects moving around inside the shield or moving from inside to outside the shield.
  
• Shields block missiles, rockets and bombs that enter the bubble. They explode on the shield surface. Shrapnel does not hit shield contents. Bombs that hit shields do not make craters in nearby terrain.
  
• Shields absorb blasts and collisions. The protected ship cannot be pushed by hitting the shield.
  
• Incendiary, acid, etc. weapons that explode on the shield do not inflict the protected ship with fire or acid.
  

Shield Hit Effect
The hit effect on the shield bubble was not working. It is fixed. You will now see an orange glow at the point of impact on the shield.

Shield Transparency
Shields now become more transparent as their energy is reduced.

• On spacecraft, sides of the shield bubble are transparent according to energy at each side of the shield.
  
• On buildings, shields do not have sides and the entire shield bubble uniformly becomes more or less transparent.
  

[Vectorus]

Oh my, I didn't realize how much I wanted this until I read it! Very promising. I wonder if you've been watching "Avengers: Infinity War" (or perhaps "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace")...

How is shield recharge rate calculated now? I think I tried a basic conversion from old-style shield units a while back, but this seemed to suggest that the largest shields (4+ million hp) could take longer to charge than the ship took to build!

Does this make it any easier to implement transporter-blocking for terrestrial shields?

[Haxus]

Terrestrial shields will block transporters now, at least enemy. Neutral or better are permitted.

[Haxus]

Ground bases recharge their shield every 10 seconds, fully if the power is available in the capacitor storage of power plants.

[Deantwo]

I don't know if you remember, but a time back we talked about making shields be temporary disabled when they are disabled/destabilized. Like when the shield reaches 0 health, it disables for ~20 seconds while it recharges to a minimum shield health.
This would help with the feeling of the shield never going away, and allowing for an easier time to transport on board using transporters.

On another note, since the the size of the shield bubble of a military installation depends on the size. I was thinking that maybe the center of the shield bubble should slowly be moved towards the center of the planet as it gets bigger.
This would allow gigantic shield bases to cover the whole world evenly rather than have the bubble center be offset to the surface where the military installation is located.

[Vectorus]

Nice ideas Dean. It is slightly annoying and rather hit-and-miss trying to board a pirate whose shields are up and down alternately for a few seconds each.

It would be good to be able to choose a bubble radius less than the maximum for ground-based shields. That is already the case, effectively, for ships shields - they're only as big as you make the hull. For one example, I might want to have a more or less public-access city with a small military section walled and transporter-shielded. It would be useful to separate shield strength and radius for such applications.

I understand about ground shields now. Any info on ship-based recharge rate?

[Deantwo]

I understand about ground shields now. Any info on ship-based recharge rate?

See: http://hazeron.com/wiki/index.php/Shield#Recharge_Rate

I doubt it has changed at all since that was written, apart from the mentions of "TL".

[jakbruce2012]

This makes me think so much of Stargate Atlantis.  Similar shield mechanics, and city scale shields are cool.  If you're going 150km/s or faster near ground level you're asking to be splattered anyway, just make sure the AI knows this and is appropriately afraid of flying fast near shields.

[Vectorus]

The wiki's info on shield recharge is mostly speculative, it seems - it would be nice to know the actual mechanics, and this is an opportune moment to ask. 

Do AI pilots know that they cannot reach a shielded landing site if they are going too fast? Or would it simply be a case of "bounced off shield, speed now low enough"?

[Haxus]

I liked the idea of the destabilized shield and I have implemented it. When damage effects cause a shield to drop to zero, it gets 10 seconds of destabilization time.

Each critical hit on shields by an attacking weapon adds 3 seconds of destabilization time.

This will be posted in the next update.