API additions needed for Shield Mods.

While there is a lot in gridsystems that would be useful, my main needs are in the power code. In particular access to the computed available and max grid power.

yeah noticed the bullet decal, big visibility issue when it hits the glass of the cockpit this has been an issue since the first bubble shield mod "moon prism"

I agree Kane, it really should be it's own section.

Actually I think shields should definitely be in the base game. They're really needed for balancing reasons. Without them it's just so damn easy to access everything and cause insane damages and grief with very little investment.

yeah though I've found that with projectors nanite build and repair and the hacking block mods that re appropriating ships is insanely difficult.

And to rip a piece off by bumping into something.

"Shane Stixrud shared this idea 2 months ago"

"already"

Well... maybe a different choice of words would be prudent.

Awesome! :D

That's awesome! Thanks for letting us know.

Shane Stixrud shared this feedback 7 months ago, @Petr Minařík pls

Any word on this? Also exposing IMyOreDetector to the ingame API would be nice :)

Aaand possibly forgotten.

They are, because honestly it does not require a lot of effort ...They just don't have the manpower, so everything takes quite a lot of time.

I think it's streamlining for the Xbox port - it required a lot of work hours to maintain code. But this API addition would be extremely helpful.

Please consider updating the https://github.com/KeenSoftwareHouse/SpaceEngineers repository with current Space Engineers source code.

It would allow us to contribute PRs for this feature and other fixes/improvements as well.

I agree with you! What's the point in asking the players to vote on issues when the devs still just do what they want? I get and understand its their game, but does that mean the voting is just for show?

I really hope this gets added or someone makes a plugin to workaround.

why should KSH open your codes for mods

I think KSH reacts correctly, the game should always be the focus. the modders should live with what they get.

well now i want a downvote option like reddit

Keen,

I am updating this post with more details on the API additions I requested.

-=MyCubeGridSystems ModAPI Needs=-

Expose the following MyCubeGridSystems objects/systems to modapi:

public Action<long, bool, string> GridPowerStateChanged;

public MyGridResourceDistributorSystem ResourceDistributor { get; private set; }

private Action<MyBlockGroup> m_terminalSystem_GroupAdded;

private Action<MyBlockGroup> m_terminalSystem_GroupRemoved;

Events for OnAddedToGroup and OnRemovedFromGroup

ConveyorSystem Push and Pull Access

-=MyProjectile / MyMissile=-

[OnAdd Event]:

An option to register an OnAdd event for both MyProjectiles and MyMissiles. This event would ideally return the following.

READ ACCESS:

Position, Direction, Velocity, damage/radius values, Owner, Parent entity.

WRITE ACCESS:

Trigger Destroy (Explodes/triggers hit visual/sounds) and Trigger Remove (no detonation, sound/visuals just removes).

[OnBeforeRemove Event]:

An option to register a OnBeforeRemove event for both MyProjectiles and MyMissiles. This event would ideally return the following.

READ ACCESS:

The same values as OnAdd, with the addition of returning the entity hit, if it did hit an entity.

WRITE ACCESS:

Let a mod prevent damage but allow the audio visual effect

Let the mod remove the projectile/missile without any audio visual effects/decals triggering or damage occurring.

[Register a shape to collect Projectile/Missile states in that shape]

Create a ModAPI interface that allows mods to register a shape (ellipsoid, sphere and obb). This shape would create a physicalless entity but with havok phantom e.g. MYIApiGateway.Physics.AddOrUpdatePhantom(Shape, Position, phantomId). The existing MyMissiles and MyProjectiles loop would then check for this Phantom in the same way you already check for safezones. If the projectile/missile detects a mod phantom it would fire the same/similar OnAdd event listed above every frame/tick it is touching or inside the phantom entity. Due to mod profiler overhead it may be better to fire 1 event per tick/frame per mod Phantom, returning a list of projectile events per phantom per frame.

it is their game, but we are their community, and we pay for their product, and I also pay for DLC, and I refer friends to buy the game, and sometimes even buy it as a gift. Im suggesting they make this basic change that can help improve their game, which, if they want to prove to their player base that they care, thats one way to do it. Yeah, its their intellectual property, but it doesnt mean they should ignore suggestions from their community, especially if they provide means for suggestions to be made. Its like we are talking to a brick wall, we are ignored a lot, which sucks when youre an active forum member and stand up for their company.

It's not about modders whining that they aren't getting acces to more features.

This is about keen letting the community vote on things they'd like to see in the game. What kind of message does it send ot the community if the top voted issue is 2 years old and still unresolved?

Now I can see how people may think that the devs just do whatever they want anyway and don't care about what we vote for anyway.

I have the feeling that SE will be opened again in the future.

But I guess it will be when it won't be developed by keen anymore.

i know this is a bit late, but keen at one point DID release source code so that the community could help them, and everyone shat on them for "spaghetti code". this along with the torch-keen relationship doesnt help matters either.

Absolutely not. There are quite a few issues with shields, most of them difficult if not impossible to solve.

First, you're proposing them as a solution to "relatively low velocity fender benders", which rarely if ever happen with a halfway decent pilot. The distances involved in SE, and the three-dimensional movement space, allow for easy avoidance of any collision. This is especially true because any well-designed ship should have cargo mass and minimum thruster acceleration factored into the design. Shields in this case simply promote lazy design.

Second, there are much better ways to increase TTK. Giving actual damage reduction to armor would do so much more effectively without breaking every single already-existing combat design, since armor is already a universal installation on ships. A weapon rebalance could also perform this function, has been necessary for years at this point, and would only become more difficult with the introduction of shields due to interactions.

Third, the balance against armor would be horrendous. If it increases TTK significantly, it would necessarily be a much more effective defense than armor. Which makes a ship with additional shields and more power a direct upgrade to one with more armor instead. Without additional complications to the shielding system, this becomes a direct race to power and shield limitations, which in turn transforms ship combat into a statistical resource game consisting of shield strength, power reserves, and weapon power. I believe that this would be even worse than the current state of ship combat.

Even with some sort of diminishing returns on shields, that simply promotes a balance point at which shields are less effective than armor, which in turn leads to "standard" shield packages for capital ships, with a specific loadout being most favored and anything beyond that ignored. Unless ship mass is factored into this diminishing return algorithm, which now is overly complicated and very difficult to balance effectively for ships of all classes on top of finding the "ideal" ratio of TTK on shields compared to armor.

Finally, if shields are less effective than armor, they're relegated to minor collision damage mitigation. Which, again, is unhealthy for ship design and not all that useful.

And, of course, shields break heavily with the SE technology rule, which is "plausible unless necessary for gameplay". Shields aren't necessary for gameplay, as shown by the current state of the game, therefore they should not be in SE.

Got to disagree on some of this.

First - what I agree with. Shields shouldn't be the go-to for low velocity bumps. I agree, any good pilot should have the skills to avoid wrecking their ship in low velocity flight, and high velocity comes with risks that the pilot accepts.

Ship builders should still have to account for mass and thrust, angular speed, hardened surfaces etc. to ensure the pilot has the tools to avoid crashes.

However! I do believe shields have a place in the game. In a universe where artificial gravity exists (not necessary for gameplay) it's plausible that energy shields should exist too - energy shields are actually more plausible that A-gravity and jump drives, and a staple in sci-fi culture and games.

They should be powerful enough to make a capital ship battle tough - but not so powerful that a small fighter can survive such a battle solo. I believe the Darkstar defense shields mod has it quite well balanced - where shield strength is capped based on power output and ship mass, with massive power output being required for effective shield regen in battle. The mod pairs well with weapon core, which adds emp and energy weapons - where effectiveness of energy weapons against shields is 5x vs against armor.

Shields are expensive to build - requiring large amounts of platinum, making early game access virtually impossible.

I believe they have a place in the game, but the issue isn't shields / armor - it's the weapons.

With only kinetic weapons available in vanilla, with short ranges, the only form of combat available is close quarters, or using PMW's, which again are just kinetic. (I'm counting explosive as kinetic here). High power consumption energy weapons (weak against armor but strong vs shields) add a dynamic that allows shields to make sense, and allows for a variety of gameplay styles.

The player will be able to choose slow burn, distance combat vs CQ shred and run, they'll have to burn down shields before opening up gattling fire, and defending power systems becomes even more important than ever.

Armor tanking remains relevant for low power combat, with power put into offensive and speed first, while shield tanks take the risk of diminished offensive capacity.

Make shields expensive, and power-hungry, and energy weapons very power hungry, long range, and relatively weak vs armor and we'll have the balance that virtually every other space game has.

Gravity generators and jump drives are both necessary gameplay components. Gravity generators haven't been quite as much of a necessity since planets' implementation, but they still are on the level of suit headlights in terms of convenience. Jump drives, on the other hand, became necessary because of planets and the distances between them. While shields have the same level of plausibility, there would need to be a prior update which necessitated shields for them to be comparable to these examples. And a combat update that then requires shields isn't a good combat update at all, because it requires an entirely new, completely unrealistic mechanic for it to be functional.

I looked at the Darkstar shield system. It's balanced, but makes no logical sense on why, exactly, you need to pack a ton of steel into various shapes for a stronger barrier. And considering that the implication of this cap is that shield HP is generally better than normal HP (which is true in almost all cases), we again run into the issue of people maxxing out shield HP for a given size of ship and then ignoring it in favor of additional armor to raise the cap.

Energy weapons are an extremely overused trope, and the "variety" is simplistic at best with few, if any, interesting interactions. At most, it forces everyone to pack a mix of weapons because any sane ship designer will add shield HP (again, direct upgrade to straight armor) until the cap. The related weapon core mostly just adds more fine control on weapon groupings and a basic targeting system. Which precludes an actually interesting interaction for the promise of an extremely common space combat experience. Even allowing some of the compatible weapons packs, it's more like a transplant of some other sci-fi game's mechanics instead of taking advantage of SE's different qualities.

The fact that energy is limited between shields and energy weapons just makes it worse. Instead of some other mechanic, we have the choice between attacking and defending! Which, again, hits the diminishing return like a Red Ship crashing into an asteroid. Once you can't add more HP with more power, it's much weaker and the rest of the energy automatically goes to the weapons. Basic decisions, instead of something that actually matters. I would also note that range is everything without a heavy limitation. Why bother with gatlings and CQC at all when the speed limit is 100 m/s? Why even bother with armor except to allow more shields?

TL;DR: Shields aren't remotely as necessary as the other unrealistic blocks, and never will be. The interactions that they introduce would be very all-or-nothing, resulting in very set balance points and a decrease in design variety. Also, it weakens the unique feel of SE by unnecessarily breaking the hard sci-fi theme.

If one doesn't want shields one can just turn them off. Not everyone likes weather either and can just turn it off. Shields are a regenerating health mechanic that hundreds and even thousands of other games have, just a different form of it. No one is going to be forced to use shields in their world that doesn't want to. I really don't see why some folks find it so unreasonable to suggest they just turn it off.

That only works in singleplayer. And it forces weapon balance to be centered on shields because of their impactfulness, which can be disastrous when they're just removed. Shields also use valuable dev time that could be used on other, better additions to the game. Even when removed, shields are bad for Space Engineers.

The reason that shields are so common is that they add more to combat when already at a different level of granularity. If you just need to have more weapon types in your sci-fi strategy game, shields add a new obstacle and new interactions with what otherwise would be just a health bar. Additionally, they're incredibly useful as a plot device in other media, as a quick way to convey urgency. If a generic tech guy says that shields are at 10%, you know the protagonists are almost out of time. And, of course, they make for good visuals without having to actually worry about consequences for that massive hit that the ship just took. The ship can just return in the next episode, because all they needed to do was let the shields recharge.

This all gets reversed in Space Engineers, because ships don't have a generic health bar on which a shield health bar would make sense. And getting hit and losing functionality is actually meant to be part of the game, instead of a plot hole. The complete lack of consequences for getting hit is one of the reasons that shields are so bad for the game.

And neither of these arguments would be very strong even if they were at all correct. Making an update optional barely counts as a positive attribute, while precedent doesn't have much weight by itself.

After playing empyrion, I must say that I dislike the concept of having shields vanilla in SE, primarily because it is more of a forced meta IMO.

@Doomed Person It does not only work in singleplayer, It's up to the player to decide what server he plays on, if he doesn't like the mod setup he's free to leave, but an entire server that likes shields should not be forced to go without them because an entitled player doesn't, regardless of the reason. It's the same reason you don't go to someone else's party and tell them what kind of music they can listen to or food they can serve to guests, you're a guest there not a rule-maker.

Of course. People can add whatever mods they want. But that doesn't change the fact that a vanilla implementation of shields would be a terrible waste of the potential that ship combat has in SE.

The shield mod has waaay more configuration than what is set in the stock mod. For instance, the stock setting has it so that it has a maximum HP value worth 50% of the total grid's combined block health, provided you have enough power to reach that. You can simply reduce that to say... 5% of the grid's total health and BOOM, suddenly you don't have a 10 million point shield and have a vastly more manageable 1 million point shield with the same grid.

Worth noting that you should actually look at what you can do with the shield mod before claiming it's overpowered and unbalanced right out the gate and that it would completely upset balance of the game. There are things in Vanilla SE that already annihilate the balance of the game to a laughable degree. xD

Congratulations, you've discovered loose-cannon balancing. No, it doesn't fix anything. It just makes the OP tactic useless half the time, which is even less fun for everyone. Yes, I've played other games where the devs did this. The usual response was to nerf it out of the meta entirely and go back to whatever was common, because the previous meta was usually fine and the rest of the xpac was usually solid. No, that isn't an option here because the previous meta was almost worse and the rest of the xpac would probably consist of a cosmetics DLC.

Quite a thoughtful discussion. Everyone makes some good points for and against implementation of shields. While I believe they can be balanced well, like Simon Osbaldeston suggested (especially when paired with high power usage, long range energy weapons with bonus damage to shields), my main reason for even using them in game now is to increase ttk, because in the vanilla game your ships gets shredded honestly in seconds by enough missiles and gatlings. Doomed Person made an excellent point that I didn't consider regarding instead adding some damage mitigation to armor plating to achieve a more reasonable ttk whilst maintaining the current gameplay mechanic based on causing subcomponent damage.

Honestly, I am now leaning towards feeling like changes to how armor plating works by adding some damage mitigation to it being a far simpler and more appropriate way to increase ttk in se. Also bare in mind that what the original author of this topic, Shane Stixrud, was asking for was not specifically energy shields, but proper api access for modders to be able to more easily create better mods.

Also, in response to Doomed Person's comment about bad driving, I am absolutely a terrible driver sometimes, especially when docking (i.e. coming in way too hot and...um....running strait through my space station with my miner) :P

Now that I'm certain I know who Doomed Person is from the old forum, I would have hoped he would have come up with better arguments by now. It's the same song and dance as elsewhere.

First up with a shield item, you can simply turn it off if you don't like it, just like you could economy, the oxygen system or any other item, all of which massively effect gameplay. If you do not like shields you are not being forced to play with them enabled. If you do not like them then turn them off. You don't have to look at them or play on servers that have them, and the folks that like shields get their vanilla shield they want and can adjust balance wise to their heart's content. Shields are a regenerating health mechanic that literally hundreds if not thousands of other games out there have. A shield is basically going to add extra "health bars" to a block that must be depleted before permanent damage to the block can be done. You deplete health pool 1, then you can drain health pool 2. Once health pool 2 is out, the item is destroyed. Star Trek Online has regenerating health, so does Call of Duty, Ark Survival Evolved, and hundreds of other games. It's no different than if a player character took damage from a dinosaur bite in Ark than healed it back naturally. Change the dinosaur and the human into 2 SE ships and you have literally the same scenario.

Doomed Person's entire line of logic basically boils down to, he doesn't like the idea of shields so neither should anyone else, and because he doesn't like it no one else should be allowed to have them. You are one man with one opinion and one experience. Anecdote is not evidence or proof of anything. However if you're going to go by that line of logic, i have played a ton of different games with varying forms of regenerating health mechanics, and have never had an issue like you've described. So by the logic you've used above, my anecdote cancels out your anecdote.

For the issues mentioned with balancing said hypothetical shield, once Keen has established a default baseline, it would then be up to the players to adjust the balance to their liking. If folks like the default settings they can keep them where they are, or they can change the settings. It's the same concept as someone turning up the weld speed, character/block inventory size, or disabling block limits. If one sever prefers the full "realistic" settings then they can run those settings. If another server prefers a higher weld speed, inventory size, and running with no block limits, then can do that. Both servers are happy.

The argument about "there's no consequences to a ship taking a large hit" basically boils down to "I have to work harder to get through their shield and I don't like it." It's a subjective preferential argument with no basis in reality. It's negated easily by playing on a server that has the settings you like. In other words find a no-shield server and have at it.

I personally don't like the idea of a hunger system in game as some have advocated for, as I find more often than not they tend to be purely a "eat this so you don't die" thing that adds nothing of value to the game save another system to manage for the sake of management. However there are easy solutions to my problem if a hunger system were ever implemented. I can adjust the balance to my liking, or simply turn it off. My dislike of a potential hunger system is not a valid reason as to why others shouldn't be allowed to have said system.

Lastly as to the "lack of health bar" issue, that's easily taken care of via scripts and LCD panels. Slap a programming block down and have keep watch on the health of the shields and/or other blocks you want it to keep an eye on, and then display that health on a LCD panel. Not exactly rocket science.

You still seem to think your way is the only correct way, and if's not your way then it won't work. Your way is only one of several ways to play the game, and is not the winner take all best way of doing things. There are already solutions to your problems that would take less than 5 seconds to implement. Your entire line of logic basically boils down to someone complaining about folks playing Blue in Magic the Gathering, when you and your friends don't have to go against Blue players unless you choose to.

>First up with a shield item, you can simply turn it off if you don't like it, just like you could economy, the oxygen system or any other item, all of which massively effect gameplay. If you do not like shields you are not being forced to play with them enabled. If you do not like them then turn them off. You don't have to look at them or play on servers that have them, and the folks that like shields get their vanilla shield they want and can adjust balance wise to their heart's content.

Oxygen and economy are fairly well-contained. One combat system out of multiple parts? Any combat has interactions between shields and weapons and armor and whatever else is on the ship. Removing one of those parts can upset the whole thing, unless done carefully and thoroughly. I'd need to remove shields and the weapons that don't make sense without shields, then mod the rest so they're balanced without shields.

I don't think it's reasonable to say that shields and their consequences are easily removed from one game in particular.

>Shields are a regenerating health mechanic that literally hundreds if not thousands of other games out there have.

I believe I've addressed this already. Many media have sci-fi shields because they're convenient in other respects, not because they're interesting mechanics at the level of granularity that Space Engineers uniquely offers.

>You deplete health pool 1, then you can drain health pool 2. Once health pool 2 is out, the item is destroyed.Star Trek Online has regenerating health, so does Call of Duty, Ark Survival Evolved, and hundreds of other games. It's no different than if a player character took damage from a dinosaur bite in Ark than healed it back naturally. Change the dinosaur and the human into 2 SE ships and you have literally the same scenario.

Star Trek Online is a MMO that works at the ship level. It makes sense to use that system there, because the hull is one huge health bar as well.

I'm not sure how CoD is relevant to ship battles, considering the massive differences in everything between the games.

Why are we talking about Ark? Nobody knows. I really have no idea what you're doing with that example, because it doesn't hold up in any respect. I could say more about that, but I don't think either of us need more elaboration.

Regenerating health is a common mechanic in other games, but often for entirely different reasons. Understanding those reasons helps when understanding why we don't just throw all the ideas into a game, and thus how we could implement ideas in a way that works with what we already have instead of grafting on something from another game.

>Doomed Person's entire line of logic basically boils down to, he doesn't like the idea of shields so neither should anyone else, and because he doesn't like it no one else should be allowed to have them. You are one man with one opinion and one experience. Anecdote is not evidence or proof of anything. However if you're going to go by that line of logic, i have played a ton of different games with varying forms of regenerating health mechanics, and have never had an issue like you've described. So by the logic you've used above, my anecdote cancels out your anecdote.

Point to one anecdote in the primary arguments. One. Some of what I say can be subjective, like saying that energy weapons and shields are overused, or that loose-cannon balancing is very common, but I've always laid out a clear argument that anyone can follow, exactly because of claims like this one.

>For the issues mentioned with balancing said hypothetical shield, once Keen has established a default baseline, it would then be up to the players to adjust the balance to their liking. If folks like the default settings they can keep them where they are, or they can change the settings. It's the same concept as someone turning up the weld speed, character/block inventory size, or disabling block limits. If one sever prefers the full "realistic" settings then they can run those settings. If another server prefers a higher weld speed, inventory size, and running with no block limits, then can do that. Both servers are happy.

This still doesn't address the base issues. Values can be set and reset. The problems are that there's a massive dropoff on either side of the balance point for shields, their balance point still doesn't add much to combat that isn't implemented better in other games, and the balance point can easily be shifted by community-based variation in building preference.

>The argument about "there's no consequences to a ship taking a large hit" basically boils down to "I have to work harder to get through their shield and I don't like it." It's a subjective preferential argument with no basis in reality. It's negated easily by playing on a server that has the settings you like. In other words find a no-shield server and have at it.

You're missing the point. A ship without shields takes a large hit and loses some capabilities, depending on where it lands. A ship with shields takes a large hit and is unaffected. This means that ships with shields have a massive advantage over others, and any balance point either requires specifically anti-shield weapons that still don't hard counter shields, or requires all ships to have shields to be viable. Both of these force people to use specific weapons or systems to be at all viable, which I don't think is good for the game.

>I personally don't like the idea of a hunger system in game as some have advocated for, as I find more often than not they tend to be purely a "eat this so you don't die" thing that adds nothing of value to the game save another system to manage for the sake of management. However there are easy solutions to my problem if a hunger system were ever implemented. I can adjust the balance to my liking, or simply turn it off. My dislike of a potential hunger system is not a valid reason as to why others shouldn't be allowed to have said system.

But the fact that it's often an "eat this so you don't die" system is a valid argument against food, because those systems aren't generally fun to play with. And the devs might want to take that into account when considering what to add to Space Engineers next, so it's something worth repeating when people mention food.

>Lastly as to the "lack of health bar" issue, that's easily taken care of via scripts and LCD panels. Slap a programming block down and have keep watch on the health of the shields and/or other blocks you want it to keep an eye on, and then display that health on a LCD panel. Not exactly rocket science.

You've missed the point spectacularly. It's not an issue; it's what makes Space Engineers unique. Other games have generic "hull points" or status effects like "damaged reactors". We have the actual things, and using that in interesting ways is what makes Space Engineers unique.

>You still seem to think your way is the only correct way, and if's not your way then it won't work. Your way is only one of several ways to play the game, and is not the winner take all best way of doing things. There are already solutions to your problems that would take less than 5 seconds to implement. Your entire line of logic basically boils down to someone complaining about folks playing Blue in Magic the Gathering, when you and your friends don't have to go against Blue players unless you choose to.

There are many correct ways to add new material to Space Engineers. I'm just giving reasons for why this isn't one of them.

You seem to often miss the point spectacularly, in ways that would have completely be prevented if you'd simply read the following sentences. Is it any wonder that you considered the main selling point of SE combat to be a problem?

Even though I posted earlier in favor of shields, Doomed Person has some very valid points. I won't speak to attitude or what's subjective vs objective as it's not constructive.

I play with shields sometimes for one reason only. Current armor is about as effective as wet tissue paper and catastrophic damage is a near certainty in most decent battles. Not something I want to see a 2 week build go through on it's first outing. But recently I've started playing without shields and weapons mods.

Why? Because with shields as they currently are an easy win vs vanilla weapons and ships. Add in modded weapons and it's still too easy because then you can take out the enemy faster while shields provide a buffer. Give the enemy shields also and we're back to the start. Shields then become just another thing to burn down before the real fight starts. Who can burn down faster just depends on who has the most or best weapons - like vanilla.

Who lasts the longest depends on who has the biggest ship - almost like vanilla. It takes away the agility advantage.

Back to the original reason for shields to exist... armor is like wet tissue. This leads to some difficult to balance problems. Do we make armor really strong? Well if we did that it wouldn't be much different to giving everything shields, except for fairly stationary battles where focus fire is practical. What we need is a more practical change to armor types:

Light = tissue paper, hardly any weight.

Heavy = thicker tissue paper, maybe tin foil, more weight, ok against bumps and hard landings.

Blast = Tough as hell against explosives but ridiculously heavy

Charged plate = thin electromagnetic plate accessory, light weight but has power consumption, significantly reduces damage to the attached block (like a primitive precursor to shields). Destroyed when breached.

The addition of one block type would give one-time per block shield-like properties to strategic areas with a power draw penalty. It's more theoretically plausible than projected shields, and doesn't have a regen mechanic other than welding it back up.

Has this been suggested before? If not, perhaps we should.

Also, we're WAY off topic now. (API Additions)

>Light = tissue paper, hardly any weight.

>Heavy = thicker tissue paper, maybe tin foil, more weight, ok against bumps and hard landings.

>Blast = Tough as hell against explosives but ridiculously heavy

>Charged plate = thin electromagnetic plate accessory, light weight but has power consumption, significantly reduces damage to the attached block (like a primitive precursor to shields). Destroyed when breached.

This sounds like a pretty good idea for increasing TTK, and definitely a unique one. Any ideas on the game mechanics for it? I like messing around with on-hit damage reduction as a very neat way to balance damage types and distinguish armor, but I'm sure there are better solutions. Definitely put up a separate suggestion for it, so it doesn't get buried here. So that ended up happening.

As a side note, I'm more in favor of making Heavy vs. Blast a more sidegrade-y thing, where they're both about the same cost and weight but Blast is stronger against explosives and weaker against bullets.

Yeah, we're really off topic by now. But it's so fun.

I see once again Doomed Person is busting out the same flawed arguments that he did on the previous forum. Once again I will address the bogus logic.

<<Oxygen and economy are fairly well-contained. One combat system out of multiple parts? Any combat has interactions between shields and weapons and armor and whatever else is on the ship. Removing one of those parts can upset the whole thing, unless done carefully and thoroughly. I'd need to remove shields and the weapons that don't make sense without shields, then mod the rest so they're balanced without shields. I don't think it's reasonable to say that shields and their consequences are easily removed from one game in particular.>>

Every setting has the ability to "upset things" depending on what one's goals are for a server. Inventory size, weld speed, wolves/spiders, oxygen, economy, and down the line. Folks using "realistic" settings will have a much different type of gameplay than those using an "unrealistic" approach with vanilla settings. That server balance is also further altered by whether or not mods are in use, and depending on what kind of mods are in use. The balance that works for you may not work for others. I have my own custom engines that I use. Some folks like them, some don't. Those that like them can use them, those that don't are under no obligation to use them. Shields would also be contained to themselves and you're drastically overthinking the combat system. As is there are 2 weapons in SE, 3 if you count the warhead. Every block they add will have the potential of interacting with those 3 weapons regardless of what kind of block it is. The work of deciding how durable a block should be is already done as part of its creation. All you're defining is how much additional protection a shield should afford a block it's protecting, and how much damage a turret should have to do in order to drop that shield. Although you view it as different in your mind, programming wise it's exactly the same. From a programming standpoint it's a simple solution. If shields are on it uses X for stats, and if shields are off it uses Y. Ships produced on a server without the oxygen system will be drastically different than those on a server with oxygen. There is no correct way of building. Even then, you can disable the shields if you don't like them or mod them. All folks are doing here is for a vanilla block, or that we be given tools to make those blocks ourselves. You are uneffected.

<<Star Trek Online is a MMO that works at the ship level. It makes sense to use that system there, because the hull is one huge health bar as well. I'm not sure how CoD is relevant to ship battles, considering the massive differences in everything between the games.

Why are we talking about Ark? Nobody knows. I really have no idea what you're doing with that example, because it doesn't hold up in any respect. I could say more about that, but I don't think either of us need more elaboration.

Regenerating health is a common mechanic in other games, but often for entirely different reasons. Understanding those reasons helps when understanding why we don't just throw all the ideas into a game, and thus how we could implement ideas in a way that works with what we already have instead of grafting on something from another game.>>

You ignoring the examples doesn't make them less valid, Tell me, what is different between a welder automatically repairing something and consuming parts/resources vs a shield healing itself automatically consuming energy/resources to do so? The answer is zero. Both are done automatically and both occur as long as the needed available resources is present. Regenerating health and the ability to regenerate health has been around since the dawn of gaming in some form or fashion. Regenerating health is always present in games in some form or fashion, be it manual or automatic, even in SE now. In STO you can use abilities to heal yourself manually, or let your regeneration/repairs do so naturally. In ARK you can heal using various items manually, or let yourself heal over time, same with CoD. In fact since you seem to care so much about realism, I would think you of all people would be advocating that our engineers heal naturally over time, just like people can heal IRL. It's not asking Keen to do anything new that could be screwed up, but simply take an idea with over 30 years of proven effectiveness and put it to good use in SE. once again I suspect you would have the ability to turn it off.

<<Point to one anecdote in the primary arguments. One. Some of what I say can be subjective, like saying that energy weapons and shields are overused, or that loose-cannon balancing is very common, but I've always laid out a clear argument that anyone can follow, exactly because of claims like this one.>>

Okay, see below as an example that holds no basis in reality.

<<Congratulations, you've discovered loose-cannon balancing. No, it doesn't fix anything. It just makes the OP tactic useless half the time, which is even less fun for everyone. Yes, I've played other games where the devs did this. The usual response was to nerf it out of the meta entirely and go back to whatever was common, because the previous meta was usually fine and the rest of the xpac was usually solid. No, that isn't an option here because the previous meta was almost worse and the rest of the xpac would probably consist of a cosmetics DLC.>>

Because you've had a bad experience with it and because you don't like it, it shouldn't be done as it will make the game bad, is essentially the crux of this argument you've made here. Fun is subjective. What you consider fun and what I consider fun are probably going to be 2 different things. Neither side is wrong in their fun. You're welcome to the opinion shields are bad for gameplay, but again you not liking shields is not a valid reason others should be denied those tools in the vanilla game, or tools to make them ourselves. Once again like I said, you are one person with one opinion and one experience. Your way is not the only way of doing things and not everyone plays the same way as you do. Simply because they play different than you does not make their fun wrong, especially when you never have to interact with that person.

<<This still doesn't address the base issues. Values can be set and reset. The problems are that there's a massive dropoff on either side of the balance point for shields, their balance point still doesn't add much to combat that isn't implemented better in other games, and the balance point can easily be shifted by community-based variation in building preference.>>

Actually it does address the base issues, you simply choose to ignore it. All Keen has to do is create a basic default setup for what they consider balanced. From there players can adjust said balance up or down based on their individual preferences. If the balance isn't to your liking then change the balance or turn it off. Otherwise you saying it doesn't add much to combat is purely your own subjective opinion. You're entitled to that opinion, but you having that opinion doesn't make it objective fact like you seem to think it does. Keen knows full well that not everyone is going to like the balance of all the blocks they put out, which is why we are given the ability to change them to suit our own preferences as part of the sandbox experience. All they do is give us some sand and basic tools to work with to make our own stuff. We can either use the tools they give us as is, and/or create our own. Both are valid. Otherwise as to your point about performance difference based on community build variation, that's exactly why they balance around individual block performance and ship it off to players to make it a player problem.

<<But the fact that it's often an "eat this so you don't die" system is a valid argument against food, because those systems aren't generally fun to play with. And the devs might want to take that into account when considering what to add to Space Engineers next, so it's something worth repeating when people mention food.>>

I'm glad to see we agree at least on that bit with regards to a food system, however you partially missed the point in why I made that statement. Although I am not fond of a food system and feel more often than not it becomes "eat this so you don't die", it's not a valid reason as to why others who do like food systems should be denied the ability to have a food system. As long as I can turn it off and not have to use it, any arguments I could make against the system are rendered moot. The same is true with shields. You don't like them, don't use them. Otherwise your dislike is not a valid reason others shouldn't be given said block, and/or tools to create their own spin of those blocks.

<<You've missed the point spectacularly. It's not an issue; it's what makes Space Engineers unique. Other games have generic "hull points" or status effects like "damaged reactors". We have the actual things, and using that in interesting ways is what makes Space Engineers unique.>>

Other games have power sources and items just like SE does, so no this is not what makes SE unique, not even close.

<<You're missing the point. A ship without shields takes a large hit and loses some capabilities, depending on where it lands. A ship with shields takes a large hit and is unaffected. This means that ships with shields have a massive advantage over others, and any balance point either requires specifically anti-shield weapons that still don't hard counter shields, or requires all ships to have shields to be viable. Both of these force people to use specific weapons or systems to be at all viable, which I don't think is good for the game.>>

And like I pointed out previously, your entire line of logic in part comes down to you don't like shields because you would have to work a little harder to disable parts of a ship. Being unable to get through their shields is no different than being unable to get through their armor. If you're half as good of an engineer as you want us to believe, then you should have no problems playing around shields. Otherwise if you think they're that big of an issue TURN THEM OFF. No one would be forced to use them. If you don't like shields, don't go to a server that has them. if you don't like them, don't use them on your server. It's really not a difficult concept, you just choose to make it one. You say you want additional counters to shields, okay here's an easy solution, add a third turret type that doesn't do as much damage to armor, but does increased damage vs shields. An EMP warhead can also be created that does more damage to shields than hull. Boom you now have 2 weapons in addition to the standard. If shields are making that much of a difference that they are completely crippling your ability to fight, this tells me that one of two scenarios is happening. 1: the item is legitimately broken. 2: the item is fine and the player not knowing how to counter said item is the problem. More often than not it's number 2, which is what your line of logic above simply screams to me. If you don't like the balance of the item, change it or disable it. It's like the folks that complained about flying mounts in World of Warcraft. If you don't like flying mounts, don't use them. Not exactly a difficult concept.

<<There are many correct ways to add new material to Space Engineers. I'm just giving reasons for why this isn't one of them.

You seem to often miss the point spectacularly, in ways that would have completely be prevented if you'd simply read the following sentences. Is it any wonder that you considered the main selling point of SE combat to be a problem?>>

As I said above, you are one man with one opinion and one experience. Your way is NOT and I repeat is NOT the only way of doing things. You are not automatically correct simply because it's your opinion shields are bad. You are not the deciding factor on what is or isn't the "correct" way to add something to SE or even what the "correct" additions are. You have no legitimate arguments that aren't purely subjective or mooted out by the ability to turn off the item. You are not being forced to use the item, yet you seem to think you are. If you don't like the idea of shields, as you clearly don't, that's fine and you're entitled to that opinion. The fun of others is not wrong simply because you don't like it. Your last lines just stink of arrogance and entitlement. If you don't like shields that's fine, but who the heck are you to say the rest of us shouldn't have a vanilla version of them, or better tools to make those blocks ourselves. Your attitude is the exact kind of entitled mentality that another user mentioned. You don't want it for your worlds and servers, that's fine. Otherwise your dislike is not a valid reason others shouldn't be allowed to have it.

>I see once again Doomed Person is busting out the same flawed arguments that he did on the previous forum. Once again I will address the bogus logic.

I'm not actually sure what you're referring to. The only other place that I can recall being active in SE is Reddit, and only occasionally there. I'm not surprised that other people also have the same ideas though.

> Every setting has the ability to "upset things" depending on what one's goals are for a server. [...] Shields would also be contained to themselves and you're drastically overthinking the combat system. As is there are 2 weapons in SE, 3 if you count the warhead. Every block they add will have the potential of interacting with those 3 weapons regardless of what kind of block it is. The work of deciding how durable a block should be is already done as part of its creation. All you're defining is how much additional protection a shield should afford a block it's protecting, and how much damage a turret should have to do in order to drop that shield. Although you view it as different in your mind, programming wise it's exactly the same. From a programming standpoint it's a simple solution. If shields are on it uses X for stats, and if shields are off it uses Y. Ships produced on a server without the oxygen system will be drastically different than those on a server with oxygen. There is no correct way of building. Even then, you can disable the shields if you don't like them or mod them. All folks are doing here is for a vanilla block, or that we be given tools to make those blocks ourselves. You are uneffected.

Again, they aren't self-contained precisely because they interact with other elements of the game and other parts would need to be balanced with them. Some elements like inventory, tool speed, and oxygen usage don't interact that much or don't need balancing because they're designed for a specific level of difficulty in certain areas at different set values. Combat as a whole is similar, but one specific part of combat can't be removed without upsetting the whole thing. Examples of this can be seen across the whole of gaming in any kind of PvP environment. Even with a system as simple as ours, balance exists. While it would be simple programming-wise, it would force both current and future updates to PvP in SE to incorporate shields as a major element and thus make any combat without shields difficult to create and fundamentally limited without sweeping overhauls using modding.

> You ignoring the examples doesn't make them less valid, Tell me, what is different between a welder automatically repairing something and consuming parts/resources vs a shield healing itself automatically consuming energy/resources to do so? The answer is zero. [...]

The answer is that a shield almost always covers a larger area, has a much less limited resource pool, usually does so faster, almost invariably is much further displaced from the damaged area, and tends to have much more overall effectiveness.

So no, not zero by a long shot. Regenerating health mechanics or equivalents by themselves aren't a problem, but the way in which shields generally implement them doesn't reward intelligent ship design.

>Okay, see below as an example that holds no basis in reality.

I'll provide the full argument then.

If a mechanic that inherently holds very high value is used in a game, it's very hard to balance. Synergy means that it has a large range of potential usable value. Additionally, countering interactions mean that it might be more or less effective against a range of different strategies. Finally, its inherent value means that stacking it creates a power multiplier which can become massive when the previous two align. Therefore, the effectiveness of this kind of strategy is highly dependent on the rest of the meta, and can easily become extremely powerful or entirely useless in local metas. For an example, I'd use Bastion from Overwatch, who is easily countered by some well-known tactics but is a source of constant complaints at lower ranks where people don't know how to use them. Bastion + protection + inexperienced enemies = victory. At medium or high ranks, everyone knows how to swap and counter him, and he's universally acknowledged as the worst hero in the game, and has been since launch. Not even the rest of the team can help all that much. This kind of effect would be exacerbated by the relative permanence of ships in Space Engineers, which slows meta evolution and prevents people from effectively adapting to counter the mechanic in question. If Space Engineers starts to add more weapons or weapon types to combat, this would become even more of an issue over time as both synergy and countering have larger ranges.

>Because you've had a bad experience with it and because you don't like it, it shouldn't be done as it will make the game bad, is essentially the crux of this argument you've made here. Fun is subjective. What you consider fun and what I consider fun are probably going to be 2 different things. Neither side is wrong in their fun. You're welcome to the opinion shields are bad for gameplay, but again you not liking shields is not a valid reason others should be denied those tools in the vanilla game, or tools to make them ourselves. Once again like I said, you are one person with one opinion and one experience. Your way is not the only way of doing things and not everyone plays the same way as you do. Simply because they play different than you does not make their fun wrong, especially when you never have to interact with that person.

Yes, because my own experience is backed with other PvP games' histories. Fun is subjective, but I really don't want to see people work out the optimal shield-stacking strategy and run over people's cool builds with a ball of reactors, guns, and arbitrarily-placed armor. I don't think that would be fun for even casual players, and it doesn't make higher-level PvP interesting. If people have other opinions, I'd like to see why, or at least how their shield idea differs.

Also, it's fine if you want to play Star Trek Online or something. But there's real potential here for something completely different, and it would be a shame if SE didn't take advantage of that. It's why I do this.

> Actually it does address the base issues, you simply choose to ignore it. All Keen has to do is create a basic default setup for what they consider balanced. From there players can adjust said balance up or down based on their individual preferences. If the balance isn't to your liking then change the balance or turn it off. [...]

Again, it's not that players can adjust the balance however. It's that there isn't and can't be a balance point anyway.

> I'm glad to see we agree at least on that bit with regards to a food system, however you partially missed the point in why I made that statement. Although I am not fond of a food system and feel more often than not it becomes "eat this so you don't die", it's not a valid reason as to why others who do like food systems should be denied the ability to have a food system. As long as I can turn it off and not have to use it, any arguments I could make against the system are rendered moot. The same is true with shields. You don't like them, don't use them. Otherwise your dislike is not a valid reason others shouldn't be given said block, and/or tools to create their own spin of those blocks.

Of course. But I think that a reasonable argument should be able to illuminate root values and priorities in what people want to see in-game, and given similar values, we should all be able to come to similar conclusions. If people make a suggestion and I don't entirely agree, I want to know why and how we both got to where we are. Maybe one of us made a bad assumption, or didn't account for some factor in a suggestion. Or one of us likes one form of survival content more than the other, or didn't think of a specific way to implement it. Either way, the resolution should create a better-informed playerbase.

> Other games have power sources and items just like SE does, so no this is not what makes SE unique, not even close.

But do they have conveyor systems feeding the guns? Maintenance corridors for the internals? Mining craft with support equipment?

Other games have some parts of a ship interior, but only Space Engineers has an actual functioning interior.

>And like I pointed out previously, your entire line of logic in part comes down to you don't like shields because you would have to work a little harder to disable parts of a ship. Being unable to get through their shields is no different than being unable to get through their armor.

No. If you shoot at the front of a ship, does the armor on the back break? What about the armor block next to where you shot it?

You could implement shields on a block-by-block basis, but that's even weirder in terms of realism, acts very similarly to autowelding armor in terms of active combat mechanics, and still is a direct upgrade to stronger armor.

>If you're half as good of an engineer as you want us to believe, then you should have no problems playing around shields. Otherwise if you think they're that big of an issue TURN THEM OFF.

There's a difference between skill and fun. I could play around them, but I'm making the case that they're not fun to play with.

>No one would be forced to use them. If you don't like shields, don't go to a server that has them. if you don't like them, don't use them on your server. It's really not a difficult concept, you just choose to make it one. You say you want additional counters to shields, okay here's an easy solution, add a third turret type that doesn't do as much damage to armor, but does increased damage vs shields. An EMP warhead can also be created that does more damage to shields than hull. Boom you now have 2 weapons in addition to the standard. If shields are making that much of a difference that they are completely crippling your ability to fight, this tells me that one of two scenarios is happening. 1: the item is legitimately broken. 2: the item is fine and the player not knowing how to counter said item is the problem. More often than not it's number 2, which is what your line of logic above simply screams to me. If you don't like the balance of the item, change it or disable it. It's like the folks that complained about flying mounts in World of Warcraft. If you don't like flying mounts, don't use them. Not exactly a difficult concept.

As I stated previously:

>>This means that ships with shields have a massive advantage over others, and any balance point either requires specifically anti-shield weapons that still don't hard counter shields, or requires all ships to have shields to be viable. Both of these force people to use specific weapons or systems to be at all viable, which I don't think is good for the game.

Shields are powerful. So you introduce a counter: EMP weapons. Now everyone's running around with EMP weapons and shields, instead of just shields. And while that isn't necessarily bad by itself, I think I've already talked upthread about how it doesn't play to the strengths of SE and goes towards generic sci-fi MMO gameplay.

<<I'm not actually sure what you're referring to. The only other place that I can recall being active in SE is Reddit, and only occasionally there. I'm not surprised that other people also have the same ideas though.>>

You talk like a guy named Stardriver who has raised many of the exact same complaints and arguments as you have, in the exact same way as you have almost word for word in the past. I find that to be an extremely convenient coincidence. However moving on for the moment.

<<Again, they aren't self-contained precisely because they interact with other elements of the game and other parts would need to be balanced with them. Some elements like inventory, tool speed, and oxygen usage don't interact that much or don't need balancing because they're designed for a specific level of difficulty in certain areas at different set values. Combat as a whole is similar, but one specific part of combat can't be removed without upsetting the whole thing. Examples of this can be seen across the whole of gaming in any kind of PvP environment. Even with a system as simple as ours, balance exists. While it would be simple programming-wise, it would force both current and future updates to PvP in SE to incorporate shields as a major element and thus make any combat without shields difficult to create and fundamentally limited without sweeping overhauls using modding.>>

If you're trying to define being self-contained as 100% independent from the other elements of the game, then nothing like that exists as all blocks and systems have the potential to interact with the game in some form or fashion. You can say that inventory, tool speed, and oxygen don't need much balancing, but actually they do. Oxygen supply usage will determine how much strain will be on the ice supply and how much is needed, from a small few rocks of the stuff, or your own portable ice moon. Tool speed will have a major effect on how fast structures can be built and repaired, and how quickly one can marshal their forces. Inventory size will have a drastic effect on everything, such as how much fuel a ship can carry, how many containers it has to use to carry it all, how much ammo it can carry, how much ammo a turret can hold, and down the line. Each of those items will drastically effect balance on the world/server depending on what it's set at, as well as what kinds of builds are going to be practical and which aren't. The more/less mass a ship is required to carry can greatly effect it's performance in combat. You're correct that balance exists in game like SE, but that balance is not universally the same from server to server, and can vary wildly. On alot of servers they only have the 3 vanilla engine types, but on mine there are 4. That itself is a major balance change.

As to your bit in bold, once again you have it wrong. Combat without shields already exists. You would either have them or you don't, you would either use them or you wouldn't. The same argument you make against shields there could also be used against any additional turret types that could be added to the game. As for balance, it would be up to you to decide what is best for you and your server just as it would be me for my server. As easily as shields could be added they could also be disabled. Adding shields would be like adding a buff, you either have that buff or you don't. Being unable to get through a shield is no different than being unable to get through armor. If a shield is completely negating your ability to fight someone, then the problem isn't the shield, the problem is you and your build. If you can fight worth a klang without shields right now, then certainly fighting with shields shouldn't be that much of a stretch to you. and if it is then TURN THEM OFF. All Keen has to do is decide how much they want a singular shield to do vs singular weapons, then ship it off to the players and make it our problem. It will then come down to who can bring the most shielding, armor, weapons, and skill using those items to bear.

<<The answer is that a shield almost always covers a larger area, has a much less limited resource pool, usually does so faster, almost invariably is much further displaced from the damaged area, and tends to have much more overall effectiveness. So no, not zero by a long shot. Regenerating health mechanics or equivalents by themselves aren't a problem, but the way in which shields generally implement them doesn't reward intelligent ship design.>>

Nope, not even close. While a shield can cover a larger area, that is also a potential weakness at the same time. The shield doesn't have to be hit in the same place each time to break, it simply needs to be hit enough. A ship relying on pure armor alone must be hit in the same place in the same armor blocks to break them before you can damage internals. A welder system backed by sufficient repair parts and resources is the same concept as a shield backed by sufficient power and regeneration. Same concept, different methods.

As to "rewarding intelligent design" that's your opinion. If a guy is over-reliant on the shields and has most of his critical components exposed and you can't beat him, again the problem is you and not the shield. It also reads to me as shields allowing different types of designs and you not liking that folks don't build like you do. If your builds are as good as you claim then certainly you shouldn't have any problems. Otherwise if that guy is beating you then your builds aren't what you thought they were.

<<Yes, because my own experience is backed with other PvP games' histories. Fun is subjective, but I really don't want to see people work out the optimal shield-stacking strategy and run over people's cool builds with a ball of reactors, guns, and arbitrarily-placed armor. I don't think that would be fun for even casual players, and it doesn't make higher-level PvP interesting. If people have other opinions, I'd like to see why, or at least how their shield idea differs.

Also, it's fine if you want to play Star Trek Online or something. But there's real potential here for something completely different, and it would be a shame if SE didn't take advantage of that. It's why I do this.>>

Once again this is anecdote and not valid evidence on its own. Folks are always going to find a way to grief other folks and cheese certain strategies. You're deluding yourself if you think anything can ever be made 100% griefer and cheese proof. Shields like the Jump Drive would be an end game type of block. Folks who are farther along the tech tree will always have an advantage and edge over those that aren't as far along. That's true in virtually every other game out there. As for your bit in bold, that again is your personal problem to work out for your server. Your wants for your server should not be allowed to dictate to other servers. What you find interesting and arbitrary others may not. You're entitled to your own opinions and what you for your own server, but that ends when you're basically saying others shouldn't have a feature because you don't like it. As for the "doing something different" thing, do you not know how to customize your own worlds? Have you never looked in the options area? If you feel that giving folks an option is such a bad thing TURN IT OFF. Learn to make the game your own. Folks aren't demanding you play with a feature you don't like. Folks are asking that they be allowed to have that feature for themselves in the form of a vanilla block, or at the very least be given the tools to create those blocks themselves.

<<Again, it's not that players can adjust the balance however. It's that there isn't and can't be a balance point anyway.>>

you are 100% wrong on this point. Keen only needs to answer how many shots it would take from a single gatling, single missile turret, and how many warheads it takes to break the shield. Thus you have your starting balance point given to you by Keen. Folks can then adjust up or down on their servers respectively based on what they thought of said balance. It may not be a balance you like, but it's still a balance point.

<<Of course. But I think that a reasonable argument should be able to illuminate root values and priorities in what people want to see in-game, and given similar values, we should all be able to come to similar conclusions. If people make a suggestion and I don't entirely agree, I want to know why and how we both got to where we are. Maybe one of us made a bad assumption, or didn't account for some factor in a suggestion. Or one of us likes one form of survival content more than the other, or didn't think of a specific way to implement it. Either way, the resolution should create a better-informed playerbase.>>

In my case, I am asking Keen to either give us the option of a vanilla block to work with, or the tools to make the block ourselves so we can better customize the game to our liking. Folks that don't like the shield block wouldn't have to use it, those that do like it can use it as much as they want. I am not demanding other folks be made to use it, simply that another potential tool be given that can be used in the sandbox, or the ability to make that tool ourselves. If you don't want to use that tool, then you don't have to. I would most likely end up disabling a food system should it be implemented in game because I'm not normally a fan of those types of mechanics. However my dislike of such systems is not a valid reason as to why Keen shouldn't consider giving others who do like it such a system. If I don't like it I can turn it off, and those that do can leave it on. Thus both sides are happy. Folks are asking for an option, nothing more nothing less.

<<But do they have conveyor systems feeding the guns? Maintenance corridors for the internals? Mining craft with support equipment?

Other games have some parts of a ship interior, but only Space Engineers has an actual functioning interior.>>

Some do and some don't depending on the game. SE gives a great deal of customization of the interior of a ship, quite a bit more than alot of other games. However it is not the only game to allow for interior customization.

<<No. If you shoot at the front of a ship, does the armor on the back break? What about the armor block next to where you shot it?

You could implement shields on a block-by-block basis, but that's even weirder in terms of realism, acts very similarly to autowelding armor in terms of active combat mechanics, and still is a direct upgrade to stronger armor.>>

Since you yourself just referred to shields as "a direct upgrade to stronger armor" you've proven my point. If you have a shield and armor with equal amounts of health or close to equal, being unable to break one means you won't be able to break the other. This isn't rocket science. If realism is your concern, then that ship sailed long ago when they added gravity generators, jump drives, space balls, and artificial mass as prime examples. Also on that point, don't even get me started on how unrealistically close the various celestial bodies are to each other, and how strong the gravitational pull is compared to size and so on. If you're looking for 100% realism then you're going to be disappointed. If realism is your thing then more power to you. Otherwise for me it doesn't bother me that much. If I wanted 100% realism I would play another game. The realism ship sailed long ago.

<<There's a difference between skill and fun. I could play around them, but I'm making the case that they're not fun to play with.>>

If you think they're not fun to play with then TURN THEM OFF. You would already have a solution to your problem if you think they're not fun to play with. I don't see what's so unreasonable about that. It's the same concept as the food system. I could try to tweak it to my liking, or turn it off if I didn't like it. Those that did like it could keep it going. Not exactly a difficult concept.

<<Shields are powerful. So you introduce a counter: EMP weapons. Now everyone's running around with EMP weapons and shields, instead of just shields. And while that isn't necessarily bad by itself, I think I've already talked upthread about how it doesn't play to the strengths of SE and goes towards generic sci-fi MMO gameplay.>>

You're entitled to your opinion that it would make SE less unique and more sci-fi type. However again you have the power and would have the power to decide if shields were implemented on your server or not. You have the power to decide what kind of mods if any will be on your server. One of the strengths of SE is that we have a large variety of blocks to pick from to make what we want, plus the ability to make most any block we could want in game if it's not readily available in vanilla. For some folks the vanilla blocks are enough. For me however I wasn't satisfied with the performance of the 3 vanilla engine types and created my own type of engines. I have also created 2 gravity generators with larger range for use on space stations, a smaller gravity plate for when larger generators aren't as practical or desired, and also my own version of stackable gyros. Not many games would allow me the ability to do that. Folks are simply asking they be given the ability to use a vanilla shield generator, or be given the tools to better create those blocks themselves. If you wanted to use them you could, otherwise you wouldn't have to.

Otherwise folks complaining about shields being added when they don't have to use them, is like getting mad at someone in Magic the Gathering for playing the color blue when you don't have to play with that person or allow blue to be used in your own private games.

>If you're trying to define being self-contained as 100% independent from the other elements of the game, then nothing like that exists as all blocks and systems have the potential to interact with the game in some form or fashion. [...] Each of those items will drastically effect balance on the world/server depending on what it's set at, as well as what kinds of builds are going to be practical and which aren't. [...]

Many of these elements are marginal at most. In a large ship battle, one ship would be destroyed or forced into retreat long before either ran out of ammo regardless of inventory sizes. On the other hand, doing something like tweaking the Gatling Turret's targeting could have massive effects on design and strategy immediately. Directly combat-related changes are almost without exception the most impactful kinds of changes to combat.

>As to your bit in bold, once again you have it wrong. Combat without shields already exists. You would either have them or you don't, you would either use them or you wouldn't. The same argument you make against shields there could also be used against any additional turret types that could be added to the game. [...]

Did I argue that combat without shields doesn't exist? What I'm saying is that any future updates need to work around shields and, if they want to create interesting combat, have interactions utilizing the difference between shields and armor. And trying to remove shields requires rebalancing those weapons or removing them, losing a lot of content in the process.

>Nope, not even close. [...] A welder system backed by sufficient repair parts and resources is the same concept as a shield backed by sufficient power and regeneration. Same concept, different methods.

You claimed that shields were effectively the same as autowelding armor. I provided examples showing why they aren't the same. You're moving the goalposts to assume sufficient supply, but autowelding armor is still much more easily shut down because of its required proximity to the surface.

>While a shield can cover a larger area, that is also a potential weakness at the same time. The shield doesn't have to be hit in the same place each time to break, it simply needs to be hit enough. A ship relying on pure armor alone must be hit in the same place in the same armor blocks to break them before you can damage internals.

And one point of shield HP is in almost every case better than one point of armor HP, the equivalence point shifts massively depending on the situation, potential weapons that have advantages or disadvantages against shields continue to exacerbate this, and the end result is that shields have an outsized impact on the meta and any attempt at balance must focus almost entirely upon shields.

>As to "rewarding intelligent design" that's your opinion. If a guy is over-reliant on the shields and has most of his critical components exposed and you can't beat him, again the problem is you and not the shield.

One of the reasons that combat exists is to compare ship designs' effectiveness. Would this be a fun game if anyone could take a block list and put them in any functional order to create the ideal ship for that weight class?

>Once again this is anecdote and not valid evidence on its own. Folks are always going to find a way to grief other folks and cheese certain strategies. You're deluding yourself if you think anything can ever be made 100% griefer and cheese proof.

Yes, but I don't think it helps to add something that makes it easier on top of the other issues I've outlined.

>Shields like the Jump Drive would be an end game type of block. Folks who are farther along the tech tree will always have an advantage and edge over those that aren't as far along. That's true in virtually every other game out there.

Let's be real here: Space Engineers barely has a tech tree or endgame. Any PvP faction would have access to all resources and blocks, even if we had a few more updates trying to create progression. Saying that something is an endgame block is practically meaningless.

>As for your bit in bold, that again is your personal problem to work out for your server. Your wants for your server should not be allowed to dictate to other servers. What you find interesting and arbitrary others may not. You're entitled to your own opinions and what you for your own server, but that ends when you're basically saying others shouldn't have a feature because you don't like it.

Again, I don't think it's something that would be fun for most people in the community. If you want to explain how I'm wrong about that, feel free. But saying "That's just your opinion" can be used to counter every single statement about what should or shouldn't be implemented in SE on this forum. If you think that's something worth saying, why say anything? It's just your opinion.

>As for the "doing something different" thing, do you not know how to customize your own worlds? Have you never looked in the options area? If you feel that giving folks an option is such a bad thing TURN IT OFF. Learn to make the game your own. Folks aren't demanding you play with a feature you don't like. Folks are asking that they be allowed to have that feature for themselves in the form of a vanilla block, or at the very least be given the tools to create those blocks themselves.

I'm saying that having shields forces further development in this area to focus around them, in a way that makes more unique directions for the game ineffective. I could try and use mods to do it myself, but at that point, why am I not just making my own game?

I'm here because I think there are ways in which Space Engineers could go that make the game more interesting, unique, and are more likely to allow it to succeed. Saying that "you can just mod it in" is fundamentally unproductive in a similar way to "That's just your opinion".

>you are 100% wrong on this point. Keen only needs to answer how many shots it would take from a single gatling, single missile turret, and how many warheads it takes to break the shield. Thus you have your starting balance point given to you by Keen. Folks can then adjust up or down on their servers respectively based on what they thought of said balance. It may not be a balance you like, but it's still a balance point.

I should have clarified that "balance point" refers to a state of the game in which a specific weapon or ability is generally at the same power level as other comparable game elements. For example, rock-paper-scissors is at the balance point for all three, while neither side in tic-tac-toe is at the balance point.

And my argument is that, given their volatility, potential synergies and counters both existing and in future updates, and local metas being unable to quickly adapt, such a balance point does not and cannot exist for shields.

>In my case, I am asking Keen to either give us the option of a vanilla block to work with, or the tools to make the block ourselves so we can better customize the game to our liking. Folks that don't like the shield block wouldn't have to use it, those that do like it can use it as much as they want. I am not demanding other folks be made to use it, simply that another potential tool be given that can be used in the sandbox, or the ability to make that tool ourselves. If you don't want to use that tool, then you don't have to. I would most likely end up disabling a food system should it be implemented in game because I'm not normally a fan of those types of mechanics. However my dislike of such systems is not a valid reason as to why Keen shouldn't consider giving others who do like it such a system. If I don't like it I can turn it off, and those that do can leave it on. Thus both sides are happy. Folks are asking for an option, nothing more nothing less.

And I think that the inclusion of such a block would force future updates to center around it in a way that prevents other aspects of combat from being fully realized and generally isn't a positive addition to the game. While having new options is normally good, I think this would, in the long term, close off more options than it opens.

>Some do and some don't depending on the game. SE gives a great deal of customization of the interior of a ship, quite a bit more than alot of other games. However it is not the only game to allow for interior customization.

And that kind of detail is entirely unique. It's the most different part of SE. I think exploring that route of future development would be a much better use of time than shields, shield counters, maybe some other generic sci-fi things, and then people leaving because they realize that other games do the same things but with a much better game engine.

>Since you yourself just referred to shields as "a direct upgrade to stronger armor" you've proven my point. If you have a shield and armor with equal amounts of health or close to equal, being unable to break one means you won't be able to break the other. This isn't rocket science.

If you have a shield with x health, you deal x damage and then hit internals. If the enemy armor has x health, you punch a hole for a fraction of that and start shooting inside or widening the hole if necessary. This isn't rocket science.

>If realism is your concern, then that ship sailed long ago when they added gravity generators, jump drives, space balls, and artificial mass as prime examples.

All of those are necessary mechanics. Gravity was needed to test that it actually worked prior to planets, artificial masses were needed to test grids in gravity, and Jump Drives were needed so that people could get between planets within a reasonable amount of time.

Shields are only necessary if you design the rest of the update around needing shields.

>Also on that point, don't even get me started on how unrealistically close the various celestial bodies are to each other, and how strong the gravitational pull is compared to size and so on. If you're looking for 100% realism then you're going to be disappointed. If realism is your thing then more power to you. Otherwise for me it doesn't bother me that much. If I wanted 100% realism I would play another game. The realism ship sailed long ago.

Realism doesn't need to be perfect, especially quantitatively in some ways, but one of the core principles of Space Engineers was the idea that, as much as possible, they'd keep to things that NASA could plausibly come up with in the next 60 years. Are we just throwing that away for one of the most overused sci-fi tropes?

>If you think they're not fun to play with then TURN THEM OFF. You would already have a solution to your problem if you think they're not fun to play with. I don't see what's so unreasonable about that. It's the same concept as the food system. I could try to tweak it to my liking, or turn it off if I didn't like it. Those that did like it could keep it going. Not exactly a difficult concept.

Again, future updates would have to center around shields. I've already explained why that's true and why it's bad.

>You're entitled to your opinion that it would make SE less unique and more sci-fi type. However again you have the power and would have the power to decide if shields were implemented on your server or not. You have the power to decide what kind of mods if any will be on your server. One of the strengths of SE is that we have a large variety of blocks to pick from to make what we want, plus the ability to make most any block we could want in game if it's not readily available in vanilla. For some folks the vanilla blocks are enough. For me however I wasn't satisfied with the performance of the 3 vanilla engine types and created my own type of engines. I have also created 2 gravity generators with larger range for use on space stations, a smaller gravity plate for when larger generators aren't as practical or desired, and also my own version of stackable gyros. Not many games would allow me the ability to do that. Folks are simply asking they be given the ability to use a vanilla shield generator, or be given the tools to better create those blocks themselves. If you wanted to use them you could, otherwise you wouldn't have to.

See above.

>Being unable to get through a shield is no different than being unable to get through armor. If a shield is completely negating your ability to fight someone, then the problem isn't the shield, the problem is you and your build. If you can fight worth a klang without shields right now, then certainly fighting with shields shouldn't be that much of a stretch to you. and if it is then TURN THEM OFF. All Keen has to do is decide how much they want a singular shield to do vs singular weapons, then ship it off to the players and make it our problem. It will then come down to who can bring the most shielding, armor, weapons, and skill using those items to bear.

>It also reads to me as shields allowing different types of designs and you not liking that folks don't build like you do. If your builds are as good as you claim then certainly you shouldn't have any problems. Otherwise if that guy is beating you then your builds aren't what you thought they were.

I've already explained how this is bad for the game in general. Additional ad hominem doesn't help.

>Otherwise folks complaining about shields being added when they don't have to use them, is like getting mad at someone in Magic the Gathering for playing the color blue when you don't have to play with that person or allow blue to be used in your own private games.

In this example, it's more like if WotC were considering adding a new color with very powerful cards that don't need any particular strategy to be effective. Not only that, but the specific effects mean that it's very difficult to rework them to be balanced. And as the cherry on top, they're themed for a historical medieval europe setting and don't really fit with the rest.

Sure, you could get together a group of friends that don't use the color, but then what about future expansions where they balance new cards around this powerful color? Would you try to rework those cards? Ignore them completely? Try and find a different game when one of the reasons you play is the way in which it's unique?

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<< Many of these elements are marginal at most. In a large ship battle, one ship would be destroyed or forced into retreat long before either ran out of ammo regardless of inventory sizes. On the other hand, doing something like tweaking the Gatling Turret's targeting could have massive effects on design and strategy immediately. Directly combat-related changes are almost without exception the most impactful kinds of changes to combat.>>

The more you speak the more I’m convinced you’re Stardriver using a different name, especially after your most recent response. Weld speed will have a drastic effect on how practical and effective it is to repair your ship in battle. Will you be able to do some spot welding and leave the rest to auto-repair welders, or will you need time at a shipyard to recover. Repair rate will have a drastic impact on how long certain ships can stay in a fight. Inventory size also effects how much ammo a turret can carry, how many cargo containers you will need on a ship, and how many repair parts you can potentially carry on a ship. The more blocks required the heavier and less compact the design will be. All of this effects the ship designs before there has ever been a single shot fired from a turret. Targeting priorities of the turrets and overall combat strategy can effect the outcome certainly, but weld speed and inventory size effect what that strategy will be and type of ship that’s viable before you ever have to worry about turrets and the actual battle.

<< Did I argue that combat without shields doesn't exist? What I'm saying is that any future updates need to work around shields and, if they want to create interesting combat, have interactions utilizing the difference between shields and armor. And trying to remove shields requires rebalancing those weapons or removing them, losing a lot of content in the process.>>

Yes actually you did. You argued that combat without shields wouldn’t be possible and couldn’t exist without a complete rebalance of the game and pvp.

Previously you said: “Again, they aren't self-contained precisely because they interact with other elements of the game and other parts would need to be balanced with them. Some elements like inventory, tool speed, and oxygen usage don't interact that much or don't need balancing because they're designed for a specific level of difficulty in certain areas at different set values. Combat as a whole is similar, but one specific part of combat can't be removed without upsetting the whole thing. Examples of this can be seen across the whole of gaming in any kind of PvP environment. Even with a system as simple as ours, balance exists. While it would be simple programming-wise, it would force both current and future updates to PvP in SE to incorporate shields as a major element and thus make any combat without shields difficult to create and fundamentally limited without sweeping overhauls using modding.” You also said: “Again, it's not that players can adjust the balance however. It's that there isn't and can't be a balance point anyway.”

So yes you did actually say it wouldn’t be possible without balancing the entire game and pvp scene around the shields. What is considered “interesting combat” is subjective and not a valid reason again others should be denied access to something, just because you don’t think it’s interesting. You’ve already been told how easy it is to balance such an item for a basic vanilla block, and rebalance it player side if you think it’s too strong or too weak. Keen decides they want their vanilla shield to be able to take X hits from a single gatling, X from a single missile turret, and X warheads before it breaks. Value X is the standard and default value. They give folks the ability to increase the default values of the shield if they think it’s too weak noted as (X+1), or decrease the values if they think it’s too strong noted as (X-1). If those values still aren’t enough for players, they can go into the definition for the shield and raise or lower it to their liking. You forget that more turrets hitting a target means more damage going out, and the quicker the shields/armor will fall. Likewise this can be mitigated by adding more shielding. Once the baseline of single turret vs single shield has been established, they ship it off to players and make it a player problem. A multiplier value can also be added to have weapons do increased, or decreased damage to shields depending on the desires of the players as well. If the shields are not on, or there are no shields to hit, then that shield multiplier simply won’t be used. There is no harder to balance save in your own mind. Even then balance of the items only becomes a concern should you choose to use them.

You also keep bringing up pvp as a reason why this shouldn’t be done. In case you haven’t noticed, this is NOT a purely pvp game, and pvp is NOT the sole deciding factor on what should or shouldn’t be added to the game. Both modes of gameplay are valid choices. Choices made by server owners will effect the ability to conduct pvp and pve activities of various types in the positive or the negative. Different servers will have different balance points, and is a choice made by each individual server owner. PVP server A does not get to dictate to PVE server E that they aren’t allowed to use a certain block because they don’t like it. Especially since the PVP server can change the block to their liking or turn it off. One side of the game does NOT get to dictate to the other. If I want pvp I will go to a pvp server. What you do for your pvp side of things should have no bearing on what I do in mine, which is why you would be given the option to disable said shield block or mod it if you wished. If all Keen did was give us the tools to make a shield block on our own, then you wouldn’t have to utilize the tools. Sorry but pvp is not a valid argument here when there are going to be multiple balances in use across multiple servers.

<<You claimed that shields were effectively the same as autowelding armor. I provided examples showing why they aren't the same. You're moving the goalposts to assume sufficient supply, but autowelding armor is still much more easily shut down because of its required proximity to the surface.>>

Nope, you are 100% wrong again here. Sufficient supply of parts and energy has been assumed from the start. See my previous statements here: “You ignoring the examples doesn't make them less valid, Tell me, what is different between a welder automatically repairing something and consuming parts/resources vs a shield healing itself automatically consuming energy/resources to do so? The answer is zero. Both are done automatically and both occur as long as the needed available resources is present.” That was my first quote on the issue. Note the section in bold assuming adequate repair parts and energy for both items. See my second quote here: “Nope, not even close. (…) A welder system backed by sufficient repair parts and resources is the same concept as a shield backed by sufficient power and regeneration. Same concept, different methods.” That is my second statement I made. In all instances I have assumed adequate repair parts for our auto-welders to use, and adequate energy reserves for our hypothetical shields to use. There is no moving of goal posts here save in your own mind as you grasped at straws on this one. There is no functional difference between an auto-welder with sufficient repair parts behind it, and a shield with sufficient energy behind it to rebuild the shield with. Both are functionally the same with different methods used.

I also find it rather amusing that you say the two would be very different, yet in a previous post you said this: <You could implement shields on a block-by-block basis, but that's even weirder in terms of realism, acts very similarly to autowelding armor in terms of active combat mechanics, and still is a direct upgrade to stronger armor.”>

In other words you contradicted yourself. Which one is it? Are they the same or not? Because both of your statements can’t be true at the same time.

<<One of the reasons that combat exists is to compare ship designs' effectiveness. Would this be a fun game if anyone could take a block list and put them in any functional order to create the ideal ship for that weight class?>>

According to who? Because I missed that memo. Once again what is fun is subjective and this is not a valid argument but your opinion. What you’re talking about here is min/maxing to squeeze every last one and zero of damage out of your ship design as possible. If you like doing that sort of thing, then by all means have at it. You’re allowed to like what you like. However once again, your way is not the only way of doing things and not everyone plays like you or thinks like you. It baffles me that there can be elitism in a game like SE, but here we are with arguments like yours proving that it exists.

<<Yes, but I don't think it helps to add something that makes it easier on top of the other issues I've outlined.>>

Once again, the idea that it would make griefing easier is your opinion and not fact. A shield does not guarantee a win, and people can grief right now without shields. Adding a shield isn’t going to magically make that worse, nor is keep a shield out of the game going to prevent griefing. A shield is simply a health buff from a programming standpoint. You either have it or you don’t. Someone having more health than you isn’t griefing, nor can it be used for griefing. If this were an item like a Jump Inhibitor that can harm an opposing ship without them being able to do anything about it, then you would have a legitimate argument, as a jump inhibitor serves no purpose other than to force a fight on the unwilling, be it in pvp or pve. You press a button and are able to shut down entire systems on their ship without having fired a shot and without them being able to do anything about it. Thus you can force an unwanted pvp encounter on someone or otherwise. THAT is griefing, someone having a shield isn’t, nor can it contribute to griefing.

<<Let's be real here: Space Engineers barely has a tech tree or endgame. Any PvP faction would have access to all resources and blocks, even if we had a few more updates trying to create progression. Saying that something is an endgame block is practically meaningless.>>

Once more this is purely your opinion and not established fact. We can debate the quality of the tech tree, but it doesn’t negate the fact one exists, and things like Jump Drives, shields, and similar are/would be considered end game blocks. Also once again, you are assuming everyone plays pvp and will operate purely from a pvp standpoint, and that’s not the case. Factions who have been around longer and had more time to prepare generally will always have an edge over those who haven’t been operating as long. This is true in the here and now and will always be true with or without shields. If you have folks running around and griefing everyone, then it sounds like you’ve got bigger problems to worry about than a shield. pvp is not the end all be all of this game you clearly think it is. Upsetting the pvp crowd or pvp balance as is right now is not a valid reason on its own to keep something from the game, be it an actual shield block, or simply tools to create them without so many issues. If you are so inconvenienced by having to click a box to turn something off you don’t like, you’ve got no business playing a game like SE in the first place.

<<Again, I don't think it's something that would be fun for most people in the community. If you want to explain how I'm wrong about that, feel free. But saying "That's just your opinion" can be used to counter every single statement about what should or shouldn't be implemented in SE on this forum. If you think that's something worth saying, why say anything? It's just your opinion.>>

The bit in bold is where your disconnect with reality lies. You’re entitled to your opinion on what’s fun. Your opinion may be true for you and your crew, but you don’t speak for me, and you don’t speak for the majority of the community like you think you do. In the first line in bold you make the statement you don’t think such a shield block would be fun for the community. Alright fair enough, you’re entitled to that opinion. However in the second line you assert your opinion as fact even though again, it’s purely your subjective opinion. I’ve stated “that’s your opinion” in several instances, because multiple times you have asserted subjective opinions as objective fact. Not only this but you have made several arguments regarding balance and programming that are just flat out wrong.

Here are 2 examples from your previous posts that are purely opinion based. 1: “Regenerating health mechanics or equivalents by themselves aren't a problem, but the way in which shields generally implement them doesn't reward intelligent ship design.” 2: “Fun is subjective, but I really don't want to see people work out the optimal shield-stacking strategy and run over people's cool builds with a ball of reactors, guns, and arbitrarily-placed armor. I don't think that would be fun for even casual players, and it doesn't make higher-level PvP interesting.”

Those 2 examples in italics are just 2 examples of something you have asserted as fact that is nothing more than your opinion. You’re welcome to believe both of those statements, however simply because you have put those statements forth does NOT make them objective fact. Your idea of “intelligent ship design” and “interesting higher level pvp” is not going to be the same as everyone else in the community. If everyone played the same as you, then you would have an argument here, but not everyone in the community plays like you, so you have no argument here. What you are saying on those 2 points is valid only for you and your crew.

<<And I think that the inclusion of such a block would force future updates to center around it in a way that prevents other aspects of combat from being fully realized and generally isn't a positive addition to the game. While having new options is normally good, I think this would, in the long term, close off more options than it opens.>>

<<Again, future updates would have to center around shields. I've already explained why that's true and why it's bad.>>

<<I should have clarified that "balance point" refers to a state of the game in which a specific weapon or ability is generally at the same power level as other comparable game elements. For example, rock-paper-scissors is at the balance point for all three, while neither side in tic-tac-toe is at the balance point.

And my argument is that, given their volatility, potential synergies and counters both existing and in future updates, and local metas being unable to quickly adapt, such a balance point does not and cannot exist for shields.>>

<<This still doesn't address the base issues. Values can be set and reset. The problems are that there's a massive dropoff on either side of the balance point for shields, their balance point still doesn't add much to combat that isn't implemented better in other games, and the balance point can easily be shifted by community-based variation in building preference.>>

Here are 4 examples of statements you have made regarding programming and balancing that are just flat out wrong. When any kind of block is released, durability of said block is determined at that point. Keen decides how many components they want the block to consume for its construction. They also decide that a block should be able to take X amount of shots from a single gatling, X from a single missile turret, and X amount of warheads to break the block. Here is how it breaks down from a balance point.

Let’s assuming you have Block A that has 10 hitpoints. Let’s also assume that our gatling turrets deal 1 hp per shot, missile turrets deal 3 hp per shot, and warheads deal 12 damage per warhead. This would mean it would take 10 gatling shots, 4 missiles, or a single warhead to destroy Block A, assuming only one item can be brought to bear on it. That is your baseline Keen balance point. Whether folks like that balance point or not, it doesn’t change the fact that one exists. Server A might raise the hp of the block to 20 points, Server B might lower it to 7, and Server C might leave it where it is. In addition those 3 servers could alter the health of the block AND amount of damage each weapon deals, thus altering the balance of the block AND the weapons. That’s a decision each server will have to make for themselves. Unless you visit all 3 servers, you will never know the difference in balance exists as one server has no bearing on the other.

In our hypothetical example above, once the balance is set, it becomes a player problem to adjust up or down as they need or see fit as Keen has already done their part. Unless they decided down the road they’re not satisfied with the vanilla balance of the block, it will remain the same with no other updates revolving around it. If a vanilla shield were to make certain blocks too durable, all they need to do is stick an additional line of code on the shield that gives a different level of shielding vs standard. If they can change the Safe Zone block, as well as the Hydrogen tanks, and Hydrogen consumption rate, then they can clearly address problem blocks on an as needed basis. There is no need for large sweeping rebalances, nor is there any kind of massive adaptation that would need to happen with such a block. You either have it or you don’t. There is no “massive dropoff” on either side of balance either. You either like it or you don’t. If you don’t like it you can change it to suit yourself or turn it off. As for “balance easily shifted by community based variation in build performance” that’s not how balance works. If a massively overpowered combo was discovered tomorrow that allowed folks to do more damage than intended, that’s not “shifting the balance” but exposing a bug that was already there. As to your meta argument, not having a clearly defined meta isn’t a bad thing. It forces folks to actually think outside the box and find what works for them. You know actually do a little engineering instead of just slapping a build together the way that (insert name here) does it.

<<Again, future updates would have to center around shields. I've already explained why that's true and why it's bad.>>

Once again you are 100% wrong on this point, and it’s already been explained why. Balance does not work the way you think it does plain and simple. Not from a programming standpoint, and not from a practical standpoint.

<<All of those are necessary mechanics. Gravity was needed to test that it actually worked prior to planets, artificial masses were needed to test grids in gravity, and Jump Drives were needed so that people could get between planets within a reasonable amount of time.

Shields are only necessary if you design the rest of the update around needing shields.>>

<<Realism doesn't need to be perfect, especially quantitatively in some ways, but one of the core principles of Space Engineers was the idea that, as much as possible, they'd keep to things that NASA could plausibly come up with in the next 60 years. Are we just throwing that away for one of the most overused sci-fi tropes?>>

Heavier armor is only necessary if you design the rest of the game around needing heavier armor. Nope you can have gravity and a means of fast travel without gravity generators or Jump Drives. Gravity can be tied to the center mass of the grid itself, with the ability to turn the artificial gravity field on/off via the control panel without needing a physical representation of a block present. The ability to fast travel can be tied to the grid itself. Each grid can fast travel to and from a certain area no matter how far. The cooldown is tied to the mass of the grid and how much power is available on the grid itself so each grid must be tactical in its use of Jump mechanic. You don’t need physical blocks to represent those mechanics, they just make it easier. If the new standard is that something must be “needed” before it can be added, then by Keen’s admission SE is feature complete and we can kiss any further updates beyond your basic bug fixing goodbye. Afterall nothing else is needed. However that isn’t the point.

Again if realism is your concern, then that ship sailed long ago as there are plenty of unrealistic elements in this game. Gravity generators and Jump Drives are just 2 popular examples. Other examples are celestial bodies having too strong a gravity pull for their size, celestial bodies being too close to each other, ice being present in areas that are clearly above freezing temperatures, the lack of a food/water system, the fact we can even hear weapons fire in space just to name a few. Then when it comes to power generation, the large grid nuclear reactors are an absolute joke compared to our modern 2020 reactors in terms of power output. Our modern reactors absolutely smoke the SE reactors in terms of power generation, yet I’m expected to believe that somehow the SE reactor is more advanced and better. By realism standards the small grid small nuclear reactor shouldn’t even exist at all. That thing is a 0.5 meter cube (18 inches) in size. Yet somehow I’m expected to believe by then they’ll have a fully contained nuclear reactor that I could power my house with for an entire year, with the occasional refueling of some uranium or other radioactive material. Let’s also not forget the Windmills working underground. If you can tolerate all of these bits of unrealism, you can tolerate a shield or the tools to make them being given to modders. Especially since you can turn it off. If realism is your goal, you’re playing the wrong game.

<<In this example, it's more like if WotC were considering adding a new color with very powerful cards that don't need any particular strategy to be effective. Not only that, but the specific effects mean that it's very difficult to rework them to be balanced. And as the cherry on top, they're themed for a historical medieval europe setting and don't really fit with the rest.

Sure, you could get together a group of friends that don't use the color, but then what about future expansions where they balance new cards around this powerful color? Would you try to rework those cards? Ignore them completely? Try and find a different game when one of the reasons you play is the way in which it's unique?>>

Once again nope, an additional color is not needed. What you’re doing by excluding blue is essentially creating a new format. For Magic the Gathering there are quite a few different formats. Two Headed Giant, EDH aka Commander, Tiny Leader, Standard, Extended, Legacy, Modern, Vintage, Peasant, Pauper, Plane Chase, and Archenemy just to name some of them. Each one of those formats has a different card pool and set of rules to them with the core game being the same. As new cards are created, the formats roll with the punches and address problem cards and combos if/when they arise. This is no different than different servers in SE using different balance points, along with different mods and otherwise to customize it to their liking. Just like with MTG, some people prefer standard format, where as in recent years I’ve been more of an EDH guy. Some people prefer just a plain vanilla SE server using all the “realistic” settings, where as others prefer to mod their servers to the moon and back. The core game is still Space Engineers, but with a twist. Mods can be compared to homebrew cards and rules to create your own format. You’re not creating a new game from scratch, you’re simply making a format to play the way you enjoy. In this instance, folks like myself who like shields are asking for one of two things to happen. Either they give us a vanilla shield block, and/or give us tools to make those blocks ourselves. Those who are of similar mind can join us, and those who don’t like the idea of a shielded format don’t have to play it.

<<I don't think it's reasonable to say that shields and their consequences are easily removed from one game in particular.>>

<<You're missing the point. A ship without shields takes a large hit and loses some capabilities, depending on where it lands. A ship with shields takes a large hit and is unaffected. This means that ships with shields have a massive advantage over others, and any balance point either requires specifically anti-shield weapons that still don't hard counter shields, or requires all ships to have shields to be viable. Both of these force people to use specific weapons or systems to be at all viable, which I don't think is good for the game.>>

<<There are many correct ways to add new material to Space Engineers. I'm just giving reasons for why this isn't one of them.

You seem to often miss the point spectacularly, in ways that would have completely be prevented if you'd simply read the following sentences. Is it any wonder that you considered the main selling point of SE combat to be a problem?>>

<<Yes, because my own experience is backed with other PvP games' histories. Fun is subjective, but I really don't want to see people work out the optimal shield-stacking strategy and run over people's cool builds with a ball of reactors, guns, and arbitrarily-placed armor. I don't think that would be fun for even casual players, and it doesn't make higher-level PvP interesting. If people have other opinions, I'd like to see why, or at least how their shield idea differs.>>

<<And I think that the inclusion of such a block would force future updates to center around it in a way that prevents other aspects of combat from being fully realized and generally isn't a positive addition to the game. While having new options is normally good, I think this would, in the long term, close off more options than it opens.>>

<<Again, I don't think it's something that would be fun for most people in the community. If you want to explain how I'm wrong about that, feel free. (…).>>

Finally these bits I’ve pulled are very telling as to your motives in my book. I’ve explained to you how to balance a shield from a programming and practical standpoint. I’ve worked with computers for 15 years, and have made quite a few levels and items for older games. Several of which in fact were EA recommended for their respective titles. I won’t claim to know everything about SE because I certainly don’t. However I know how to balance a level and balance an item. Whether folks like that balance or not, and whether they like the mods/items/levels I create or not will ultimately be up to them. If they decide they like the content I create they’ll use it in some form or fashion. If they don’t then they won’t use it. The same is true with mods for SE and/or blocks in the game. I have also explained how if you don’t like the idea of a shield block being vanilla you don’t have to use it, or could just turn it off. I’ve also explained how if all Keen gives us are the tools to make said blocks ourselves, you wouldn’t have to use them.

Folks aren’t trying to force you to use said shield block nor the tools to create them, should we ever get either of them. Folks are asking for either a block or tools to create a format and play the way they want to play. However with some of the sections in bold, you demonstrate you don’t think folks should be allowed to have either of those things, because YOU think the community wouldn’t enjoy it. If you want to talk about whether folks would think its fun or not, the 2 most popular shield mods on the workshop right now are Cython’s Energy Shields and Defense Shields by Darkstar. Between those 2 mods alone you have 394,264 people that have subbed to a shield mod. This doesn’t count other shield mods or folks that have republished either mod with permission. At last known count, SE had sold 3.5 million copies. This means 11.3% of the playerbase is subscribed to those 2 mods going off pure numbers. That’s a significant amount of people who clearly don’t mind using a shield at least some of the time. So obviously a significant portion of the community disagrees with you on what is fun and what isn’t.

As I’ve said prior, you are one person with one opinion. You’re entitled to that opinion and you’re entitled to like what you like. However you don’t get to make the decision of what is fun and what isn’t for the rest of the community. The problem you have is that your logic would deny folks the ability to decide that for themselves. Your line of logic would also deny people the ability to setup and play their own custom format the way they want to play, when you have zero obligation to do the same. Your entire line of logic again at the end of the day boils down to, you don’t think the majority of folks would like it, and you already don’t like, so you think it shouldn’t be done. If you want to have your own server or world, you have to make decisions for that world. If folks don’t like shields or have no interest in the tools to create them, the don’t have to use either of them. Their solution is already there. But by your line of logic, that’s apparently not good enough. It’s not enough that you don’t like it, the sheer thought of a shield or the tools to make them being given to us is seen as diluting the purity of your game. Your way is not the only way of doing things and not everyone plays like you. You are entitled to your opinions and to like what you like. You’re free to say “I don’t think you’ll like it” as that’s you making a recommendation to other players. On the opposite end of that coin, you don’t get to make the decision for them on what they will or won’t use. Folks are not demanding you join them in using shields, they’re simply asking for either a vanilla block, or the tools to make modded blocks ourselves so we can play how we like on our servers, and you can be left out of it.

>Weld speed will have a drastic effect on how practical and effective it is to repair your ship in battle. [...] All of this effects the ship designs before there has ever been a single shot fired from a turret. [...]

It's true that weld speed is one of the more impactful stats, being more involved in combat. However, it's also true that it becomes completely irrelevant in some scenarios, like if railguns that punched clean through armor became the most common ship weapon, or if shields were more effective than armor. However, the point here was that, unlike normal survival ratios, combat is much harder to balance because of the interactions significantly affecting it in several ways. Inventory size and oxygen systems usually don't affect one another in a reasonable scenario, for reasons that I don't think are productive to elaborate upon, and so it's easier to balance grinding and progression in each of then separately. Combat, on the other hand, does not have anything remotely similar to this amount of separation.

>Yes actually you did. You argued that combat without shields wouldn’t be possible and couldn’t exist without a complete rebalance of the game and pvp.

I argued that combat without shields would be very difficult to re-create after implementing shields. Which is a very different thing from saying that combat without shields wouldn't exist entirely. It would, just in a very unbalanced state.

>[...]What is considered “interesting combat” is subjective and not a valid reason again others should be denied access to something, just because you don’t think it’s interesting.

It's subjective, but we can make some predictions based on how people react to changes in other games. For example, we can see through various gaming communities that rewarding skill is generally popular across almost every game with PvP involved. Which, coincidentally, is what I'm saying that shields would go against.

>You’ve already been told how easy it is to balance such an item for a basic vanilla block, and rebalance it player side if you think it’s too strong or too weak. [...] There is no harder to balance save in your own mind. Even then balance of the items only becomes a concern should you choose to use them.

I've already explained why they're hard to balance, and why choosing not to use them is barely an option.

>[...] pvp is NOT the sole deciding factor [...]

On the other hand, PvP tends to have much higher requirements in terms of balance. PvE balance isn't much of an issue as long as it's possible for the AI to give a challenge. So a combat update which encompasses PvP and PvE would almost certainly need to focus on the PvP part.

>[...]If all Keen did was give us the tools to make a shield block on our own, then you wouldn’t have to utilize the tools. [...]

It's possible to do practically anything with mods. This doesn't mean that Keen should just not update at all to let people customize everything. The point of having official updates is to make the base game's experience as good as possible. Shields don't contribute to this, so they shouldn't be implemented.

>[...] Sufficient supply of parts and energy has been assumed from the start. [...]"[...] Tell me, what is different between a welder automatically repairing something and consuming parts/resources vs a shield healing itself automatically consuming energy/resources to do so?" [...]Note the section in bold assuming adequate repair parts and energy for both items. See my second quote here: “Nope, not even close. (…) A welder system backed by sufficient repair parts and resources is the same concept as a shield backed by sufficient power and regeneration. Same concept, different methods.” That is my second statement I made. In all instances I have assumed adequate repair parts for our auto-welders to use, and adequate energy reserves for our hypothetical shields to use. There is no moving of goal posts here save in your own mind as you grasped at straws on this one.

The first doesn't really imply the assumption of adequate resources. In fact, by specifically mentioning the resources consumed, it sounds like that's intended to be something to factor in.

>There is no functional difference between an auto-welder with sufficient repair parts behind it, and a shield with sufficient energy behind it to rebuild the shield with. Both are functionally the same with different methods used.

So are you saying that these

>>>>>[...]a shield almost always covers a larger area, has a much less limited resource pool, usually does so faster, almost invariably is much further displaced from the damaged area, and tends to have much more overall effectiveness.

are all nonexistent?

>I also find it rather amusing that you say the two would be very different, yet in a previous post you said this: <You could implement shields on a block-by-block basis, but that's even weirder in terms of realism, acts very similarly to autowelding armor in terms of active combat mechanics, and still is a direct upgrade to stronger armor.”>

>In other words you contradicted yourself. Which one is it? Are they the same or not? Because both of your statements can’t be true at the same time.

You could change the gatling gun's projectile velocity, massively decrease clip size and rate of fire, increase the cost of ammo, and make the bullets explosive. It would still technically be called a gatling gun. But it would stretch realism massively for no good reason, be incredibly stupid, and be pointless when it could just be reskinned and called a rocket launcher. That doesn't change the fact that a gatling gun and a rocket launcher are fundamentally different concepts.

Similarly, you could implement shields to act in every way like autowelding armor. But that would be stupid, pointless, and an edge case which wouldn't be worth factoring in when deciding whether shields in general should be implemented.

>According to who? Because I missed that memo. Once again what is fun is subjective and this is not a valid argument but your opinion. [...]

I've explained my reasoning on this issue above. Reply to that, to reduce bloat.

>Once again, the idea that it would make griefing easier is your opinion and not fact. [...]

Regardless of our definitions of griefing, and the differing implications because of them, I simply don't think that these kind of lowered design requirements for maximally powerful PvP ships is good for the long-term health of the game, especially if it's an extension of one of the only two defense mechanisms.

>The bit in bold is where your disconnect with reality lies. You’re entitled to your opinion on what’s fun. [...]

I've explained my reasoning on this issue above. Reply to that, to reduce bloat.

>Here are 4 examples of statements you have made regarding programming and balancing that are just flat out wrong. [...]

There's a difference between what the developers put out and what is actually balanced. If that difference is big and obvious, then it isn't up to the community to fix it. It's the devs' fault for releasing a broken update.

> There is no “massive dropoff” on either side of balance either. You either like it or you don’t. If you don’t like it you can change it to suit yourself or turn it off. As for “balance easily shifted by community based variation in build performance” that’s not how balance works. If a massively overpowered combo was discovered tomorrow that allowed folks to do more damage than intended, that’s not “shifting the balance” but exposing a bug that was already there.

I think there's a fundamental difference in our definitions of "balance". I'm using it as a state of the game in which as many different strategies as possible are viable, within reason of course. As I've explained previously, it's very difficult to find this state for shields. As I've also explained previously, local communities that tend towards specific build or weapon choices cause this state to be very fragile regardless of the specific opinions of the people running the server.

>As to your meta argument, not having a clearly defined meta isn’t a bad thing. It forces folks to actually think outside the box and find what works for them. You know actually do a little engineering instead of just slapping a build together the way that (insert name here) does it.

A lack of a clearly defined meta only happens temporarily after balance changes. Given time, people will work out what is effective and what isn't. Shields would instead create extremely well defined metas, or at best extremely volatile and temporary ones. Which isn't good when most ships are large investments in terms of time and effort.

>Once again you are 100% wrong on this point, and it’s already been explained why. Balance does not work the way you think it does plain and simple. Not from a programming standpoint, and not from a practical standpoint.

Once again, I've explained why it is difficult or impossible to find the point at which this would be balanced, and the most you've offered is that it can be locally adjusted. Which, again, does not address the core issue.

>Heavier armor is only necessary if you design the rest of the game around needing heavier armor.

I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to prove here, and don't want to bloat by creating tangents. Would you mind elaborating?

>Nope you can have gravity and a means of fast travel without gravity generators or Jump Drives. Gravity can be tied to the center mass of the grid itself, with the ability to turn the artificial gravity field on/off via the control panel without needing a physical representation of a block present.

The reason that I brought up gravity generators was that there are realism breaks, but only when necessary for current or future features. Your example, apart from having difficult details, completely misses that point.

>The ability to fast travel can be tied to the grid itself. Each grid can fast travel to and from a certain area no matter how far. The cooldown is tied to the mass of the grid and how much power is available on the grid itself so each grid must be tactical in its use of Jump mechanic. You don’t need physical blocks to represent those mechanics, they just make it easier.

Same for Jump Drives. Completely missing the point.

>If the new standard is that something must be “needed” before it can be added, then by Keen’s admission SE is feature complete and we can kiss any further updates beyond your basic bug fixing goodbye. Afterall nothing else is needed. However that isn’t the point.

Completely missing the point again. The reason we have this whole section is that realism breaks must serve a necessary function to be worth implementing.

>[...]celestial bodies having too strong a gravity pull for their size

Practicality in having reasonably-sized celestial bodies while still having enough gravity to be similar to normal planets.

>celestial bodies being too close to each other

Practicality in allowing travel between celestial bodies in a reasonable time frame.

>ice being present in areas that are clearly above freezing temperatures

Practicality in allowing players to easily obtain hydrogen

>the lack of a food/water system

Practicality in not attempting to implement every possible feature at once.

>the fact we can even hear weapons fire in space just to name a few.

The one unnecessary reality break you've presented so far. And it's still pretty convenient to know when the turrets are shooting at something.

>[...]nuclear reactors[...]

Practicality to make power generation a factor in ship design.

>Let’s also not forget the Windmills working underground.

Because Keen half-asses everything and voxels are tricky anyway. I do think it needs to be fixed though.

>If you can tolerate all of these bits of unrealism, you can tolerate a shield or the tools to make them being given to modders. Especially since you can turn it off. If realism is your goal, you’re playing the wrong game.

I can tolerate many minor issues that exist because they would be far too much effort to fix or would make gameplay much worse as a result. What I can't tolerate is an unnecessary addition to an existing game that adds nothing unique to it and prevents an entire part of the game from functioning properly.

>Once again nope, an additional color is not needed.[...]

So basically what you're saying is that despite the developers, people have done this successfully, and created at least a dozen variations, all with their own rulesets and content, which all play differently enough to stay self-sustaining and are still forced to "roll with the punches" of new releases.

Do you really think this is a good example of game design?

>I’ve explained to you how to balance a shield from a programming and practical standpoint.

And I've explained why that doesn't work in this case.

>I’ve worked with computers for 15 years, and have made quite a few levels and items for older games. Several of which in fact were EA recommended for their respective titles. I won’t claim to know everything about SE because I certainly don’t. However I know how to balance a level and balance an item.

Then you should know what happens when someone decides that a game should have a must-include in an otherwise customizable loadout.

>Folks aren’t trying to force you to use said shield block nor the tools to create them, should we ever get either of them. Folks are asking for either a block or tools to create a format and play the way they want to play.

The problem is that it isn't "tools to create a format" when it's an official addition to the game. I'm perfectly fine with mods adding in shields, but as I've explained previously, adding them to the base game wouldn't be very good.

>However with some of the sections in bold, you demonstrate you don’t think folks should be allowed to have either of those things, because YOU think the community wouldn’t enjoy it. If you want to talk about whether folks would think its fun or not, the 2 most popular shield mods on the workshop right now are Cython’s Energy Shields and Defense Shields by Darkstar. Between those 2 mods alone you have 394,264 people that have subbed to a shield mod. This doesn’t count other shield mods or folks that have republished either mod with permission. At last known count, SE had sold 3.5 million copies. This means 11.3% of the playerbase is subscribed to those 2 mods going off pure numbers. That’s a significant amount of people who clearly don’t mind using a shield at least some of the time. So obviously a significant portion of the community disagrees with you on what is fun and what isn’t.

I play several games with mods, but I'm not constantly interested in what they offer and actively dislike some categories of popular mods in each. While some people might like shields, focusing on one small group of the playerbase and making their preferences the default is almost certain to end poorly.

>[...] Your entire line of logic again at the end of the day boils down to, you don’t think the majority of folks would like it, and you already don’t like, so you think it shouldn’t be done. [...]

Yes. I've also explained why I think the majority of players wouldn't like it, and I'm basing my conclusions on reasoning derived from basic truths about most PvP playerbases. If you want to explain why I shouldn't think so, then go ahead. Otherwise, that's just your opinion, so you're just as wrong.

<<It's true that weld speed is one of the more impactful stats, being more involved in combat. However, it's also true that it becomes completely irrelevant in some scenarios, like if railguns that punched clean through armor became the most common ship weapon, or if shields were more effective than armor. However, the point here was that, unlike normal survival ratios, combat is much harder to balance because of the interactions significantly affecting it in several ways. Inventory size and oxygen systems usually don't affect one another in a reasonable scenario, for reasons that I don't think are productive to elaborate upon, and so it's easier to balance grinding and progression in each of then separately. Combat, on the other hand, does not have anything remotely similar to this amount of separation.>>

You’re thinking on WAY TOO BIG of a scale for what is needed in terms of balance, both from a practical and programming standpoint. With SE you have literally infinite possible combinations with just the vanilla parts that can be created with the only limiting factors being the hardware to run it. If someone has the hardware to run it, then one could have a 1:1 Death Star or Starkiller Base. It’s impossible for them to take every single combination into account that could exist, and every possible interaction point that could come from those builds. To do that they would need to be omniscient and they’re not. The only way they can have anything resembling balance and allow for the build freedom we have now, is to balance around singular block performance and ship it to players.

Combat balancing and balancing as a whole does NOT work the way you think it does. In game as is right now, you assign an amount of damage you want each weapon to be able to do. From there you then decide how many hits from each weapon you want a block to be able to take before it breaks. With this, your baseline balance has been established. It will then come down to two things, who built their ship better, and who flies their ship better. The one who is better in those areas will be the victor. You can either hit your target or you can’t. No matter how much “balancing” you do, they will NEVER be able to account for all possible player interactions and possible builds. Quite literally they would need to be aware of every single one of the infinite combinations of builds that could exist, and the infinite number of ways to use them. Since they’re not omniscient, the only thing they can do is balance the block interactions around singular block performance and ship it to players to make it a player problem. There is no difference in pvp and pve balance from a programming or practical standpoint. You can either hit the target or you can’t. You can either fly or you can’t. Keen has no control over the tactics players use. They can only try to control block interactions.

<<I argued that combat without shields would be very difficult to re-create after implementing shields. Which is a very different thing from saying that combat without shields wouldn't exist entirely. It would, just in a very unbalanced state.>>

Once again you are 100% wrong on this point. A shield from a programming and practical standpoint is a temporary buff that grants additional health/protection to the blocks it effects as long as the shield generator is active. You either have this buff or you don’t, there is no middle ground. Combat without shields is recreated simply by turning them off and removing the ability to gain the temporary buff. It’s the same concept as missing a class buff in a game like World of Warcraft or similar that grants 10% extra health. Seriously dude you’re severely overthinking this.

<<It's subjective, but we can make some predictions based on how people react to changes in other games. For example, we can see through various gaming communities that rewarding skill is generally popular across almost every game with PvP involved. Which, coincidentally, is what I'm saying that shields would go against.>>

The part in bold actually made me laugh at my computer. You just put the hypocrisy of your position on full display for everyone to see. How quickly you’ve already forgotten your statement below from a previous post: “(…)Regenerating health is a common mechanic in other games, but often for entirely different reasons. Understanding those reasons helps when understanding why we don't just throw all the ideas into a game, and thus how we could implement ideas in a way that works with what we already have instead of grafting on something from another game.” With those 2 statements in bold you contradicted yourself big time. You tried to blast me for using examples from other games and say “we don’t just throw all ideas into a game” and also that we shouldn’t just “graft in something from another game.” Yet here you are appealing to the pvp scene from other games, proving your 100% total hypocrisy. Those 2 statements destroyed any and all credibility you might have had before.

Once more, this is NOT and I repeat is NOT purely a pvp game. This is a game where both pvp AND pve are possible. Both are valid choices and you cannot balance something with only one mode or the other in mind. Again you’re welcome to think a vanilla shield block wouldn’t be a good thing for pvp. However once more, that is purely your subjective opinion and is not a valid reason on its own why folks shouldn’t be given either a vanilla version of the block, or tools to make the blocks ourselves. If you think it’s bad, you have the option to mod said block, or simply turn it off. The game does not revolve around you or the pvp people. Something being an OPTION means you are not required to use it. If you don’t like it you can turn it off and don’t have to use it. If you do decide to use it then you can either use it as is, or mod it to your liking.

<<I've already explained why they're hard to balance, and why choosing not to use them is barely an option.>>

Point blank as much as I hate to say it, you have no idea what balance really is or how to achieve it from a practical standpoint or a programming one. Several times now you have asserted your own subjective opinion and several outright falsehoods as fact, when they are simply untrue. Balance plain and simple does not work the way you think it does and is not this big complicated process you’re making it out to be. You’re entitled to like what you like with regards to balance, but you are not entitled to your own facts of how it works.

Second on the point in bold, that is the epitome of entitlement mentality. You may not like the options you would have, but it doesn’t negate the fact you would have options. If you don’t like shields, you have an option that completely removes them from the picture, TURN THEM OFF. It’s no different than what I would do if a food system was implemented. I would have the ability to use the food system as is, mod it, or turn it off. If I decide I absolutely don’t like it, I can turn it off and not have to deal with it, and the folks that do like it could keep using it. Both sides win and get what they want. You not liking a shield block or the tools to make them is not valid reason that others should be denied the option. By numbers given previously, 395k subbed to the 2 most popular shield mods on the workshop is a significant amount of the playerbase based off last known number of copies of the game sold. That’s a total of just over 11% of the game’s playerbase. Complaining “that’s barely an option” is the same as if I went into a restaurant and complained they serve coleslaw. I may not be fond of the stuff, but I don’t get to tell other folks they’re not allowed to have it, or that restaurant shouldn’t be allowed to serve it just because I don’t like it. Your logic is the same way. Because YOU have decided you don’t like it and YOU think it’s bad, you want to make the decision for the entire playerbase and you don’t get to do that.

<<It's possible to do practically anything with mods. This doesn't mean that Keen should just not update at all to let people customize everything. The point of having official updates is to make the base game's experience as good as possible. Shields don't contribute to this, so they shouldn't be implemented.>>

Show me anywhere that folks are saying Keen should stop putting out updates outright and just leave everything to the modders. Show me specifically where this was said, because that’s news to me if someone is legitimately making that argument. Otherwise this bit in bold is once again your personal subjective opinion you are trying to assert as fact. At least 11% of the entire playerbase disagrees with you on what should be added. Again your subjective opinion is NOT fact.

<<On the other hand, PvP tends to have much higher requirements in terms of balance. PvE balance isn't much of an issue as long as it's possible for the AI to give a challenge. So a combat update which encompasses PvP and PvE would almost certainly need to focus on the PvP part.>>

100% untrue. See above as I elaborated quite a bit. The only way they can have any kind of balance is to balance around singular block performance and interactions. Since there is an infinite number of possible builds and interactions that can happen, it’s literally impossible for them to take into account all possibilities, as they would need to be omniscient and they’re not. Once more, you decide how much damage each weapon is supposed to do, how many hits each block is supposed to take, and ship it to players.

<<The first doesn't really imply the assumption of adequate resources. In fact, by specifically mentioning the resources consumed, it sounds like that's intended to be something to factor in.>>

Dude, you really are grasping at straws by making an outright false argument like this. There is no difference between an automatic welder consuming parts to repair a ship, and a shield consuming energy to repair itself. The overall effect and functionality is the same as you are repairing the barrier between the internals of the ship, and incoming weapons fire. Adequate resources have always been assumed. You’re only pretending otherwise now to grasp at this straw.

<<So are you saying that these

>>>>>[...]a shield almost always covers a larger area, has a much less limited resource pool, usually does so faster, almost invariably is much further displaced from the damaged area, and tends to have much more overall effectiveness.

are all nonexistent?>>

From a programming standpoint and practical one, again there is no difference between an automatic repair welder consuming parts to repair, vs a shield consuming energy to repair. As I said above, both are repairing the barrier between enemy weapons and the ship’s internals. The overall effect is the same, and it only feels drastically different to people because of the type of resource consumed. The welder consumes a physical part, a shield consumes energy. You must still have either physical components and/or energy for either the repair welder or the shield to work. If you don’t have the physical components, your repair welders are useless. If you don’t have the energy to devote to the shields, the shields are useless.

<<You could change the gatling gun's projectile velocity, massively decrease clip size and rate of fire, increase the cost of ammo, and make the bullets explosive. It would still technically be called a gatling gun. But it would stretch realism massively for no good reason, be incredibly stupid, and be pointless when it could just be reskinned and called a rocket launcher. That doesn't change the fact that a gatling gun and a rocket launcher are fundamentally different concepts.

Similarly, you could implement shields to act in every way like autowelding armor. But that would be stupid, pointless, and an edge case which wouldn't be worth factoring in when deciding whether shields in general should be implemented.>>

As I suspected you would do, you dodged the question completely. Previously you made the 2 statements below. 1: <“You claimed that shields were effectively the same as autowelding armor. I provided examples showing why they aren't the same. You're moving the goalposts to assume sufficient supply, but autowelding armor is still much more easily shut down because of its required proximity to the surface.”> 2: <“You could implement shields on a block-by-block basis, but that's even weirder in terms of realism, acts very similarly to autowelding armor in terms of active combat mechanics, and still is a direct upgrade to stronger armor.”> So point blank dude, which one is it? Are they the same or not? So far all you’ve done is flip flop back and forth on this based on what is convenient for you at the time. Either it’s the same concept or it’s not, you don’t get to have it both ways.

Once more dude, you are NOT the deciding factor as to what is considered a “stretch of realism for no good reason” and what isn’t. You are NOT the deciding factor as to what is a pointless addition and what isn’t. Overall from a practical and programming standpoint, shields already behave like an auto-welder system. Again the difference is in the resources consumed for both to do their deed. Once more you have no idea what you’re talking about when it comes to the practical or programming side of things. Again the realism ship has already sailed when it comes to this game, so you’re beating a dead horse on that one. If you want realism, TURN OFF THE BLOCK OR DON’T USE THE TOOLS. You already have and would have options, you just don’t like what those options are. Not everyone shares your definition of realism and not everyone plays the same as you in game. I’m not going to touch your weapons argument here as that I will deal with below.

<<There's a difference between what the developers put out and what is actually balanced. If that difference is big and obvious, then it isn't up to the community to fix it. It's the devs' fault for releasing a broken update.>>

<<I think there's a fundamental difference in our definitions of "balance". I'm using it as a state of the game in which as many different strategies as possible are viable, within reason of course. As I've explained previously, it's very difficult to find this state for shields. As I've also explained previously, local communities that tend towards specific build or weapon choices cause this state to be very fragile regardless of the specific opinions of the people running the server.>>

If you don’t like something a dev puts out, it’s automatically considered unbalanced and broken now? Dude get over yourself. Just because you don’t like something doesn’t automatically mean it’s broken or unbalanced. It means simply you don’t like that balance. Each server’s balance is going to vary based on the settings they have, what mods they use, and down the line. You would consider my server an unbalanced abomination if you were to set foot on it because of the settings I use and mods I have enabled on it. Most of them my own creation, some of them not. Likewise I’m sure I would make the same assessment of your server.

Once more in regards to balance with shields, both from a programming and practical standpoint, you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. Takes all of 5 minutes to balance them out. One only needs to determine how many hits you want said shield to be able to take before it fails, like you would do with armor blocks or any other block in game, then set the stats accordingly. If after you’ve created your initial balance you feel the shields, armor, or other block is too weak or too durable, you adjust the stats up or down accordingly. That’s how balance works at a modder level and at the Keen level. The balance point is going to vary from server to server based on the individual needs/wants of that server. The types of weapons used and the balance of those weapons is going to vary from server to server. If you don’t like the balance point on a specific server, you can ask the server owner to alter said balance, but they are under no obligation to do so. Otherwise don’t go to that server. Each server has to make those decisions for themselves, and not all servers will make the same decision.

<< A lack of a clearly defined meta only happens temporarily after balance changes. Given time, people will work out what is effective and what isn't. Shields would instead create extremely well defined metas, or at best extremely volatile and temporary ones. Which isn't good when most ships are large investments in terms of time and effort.>>

People already try to figure out the theoretical “best” build for what they’re trying to do in game with or without shields. This isn’t a valid argument against a vanilla shield or tools to create them being given. Folks are always going to try to figure out the next “meta” no matter what. There will be some metas shields are included in, and some they’re not included in. This is due in part to individual decisions that will be made by individual servers. Some servers will use them and some won’t. However that’s a choice each individual server will have to make for itself. Having options when building a ship or station isn’t a bad thing. I will grant you that they can require a fair amount of time and effort. On the opposite side of that coin having a shield also gives folks who want it an additional option to help protect that investment. Whether they use it or not will be up to them.

<< Once again, I've explained why it is difficult or impossible to find the point at which this would be balanced, and the most you've offered is that it can be locally adjusted. Which, again, does not address the core issue.>>

Once again, you have no idea how balance works from a programming or practical standpoint. I don’t need to offer more than adjust said shield or turn it off because nothing else is needed. If you don’t like shields or any other block, you can mod them to your liking or turn them off. Servers that do like shields or said block will continue to use them. Thus you get the balance point and environment you like for your server, and I get mine for my server. Both sides get what they want. The core issue I see here is that apparently not being good enough for you. You seem to think that since you don’t think the community wouldn’t like it, that they shouldn’t be given the option of a shield block or tools to create them. Because you have decided you don’t like it, you don’t think others should even be given the option so they can make that decision for themselves. That’s the core issue I see here.

<< I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to prove here, and don't want to bloat by creating tangents. Would you mind elaborating? >>

The argument of “x is only necessary if you design the rest of the game around needing x” can be applied to literally any block that exists now, or could possibly exist in the future. Replace “x” with whatever block you don’t like and the argument is the same. “new weapons are only necessary if you design the rest of the game around needing them. Stronger armor is only necessary if you design the rest of the game around needing it.” Your argument here is not valid.

<< The reason that I brought up gravity generators was that there are realism breaks, but only when necessary for current or future features. Your example, apart from having difficult details, completely misses that point.>>

<< Completely missing the point again. The reason we have this whole section is that realism breaks must serve a necessary function to be worth implementing. >>

<< [...]nuclear reactors[...] >>

The entire reason that the realism citations occurred is you made the argument that shields break realism and shouldn’t be included, nor should we be given the tools to make them. The problem you have in citing the realism argument is that the realism ship already sailed years ago. Jump Drives and Gravity Generators are NOT necessary from a programming standpoint. You don’t need them to have a quick travel mechanic or a gravity mechanic in game as both can be tied directly to the grids themselves without the physical representation of a block. Having that physical representation of a block present simply makes it easier and gives better control of the mechanics. If your concern is realism and you want something realistic, you’re playing the wrong game.

I also find it funny you say I missed the point, yet you ignore my entire point about the small grid small nuclear reactor as simply “practicality to make ship power a factor.” You claim you want realism, but you have apparently no issues with an 18 inch fully contained nuclear reactor that can put out enough energy to power the average modern house for an entire year. Once again, the realism ship sailed years ago so this is a bogus argument.

<<I can tolerate many minor issues that exist because they would be far too much effort to fix or would make gameplay much worse as a result. What I can't tolerate is an unnecessary addition to an existing game that adds nothing unique to it and prevents an entire part of the game from functioning properly.>>

Again, get over yourself. This is the most entitled, arrogant, and prideful statement I have seen from anyone in this community yet. This game does NOT revolve around you and what YOU can “tolerate.” This game doesn’t revolve around what you think is unique and what isn’t. Point blank, you are not as important as you think you are. You’re entitled to your opinions, but you are one person with one opinion on how the game should be. Point blank, you don’t know what you’re talking when it comes to programming or balancing and don’t know even a tenth of what you think you do. If you don’t like how something functions, mod it or turn it off. It’s really that simple. Just because you don’t like the function of something doesn’t make it broken. That’s like a little kid complaining a game cheated him because he lost.

<<So basically what you're saying is that despite the developers, people have done this successfully, and created at least a dozen variations, all with their own rulesets and content, which all play differently enough to stay self-sustaining and are still forced to "roll with the punches" of new releases.

Do you really think this is a good example of game design?>>

You have this unreasonable and irrational standard of what game development actually is. Continuing with our Magic the Gathering example, in a game like MTG there is a pool of 20,311 unique cards that can be utilized and called upon to create one’s deck. If you honestly think they’re going to remember all 20,311 cards every single time they release something new then you’re kidding yourself. All of the various formats will be effected differently as each format uses a different pool of cards, while excluding other cards. A card that’s extremely overpowered in one format such as EHD aka commander, may be just a generic filler card in a format such as Standard. This is because in Standard format the card never has a chance to interact with other cards allowing the OP combo to take place. If the overpowered combo becomes a major issue, then it can be banned from use in EDH. Yet over in Modern, the combo may actually be weak compared to other combos that exist. Different formats are going to react differently to new releases of cards. Some may see the new releases as extremely weak, others extremely powerful, and others indifferent.

Just as the different formats react differently to new releases in Magic the Gathering, different servers in SE will react differently to new block releases. A prime example is the recent hydrogen rebalance that took place. For servers using only the 3 vanilla thrusters, it’s a big deal as it allows them to carry more fuel, and get greater efficiency out of their thrusters. For my server it’s a welcomed change, but ultimately a neutral one since my fourth thruster type is stronger than hydrogen and already has greater fuel efficiency. Every server must make those choices for themselves, just like every format must decide what is best for itself in Magic the Gathering. If one wishes to have a server and such but can’t make those decisions, they are not ready to have a server of their own. Part of developing games means learning to roll with the punches. If one can’t do that, then they have no business in the development world.

<<Then you should know what happens when someone decides that a game should have a must-include in an otherwise customizable loadout.>>

If everyone played like you, this would be a legitimate argument. However not everyone shares your definition of “must include” so this is not a valid argument. If a shield alone is always the deciding factor on whether someone wins or loses, you’ve got more problems to worry about than just a shield. What is “must have” in a game like SE is purely subjective.

<<The problem is that it isn't "tools to create a format" when it's an official addition to the game. I'm perfectly fine with mods adding in shields, but as I've explained previously, adding them to the base game wouldn't be very good.>>

Yet again you assert your own subjective opinion as fact when it’s not. Continuing with our MTG example. If you don’t like how a current format operates, then play another format. If there are no other official formats you like, then create your own. EDH and Tiny Leader are two such formats that started out as unofficial formats and were later officially sanctioned. If you don’t like the idea of shields in the base game, TURN THEM OFF. If you were being forced at the barrel of a gun to use the block then you would have a valid argument, but you don’t. Every argument you’ve raised is purely your own subjective opinion which is mooted by the point you can turn the blocks off if you don’t want to use them.

<<I play several games with mods, but I'm not constantly interested in what they offer and actively dislike some categories of popular mods in each. While some people might like shields, focusing on one small group of the playerbase and making their preferences the default is almost certain to end poorly.>>

I’m so glad you decided to resort to the line in bold, as it once more shows the hypocrisy of your position. The “soop3r l33t HaRdCoR3 pvp” types like yourself are a minority in the community, yet you want to try to dictate to the rest of the community that they shouldn’t be allowed a vanilla shield block or the tools to make shield blocks, because the minority that is the “soop3r l33t HaRdCor3 pvp” crowd doesn’t like it. Sorry but you’re not that important. I also don’t call 11% of the playerbase insignificant if we’re going by 2019 numbers. Far fewer people requested weather than have requested shields, yet weather was added. Once more, TURN OFF THE BLOCK IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT.

<<Yes. I've also explained why I think the majority of players wouldn't like it, and I'm basing my conclusions on reasoning derived from basic truths about most PvP playerbases. If you want to explain why I shouldn't think so, then go ahead. Otherwise, that's just your opinion, so you're just as wrong.>>

Once again, get over yourself. You put me on blast previously for using other games as comparative examples, saying we shouldn’t graft in “unoriginal” ideas from other games and similar, yet here you continue to appeal to pvp arguments using other games. The hypocrisy is strong with you. This game is NOT now nor has it ever been a pvp only game. This is a game where both pvp and pve can happen. You’re welcome to your opinions on what you think the community would like or dislike. Yet it goes beyond just you having an opinion, to you trying to make that decision for the community, and actively trying to prevent them from even having the option to make that choice for themselves. Again you are NOT that important and this game doesn’t revolve around you. You’re entitled to your opinions, but you don’t get to dictate to me or others what my options should be based purely on those opinions. I swear if you aren’t Stardriver using a different name I will go out and buy a hat just to eat it, because you are making the same exact arguments he used to make, WORD FOR WORD.

>You’re thinking on WAY TOO BIG of a scale for what is needed in terms of balance, both from a practical and programming standpoint. [...]

Other games also have that kind of massive variance, but they can still make it work easily. For example, Hearthstone has hundreds of cards and 30 deck slots, but the devs have in general managed to keep the balance by looking at potential synergies and making balance changes post-launch after observing the meta.

To link this back to SE, there are an infinite number of ways to build a ship. However, many ships are simply not worthy of consideration. If a ship is missing essential systems, it obviously isn't worth worrying about. Many are not significantly different from each other, either. In the vast majority of cases, a few different blocks of armor or a slightly repositioned conveyor route won't be a deciding factor. Through similar methods, it's possible to get a rough idea of how different weapons and systems would interact with each other, and how to make them balance each other out.

Simply setting arbitrary values and making the players deal with it is lazy and neglectful development.

>[...] A shield from a programming and practical standpoint is a temporary buff that grants additional health/protection to the blocks it effects as long as the shield generator is active. You either have this buff or you don’t, there is no middle ground. [...]

I believe that I've explained this before. The fact that it has a shared health pool is enough to make it significantly different from additional armor, even without the cheap regeneration's effect combined with this. And the original point was about how shields would almost certainly require new weapons to interact with them in a way that separates them from armor, which in turn would make combat without shields much worse.

>{...]With those 2 statements in bold you contradicted yourself big time. [...]

Actually, it's two applications of the same idea. We need to think about whether other games are comparable, and in what ways, instead of jumping to the conclusion that either all other games are comparable or none of them are.

The concepts of countering and meta are useful despite being from largely unrelated games, because the key factor in their use is that players have various options that give comparative advantages or disadvantages against others. This also exists in Space Engineers, so it is an effective model of PvP.

On the other hand, shields are used because they're an easy way to avoid consequences for ship damage and give a quick number for survivability. Space Engineers is at best neutral for both of these, so other games' examples are not a strong reason for their inclusion.

>Once more, this is NOT and I repeat is NOT purely a pvp game. This is a game where both pvp AND pve are possible. Both are valid choices and you cannot balance something with only one mode or the other in mind.

Of course. What I'm saying is that PvP has much higher standards for balance than PvE. If one ship or loadout or weapon is much better at killing AI mooks, people will ask for a fix but won't be very unhappy. If one of the same is wildly OP at some or all levels of play, the players having to deal with it will be much angrier.

>100% untrue. See above as I elaborated quite a bit. The only way they can have any kind of balance is to balance around singular block performance and interactions. Since there is an infinite number of possible builds and interactions that can happen, it’s literally impossible for them to take into account all possibilities, as they would need to be omniscient and they’re not. Once more, you decide how much damage each weapon is supposed to do, how many hits each block is supposed to take, and ship it to players.

This routes back to the PvP balance debate above.

>Again you’re welcome to think a vanilla shield block wouldn’t be a good thing for pvp. However once more, that is purely your subjective opinion and is not a valid reason on its own why folks shouldn’t be given either a vanilla version of the block, or tools to make the blocks ourselves. If you think it’s bad, you have the option to mod said block, or simply turn it off. The game does not revolve around you or the pvp people. Something being an OPTION means you are not required to use it. If you don’t like it you can turn it off and don’t have to use it. If you do decide to use it then you can either use it as is, or mod it to your liking.

We've talked about this. This whole debate is about my reasoning for why this would be unpopular.

>Point blank as much as I hate to say it, you have no idea what balance really is or how to achieve it from a practical standpoint or a programming one.[...]

I've provided examples of balancing in other games and explained why they are comparable. So far, all you've said to refute this is variations upon "You're overthinking this" and "You have no idea what you're talking about". Until you provide a strong reason as to why this model of balance no longer becomes applicable, I will continue to use it.

>[...]You may not like the options you would have, but it doesn’t negate the fact you would have options.

I'd like to give special mention to this. If this argument is valid, so is the argument that you still have the option to mod shields in. You may not like the options you have, but it doesn't negate the fact that you would have options.

>If you don’t like shields, you have an option that completely removes them from the picture, TURN THEM OFF.[...]

This isn't about a personal dislike of shields. I've explained, repeatedly, that it's because I have good reasons to believe that this would have a negative impact on the gameplay experience for the majority of the playerbase.

>Complaining “that’s barely an option” is the same as if I went into a restaurant and complained they serve coleslaw. I may not be fond of the stuff, but I don’t get to tell other folks they’re not allowed to have it, or that restaurant shouldn’t be allowed to serve it just because I don’t like it. Your logic is the same way. Because YOU have decided you don’t like it and YOU think it’s bad, you want to make the decision for the entire playerbase and you don’t get to do that.

This is a terrible example, and you know it. If you want me to enunciate the exact reasons why this is a joke, I can, but I don't feel like it at the moment and it should be obvious to everyone who has read the preceding comments.

>[...] this bit in bold is once again your personal subjective opinion you are trying to assert as fact.[...]

Again, it's the center of this whole debate. I'm explaining why this would be unpopular, and so far most of your direct responses have been saying that it's just an opinion so it doesn't count.

>[...]See above as I elaborated quite a bit. [...]

I did too.

>[...] Adequate resources have always been assumed. [...]

I don't think this was clearly stated from the beginning, but this point is inconsequential either way.

>From a programming standpoint and practical one, again there is no difference between an automatic repair welder consuming parts to repair, vs a shield consuming energy to repair. As I said above, both are repairing the barrier between enemy weapons and the ship’s internals. The overall effect is the same, and it only feels drastically different to people because of the type of resource consumed. The welder consumes a physical part, a shield consumes energy. You must still have either physical components and/or energy for either the repair welder or the shield to work. If you don’t have the physical components, your repair welders are useless. If you don’t have the energy to devote to the shields, the shields are useless.

A shield almost always covers a larger area, has a much less limited resource pool, usually does so faster, almost invariably is much further displaced from the damaged area, and tends to have much more overall effectiveness.

Each of these is alone a major difference.

>[...]Either it’s the same concept or it’s not, you don’t get to have it both ways.[...]

I'm saying that they are fundamentally different concepts. I added that part to show that it's possible to blatantly ignore definitions and use ridiculous misnomers to technically make them identical, as support for the above section that outlined the major differences between shields and welders. I'm not sure why you ignored context and took it as evidence for the direct opposite.

>[...]Just because you don’t like something doesn’t automatically mean it’s broken or unbalanced. It means simply you don’t like that balance. [...]

Apparently, I'm going to have to do this extremely slowly and clearly.

It's obvious that having one single dominant strategy or tactic is unhealthy for any game with a PvP aspect.

Source: the vast majority of PvP games over the last few years.

Therefore, without a strong reason for the uniquity of Space Engineers, it is likely that having one single dominant strategy or tactic will be unhealthy for the PvP parts of Space Engineers.

So, if shields make it difficult to have multiple effective strategies in PvP, they will be unhealthy for Space Engineers.

Now can you stop with the "personal opinion" spiel and actually get into solid reasoning?

>Once more in regards to balance with shields,[...]

Again, this doesn't help at all in finding a point at which different combat systems are at comparable levels of power, and definitely doesn't help when that point might not exist.

>[...]This isn’t a valid argument against a vanilla shield or tools to create them being given.

Vanilla is the default. Individual servers won't affect this much, if at all, because vanilla can and should be the standard for other modes. The majority of builds are almost certain to be either heavily modded, or optimized for vanilla use because of this.

>Folks are always going to try to figure out the next “meta” no matter what. [...]

Without constant updates, the meta usually stagnates. The problem is that shields are extremely volatile within the meta. If their power is poorly adjusted, they're either universal or nonexistent. And if their relative strength is very close to other strategies', they're useless in some fights and incredibly powerful in others. I'm trying to advocate for changes to PvP that maximize the number of distinct strategies in the meta, and minimize the number of fights that the meta unilaterally decides. If you look at other PvP games, this is usually what the devs try to do as well.

>[...]If you don’t like shields or any other block, you can mod them to your liking or turn them off.[...]

I've already explained why "just turn them off" isn't a valid argument.

>The argument of “x is only necessary if you design the rest of the game around needing x” can be applied to literally any block that exists now, or could possibly exist in the future. [...]

It's applicable to some blocks. Many functions simply need to exist in some form, like thrust, rotation, power, and weapons. My point was that realism breaks are a strong argument against a block's addition unless that block's function is necessary and there's no other reasonable way to do it.

>[...]You don’t need them to have a quick travel mechanic or a gravity mechanic in game as both can be tied directly to the grids themselves without the physical representation of a block. [...]

It's not the block that's the problem, it's the realism break. If we need a fast travel mechanic in some form, we're already breaking realism, so it's better to give players control over it. If we need simple directional gravity, then let players mess around with it so we can find bugs before having to deal with them on planets. Removing the blocks is meaningless.

>I also find it funny you say I missed the point, yet you ignore my entire point about the small grid small nuclear reactor as simply “practicality to make ship power a factor.” You claim you want realism, but you have apparently no issues with an 18 inch fully contained nuclear reactor that can put out enough energy to power the average modern house for an entire year. Once again, the realism ship sailed years ago so this is a bogus argument.

Because it's the same thing all over again. Keen needed an easy way to power a small grid. At the time, calling it a small reactor was better than calling it, for example, a small battery. Now, it's just another thing that needs a rework.

>[...]This game does NOT revolve around you and what YOU can “tolerate.” [...]

I was using the word "tolerate" to mirror your own language and emphasize my point. I can reword it if you don't like your own tone:

"There are many minor issues with the game, but the majority of them would be impractical to fix. On the other hand, shields would an unnecessary addition to an existing game that adds nothing unique to it and prevents an entire part of the game from functioning properly."

Are we going to deal with substance now?

>[...]Continuing with our Magic the Gathering example, in a game like MTG there is a pool of 20,311 unique cards that can be utilized and called upon to create one’s deck. If you honestly think they’re going to remember all 20,311 cards every single time they release something new then you’re kidding yourself.[...]

So you're saying that there's not only a fractured playerbase, but the developers only get by because there's too much content to balance?

We have two types of armor, three types of thruster, and two guns, spread across a few size factors, with many other games competing for business. For some reason, I don't think the "too big to fail" strategy will work here.

>Just as the different formats react differently to new releases in Magic the Gathering, different servers in SE will react differently to new block releases. A prime example is the recent hydrogen rebalance that took place. For servers using only the 3 vanilla thrusters, it’s a big deal as it allows them to carry more fuel, and get greater efficiency out of their thrusters. For my server it’s a welcomed change, but ultimately a neutral one since my fourth thruster type is stronger than hydrogen and already has greater fuel efficiency. Every server must make those choices for themselves, just like every format must decide what is best for itself in Magic the Gathering. If one wishes to have a server and such but can’t make those decisions, they are not ready to have a server of their own. Part of developing games means learning to roll with the punches. If one can’t do that, then they have no business in the development world.

What I'm getting from this is that we're using fundamentally different balance models. However, I don't think one based on offline CCGs is very applicable to videogames, and doesn't take advantage of the faster and more centralized balancing capabilities that they can provide. Additionally, it isn't one that seems likely to survive a small playerbase, many other options, and low total content output, without a strong reason.

>If everyone played like you, this would be a legitimate argument. However not everyone shares your definition of “must include” so this is not a valid argument. If a shield alone is always the deciding factor on whether someone wins or loses, you’ve got more problems to worry about than just a shield. What is “must have” in a game like SE is purely subjective.

If people are designing ships for PvP, they are playing like me. And if there's an update focused around combat, it's encouraging people to play like me as well.

>Yet again you assert your own subjective opinion as fact when it’s not. [...]

I've already explained the reasons for why this would be bad for everyone.

>[...]you want to try to dictate to the rest of the community that they shouldn’t be allowed a vanilla shield block or the tools to make shield blocks[...]

I'm not against making modded shields easier. I simply don't think that the base game should require mods to have worthwhile PvP. I don't think that's a controversial position at all. And I've explained why the rest of the community, after playing with shields, would be likely to agree with me.

>Once again, get over yourself. You put me on blast previously for using other games as comparative examples, saying we shouldn’t graft in “unoriginal” ideas from other games and similar, yet here you continue to appeal to pvp arguments using other games. The hypocrisy is strong with you.

I've explained the difference between the two above. Other games can be applicable, but aren't universally so and need strong reasons for the comparison to be valid.

>[...]You’re welcome to your opinions on what you think the community would like or dislike.[...]

If I think the community would dislike something, wouldn't it be rational to advocate against it? In fact, isn't that the main reason to advocate for or against something?

>I swear if you aren’t Stardriver using a different name I will go out and buy a hat just to eat it, because you are making the same exact arguments he used to make, WORD FOR WORD.

It would be a good time to buy a hat then. It's probably better to order one online though, given the current circumstances.

Would you mind linking the conversations? I'm actually interested in this guy now.

<<Other games also have that kind of massive variance, but they can still make it work easily. For example, Hearthstone has hundreds of cards and 30 deck slots, but the devs have in general managed to keep the balance by looking at potential synergies and making balance changes post-launch after observing the meta.

To link this back to SE, there are an infinite number of ways to build a ship. However, many ships are simply not worthy of consideration. If a ship is missing essential systems, it obviously isn't worth worrying about. Many are not significantly different from each other, either. In the vast majority of cases, a few different blocks of armor or a slightly repositioned conveyor route won't be a deciding factor. Through similar methods, it's possible to get a rough idea of how different weapons and systems would interact with each other, and how to make them balance each other out.

Simply setting arbitrary values and making the players deal with it is lazy and neglectful development..>>

You get props for thinking of the Hearthstone example and recognizing some of the ways they have chosen to balance the game and make it easier for themselves to deal with. With Hearthstone there are limits to deck size, copies of a card you can have in your deck, cards limited to certain heroes in addition to the generic cards, a limit to actions you can take per turn based on mana pool and applicable card effects, format restrictions, and overall a limit on the number of turns that can happen due to draw damage. There are still a lot of choices that can be made, but not nearly as many as people think because of the restrictions. If not for those restrictions, the possibilities would be infinite. However it’s exactly those restrictions as to why the comparison to SE fails. SE has no such restrictions as I explained prior. The possibilities are infinite in SE. You may think certain a certain build isn’t worth worrying about, but bottom line it's still a possible combination that must be taken into account whether you like it or not since it can be taken into combat.

As to setting arbitrary values, who gets to define what is “arbitrary” and what isn’t? Once again, it’s really simple, you define how much damage you want a weapon to do, and how many hits from said weapon a block is able to take, then set your stats accordingly. That’s not arbitrary, that’s working from a plan. You may not like the plan, but you not liking the plan doesn’t make it arbitrary.

<< I believe that I've explained this before. The fact that it has a shared health pool is enough to make it significantly different from additional armor, even without the cheap regeneration's effect combined with this. And the original point was about how shields would almost certainly require new weapons to interact with them in a way that separates them from armor, which in turn would make combat without shields much worse.>>

Nope, that’s not how that works. From a programming and practical standpoint, there is no difference between the two interactions. When a weapon impacts a block of armor or a shield, the impact subtracts an appropriate amount of health from the shield or block. If there is no enough health to absorb the impact then the shield fails or the block breaks. The only time an additional interact comes into play is if one wanted to add a damage variance between what a weapon does to armor vs a shield. Otherwise no other interactions are required and this once again boils down you pushing a personal opinion that is simply untrue.

<< Actually, it's two applications of the same idea. We need to think about whether other games are comparable, and in what ways, instead of jumping to the conclusion that either all other games are comparable or none of them are.

The concepts of countering and meta are useful despite being from largely unrelated games, because the key factor in their use is that players have various options that give comparative advantages or disadvantages against others. This also exists in Space Engineers, so it is an effective model of PvP.

On the other hand, shields are used because they're an easy way to avoid consequences for ship damage and give a quick number for survivability. Space Engineers is at best neutral for both of these, so other games' examples are not a strong reason for their inclusion.>>

As expected, you want to have your cake and eat it too. Sorry but that’s not how it works. You don’t get to appeal to other games when it suits you, then try to dismiss it purely out of hand when it doesn’t. That’s called hypocrisy. I gave you examples of shields working in other games, how they work, and also explained how they work from a programming perspective. You dismissed them out of hand and are clinging to a false notion of how shields work. Yet at the same time you’re trying to say “we shouldn’t just graft in ideas from other games” you’re appealing to how pvp works in those other games to say shields shouldn’t exist in this one. Your final line in bold is the very definition of hypocrisy as you’re trying to have it both ways. When you used the Hearthstone example above, I didn’t simply write it off because it came from another game. I explained the flaw in the example. Hearthstone places clear definable limits on its stuff that SE does not.

As to your first line in bold, that just reads to me as you whining you would have to work a little harder to kill something. Being unable to get through their shields is no different than being unable to get through their armor. If you’re half as good as you want us to think you are and are some “sup3r l33t” pvp guy like you’ve been portraying, you shouldn’t have an issue. If you feel they aren’t balanced or to your liking, TURN THEM OFF. You have options, and you not liking a feature isn’t enough on its own to justify keeping it from the game. If a shield alone is making that huge of a difference, then the problem is you and not the shields. Learn to play around it, mod it, turn it off, or quit whining. That’s all the first line in bold is, you whining that you actually have to change your strategy.

<< Of course. What I'm saying is that PvP has much higher standards for balance than PvE. If one ship or loadout or weapon is much better at killing AI mooks, people will ask for a fix but won't be very unhappy. If one of the same is wildly OP at some or all levels of play, the players having to deal with it will be much angrier.>>

Once again, you are 100% incorrect. When something is in a balanced state, this means that the items may have certain edges that make them better suited for certain tasks than others, but ultimately are around the same overall power level as other items on paper. Much like the difference between a katana and a rapier. A rapier is better for stabbing where as a katana is better for slashing, though both are equally capable of killing. It’s just a matter of how the fatal damage is dealt. If a rapier user is skilled enough, the sword’s weaknesses at slashing can be overcome. That doesn’t make the sword “overpowered”, it simply means that the user is skilled enough that the weaknesses don’t matter. Someone being better than you doesn’t mean the stuff they’re using is overpowered. From a practical and programming standpoint there is no difference in the two.

<< I've provided examples of balancing in other games and explained why they are comparable. So far, all you've said to refute this is variations upon "You're overthinking this" and "You have no idea what you're talking about". Until you provide a strong reason as to why this model of balance no longer becomes applicable, I will continue to use it.>>

No, all you’ve done is provided your own subjective opinion and then asserted that opinion as fact when it’s not. You have asserted several outright falsehoods as fact when it comes to programming. You have asserted that there is some massive difference between a shield and an armor block in terms of functionality and there’s not. Both are barriers between enemy weapons and the inside of your ship. You have asserted there is some massive difference between a shield repairing itself with energy, and a network of repair welders consuming parts to repair the armor. You are repairing the barrier between the outside of the ship, and the internals. The only difference is in the physical form of the protection and the type of resource consumed. You have asserted that there is essentially some big grand formula with balancing shields and similar. I have explained how it can be done in five minutes or less.

Plain and simple it’s obvious you’ve never sat down and tried to balance a game. You’ve never programmed something into a game, and you have never taken the time to actually design something from the ground up and see it put into the game. Point blank you are pushing false information as fact which is why I have called it out. I have said “you have no idea what you’re talking about” because quite frankly when it comes to programming and such, you don’t.

<< I'd like to give special mention to this. If this argument is valid, so is the argument that you still have the option to mod shields in. You may not like the options you have, but it doesn't negate the fact that you would have options.>>

<< This isn't about a personal dislike of shields. I've explained, repeatedly, that it's because I have good reasons to believe that this would have a negative impact on the gameplay experience for the majority of the playerbase.>>

<< This is a terrible example, and you know it. If you want me to enunciate the exact reasons why this is a joke, I can, but I don't feel like it at the moment and it should be obvious to everyone who has read the preceding comments.>>

<< Again, it's the center of this whole debate. I'm explaining why this would be unpopular, and so far most of your direct responses have been saying that it's just an opinion so it doesn't count.>>

The difference between you and me is that I acknowledge there are already existing options to mod shields in. I acknowledge that it’s already possible to create shield block mods. However there are certain elements of the API that modders don’t have access to making it more cumbersome than necessary. Myself and others acknowledge that options exist. However we have asked those options be expanded due the limited access to the API to create shield mods, or just give us a vanilla shield. I’ve acknowledged that there are already existing options. I have simply requested those options be expanded or improved.

You on the other hand are sitting back and pretending you would have no options should a vanilla shield be created, or better tools given to create shield mods. You have sat back and made statements such as “just “turn it off” is hardly an option”. You are saying you don’t like shields and think they would harm the “normal experience” of the game and require all these extra balancing steps, and how future balance would have to revolve around them. Which is again an opinion you’re entitled to. However when you are presented with an option that gives both sides what they want, you being allowed to remove shields from the equation, and folks who want them the ability to use them, you whine and complain saying “that’s hardly an option.” In addition you have whined about how shields allow people to “escape consequences of getting hit, how unrealistic you think shields are, how balancing them would be some monumental task and all future updates would have to be balanced around them being present, how they would be a nightmare from a pvp standpoint, how they shouldn’t be added because they’ll upset the pvp balance.

You have argued how YOU don’t think the community would like shields, how better tools to create shield mods wouldn’t get used enough to justify their development, and then went on to argue that because YOU don’t think they would be well received they shouldn’t be added. Instead of being given the block/tools and deciding for themselves if they like it or not, view it as a negative on their gameplay or not, they should just trust you and allow you to speak for them because YOU don’t think they would like it. Then when you are rightly called on it, you turn around and say “this is a joke”.

<< I've already explained why "just turn them off" isn't a valid argument.>>

So the idea you were joking is pure bull****. You’re dead serious and now you’re just trying to back peddle since you were called out on it. You say you don’t like shields, and you say they’re bad. Yet by turning them off you get what you want in not having to deal with them, and folks who do like them can continue to use them. Both sides win, yet apparently that’s not good enough for you. It’s not enough that you can turn them off or simply ignore the existence of the tools to create the blocks, no because YOU don’t like it, no one else should be allowed to use it. I don’t like the idea of a hunger system, nor do I like the idea of a Jump Inhibitor. However if other folks want those items on their servers, they should be allowed to have those items. I can simply turn those systems off and not have to deal with them. They get their Jump Inhibitors and hunger system, and I don’t have to deal with it. The only reason you would consider “turn it off” as a non-option is because of entitlement. You say you don’t want to make the decision for the community, yet your words and actions say otherwise. The fact that you said previously “it was a joke” then turn around and assert it again proves your hypocrisy. The fact that you would have an option to accomplish exactly what you want while allowing others to still use the block/tools and are complaining shows that you do think you should be allowed to make that decision for the community, and sorry you’re not that important dude.

<< I don't think this was clearly stated from the beginning, but this point is inconsequential either way.>>

You can’t be serious. Do you really think I can’t go back and pull text from my own posts? See below. Once again you are 100% wrong: “You ignoring the examples doesn't make them less valid, Tell me, what is different between a welder automatically repairing something and consuming parts/resources vs a shield healing itself automatically consuming energy/resources to do so? The answer is zero. Both are done automatically and both occur as long as the needed available resources is present.” That was my first quote on the issue. Note the section in bold assuming adequate repair parts and energy for both items. See my second quote here: “Nope, not even close. (…) A welder system backed by sufficient repair parts and resources is the same concept as a shield backed by sufficient power and regeneration. Same concept, different methods.”

See relevant parts in bold. Adequate resources have been assumed from the start. You’ve simply ignored it.

<< I'm saying that they are fundamentally different concepts. I added that part to show that it's possible to blatantly ignore definitions and use ridiculous misnomers to technically make them identical, as support for the above section that outlined the major differences between shields and welders. I'm not sure why you ignored context and took it as evidence for the direct opposite.>>

Nope and again nope. It’s already been explained to you why they are the same from a programming and practical standpoint. There is no difference between a shield with adequate energy backing it up, and a network of repair welders with adequate resources backing them up. You either have them or you don’t. If you feel a shield isn’t sucking up enough energy, then that’s a simply numbers tweak. Again, you have no valid argument here. You can say all you want they’re different, but it’s not. It’s only different in your mind.

<< Vanilla is the default. Individual servers won't affect this much, if at all, because vanilla can and should be the standard for other modes. The majority of builds are almost certain to be either heavily modded, or optimized for vanilla use because of this.>>

Vanilla is not strictly default settings. Vanilla in this instance means the base game and all of the possible settings included in vanilla, while excluding mods. Keen pumps out a base game for folks and then leaves it up to players to change the base settings how they like, which includes allowing for mods.

<< I've already explained why "just turn them off" isn't a valid argument.>>

Already addressed this but one last bit that needs to be stated. Trying to say “turn them off isn’t an option” is like someone complaining they don’t like the new weather system but refusing to turn it off and demanding the system be removed from the game because they don’t like it. In this case you’re saying you don’t like shields and instead of you simply turning them off, you are actively demanding Keen exclude them from the game and deny others the option to use them because YOU have decided you don’t like them. So because you personally don’t like them, no one in the community should even have the option. Please explain, who is going to force you to have shields turned on should they become vanilla, or use the better modding tools to create shield blocks? What valid reason do you have that prevents you from simply turning shields off should they be implemented?

<< It's not the block that's the problem, it's the realism break. If we need a fast travel mechanic in some form, we're already breaking realism, so it's better to give players control over it. If we need simple directional gravity, then let players mess around with it so we can find bugs before having to deal with them on planets. Removing the blocks is meaningless.>>

What you consider realistic and what others consider realistic isn’t always the same thing. I can tell you right now that my definition and your definition are different. Once more the realism ship sailed long ago. If you’re wanting realism then you’re playing the wrong game. If you think something is unrealistic, no one is forcing you to play with it. No one is going to force you to use a shield block if you don’t like them. Point being dude, realism sailed long ago. If you feel something is too unrealistic, then don’t play with it. Otherwise you don’t get to dictate to other servers and other players based on what you find realistic or not.

<< (…)"There are many minor issues with the game, but the majority of them would be impractical to fix. On the other hand, shields would an unnecessary addition to an existing game that adds nothing unique to it and prevents an entire part of the game from functioning properly."(…)>>

Point blank dude, you don’t know what you’re talking about when it comes to programming and are not qualified to speak on it. I’ve already explained several times how adding a shield does not prevent combat from functioning or anything from functioning. You not liking the function of something doesn’t mean it’s broken or isn’t working properly. The only “necessary” items we need in game are 1 power source, an armor block to provide surface, 1 engine type, 1 weapon, and that’s really it. Nothing else is needed and is all fluff. If we’re only adding items that are “necessary” now, then we may as well kiss any future updates to SE goodbye save for bug fixes. Otherwise that’s it.

<< What I'm getting from this is that we're using fundamentally different balance models. However, I don't think one based on offline CCGs is very applicable to videogames, and doesn't take advantage of the faster and more centralized balancing capabilities that they can provide. Additionally, it isn't one that seems likely to survive a small playerbase, many other options, and low total content output, without a strong reason.>>

The previous Magic the Gathering example wasn’t meant to be a 1:1 translation, but to draw on something that has multiple format options comparable to the multiple balances that exist across the different SE servers based on mod choice, base settings and so on. The problem you have is that you seem to think that everything needs to be balanced the same way, and that everyone plays the same way, and that’s not the case. That was one of the reasons I brought up the MTG example as I was drawing on different formats existing like servers on SE using different settings, and essentially making their own format.

-EDH aka Commander requires a 100 card deck, and you can only have one copy of each card you use in your deck, unless the card specifically says otherwise. The cards you select must match the color identity of your commander, meaning you can’t use off colored cards. You win the game by reducing your opponent’s life total to zero, or dealing 21 damage with a single commander to an opponent. As long as a card isn’t on the ban list it can be used.

-Standard format requires a 60 card deck. You can have 4 copies of a single card in your deck, unless the card specifies otherwise. The cards you select can be any color you want them to be. You can only select cards from the 2 most recent blocks and core set. On rare occasions if a particular card is found to be too overpowered for standard, it will be placed on a ban list. You win by reducing the opponent’s life total to zero.

The balance and overall feel of both formats is radically different, but at the core you are still playing Magic the Gathering. This applies the same way to various servers in SE. Each server will generally have it’s own feel, potentially it’s own rules and balance, but at the core is still Space Engineers. Not every SE server is going to have the same balance and setup, but the core game will still be there. The balance on my server is going to be different than the balance on your server as just one example. Both are valid play choices, but with their own flair.

<< If people are designing ships for PvP, they are playing like me. And if there's an update focused around combat, it's encouraging people to play like me as well.>>

Good grief dude GET OVER YOURSELF. The amount of ego in that statement is so big even someone like Zeus would be jealous. This game does not revolve around you, and not everyone plays like you. You’re one guy with one opinion. Not everyone plays like you or has the desire to play like you. Not everyone fights the same way as you or builds the same way as you. If they did this would be a game of nothing but drones. If and when a combat update was to come, it is NOT encouraging folks to play like you, it’s encouraging folks to try out the new combat system. If they wanted to encourage folks to play like you, they would straight up say “hey check this guy out for tips and tricks on combat and go to his server.” Until something like that happens, it’s just you blowing hot air about your own perceived greatness that only exists in you mind. Seriously, you need to come back to reality as you’re not even in this universe anymore you’ve gone so far off course. You are not Klang’s gift to SE you think you are. If everyone wanted to play like you, folks would go to a server hosted by you and be asking you for your settings and mirroring your server settings to the max. The fact that there are servers existing that don’t do this, and go in the complete opposite direction of yours shows not everyone has the desire to play like you. Really dude, come back to reality, because right now you’re not there.

<< I've already explained the reasons for why this would be bad for everyone.>>

No what you’ve done is give your own subjective opinion on something, then try to assert that subjective opinion as objective fact. At least 395,000 people disagree with you on shields being a bad thing or they wouldn’t sub to the mods. That’s just over 11% of the playerbase subbed those 2 mods, which would be even higher if console had access to mods. Once again you are one person with one opinion. You’re entitled to the opinion they would be bad. What you don’t get to do is then turn around and try to make the decision for the ENTIRE playerbase that they shouldn’t be allowed an option, or tools to create said option because YOU don’t think they would like it. Your opinion =/= objective fact, get over it.

<< I've explained the difference between the two above. Other games can be applicable, but aren't universally so and need strong reasons for the comparison to be valid.>>

Ah so the standard is now “must have strong reasons for being valid” instead of “we shouldn’t be grafting ideas from other games, and throwing every un-unique idea into the game”. This as you sit back and try to play arbitrator as to what is/isn’t a strong reason. All so you can provide an escape mechanism for your own arguments like every wannabe “free thinker” and “skeptic” on the internet when presented with an idea they don’t like, instead of using logic and reason to explain why it doesn’t work. Good to know the goal posts have shifted again.

<< I'm not against making modded shields easier. I simply don't think that the base game should require mods to have worthwhile PvP. I don't think that's a controversial position at all. And I've explained why the rest of the community, after playing with shields, would be likely to agree with me.>>

A couple of things here, first up you are not authority on what is “worthwhile pvp” and what isn’t. You are one person with one opinion on how pvp and the game as a whole should go. What you consider “worthwhile pvp” and what others consider worthwhile pvp may not be the same thing. I can tell you right now you and I have drastically different views on what is considered worthwhile. Next, show me anywhere that someone is wanting to require mods for pvp OR pve either one. Show me anywhere this is happening or being proposed to happen. If you’re insisting this is a thing, certainly you can show me at least one instance of it. Don’t worry I’ll wait.

What I have seen people say is they want the option of a vanilla shield, or better tools to create shield mods for themselves. Meaning it is NOT required use, and folks can use it if they choose, or ignore its existence and turn it off. What is “required” in this game for it to be fun or worthwhile is wholly subjective and opinion based. For the way I like to build, I needed something better than better than hydrogen as I absolutely despised, and still somewhat despise the balance of hydrogen in this game. As such I created my own thruster type that does what I need it to do. Other servers may not see the need for a fourth thruster type and as such only roll with the three vanilla options. Something like that is a choice each server will have to make for themselves. Not everyone will choose the same options and/or mods to play with as not everyone has the same goals for their server and their world. Your argument assumes everyone plays pvp exclusively and they don’t. Some folks are exclusively pvp, some exclusively pve, and some do a bit of both.

Oh the arrogance and outright elitism in your bolded line there. You really are that full of yourself and have bought your own egotistical press. Get off your high horse already dude. You are not the voice of the community you seem to think you are and you sure as klang don’t speak for me. I’m willing to bet you also don’t speak for the 395k others who have subbed to the 2 biggest shield mods on the workshop either. Your argument is basically like the raging neckbeards in various online games saying “you’re not a real gamer if you’re using (insert option here). When you learn to play like me, you’ll be a real gamer.” You’re entitled to your opinion on what you think the community would like, but you don’t get to make that final decision for them. Also with that line in bold you’ve cemented to me you’re either Stardriver using a different name or someone extremely close to him, as that’s the same kind of egotistical argument he made previously.

<< If I think the community would dislike something, wouldn't it be rational to advocate against it? In fact, isn't that the main reason to advocate for or against something?>>

Voicing your opinion and opposition/support for something is one thing and to be expected, but you’ve gone well beyond that. You’re entitled to your opinion on what you think is a good idea or bad idea. You’re entitled to you opinion on what you think is a good addition to the game or not. You’re also entitled to say “I don’t think this should be done because (insert reasons here).” However you’ve gone well beyond simply advocating for something into trying to force your desired outcome. You’ve gone from saying “I don’t think folks would like that” to actively trying to prevent people from being given content and being able to make the “shields or no shields” decision for themselves.

I despise the idea of a hunger system in this game. I feel more often than not they become little more than “eat this so you don’t die” and add nothing of value to the game. They ultimately become little more than added complexity to manage for the sake of complexity. I also strongly despise the idea of Jump Inhibitors and feel they’re little more than a griefer’s holy grail of desired tools to abuse other players. The only reason for such a block to exist is to force a fight on unwilling participants.

However at the same time I also believe the folks who want those items should be able to have them if it were to come down to it. As long as I am not forced to participate and can turn off the hunger system or Jump Inhibitor for my server, there is no issue or harm done to me or my server purely by those items existing. If the concern is “default” settings then they can leave the items turned off by default, which gives the individual server owners the choice of whether to turn them on or not. The same approach would be taken with shields, they are left off by default, but can be turned on if desired. As long as I am not forced to use the hunger system or Jump Inhibitors on my server, I can turn them off or leave them off and go on about my day ignoring their existence, and the folks who do like those systems can use them to their heart’s content. Both sides win. They get the content they want and I don’t have to be part of it.

The difference between you and me is that although I’m opposed to Jump Inhibitors and a hunger system, I still think that is a decision each server should be able to make for itself if those items were to exist. I’m asking for folks to be given optional content. You’re stomping your feet and trying to gatekeep content based on what YOU think the community would like, and are trying to make decisions for them..

Overall, if you would be able to turn it off (you would be) there is no harm done to your server or you as you can turn it off. You are not being forced to participate, and would have an option that gives you exactly what you want, a shield-less server. Having the option to turn it off and get what you want, but refusing to do so is like a little kid complaining folks can play with something he doesn’t like. Realism has already sailed and most of the key elements to make a shield are already there, especially with the Safe Zone block being potentially adaptable for a shield template. Different modes and blocks for different folks. There is no one singular way to play in a sandbox.

I see a massive flame war happening here, let me be clear about this:

shield mods have their own way of making shields work, and they kind of need to keep it that way... its fine for them to add a set of methods for modders to call to simplify the process, but where does it end? what mods get treatment and what dont? they dont have all of the time in the world to spend on pushing resources towards the modding community when they are trying to fix problems and increase the revenue they could get from the base game

I am against shields being in vanilla, at least in the way they are as the current mods, and even if they were added, its kind of a hard sell for me

1. the vanilla combat is already flawed and we need more armor types and weapons, this is supposed to be a realistic game, not necessarily a super sci-fi game, ask the devs what they were going for, otherwise why would a "realistic" setting be there, and why was that the default before?

2. shields become about power generation rather than ship design, but pretty much acted the same as welder armor, and with welders being nerfed (presumably because of this quirk) i have a feeling that shields have no place with the future of this game as it stands

3. even if you were to try to add shields to the game, it would completely break a lot of older designs, and it wouldnt be the way that the welder nerf did, because the welder nerf made it less effective not useless and its because of balance issues that we dont need to add more to the extremely broken way that this game often operates, even if keen has made it work far better than it has

4. if you were to balance shields, it would mean that armor would have to change along with that, and with that, theres a lot of mods that use armor's current values as the way they operate, and by your selfish wanting to add something to the game, they now have to rewrite their entire mod's damage system to get it to work properly with these new additions

5. you can already just add shields through mods, theres no reason to have them in the base game, at least in the capacity you are requesting

6. even though this game isnt entirely PvP, it is heavily based off of it, and completely neglecting that side of the game just because you dont play multiplayer like the vast majority of the rest of us (because PvP happens even when you dont want it to)

7. we already have a "shield" in vanilla, in the form of the safe zone block, the reason why its only available for static grids is because it would almost be impossible to balance for dynamic grids, if the zone's positional updates could even keep up, or the server cope with those calculations incurred as such

8. theres a game called "Robocraft" it has these shield blocks that are limited, and even with these, they are constantly being balanced by being increased and decreased in their values because balance is never truly achieved

9. just stop, this conversation has gone on about how people want a mod to be added to the base game, and all it turns into is "my opinion is right and yours is wrong" and nothing but that

the problem with the whole "realism is dead" argument is that the only vanilla block that really changes the way that the game behaves in a way like that is the safe zone block, and the reason why that was added was kind of obvious, if you have played on any server, ever. especially since it basically makes exploits completely useless, as you are completely protected so long as the settings are correct and you have the chips to keep the zone up

i dont see a need for us to complicate this too far and to confuse ourselves by looking at things that dont necessarily add anything that would convince us either way (especially since other games shouldnt influence decisions on this game, but also, trying to emulate other games doesnt make any more sense than just simply adding a mod, leaving as a mod, and calling it a day)

keen wants realism first and foremost, but again, this is a game, and if its not fun to play, theres no point in playing it. they know this, and have made decisions based off of this assumption, remember, the "solar system" is earth-LIKE, moon-LIKE, alien-LIKE, mars-LIKE, europan-LIKE

even if its based off of something real, its not real, and they want you to know that, but you take the fact that theres something that doesnt exactly exist IRL and say "welp, realism doesnt matter, just because of this one tiny feature" and "spiders in space? realism debunked"

You at least made an attempt at providing more than just opinion and emotion based arguments so you get props for that.

<<shield mods have their own way of making shields work, and they kind of need to keep it that way... its fine for them to add a set of methods for modders to call to simplify the process, but where does it end? what mods get treatment and what dont? they dont have all of the time in the world to spend on pushing resources towards the modding community when they are trying to fix problems and increase the revenue they could get from the base game

I am against shields being in vanilla, at least in the way they are as the current mods, and even if they were added, its kind of a hard sell for me>>

You argument here is using the classic Slippery Slope Fallacy. "If we give one mod the vanilla treatment or keep giving tools to create certain mods, then every modder will want tools for their mods and it will never end." The problem you have here is that same logic and argument can be applied to any kind of player request or change to the game one doesn't like. "it's fine for them to give options to create additional armor types and weapons, but where does it end?" Several of the blocks and items we have in vanilla started out originally as mods.

Fighter cockpit, hinge, corner lights, corner LCDs, and the weather system as just 5 examples of items that started as mods and became vanilla additions. No one is suggesting that every block get added to vanilla. What folks are suggesting is that certain popular items be considered and added. In this case it's a shield. The building blocks (no pun intended) are already there that they could create a vanilla shield. An easy way would be to use the Safe Zone as the baseline, give the field it projects a health bar, a regeneration rate for the health bare, have it suck up a good bit more energy, and call it a day. Having a wider variety of blocks appeals to a wider variety of audience meaning more potential cash for the game.

As for being against a shield in vanilla the way they are in the current mods, fair enough, at least you've given a valid reason. Though I am curious as to what kind of shield you do envision should one become vanilla.

<<1. the vanilla combat is already flawed and we need more armor types and weapons, this is supposed to be a realistic game, not necessarily a super sci-fi game, ask the devs what they were going for, otherwise why would a "realistic" setting be there, and why was that the default before?>>

We don't know for certain what they will have or won't have in 2077. In just the past 100 years we've went from basically steam powered everything, They give more than one level of setting because again, not everyone plays the same way, it's a really simple concept. Those who want the more "realistic" settings for things like weld speed, inventory size, and similar can use them, and those who want to put a full warehouse into a tiny box can do it. Considering scientists recently have begun teleporting atoms around, I don't see it as too large of a stretch that in 57 years they could be doing that on a much larger scale. Otherwise by the logic above, "which weapons and armor types are going to get the vanilla treatment? Where does it stop?" The devs have given their vision of what they want the game to be, while also leaving bits open for folks to make the game into what they want.

<<2. shields become about power generation rather than ship design, but pretty much acted the same as welder armor, and with welders being nerfed (presumably because of this quirk) i have a feeling that shields have no place with the future of this game as it stands>>

Power generation is a part of ship design. If you can't power the ship/station you're trying to create, then it's basically just a giant dead chunk of metal. In order to generate enough power to run the ship and the shields, folks still have to do the proper engineering to fit the extra power generators into the design. Be it solar, nuclear reactors, a bunch of windmills, batteries, or some other source of power. As I said to dude above, from a programming and practical standpoint, there is no functional difference between a shield consuming energy to repair itself, and welders consuming physical parts to repair the armor. Both are repairing the barrier between the inside of the ship and the enemy weapons. The only difference is the physical form of the barrier, and the resource consumed. Either way you still need to supply sufficient amounts of the resource(s) consumed. Otherwise if it's as you say, what harm is there in allowing folks both options, and letting them choose which they like better for themselves and their server?

<<3. even if you were to try to add shields to the game, it would completely break a lot of older designs, and it wouldnt be the way that the welder nerf did, because the welder nerf made it less effective not useless and its because of balance issues that we dont need to add more to the extremely broken way that this game often operates, even if keen has made it work far better than it has>>

3: Any kind of major change, and heck even some of the smaller changes, have the potential to break older designs. The change to make artificial gravity not work or be extremely weak in actual gravity broke gravity drives. The weather system meant that folks now had to weather proof their builds if they wanted to survive when a storm hit. The change to projects and their alignment years ago meant anyone using a repair projector had to realign them. The hydrogen rebalance obsoleted builds balanced around the previous balance, meaning builds using hydrogen didn't need to devote as many resources to see the same results. So pretending that shields are the only thing that can demand changes to an older build is just flat out naive and dishonest. Also who gets to determine what is broken and what isn't? What you consider broken and what I consider broken are not going to be the same clearly. You not liking something doesn't automatically make it broken. It means you simply don't like the balance as it exists currently. that's not the same as broken.

<<4. if you were to balance shields, it would mean that armor would have to change along with that, and with that, theres a lot of mods that use armor's current values as the way they operate, and by your selfish wanting to add something to the game, they now have to rewrite their entire mod's damage system to get it to work properly with these new additions>>

4: You call the banter between me and dude previously a "flame war" then proceed to call me selfish, flaming me in the process. Let he who isn't asking for an addition to the game cast the first stone. You've got no business trying to call me selfish for wanting a vanilla shield or better mod support to create them ourselves, while you yourself are asking for additional armor types and additional weapons. If me asking for a single block is selfish, then you asking for multiple blocks is even more selfish. So get off your hypocritical high horse. It also amuses me that you said previously "they don't have time to push resources to the modding community" yet here you are complaining about changes the modding community would have to make. Selfish is demanding others not be given content because YOU don't like it, while at the same time demanding additions of your own.

Next, balance from a programming and practical standpoint does not work the way you think it does plain and simple. Adding a shield would NOT mean you have to completely redesign and rework armor values. A shield is adding a temporary HP buff as long as the shield is active. You either have that buff or you don't. Balance is not some big grand conspiracy that requires you to rework the entire thing every time something happens. There are three main things that need to happen for balance of a block/item to occur. One, decide how much damage you want a weapon to be able to deal. Two, decide how many hits you want a block to be able to withstand from each weapon before said block/item breaks or fails. Three, set the stats accordingly based on those decisions. It's not rocket science and can be done in less than 5 minutes.

Also if we're operating by your logic, adding new weapons and armor would require a rebalance anyways, so what's your solution to that? If you're cool with the needed rebalance to bring in the new weapons and armor, you've got no valid reason to oppose a rebalance for a shield.

<<5. you can already just add shields through mods, theres no reason to have them in the base game, at least in the capacity you are requesting>>

You can already just add additional armor and weapons through mods. There's no reason to have them in the base game, at least in the capacity you are requesting.

<<6. even though this game isnt entirely PvP, it is heavily based off of it, and completely neglecting that side of the game just because you dont play multiplayer like the vast majority of the rest of us (because PvP happens even when you dont want it to)>>

First, adding a block you don't like doesn't mean that pvp is being ignored or neglected. It's the block existing and you being offended by it. Second, you make some pretty bold assumptions about my play choices using the No True Scotsman fallacy. Since I'm not exclusively pvp like you appear to be, I must be some single player only pleb that knows nothing. Since you have no way of knowing what I do or who I play with unless you're there, I'm going to give you a hand on this one. I host a server for myself and friends. On this server are both pvp and pve players. The pve types typically mine materials and trade to all factions on the server. The pvp types generally do their own thing and often buy materials from the pve types to do their own thing. Otherwise the pvp and pve types generally leave each other alone. Myself and another person are the military/police of the server that keep order and combat piracy. From time to time this forces us into combat against the other pvp types, or the pve spawn ships.

Now with that said, if the pvp folks don't like the existence of a shield block, they can ask for the vanilla balance to be changed, like how the vanilla Safe Zone balance was raised to 120 seconds startup vs the previous 30 seconds. Pvp players can also mod the block to their liking, or simply turn it off. Trying to equate them creating a shield block with ignoring pvp, would be like me trying to equate a hunger system with them ignoring pve players. It doesn't work like that.

<<7. we already have a "shield" in vanilla, in the form of the safe zone block, the reason why its only available for static grids is because it would almost be impossible to balance for dynamic grids, if the zone's positional updates could even keep up, or the server cope with those calculations incurred as such>>

That's not a shield, but an enhancement/rules block, akin to a trinket in something like World of Warcraft or command block in Minecraft. All shields are enhancements but not all enhancements are shields. The reason they're only available for static grids is because of the massive calculations involved with all the variables of the Safe Zone itself. On a whim people can enable/disable damage, building, grinding, the ability to fire weapons, and the size of the zone itself from a super tiny bubble, all the way out to a 1km radius. Depending on the situation this could lead to some MASSIVE breaks of the combat system as a whole and lead to crashing. If someone turns off damage, the ability of weapons to fire, and parks next to someone's ship in combat, you've effectively removed their ability to fight at all, and captured their ship without them being able to do anything as you hide behind a mobile invincibility bubble. You're also potentially giving the system a split second to react to the status changes which leads to questions such as, what if a missile that was fired outside the Zone bubble previously is then drawn into the bubble by the controlling faction increasing the size? Does it still deal damage since it was fired outside the bubble originally, or does it lose its damage since it's now inside the bubble? Preventing damage is easy and can be done with a couple lines of boolean code. "is target in SafeZone. If yes deal damage - zero, if no deal damage (number)." That's not exact but you get the idea. Although the zone can offer protection against damage it's not a true shield.

A shield has an HP pool and can be depleted. A shield is basically an extra health bubble that soaks up damage up to its limit. All that needs to happen here is the weapon takes health from the shield instead of the grid itself. If modders can make it work, there is no valid reason Keen can't make it work, even if they just have to copy the code point for point.

<<8. theres a game called "Robocraft" it has these shield blocks that are limited, and even with these, they are constantly being balanced by being increased and decreased in their values because balance is never truly achieved>>

For one this isn't Robocraft. Robocraft has only a finite number of possible build combinations that can exist due to limits placed on the vehicles and so on. While they may have a decent amount of choices to pick from, their pool is limited at the end of the day. Space Engineers has no such limitations and there are an infinite number of build combinations that can exist in vanilla alone. The only way to have balance in a game like SE and still give us the build freedom we have is to balance around individual block performance and make it a player problem after that to determine what they will use or not use. Otherwise Keen would have to be omniscient and they're not. Also on this point, Star Wars Squadrons, Star Trek Online, SWTOR, Halo, EVE Online, as modern games all have made shields work. Heck even Starfox 64, and the original Rogue Squadron for the N64 all have figured out how to make it work. You're suddenly telling me that a game far more advanced than an N64 era game somehow can't make it work? If they're constantly adjusting up or down, this tells me as a programmer they're trying to use some over-complicated balance formula when they don't need to. Otherwise the comparison here fails due to drastic differences in the game type. Also by your previous logic, they would still need to balance your new armors you want to see, so again what's the difference between balancing a shield and an armor save the physical form of the protection?

<<9. just stop, this conversation has gone on about how people want a mod to be added to the base game, and all it turns into is "my opinion is right and yours is wrong" and nothing but that>>

I don't need your permission to post here, nor did I ask for it. If you don't like what I've said then ignore it and move on. You chose to respond to what was posted here, so don't post on a publicly viewable board if you're not willing to risk a response you don't like. Otherwise it's cute that you think you get to dictate to the community based on your likes and dislikes, and how you think you asking for new armor and weapons is cool, but someone else asking for a block you don't like is selfish.

<<the problem with the whole "realism is dead" argument is that the only vanilla block that really changes the way that the game behaves in a way like that is the safe zone block, and the reason why that was added was kind of obvious, if you have played on any server, ever. especially since it basically makes exploits completely useless, as you are completely protected so long as the settings are correct and you have the chips to keep the zone up

i dont see a need for us to complicate this too far and to confuse ourselves by looking at things that dont necessarily add anything that would convince us either way (especially since other games shouldnt influence decisions on this game, but also, trying to emulate other games doesnt make any more sense than just simply adding a mod, leaving as a mod, and calling it a day)>>

As to the realism bit, if you don't think a shield is realistic, turn it off. Otherwise we have Gravity Generators, Jump Drives, Artificial Mass, the Nuclear Reactors are weaker than even those we have today, the small grid small reactor shouldn't even exist at all, the Windmill block works underground, the celestial bodies of the game are too close together, and on down the line. I can keep listing unrealistic bits about this game, but I think you get the idea. If you want 100% realism, you're playing the wrong game. If you think something is unrealistic, mod it to make it realistic, ask for it to be changed, or turn it off.

As for the second bit, your line in bold just exposed your own hypocrisy. You appealed to Robocraft as to why we shouldn't have shields as vanilla here in SE, yet are now saying other games shouldn't influence decisions on this game. Likewise by your logic here, trying to have an entire system excluded or removed just because you don't like it, when you can just turn it off, doesn't make any sense. Just like the last guy you've presented very little in the way of a coherent fact based argument that wasn't ultimately your personal entitled opinion.

<<keen wants realism first and foremost, but again, this is a game, and if its not fun to play, theres no point in playing it. they know this, and have made decisions based off of this assumption, remember, the "solar system" is earth-LIKE, moon-LIKE, alien-LIKE, mars-LIKE, europan-LIKE

even if its based off of something real, its not real, and they want you to know that, but you take the fact that theres something that doesnt exactly exist IRL and say "welp, realism doesnt matter, just because of this one tiny feature" and "spiders in space? realism debunked">>

Ah so as long as you personally consider it fun, it's just fine even it breaks realism. Good to know. You also shot yourself in the foot with the line in bold. The fact that this is a game is why it doesn't have to be 100% realistic. This game is also a sandbox game, meaning there is no clearly defined way of how you must play it. You decide what you do with the sand that is given to you. If you want to build elaborate giant sandcastles that look cool, do it. If you want to have sandcastle wars, do it. If you want to build your own sandcastle cities and pretend you're living in a futuristic town, do it. The problem you have is that your way of playing in the sand is not the only way to play. What is "fun" is subjective and on its own is not a valid reason as to why something should or shouldn't be included in vanilla. As I told dude, I despise the idea of a Jump Inhibitor block as the only reason for them to exist is to force a fight on unwilling participants. I also despise a hunger system as I often see them become little more than "eat this or die" that adds complexity and management for the sake of complexity and management. Yet in the name of fun I also believe folks who do want those systems should be allowed to have them. I can simply turn it off and there is no harm done to my server as a result. Apparently to some of you it seems "turn it off" is this unreasonable and unholy abomination of an idea.

As for the final bit on the "realism debunked" argument, it's not because of one tiny feature, but a host of issues as to why this game isn't an shining example of realism. small grid small reactor is one of the best examples of this. You're telling me that they have a small 18 inch (0.5 meters) cube shaped nuclear reactor that can power a house for an entire year? If you want me to go through and do a detailed list of all the bits that are unrealistic with this game I can do that, but I think you get the idea.

Overall I'm asking for one of two things to happen. Either give us better tools to make the blocks, or better yet give us a vanilla block. Those who want it can use it, those who don't won't have to. Likewise the folks who want your new armor and weapons can use them and those who don't want to won't have to. Afterall fair is fair.

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it would be better for the API to be flexible enough to allow shield mods, but not cater specifically to them

the difference between other games and this one is that those other games were built with shields in mind from the beginning, with some of them having the "shields" be the main health pool (like starfox) if they were to be implemented, it would be better to implement a weapon that could deal damage through the shield, like some sort of railgun (ultra-high velocity cannons or gatlings) or some sort of weapon that does increased damage to the shield but almost nothing to armor

the problem that you arent realizing with reactors is that they have quite a bit of power output, and if you look in-game, its more of that it has increased output for keen's stupidly massive power requirement for everything (wheels take 2 small reactors for a 100% powered 4 wheeled buggy, it will overload one) and even if the reactor was in real life, i doubt you realize just how much power a reactor can actually generate, because normal reactors dont run off of pure uranium, they work off of a 2% blend or something stupidly low like that (source: How much energy does uranium produce compared to coal?

Uranium is an abundant metal and is full of energy: One uranium fuel pellet creates as much energy as one ton of coal, 149 gallons of oil or 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas. It does not come out of the ground ready to go into a reactor, though. It is mined and processed to create nuclear fuel.

-https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/nuclear/)

and you said in 2077? you forget that we are getting close to making fusion work, and we already had a reaction working for 10 full seconds already, you dont think they can miniturize a reactor (that is quite inefficient, mind you) to work in such a size? we already have RTG's for rovers on mars as is

i would agree to give people the tools to make something work, but when you do something that is completely outside of the bounds of what the game engine already can do (as is configured for the task at hand), you are asking for a bit much from the devs, as most of these "shield" systems have a set value that regenerates on top of the base health, which is what you could get implemented... IF THERE WAS A HEALTH SYSTEM IN THE FIRST PLACE

there is a health system, but its not based off of the entire craft, its block-by-block and has a different system of how it operates and functions in relation to "HP" as you might call it

also, this is a game, and to keep it interesting, they need some sort of hostile NPC, they might even remove the spiders in the future, should they manage to get intelligent NPC engineers, and the wolves might become normal fauna (and already would have done the same as they do in-game, just be a LOT less destructive, but again, game balance) and spiders could be explained if they just added some sort of meteorites filled with eggs that the spiders spawn from rapidly even when its not normally time to spawn a new spider, but this would mean a lot of entities that the game would have to handle, when considering multiplayer and how people would AFK near one (even if by accident) and destroy sim speed

but for the weather and cockpits, those most likely would have been added by keen at some point anyways, they do fit with the style that is already set up for the game when they were implemented (weather is just an immersion addition)

(please do note, if theres any duplicates, it is acting kind of funky right now)

also, i think we need to get back to the root of the issue, the issue is that the modder is trying to work around something that doesnt exist as is, and as such you are basically saying that those specific API calls should be created and added to the current modding API, if it were so simple, why wouldnt they have already done it, and why are we talking about adding something to vanilla instead (which is against what the topic was originally about)

> SE has no such restrictions as I explained prior. The possibilities are infinite in SE. You may think certain a certain build isn’t worth worrying about, but bottom line it's still a possible combination that must be taken into account whether you like it or not since it can be taken into combat.

There are enough limits to have a good idea of how powerful a ship in a specific weight class is. While there are many combinations possible within those kinds of boundaries, they tend to be roughly equal after tallying components and assuming some basic design necessities. Again, it’s also possible to do some initial testing, set approximate values, and get the playerbase to find more specific issues through public testing.

And as I’ve explained before, you could take into account all the possible grids that don’t have a power source, or have neither thrust nor gyroscopes, or put all the armor in a ball at the center. But it would be like deciding to waste time checking if all the possible Hearthstone decks solely consisting of Common or Rare one-drops are viable. Sure, SE barely has any hard limitations. That doesn’t mean that the soft design limitations are nonexistent.

>As to setting arbitrary values, who gets to define what is “arbitrary” and what isn’t? Once again, it’s really simple, you define how much damage you want a weapon to do, and how many hits from said weapon a block is able to take, then set your stats accordingly. That’s not arbitrary, that’s working from a plan. You may not like the plan, but you not liking the plan doesn’t make it arbitrary.

The practical use of a weapon is much different from a theoretical number of hits that a block can take from it. Even if you’d described the process of assigning values in any more details than “how many hits should this block take”, it would still create an effectively random meta. Which is why I called it arbitrary, as you could set any numbers for damage and block durability within relatively reasonable bounds, and still have no way of getting an intended end result.

> […]When a weapon impacts a block of armor or a shield, the impact subtracts an appropriate amount of health from the shield or block. […]

Armor blocks have their own health values, while shields have one large health bar. It’s possible to focus fire and punch through a section of armor to hit what’s underneath for a small but variable fraction of the armor’s total health, even with welders repairing it, but attempting to do the same on shields is called a joke. You even stated something similar upthread when trying to argue another point:

“While a shield can cover a larger area, that is also a potential weakness at the same time. The shield doesn't have to be hit in the same place each time to break, it simply needs to be hit enough. A ship relying on pure armor alone must be hit in the same place in the same armor blocks to break them before you can damage internals.”

I’ve explained this several times already. Can you *please* respond with anything but that same irrelevant line about damage mechanics?

>The only time an additional interact comes into play is if one wanted to add a damage variance between what a weapon does to armor vs a shield. Otherwise no other interactions are required and this once again boils down you pushing a personal opinion that is simply untrue.

Again, that additional interaction is pretty much inevitable once shields are added. Doubly so if your earlier statement about shield and armor health were true.

> […] You don’t get to appeal to other games when it suits you, then try to dismiss it purely out of hand when it doesn’t. [..]

I’ve explained why I think the analogies I use are useful in understanding hypothetical updates to SE, and why I don’t think some others are similarly helpful. If you want to give counterarguments, that’s fine, but it’s otherwise like saying that someone who voted for one party’s candidate in one election and the other’s in the next is a hypocrite. Reasoning exists.

>I gave you examples of shields working in other games, how they work, and also explained how they work from a programming perspective. […]

As I’ve explained above, Star Trek Online works on a different level of granularity, so specific mechanics need justification to carry over. For example, CS:GO and TF2, despite both being FPS games, have vastly different mechanics. It would require a good reason to ask for most of the guns in CS:GO to not have ADS modes, or to advocate no respawning during the round in TF2.

>Yet at the same time you’re trying to say “we shouldn’t just graft in ideas from other games” you’re appealing to how pvp works in those other games to say shields shouldn’t exist in this one. […]

Because, as I’ve also explained above, meta is intrinsic to practically every kind of PvP. Even chess has a meta, in the form of optimized openings. Applying it to Space Engineers isn’t really a stretch when there are barely any cases where the concept of a meta doesn’t apply.

>When you used the Hearthstone example above, I didn’t simply write it off because it came from another game. I explained the flaw in the example. Hearthstone places clear definable limits on its stuff that SE does not.

And I explained above why they’re similar enough for similar ideas to be applicable, despite the difference in prevalence with hard vs. soft constraints.

>As to your first line in bold, that just reads to me as you whining you would have to work a little harder to kill something. Being unable to get through their shields is no different than being unable to get through their armor. If you’re half as good as you want us to think you are and are some “sup3r l33t” pvp guy like you’ve been portraying, you shouldn’t have an issue.

We’ve been over this.

>If you feel they aren’t balanced or to your liking, TURN THEM OFF. You have options, and you not liking a feature isn’t enough on its own to justify keeping it from the game. […]

We’ve also been over this. Twice.

> Once again, you are 100% incorrect. When something is in a balanced state, this means that the items may have certain edges that make them better suited for certain tasks than others, but ultimately are around the same overall power level as other items on paper. Much like the difference between a katana and a rapier. A rapier is better for stabbing where as a katana is better for slashing, though both are equally capable of killing. It’s just a matter of how the fatal damage is dealt. If a rapier user is skilled enough, the sword’s weaknesses at slashing can be overcome. That doesn’t make the sword “overpowered”, it simply means that the user is skilled enough that the weaknesses don’t matter. Someone being better than you doesn’t mean the stuff they’re using is overpowered. From a practical and programming standpoint there is no difference in the two.

Did you respond to the wrong section? This seems more like a response to the direct balance discussion than the topic of PvP compared to PvE balancing.

Anyway, using your example, people don’t really notice or care if the katana is significantly better overall in PvE. Maybe it does higher damage near the skill ceiling, or maybe it’s just easier for a newbie to flail around with. Either way, people won’t get angry about it. Maybe they’ll even make it a challenge, pushing the difficulty settings up and going rapier-only.

On the other hand, that same kind of minor imbalance is extremely upsetting in a PvP environment. People would go up in arms if the rapier had a 60% WR against katanas at high levels, even if it’s not an issue for the vast majority of the playerbase. If it’s like that at all levels, or the devs just set placeholder numbers and told everyone to just mod it to fix it, people start leaving.

> No, all you’ve done is provided your own subjective opinion and then asserted that opinion as fact when it’s not.

I’ve explained why I think the majority of the playerbase would dislike a change and based my stance upon that. While it could be said that I’m taking my belief as fact for these purposes, I have shown the evidence that I’ve based it upon, and as far as I can remember, I’ve only heard the “personal opinion” counterargument.

>You have asserted several outright falsehoods as fact when it comes to programming. You have asserted that there is some massive difference between a shield and an armor block in terms of functionality and there’s not. Both are barriers between enemy weapons and the inside of your ship.[…]

They also work in different ways. As usual, see above to respond instead of increasing bloat.

> You have asserted that there is essentially some big grand formula with balancing shields and similar. I have explained how it can be done in five minutes or less.

Your explanation is the equivalent of saying “Just fill in *an* answer to the problem!”. You could set whatever values you want or think are appropriate, but I’ve explained time and again why there are no values that you could set which would create a close approximation of balance.

> The difference between you and me is that I acknowledge there are already existing options to mod shields in. I acknowledge that it’s already possible to create shield block mods.

A part of my fourth comment in this thread:

“Of course. People can add whatever mods they want.”

>However there are certain elements of the API that modders don’t have access to making it more cumbersome than necessary. Myself and others acknowledge that options exist. However we have asked those options be expanded due the limited access to the API to create shield mods, or just give us a vanilla shield. I’ve acknowledged that there are already existing options. I have simply requested those options be expanded or improved.

I’m perfectly fine with making it easier to mod things in, regardless of what they are. The central point that I’m arguing is that vanilla shields would be bad for the game, not that modders should have a hard time making their own shields or something.

> better tools given to create shield mods

This in particular. I legitimately don’t care at all about this. Whatever is fine as long as everyone's happy. I want to make that clear, so we don’t end up missing each others’ points at some even later point.

> You on the other hand are sitting back and pretending you would have no options should a vanilla shield be created. You have sat back and made statements such as “just “turn it off” is hardly an option”.

And I’ve explained why it’s hardly an option.

>You are saying you don’t like shields and think they would harm the “normal experience” of the game and require all these extra balancing steps, and how future balance would have to revolve around them. Which is again an opinion you’re entitled to.[…]

I have reasons for that, which I’ve already explained. If we disagree, then we must disagree on one of these reasons.

>In addition you have whined about how shields allow people to “escape consequences of getting hit,

Actually, this was in reference to why they’re so common in other media.

>how unrealistic you think shields are,

I really don’t see how they’re remotely realistic or necessary enough to be an exception.

>how balancing them would be some monumental task and all future updates would have to be balanced around them being present, how they would be a nightmare from a pvp standpoint, how they shouldn’t be added because they’ll upset the pvp balance.

Again, responded to above.

>Then when you are rightly called on it, you turn around and say “this is a joke”.

I thought it was clear enough from context that I was calling your example so bad it's funny.

>You have argued how YOU don’t think the community would like shields, how better tools to create shield mods wouldn’t get used enough to justify their development, and then went on to argue that because YOU don’t think they would be well received they shouldn’t be added. Instead of being given the block/tools and deciding for themselves if they like it or not, view it as a negative on their gameplay or not, they should just trust you and allow you to speak for them because YOU don’t think they would like it.

Well, yes. If you strongly believe that a political candidate would be good for everyone, you go out and explain why to people who might be affected. The same principle applies here. I think it would be good, and I have reasons why. If people don't agree with those reasons, we talk about why that is. Then we end up in an incredibly long thread of replies rephrasing the same arguments until one of us compares the other to Hitler and the mods are forced to step in.

In case it wasn't clear, that last sentence was a joke.

>[...] You say you don’t like shields, and you say they’re bad. Yet by turning them off you get what you want in not having to deal with them, and folks who do like them can continue to use them. Both sides win, yet apparently that’s not good enough for you. It’s not enough that you can turn them off or simply ignore the existence of the tools to create the blocks, no because YOU don’t like it, no one else should be allowed to use it.

You've said this already. I've responded already. Can we move on to the actual argument?

> I don’t like the idea of a hunger system, nor do I like the idea of a Jump Inhibitor. However if other folks want those items on their servers, they should be allowed to have those items. I can simply turn those systems off and not have to deal with them. They get their Jump Inhibitors and hunger system, and I don’t have to deal with it.

Would you be happy if all the new updates focused around Jump Inhibitors to the point that the vast majority of new content makes no sense without them?

>You can’t be serious. Do you really think I can’t go back and pull text from my own posts? See below. Once again you are 100% wrong: “You ignoring the examples doesn't make them less valid, Tell me, what is different between a welder automatically repairing something and consuming parts/resources vs a shield healing itself automatically consuming energy/resources to do so? The answer is zero. Both are done automatically and both occur as long as the needed available resources is present.” That was my first quote on the issue. Note the section in bold assuming adequate repair parts and energy for both items. See my second quote here: “Nope, not even close. (…) A welder system backed by sufficient repair parts and resources is the same concept as a shield backed by sufficient power and regeneration. Same concept, different methods.”

>See relevant parts in bold. Adequate resources have been assumed from the start. You’ve simply ignored it.

Again, I don't think the first statement clearly states the assumption of adequate resources.

And again, this part of the discussion is entirely unproductive and has been unproductive for the last several responses.

>Nope and again nope. It’s already been explained to you why they are the same from a programming and practical standpoint. There is no difference between a shield with adequate energy backing it up, and a network of repair welders with adequate resources backing them up. You either have them or you don’t. If you feel a shield isn’t sucking up enough energy, then that’s a simply numbers tweak. Again, you have no valid argument here. You can say all you want they’re different, but it’s not. It’s only different in your mind.

See the thing pretty far above.

>Vanilla is not strictly default settings. Vanilla in this instance means the base game and all of the possible settings included in vanilla, while excluding mods. Keen pumps out a base game for folks and then leaves it up to players to change the base settings how they like, which includes allowing for mods.

The default settings and a range around them without major qualitative gameplay differences are what constitutes vanilla. It would be unreasonable to say that, for example, a world in which all ore generation is turned off counts as vanilla, given the massive differences in gameplay.

>Already addressed this but one last bit that needs to be stated. Trying to say “turn them off isn’t an option” is like someone complaining they don’t like the new weather system but refusing to turn it off and demanding the system be removed from the game because they don’t like it. In this case you’re saying you don’t like shields and instead of you simply turning them off, you are actively demanding Keen exclude them from the game and deny others the option to use them because YOU have decided you don’t like them. So because you personally don’t like them, no one in the community should even have the option. Please explain, who is going to force you to have shields turned on should they become vanilla, or use the better modding tools to create shield blocks? What valid reason do you have that prevents you from simply turning shields off should they be implemented?

This would be the case, if they proceeded to continue to make exclusively weather-based content like lightning rods, windmills that function only during storms, and so on. I could turn it off, but I'd be missing a significant portion of the total content by doing so and would have to do extra work to prevent the content broken by turning off storms from bugging out, let alone adding more content to replace it.

>What you consider realistic and what others consider realistic isn’t always the same thing. I can tell you right now that my definition and your definition are different.

I can tell you right now that no reasonable person would consider constant-vector bounded-area artificial gravity or large-mass teleportation to be realistic.

>Once more the realism ship sailed long ago. If you’re wanting realism then you’re playing the wrong game.

On the contrary, one of the central tenants of Space Engineers is limited sci-fi keeping roughly within the bounds of realism when possible.

>If you think something is unrealistic, no one is forcing you to play with it. No one is going to force you to use a shield block if you don’t like them.

I've explained my reasoning on this repeatedly. If you're going to say the same thing every time, I'll respond the same way every time.

>Point being dude, realism sailed long ago. If you feel something is too unrealistic, then don’t play with it.

How many times are you going to say this?

>Otherwise you don’t get to dictate to other servers and other players based on what you find realistic or not.

Are you saying that an average, reasonable person would find gravity generators and jump drives realistic? What about the Keen dev team?

>Point blank dude, you don’t know what you’re talking about when it comes to programming and are not qualified to speak on it.

The programming side isn't even relevant here. You don't need to insert that accusation every other paragraph.

>I’ve already explained several times how adding a shield does not prevent combat from functioning or anything from functioning.

I've explained above why it does. Several times, with help from your own arguments.

>You not liking the function of something doesn’t mean it’s broken or isn’t working properly. The only “necessary” items we need in game are 1 power source, an armor block to provide surface, 1 engine type, 1 weapon, and that’s really it. Nothing else is needed and is all fluff. If we’re only adding items that are “necessary” now, then we may as well kiss any future updates to SE goodbye save for bug fixes. Otherwise that’s it.

The necessity part was within the context of realism. Jump drives are necessary because many computers can't handle high speeds. the planets can't be too close together. and the long journey doesn't make for good gameplay. So the exception in realism is acceptable, given that there's no alternative.

On the other hand, there are multiple alternatives to shields which aren't such egregious breaks of realism. Therefore, the fact that they're unnecessary is entirely relevant.

>The previous Magic the Gathering example wasn’t meant to be a 1:1 translation, but to draw on something that has multiple format options comparable to the multiple balances that exist across the different SE servers based on mod choice, base settings and so on. The problem you have is that you seem to think that everything needs to be balanced the same way, and that everyone plays the same way, and that’s not the case. That was one of the reasons I brought up the MTG example as I was drawing on different formats existing like servers on SE using different settings, and essentially making their own format.[...]The balance and overall feel of both formats is radically different, but at the core you are still playing Magic the Gathering. This applies the same way to various servers in SE. Each server will generally have it’s own feel, potentially it’s own rules and balance, but at the core is still Space Engineers. [...]

While that is applicable to some degree, MTG has a large playerbase which doesn't easily switch games but can easily swap out formats for variety instead. Space Engineers doesn't have enough consistently active servers or server players to field that kind of diversity at significant populations, and it's much easier for players that are looking for variety to close SE and search for other sci-fi games on Steam instead of sifting through the listings for an active server that also fits a particular taste. This is why I think Space Engineers needs to act like other multiplayer games that stick around at various activity levels, by making a set of consistent, defining characteristics in standard gameplay that can keep a dedicated playerbase. While community servers are great for variety, they can't keep a game alive on their own.

>[tirade about imagined ego]

It's not about me, personally. I follow what seems effective, and I can assume that others do too. This isn't even any kind of complicated combo or strategy, either. It's literally "If shields are effective, people who want to be effective in PvP will use shields." I happen to be in that group, and you happen to like taking things out of context.

>[same thing as before]

[same answer as before]

>Ah so the standard is now “must have strong reasons for being valid” instead of “we shouldn’t be grafting ideas from other games, and throwing every un-unique idea into the game”.

Yes, because the second half of that second quote implies a level of carelessness that is directly opposed by "must have strong reasons for being valid". Seriously, do I have to start copy/pasting every phrase I use and elaborate on the exact details of everything for you to not attempt a "gotcha" contradiction on word usage?

>This as you sit back and try to play arbitrator as to what is/isn’t a strong reason. All so you can provide an escape mechanism for your own arguments like every wannabe “free thinker” and “skeptic” on the internet when presented with an idea they don’t like, instead of using logic and reason to explain why it doesn’t work. Good to know the goal posts have shifted again.

I use the standard of what I think a reasonable person would accept. If you don't agree with that, then explain why. For example, I think a reasonable person would agree that having shields for the sole reason that other games have them wouldn't be a strong reason, while having shields if they were the only way to increase TTK would be a strong reason.

>A couple of things here, first up you are not authority on what is “worthwhile pvp” and what isn’t. You are one person with one opinion on how pvp and the game as a whole should go. What you consider “worthwhile pvp” and what others consider worthwhile pvp may not be the same thing. I can tell you right now you and I have drastically different views on what is considered worthwhile.

I can tell you right now that I don't think most people would consider sitting in place while a pair of ships automatically fire at each other and slowly wear down each other's shields isn't worthwhile PvP. Do you think so?

>Next, show me anywhere that someone is wanting to require mods for pvp OR pve either one. Show me anywhere this is happening or being proposed to happen. If you’re insisting this is a thing, certainly you can show me at least one instance of it. Don’t worry I’ll wait.

I said that I "don't think that the base game should require mods to have worthwhile PvP", not that it does right now. However, I do think that this would be the case if shields were to be implemented. I've already explained why I think that in detail.

>What I have seen people say is they want the option of a vanilla shield, or better tools to create shield mods for themselves. Meaning it is NOT required use, and folks can use it if they choose, or ignore its existence and turn it off.

Better tools to create shield mods are fine. I've already explained why vanilla shields don't exist in a vacuum.

>Your argument assumes everyone plays pvp exclusively and they don’t. Some folks are exclusively pvp, some exclusively pve, and some do a bit of both.

No, it assumes that there's a significant PvP community, and that the community isn't vastly different from other games in which there are both PvP and PvE modes. Do you think that either of these are unreasonable assumptions?

>[...]You’re entitled to your opinion on what you think the community would like, but you don’t get to make that final decision for them.[...]

Would I be on my high horse if I said that most FPS players don't like playing against aimbots? What about if I said that the majority of players in competitive PvP games are playing to win? Obviously these are extreme cases, but I'm trying to find the point at which you think reasoning isn't enough to deduce the general opinion of a playerbase about something. Because, while it's nowhere near perfect, I've said several reasons why I think a reasonable person would agree with me, and you've cited a statistic showing that 11% of people have used shields at some point, when we're arguing about making them a permanent addition.

agreed, lets look at how many ACTIVE servers that have some sort of shield mod or plugin....

out of the many that ive been surfing, ive found one. and its due to the fact that they include massive superweapons, and need to increase the health pool of their blocks to keep them from being blown away in an instant, and nothing really more than that (server scenarios like star wars dont count because thats part of their lore, why wouldnt they have shields?)

the whole issue that keeps being brought up "why dont you just turn it off after it gets implemented" is more of a "why dont we just leave it as a mod" when you consider the amount of people that use shields, and that hate welder armor (which is functionally the same, but requires more planning and setup) people dont like overpowered additions being added for anything but a situation where thats normal (eg. the weapons can vaporize you, drills can eat an entire planet, etc.)

considering this is a cyclic conversation of 2v1, i think its safe to say that he just doesnt care, and wants shields regardless, and if you say otherwise, you are "inconsiderate" or "elitist"

think of it this way as well, there are two different support sites for space engineers, and he stumbled on the PC one... he wants us to have the same features because he knows that PC is what dictates what features get carried over. there is also the fact that, since it doesnt quite exist for Xbox, he took the "search all forums" as an "everything is the same"

we dont want shields to be IN the game, but support the idea of tools for modders to do whatever they want, the problem being is that the whole thread here is over the fact that a modder tried to do something that the tools didnt support, and he already worked around them

but you just want to say otherwise...

>which is functionally the same, but requires more planning and setup

Please don't encourage this. They're similar in some combat conditions, but could only be said to be functionally identical for the course of a fight if both ships run out of ammo before causing more than superficial damage to each other.

exactly why neither needs to be added, and should be treated more on a case-by-case basis, like how server admins and moderators already do, instead of lumping it in with the base game and having people expect it to be part of the existing features

not to mention the fact that keen nerfed welders, probably for this very reason (and lag)

Look, if more weapons are added (to make it more "competitive" or more diverse, then some kind of adequate defense needs to be able to counter it. Otherwise, the game becomes unbalanced.

Further to my previous comment, research at NASA has shown that plasma-based shields are technically feasible (given we have the power to generate them and a suitably powerful electromagnetic field generator. However, it did show that it would also block some light in the visible spectrum. This would blind the vessel in question to those wavelengths. Don't tell me shields are unrealistic, because the science is there, its not even fiction unless we extrapolate to get armor-tight shields. (As EM fields naturally curve in a sphere).However, this geometry would be extremely costly in terms of power. If its theoretically possible, and we know how: it CANNOT BE CALLED "UNREALISTIC" by any stretch of the imagination. It is a blatant contradiction in terms. Thank you. If you want to get a copy of the paper, please message me privately or look on NASA's website.

Given the hard requirement of a very powerful electromagnetic field in a specific shape which would almost certainly affect all the nearby delicate machinery that uses loads of electronics, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that this is closer to the level of jump drives than ion thrusters in terms of realism, and would need a similar justification. I think there are many other ways to increase TTK that don't require similar stretches of realism, from even heavier armor to faster welders to closer-to-reality concepts like defense lasers.

You forget that EM fields can be effectively nullified now; thanks to research done towards the later part of last year. Although, nullifying this strength of field may be difficult, according to the research, its possible to do so. The scientist's original idea was to be able to block out EM fields from a distance (to help with medical imaging and possibly quantum computers). If you want to be specific, EM fields can also be deformed in the presence of other fields. IF the ship was generating another field that just encompassed the ship barely, and oscillated in in perfect inverse sync with the main field, it can be nullified in a region. And using a magneto-reflective material along the hull or around certain components (in real life), we can effectively "bounce" the EM field to stay on the outside or away from critical components. EM fields have been deeply studied. The only problem is that a complete shield would also block all light from going through it (if it were plasma-based)

So, assuming that gets fixed, the only problem is that one of the definitive properties prevents it from being remotely useful?

Again, this isn't the only way to increase TTK by a long shot.

what does adding weapons have to do with NEEDING a shield mod? if you need a shield mod because of mods, thats different than LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE and citing research IRL is not applicable to in-game, as shields in a game sense arent balanced that well, and are extremely costly, meaning that people will either be completely useless or invulnerable.

it will also exacerbate the problem of people jumping away in the middle of combat because they have lost their shields instead of losing their turrets

alright jerry webb, heres the thing about your attitude

get fucking lost

now back to the point at hand: anything "realistic" is based on what we could do at the time, what is feasible, and other factors. shielding is not "realistic" because the ability for us to be able to RELIABLY use it in such a manner described for the use here would be completely ridiculous

all of your points are just "lets just throw 'science' at the problem and call it a day"

stop it, this is a game, and you need to keep the topic game-based and not "we could do it, why isnt it in the game?"

heres the thing with the in-game weapons system:

the nato magazine is the cheapest, but does the least amount of damage, its only modified by the player rifles

the nato case does a slight bit more damage than the magazine, and far more than the elite rifle, but is about 4x the cost per case vs per magazine

the 200mm missile container does a lot of damage, but has some things going against it... one being that it is extremely expensive in comparison to the other weapon types (requiring platinum and uranium in its construction, which are both used elsewhere and are rare materials) and can be more or less defeated by blast doors being used as armor and heavy armor does better against this weapon than it does against the gatling gun... and then theres the fact that a simple interior turret (aka. nato magazine) can shoot one down, rendering it useless at long range

what we need is a medium velocity or similar velocity to the gatling, but does something along the lines of a cannon, maybe even howitzer that has a ballistic projectile that can be shot down like the missile

Okay, firstly: my attitude is quite straightforward: taking what we already know about (possible in theory or in fact) and extrapolating it to a future context. If you remember: WE currently do not have space travel in the abundance that is shown in space engineers. Therefore, it must be set at a future point in time. Further to this: explain the science of a jump drive and then tell me what's more futuristic: Jump Drive, or shields. Shields (whether complete or otherwise) are technically already possible. The only problem is getting a fission / fusion reactor up into space to test with. Further, whilst we do have the conjectures as to how Jump Drives work, it is founded upon assumptions and uses theoretical particles. Until that changes, if you're going to rule out shields as being unrealistic, then that's (technically speaking) Jump Drives and Nuclear reactors gone from the game too as being "unrealistic" - as if you have potentially heard: Fusion reactors use Electromagnetic confinement to confine the plasma within the reaction chamber. If this were not present, the reactor (fission OR fusion) could start a runaway reaction. Further, I'll now directly quote the Plasma shields document: "The largest field strength produced terrestrially is 91.4T [4] and it is therefore assumed that any race suitably technologically advanced to explore space in such a manner would also be capable of producing this field strength in space. This field strength corresponds to a plasma capable of reflecting light well into the Ultra-Violet." Have a look at the attached file. Note that this is using a similar principle to the Nuclear Reactor Electromagnetic confinement. Which is why I brought it up. Now, if the shield was made of gravitons, and you said it was "unrealistic", I would argue it isn't because gravitons are also produced by gravity generators: and I remind you, even then, these particles are THEORETICAL and currently have no evidence to suggest they exist. And if they don't, well that's gravity generators gone too. And while we're on the subject of inconsistencies, Ion thrusters should not be outputting that much thrust, but I'll let that go as it is a purely electrical device and could be based off of the M-Drive concept or the Q-Thruster (also leading to the understanding why it uses so much more energy than a conventional Ion thruster. I would also like to remind all in this chat that NASA is working on a 14kW Hall Thruster (which when extrapolated to a future context, might be the design for an ion thruster in the game.) Note that this is still being proven as a valid propulsion technology, however.

The link to the Plasma Shield Paper: https://www108.lamp.le.ac.uk/ojs1/index.php/pst/article/view/2177/2081

This wasn't supposed to be here.

then why dont we have railguns? why dont we have cannons? why dont we have grenades? sniper rifles? etc.

we have been asking for a lot of currently-attainable technology and not asking for something sci-fi to be added into the game, and as you even said, the shields would be completely opaque should they be strong enough to stop a bullet, which they arent in-game, so theres a problem with applying reality to a video game, you can cite anything you want, but currently, its EFFECTIVELY impossible, considering the complexity, cost, and limited applications and its restrictions thusly

Or you can do something like Stargate: Atlantis and have a city ship underwater. hopefully Keen sees fit to bless water mod as an official addition like the weather mod as this mod is seeing a lot of content inclusion from other mods and would be a reasonable decision.

As it stands, water is lacking in realism and displaced from central content. It's good for a mod built around functional ships, but would play like an alpha-phase implementation from the standpoint of a game about building spaceships that prides itself on a fully-interactable environment.

That is the problem with any mod, not just shield mods and doesn't mean authors can't make a request to make it easier to implement, Keen has been known to take feature suggestions and popular mods and implement them in the base game, also on note of the popularity of the mod it's something a lot of players benefit from not just a fringe few as the APIs hes asking for could be used for other mods I imagine not just shields. As for imbalance, I've hardly ever noticed as shields fail after enough bombardment and weaponcore provides the framework to make weapons designed to take down shields and a mod does exist that gives others shields. I almost exclusively play SP with encounter mods so a shield mod for me is nessesity as there are no bots that have your back.

I really wish we could get something that would allow for shield mods. I don't know why the API isn't more open. I wish Keen would let us know why they don't want to allow the 3 APIs features he asking for. I too see that it would be good for more than just shields.

We need shields and other things that come in mods to be added to the vanilla game because Console users cannot access mods and some PCs also cannot handle the mod installers.

Alternatively, we need better mod support so people can have shields if they want to without derailing the normal SE experience.

Yes and Yes and did I say Yes. Let modders, server owners, and players alike have choices! Being as I do a little of all 3 it is a big help to have options and flexibility.

people playing on console cannot have mods, so many features that are in mods are unavailable to console players.

If they did their own shield (vanilla) it should allow for modded shields as well. TBH I just want shields lol! I miss the days of Gmod!

I wonder if they are working on SE2 or engine upgrades I'm hoping they are I really enjoy this game but I also see its potential for even more greatness.

It doesn't seem all that likely, given the recent updates with DLC, but I think that's the most effective way to make progress in development. The current engine can often be awkward, and some of the details like the four-block medbay have worrying implications for future development that might include more complicated blocks.

@Doomed Person "The current engine can often be awkward, and some of the details like the four-block medbay have worrying implications for future development that might include more complicated blocks." What do you mean?

The large grid medbay could easily take up three grid spaces of volume instead of four, in an L shape. In fact, it seems as if it were intended to be this way, because of the very intentional space making up the fourth grid space. The fact that it isn't currently this way suggests that the engine doesn't support blocks that take up grid spaces in a non-rectangular-prismic fashion. Which, in turn, would increase the effective sizes of larger blocks. We can already see this to some extent in the large reactor, which has comparatively large spaces that are taken by the block's grid footprint but are empty with respect to collisions and graphics.

If larger blocks were to be implemented, such as the primary ship weapons that many people have advocated for, it seems likely that this could quickly become an issue. Using many blocks like the large reactor would create even more awkward, unusable spaces within ships. And it is only possible to design so many blocks as square bricks of futuristic function.

Additionally, this raises the question of what other limitations the game engine might have if something as simple as these kinds of blocks are impossible. It seems better to start over in something that can more effectively run this game.

Ah I see.

"The normal SE experience" is going to vary from server to server based on various settings of those servers. Not everyone plays the same way or has the same goals in mind. Turn off the options you don't like, it's really that simple.

"the normal SE experience" is more of in terms of vanilla features, even if theres limits removed

the problem with requesting mods to be added to SE because you decided to get it on console instead of PC is kind of like saying that keen should add space combat to skyrim because you dont want to pay for a different game

its not my fault that you cant or sometimes more of WONT buy a PC, im not responsible for your situation and decisions, but also requesting massive changes is kind of what adds more overhead and more work for the devs to try and optimize (if they even can at that point)

as what doomed said as well, the current game engine requires multiple blocks to interact with each other to get anything that isnt exactly a prismic shape (prismic meaning no concave sections, the only way you can get them is through transforming a prism into something else) theres also the problem of how collisions work if you were to manage to get something like that to be added in the first place, how it would react, and the way that the collisions are based off of flat planes of triangles, with voxels just having a lot more of them

Nope that's not how that works. SE is SE no matter the platform it's on. There are going to be interface differences certainly due to the difference between console and PC. However to say "oops sorry you should've bought a PC" is like removing about half of the game and then saying "sorry you should've bought the full version of the game" even though they charged for the full version.

Not being able to have mods for a technical reason or contract/legal reasons between the various companies is one thing, but if even older games can give people map makers and what amounts to full on dev toolkits, they could come up with something for SE.

Otherwise good grief the elitism in that comment.

no, its the problem of asking for mods just because they bought a version of the game that doesnt have them, its like asking for all of the mods from modpacks to be added to minecraft

they should have bought the game for the features it had, not the things they saw in some youtube video somewhere else... FOR A DIFFERENT PLATFORM

to reiterate, its not our fault or the devs' fault for their decision or situation right now, and to call that elitism is basically like saying that reality doesnt exist

its okay to help someone, but the kind of territory that it seems you are getting into is VERY political

Honestly, this seems like the kind of debater that would be absolute murder in and only in a live talk, regardless of how ridiculous the point at hand is. Buzzwords like "elitism" and accusations of hypocrisy and opinionated claims, no matter how unfounded, don't just disappear after they're said in front of an audience, unlike when typed in a massive block of text. And the repeated decontextualization and debatably good-faith weird interpretations combined with constant reiteration for additional volume could easily drown out anyone trying to make a reasonable argument.

I'm glad that I don't have to pick this stuff apart live, because I'd have missed Schrodinger's understanding of shield mechanics otherwise.

i just realized something...

you know what it really starts to sound like?

Karens...

"My boy should have the upmost treatment, hes better than the other children, give him what he wants"

otherwise, why would he introduce an "elitism" argument?

It's... not quite that. More like "You aren't special, therefore you shouldn't get what you want" combined with a heavy dose of contempt for anything that comes close to attempting to predict what the community might want.

the community would rather have the choice than have it be a feature that they HAVE to turn on or off

at the point that we HAVE to turn it on or off, it becomes bloatware, and everyone hates bloatware ("experimental" features were more of a last-ditch-effort kind of forced backseat than added in disabled by default)

also, nobody can really say for sure what the community wants rather than someone who has done the research or has, yknow, ASKED THE COMMUNITY... with a poll or something? even those who have 1.whatevermillion subscribers on youtube (who call themselves the majority) arent the end-all-be-all because not all of those subscribers are real, and not all of the real ones are people who own the game, they are there for the content provided

Could you post the shield mod to mod.io so that xbox players can get it?

mod.io is in hot water considering that its a disruptive change... while you may like mods, a lot of us PC players feel like we have had to step back for some of the xbox players to be able to get equal footing. should implementation become transparent enough and effectively invisible enough, mod.io will get pretty much full mod support from the community

however, a LOT of the PC community, given that we are based off of the Steam side of things, HATE epic and thus EOS for some of the things they have been doing... exclusivity isnt something that you normally find in something that isnt simply made-to-order, its manufactured scarcity. it existed in the console space for so long that its become normal, us PC people dont want it to become normal, because developers aside, they tend to play a lot nicer with the fact that people want to use other services for game purchases, and "exclusivity" tends to be stuck to self-owned products (like EA's own system, they keep their own developers, and thus their own games, but still sometimes let products be released on other marketplaces)

We need shields! They are a logical next step. Players don't want to get one-shotted.

If you want to make them "less convenient" (not overpowered), you could make them directional so they only protect out 1 way (you would need to shield all 6 sides). Or only let it protect neighbouring blocks.

Implementing these API extensions in a way that lets modders create either bubble shields or 'Skin tight' shields would be great too.