[Answered] Balancing Armour and Shields in Blockade Runner

[RoflTankFTW]

The way it'd work is that you'd be able to take your shield-power and allocate it to the projectors (usually beforehand, possibly have a few presets) for either tightly-focused low arc but "deep" coverage or covering a wide arc but very narrowly. Maybe you set a certain power shield to 1* coverage and it's 1 kilometer deep, or that same shield to 180* coverage and it's 6 meters deep. Each meter of coverage reduces damage done by incoming fire to the actual ship by X.

I like this idea. You could still have shields only, with enough projectors to maintain a strong enough field in any direction, but you'll still want to put some armor just in case. You can have extreme ends of the design philosophies - All armor with minimal/no shields, and all shields with minimal/no armor - but people will be more inclined towards a balance of shields and armor.

All in all, I hope the direction the balancing of defenses goes is the one that promotes diverse designs, rather than cheese builds that take advantage of unbalanced mechanics.

[Holy Thunder]

I agree with Niwantaw's original statement that both armor and shields should be viable.  They should also be distinct, so that a ship with 5,000 points armor and 5,000 points shield is protected differently and moves differently than a ship with 10,000 points one or the other.

Different weapons should definitively affect them differently, and I think maybe "energy vs kinetic" was just one way of showing that. However the devs mix it up will be awesome, and I'm pretty sure they'll mix it up.

[Aaron]

Y'all want an official dev answer so it can be moved to the [Answered] board, or just want to discuss ideas amongst yourselves?  I'm good either way, and moved it to the general discussion in the meantime. =P

[Holy Thunder]

I'd like an official position, yes. (-;

[Me2005]

Yep, official position preferred. I can come up with solutions all day, doesn't do squat when you're planning something different. 

[RLS0812]

Realistically, shields will have to be dropped every time you fired a weapon, or to let another ship pass .

[SnowDragon]

I'll bring up the taco girl here. For example, IUN vessels use a combination of heavy shielding and heavy armour plate (Even on frigates the armour's two metres deep of solid material) I'm not sure why the consideration's even there that it's not viable to use both. Yes, you sacrifice some tonnage to use both armour and shielding, but if that's a problem then just make your engines bigger.

Directly related to the big ships winning thing.

EDIT: Also: Shields work for everything, the idea that shields only stop energy weapons? That's stupid.

[Hyperion]

EDIT: Also: Shields work for everything, the idea that shields only stop energy weapons? That's stupid.

That's a reasonable statement and one I wholeheartedly agree with if there is to be only one variation of shield tech, but as ZanMgt has stated numerous times they would like to incorporate species specific technology and ship design in the game proper. Depending on the race and the technology they field it could be entirely plausible that their shields could not stop or significantly alter the trajectory of a sufficiently massive and coherent projectile with mere energy barriers.

EDIT: Could you please explain the taco girl reference to me in a PM or something? If you're referring to the many delicious layers of a taco as the combination of shields and armor to protect your mighty battleship that many nations of the world and popular culture give a female identity to, then I get it.

EDIT x2: This is my 500th post! A mere drop in the ocean to a few, but a milestone to I.

EDIT x3: Please disregard EDIT x1, I have found the elusive taco girl tomes in the mighty google archives.

[Aaron]

/me has fancy new Dev tags now... ^^

Re: Star Trek 'Shields' vs. Battlestar 'Armour'

Armor / Shields will be totally dependent on alien/manufacturer.  We haven't really gone over the specific balance but will probably be going the traditional route of "Shield vs Energy: Strong.  Shield vs Kinetic: Weak" for vanilla.  It just seems to feel right that in most sci-fi's the shields do well against the bad guy's weapons and are buckled when something physical has to be absorbed (like an asteroid impact).

Again, subject to balance and changes as we explore the voxel universe's capabilities in multiplayer.  It might be too restricting to have to work something like EVE: Online's weapon resistance tables, and so we might go with a flat damage rate instead.