Energy / Health / Shields

I've also made a potential tech tree that branches of the Energy Capacitor block into blocks that can utilize the energy bar system.

The EMP would be a shockwave that disabled electronic systems on surrounding ship in a limited range AoE, then there would be a warhead version of that which branched off into magnetic implosion (pull objects instead of push with the blast) and anti-grav shockwave (pushed really strong) warheads. This would also spice up the battles a bit and gave players more choice in which way they decked out their ships. Then there would also be tesla cannons which could either also pull targets each time they hit in close range or have a similar "immobilizing" effect on electronics of targets. If they had a short range they'd be balanced. There would also be a cloaking device that used this capacitor and it could only ever be used for 1 system, so you can't go invisible and have shields at the same time for example. Maybe another block would be a Warp Drive which would basically be an epic mount version of the jump drive, which also required the energy system of the capacitors. This could also be then interrupted by EMPs and EMP warheads, instead of for instance "jump drive inhibitors" to make space combat a bit more action oriented, fast paced and skill based. This just to say that shields don't necessarily have to be unbalanced or not a good match for Space Engineers, they could feasibly be turned off at any moment. I believe it's all about the way they are implemented and I think this way it would work, and ship hulls would still be very relevant as you want to use other systems too, or you are hit by an EMP which disables your entire shield at any given moment. It means you still need to have backup even with shields.

...That's a lot there...

-You've probably got enough stuff here for two or three suggestion threads, stuffing them all in one risks people losing track of them and/or not seeing things they would want to comment on.

-When Keen added progression, the tech-tree was more of a nuisance than anything. The SE universe is not short on resources, so it isn't hard to just unlock everything as soon as you find a few half-decent ore nodes.

-An emp-weapon that instantly knocks out shields invalidates the point of shields, because everyone that knew it existed would use it, making the shield-block in to dead weight, and "short-range" isn't a good balance for most weapons because... well...

-Cloaking Devices are not a good idea. Stealth is an interesting concept, and a bit of stealth-play would be fine so long as there's a minimum detection-range, but infinitely-respawning grinder-monkeys are already enough of an issue when they need to park far enough away to not get their spawn point spotted. Giving grinder-monkeys something to let them respawn close to your stuff would just make them more annoying.

-Tractor-beams are cool. Interdiction is cool, but needs significant balancing mechanics to avoid turning pvp in to a game of "who's got the bigger death-brick" (there are other threads on this). A tractor-beam that was also an interdiction-weapon would be game-breaking... also, be careful about mentioning interdiction-stuff, pve players tend to respond to the the mention of interdiction like you just read a thesaurus of slurs at them.

I mean, they could need rare resources as well and some other prerequisites. The tech tree idea of it is just something to potentially have crossovers inbetween blocks in terms of functionality and components or something. They could also have extremely rare requirements (to unlock, not to build*), something like factorum components to build something which then unlocked the tech tree block mentioned here. There could be different steps inbetween and they don't necessarily have to unlock each other. A lot of difficulties you mentioned have several ways to be worked around.

Hmmm... Needing to sweet-talk NPC factions (or raid them) for blueprints to more advanced items would be a good way to make the tech-tree not just a trivial annoyance... not a bad idea you have there.

As for the other issues... The stuff you've come up with sounds cool, and I'd love to hear your solutions. If you can solve all the problems I point out then this stuff should absolutely be in the game and Keen should put you on their payroll. Until then I will suggest that the unbalanced stuff remain out of vanilla to be the exclusive domain of mods.

Amazing idea! Shields are a must-have in every space game.

I really like the concept behind Rift Interstellar. In that game, you build shield generators and fuel them using gas, processed materials, or any kind of resource you can imagine.

Here’s what I’d love to see in this game:

Each shield generator has a max capacity and consumes fuel while active. Fuel is consumed steadily over time, but more rapidly when the shield takes hits. The idea is that when you’re under attack, the shield consumes more energy to absorb damage.

It doesn’t need to be overly complex — just a system that gives us a way to defend our ships. A basic calculation could be done based on the ship’s dimensions (like height and width) — larger ships would naturally consume more power.

You could also add upgrade modules, like one to increase shield regeneration speed or another to reduce fuel consumption. This opens up lots of gameplay possibilities without making it too hard to understand.

Another idea that would make things even better is an energy management panel.

It could allow players to create energy groups and assign ship modules to each one. For example, you'd have a list of all blocks or systems that consume energy, and you'd be able to decide which shield generators (or reactors) supply each group. This would add a layer of strategy and control without overwhelming players — especially useful in larger or more complex ships.

Yeah the shield would deduct energy while taking hits from weapons depending on the weapons damage with a formula. I don't think that increasing the passive consumption of the shield depending on grid size is a good idea. Passive consumption is not interactive and logically not connected to the gameplay. It can be more consumption intensive but I think if ship size is doubled then shield consumption should maybe be increased by 20% max. This because otherwise very small shields can become unbreakable and large shields might as well not have a purpose. It's already hard to hit smaller, faster targets which is the entire point of fighters. A large ship would be slow, immobile, can't avoid getting hit by large main cannons like railguns. It would be bombarded constantly, also by torpedos, missiles and flying debris. This is what you have to consider and why I think that a simple way of letting the Passive Consumption not be a major part of the shield in general, just enough so you can't have it up forever. Maybe just a fixed % of the max energy bar per second, so it would scale with your ships capacity and not size, while still making it balanced. Then if we make damage not scale with energy capacity or size, but just a mitigation% depending on something else (e.g. hull strength or something more like that, maybe modules), it would be balanced in the end I think.

SE already has a size-meta, shields will only make that worse.

-A well designed small-grid ship in the hands of a talented pilot may be hard to hit, but you only need to hit it once, and if the pilot isn't one of the best or the ship isn't adequately evasive then it isn't hard for a turret to do the job.

-On the other hand a large-grid ship may be a much larger target, but the lack of caps on gyros and the absurdity of gravity-drives often allow them to out-fly small grids, and even when slow and poorly flown it isn't hard for a large-grid to have such a mass-advantage as to be able to just run a small-grid out of ammo and fuel well before the small-grid can hope to disable its larger foe.

So, do you still think giving ships a scaling hitpoint-buffer that has to be burned through before smaller ones can even start trying to damage a larger one's systems will be balanced by requiring a larger one to devote some of its' wealth of internal space to shield-fuel? Perhaps its just me but that seems like the opposite of making something balanced.

Don't get me wrong, it would be absurd to think that a single fighter would be equal to a battleship in a fight, but if even the best fighters are rendered totally incapable of inflicting damage because they can't carry enough fuel or ammo to outlast a target's shields, then shields will have invalidated an entire style of play. And before someone mentions the previously discussed "emp weapons", such a weapon would be fitted to every large-ship who's builder knows it exists, rendering shields a pointless feature in LvL fights, while any small ship meant for battle would find the emp weapons to be an "equipment tax" that takes up the small-ship's limited space which would have been better used for other weapons, equipment, or greebling.

Shields are a cool idea, but they are best left to the realm of mods, the vanilla game is better off without them.

Uhm, a capital ship vs 1 fighter and winning is not a size meta. If a single fighter could take down a capital ship that would be a problem, which is more likely the case in SE1 right now. SE1 isn't balanced at all either, but comparing fighters with capital ships is going to always cause problems. Obviously if fighters would have shields you would have to hit them more than once, and they could regenerate their shield while not being hit inbetween hits. It seems pretty reasonable to think that fighters could have an advantage this way. But I think this goes too much into speculative territory and I can really see a couple of scenarios where doing hit and runs, regenerating shields inbetween can really turn into a skill-expressive tactic for smaller corvettes and fighters. Both sizes of ships would benefit from shields and the shield would still require manual activation and management to not drain too much energy, which will definitely open up some opportunities for strategic moves to bypass shields or wear them down over time. Also actually the passive consumption being a % of the max energy bar would be a disadvantage to grids with a bigger capacity.

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You keep saying this on every subject that dares mention shields. You've been provided examples of how to balance them time and again, yet you continuously stick your fingers in your ears and scream because you don't like to be wrong on this subject. So as I've said to you several times on this, turn them off if you don't like them just like people who don't like Meteor Storms, Lightning Damage or a host of other features do if they don't like them. Now that we know a food system is coming in 1.207 I will be turning that system off if it's little more than eat/drink this or die. Heaven forbid the pve folks, sci fi people, or anyone else be given a feature they like for once in spite of the pvp crowd not liking it.

First, you decide how much damage you want a shield to be able to take reasonably from each weapon before it fails. You then decide how much it regens per second and how much power it takes. From there you ship it off to players as it's then an arms race. If dude brings a shield and his opponent brings 40 turrets, it's going to go down 40x as fast. If dude brings more shields it will take longer to breach. Welcome to warfare. Different servers will use different settings with some choosing pure vanilla, some choosing mods. Some will be pure vanilla and all default settings, some will customize their pure vanilla settings. Rarely are any 2 servers 100% alike outside of official servers. If you don't like that a server would use shields, don't play on that server. Simple as that.

As for your fighter vs capital ship examples, if the pilot is good enough to smoke the capital ship, that's a capital ship problem and not a fighter problem.

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Also I just want to add to the comment about:

"-An emp-weapon that instantly knocks out shields invalidates the point of shields, because everyone that knew it existed would use it, making the shield-block in to dead weight, and "short-range" isn't a good balance for most weapons because... well..."

The EMP shockwave would require a ship to be in close proximity to a target, we all know from pvp on SE that this is not very easy to do. That's balanced. As for EMP warheads, they are easily shot down before they reach their targets, and more likely would much harder to land due their size and traveling speed, than to simply shoot down as a minor small drone, not even accounting for the cost of an EMP warhead and the rest of the missile.

Both of these things would be reasonably balanced in my opinion and from my experience in SE1.

The EMP effect in question would *not* destroy every electric block on a ship, rather turn them off for 10-15 seconds and wouldn't affect blocks that were already manually turned off (so there is a form of counterplay possible) and also perhaps drain batteries, jump drives and energy capacitors to 0. The EMP shockwave could also have a charging animation just like the railgun so it would be reasonably easy to predict when someone was going to EMP near you and turn off your blocks beforehand and then turn them on again (i.e. counter the EMP, if you will). The Tesla turrets could simply just drain systems and for the most part not affect normal electrical blocks.

@Captainbladej52 I would advise you go re-read the original argument we had over shields instead of trying to restart it here. People don’t need to see you making absurd arguments and slinging insults, me telling you that your arguments are nonsense and that you need to be polite lest I sic the board’s moderators on you, and the two of us going in a giant circle that wastes everyone’s time and buries everyone else’s input under our walls of text.

You can find that argument here:

https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers2/pc/topic/45188-shields-and-hangar-force-fields

Don’t bother responding, I won’t read it. I know your argument for shields, you are wrong and I have already explained why, and I don’t have the energy to care enough to try and correct you anymore. Fly or fall on your own merits, you aren’t my problem.

@Gaz If you got 5 lines in to my last post you’d have seen that I know a fighter shouldn’t normally win against a battleship, it is simply a good reference point because fighters are often the thing most likely to be invalidated by shields. As for the size-meta… increasing all dimensions by 10% results in a 21% increase in surface-area for weapons, a 33% increase in hp, and given two otherwise equal ships this will snowball in to the slightly larger one grinding the smaller one in to scrap while still having around 60% of its hp left. It isn’t insurmountable with skill, design, and ingenuity, and trying to balance it out of the game would create more problems than it solves, but that doesn’t mean we should do stuff that would make it any worse.

Speculation and theory-crafting lets us find flaws and saves Keen the time it would take to do it themselves, either getting us the game that little bit faster or giving them that much more time to polish it. So, lets try throwing some math at what you have suggested so far and see where that leads…

-A 300-block small-grid (guestimating based on the average of what I’ve seen) has an 18,000 hp shield allowing it to absorb either 1 artillery round or 1 volley from a quad-assault custom-turret while still having just a bit left over. The shield regenerates 1% (180hp) per second, effectively allowing the pilot 1 such mistake while attacking a larger target every 94.5-ish seconds.

-A 1200-block large-grid (again, guestimating an average) fits a similar though larger shield. The large-grid shield has 1,800,000 hp and regenerates 1,800hp per second (I would go with 9,000,000 to match the 500x increase in volume, but sticking to 100x to roughly match the increase in steel-plates seemed more generous to the pro-shield argument).

-Using auto-cannons (railguns have lower dps, assault-cannons have lower dps and lower efficiency) it would take a bit over 5400L of ammo (roughly one medium cargo + the cockpit + a large connector) for the small-grid just to drop the large-grid’s shield if that shield didn’t regenerate. Once we add regeneration we’re easily looking at more than 2 mediums full of ammo.

---And here we run in to the first major issue, that is a lot of cargo for what are often very small builds to have to heft around, it would likely take a team of fighters to do anything there regardless of skill. Fighters need at least mildly talented pilots to avoid just getting smoked by a larger ship’s turrets, AI doesn’t cut it in that role. Having a several to one player advantage isn’t unheard of, but relying on it to happen in place of an actual balance-mechanic isn’t a great idea.

-So, we get 4 fighters with 6 autocannons each, it takes this force just over a minute of combined continuous fire to drop the large-grid’s shields and start actually damaging anything, but even then only once they get close. If they don’t land an emp early, that’s going to be a lot of time where that large-grid has absolute control of the fight and can leave when it wants while the smalls can’t (small jump-drives are factorum-loot, finding and fitting several to fighters would be an issue).

-EMP-warhead missiles might allow good range on the anti-shield and interdiction-effects, but they are still easily shot down in small numbers, and while a large-grid can afford a huge launcher-system to throw constant saturation attacks that overwhelm defenses and effectively make shields and jump-drives irrelevant features, fighters would lack the space for such a luxury and would need to rely on the other EMP armaments. Even if they did get lucky enough to land a hit, it isn’t unreasonable to think a large-grid can keep a jump-drive charged but turned off so that it can still jump if not being constantly emp’d.

---Our second issue, if the large-grid is slow enough or inexperienced enough to allow the fighters to control the engagement distance, they need to stay in EMP range to keep the large-grid pinned lest it light up a backup drive and escape. At this range the large-grid will have the grapple-tesla you suggested, and while that might have been used to keep faster ships from escaping while attacking, here it can be used to pull the small-grid attackers in too close to evade that they might then eat a broadside and become space-confetti.

-Between these two issues, fighters will be nearly useless in pvp where larger ships are involved. As SE1 currently is, a small-grid fighter’s only significant advantage is its low production cost and ease of replacement via printers, but given SE’s plentiful resources uranium and/or “shield fuel” would probably take even less work to produce than new fighters, and with shields stacking the fight against them even more then they would be virtually pointless. And we haven’t even mentioned the third issue yet…

---The third and probably most significant issue is most easily boiled down to one word: meta. A shield isn’t complex hull geometries, considerations of redundancy vs weight, the discovery of clever design tricks, or the careful consideration of what should be placed where based on how expendable it is, it’s a math-problem someone can quickly solve with a bit of experimentation and a spreadsheet. A lot of pvp-players don’t care much about anything beyond taunting a foe’s corpse. If a shield’s hp is based off a particular block, it will be spammed, if it suffers diminishing returns, it will be built to an optimization point on a graph, if it’s a static value, you’ll be lucky to get an armor-skin over an otherwise disjointed line of functional blocks, and anyone that wants to have a chance will have no choice but to play by those rules.

If someone wants shields, I have no issue with them being modded in, and I’ll gladly support making them easier to mod in and having some manner of protection that keeps updates from breaking the mod. That said, people need a balanced vanilla version of the game to get used to the basics and figure out what style of play they like, and you can’t balance shields in a way that doesn’t invalidate more playstyles with a meta than it creates.

…Also, Captainbladej52 seems to have not noticed the post with your interdiction idea. If they eventually do then they’ll probably give you some pve-logic about how interdiction is the tool of griefers and “hurts people just by existing” (I disagree, though it takes a lot of careful work to balance), but without it people will still just jump away if you drop their shields. I advise you just ignore their comments on the topic and not engage, it isn’t worth the time.

@Diego Mireira "every space game needs shields" no!!!! Absolutely not. SE1 had an incredible combat system imo -- needed balances and modification for sure, but mods like weaponcore did so perfectly, as an example. "every space game needs shields" is such an unreasonable statement. There is absolutely an argument for SE2 to include shields, I'll admit. But the idea that every space combat game needs to be the same is ridiculous. A 'no true scotsman' fallacy at its finest.

@Tael: yes we know. You think you know more than you do. Anything you don't like is automatically not balanced and can't be balanced. you made that clear the first time which is why when it comes to shields your opinion should be discarded every time.

@captainbladej52 lets relax with the ad hominem, eh? This is a game forum, not a COD lobby. Insulting people isn't gonna help your case.

@Tael those numbers are completely unreasonable and why would we even bother with speculating if they are obviously not going to be balanced in the first place. A few comments up I was literally saying that I don't think shields should scale with size lol. And here you are saying that shield scaling would be unbalanced if it depends on size... Well duh. I think shield health just depends on the amount of capacitors. The regeneration speed depends on the amount power generation a grid has. Size would maybe increase the amount of Passive Consumption of the shield at a rate of 1:5 (100% consumption increase for 500% size increase). Like, "Shield HP" shouldn't exist as a concept. It should be "Max energy capacity" and "Energy per second". I feel like you are purposefully trying to make this discussion about unimportant details that are mentioned nowhere and already addressed. You wrote an entire paragraph about shields scaling with size which is incredibly unbalanced and unnecessarily complicated for the average player. Also, you said it would save Keen time to discuss about it before implementing it, but I think at this point it would save more time to test it and see if it works, which would probably be worth it for them. Discussing about made up numbers is pointless, why not just change those numbers if they seem unreasonable to you? That's the whole point of speculation, jeez.

@brights0ng: you're not a moderator so stay in your own lane. second, I called Tael out on this because he's shown time and again with his behavior he will look for any way to say features he don't like can't be balanced, be it shields or what have you. In other words because he doesn't like it, it can't be balanced, thus everyone should just resort to mods. But if someone uses the same logic to him, oh no it's not like that it's just that we can do this and this and so on and we "just don't understand". Of course you already know this as it's hardly the first time you've tried to defend him on this junk.

@Gaz: He isn't worth your time on this because he's in denial and will never listen. He thinks he knows more than he actually does even when people with actual dev experience in games have told him he doesn't know what he's talking about. He sits there and whines about how shields or whatever thing he doesn't like can't be balanced and pulls the classic "but pvp" and "just use mods" and looks for any reason to justify why the playerbase as a whole should be denied a feature or request purely because he and his small handful of like minded people don't like it. He'll bring up every little irrelevant thing under the sun to distract and such like he's done here with you when it's something he hates. In the big shield thread it didn't matter how many times he or I made suggestions or explained how stuff could work, "but that's just bad" or so on. Didn't matter to him that he could just tick a box and turn them off if he doesn't like shields or (feature here), he's simply forced to play with them and so is everyone else. I even offered to sit down with him and find a balance that works for his worlds/servers should such a feature be implemented as did a couple others, but nope. He's free to dislike shields, but you'll never get through to people like him because they don't want to be convinced. Doesn't matter they can tick a box and turn it off and not have to play with it. Doesn't matter if shields are left off by default making people opt in. Nah if they don't like it no one should be allowed to have it.

@Gaz, Apologies, I missed the part you referenced size. Fortunately, the math will be identical if I replace arbitrary block counts/volumes with arbitrary reactor/capacitor counts allowed for by that same increase in volume, though this would force the use of the 9,000,000 number.

I'd bother with numbers in the hopes of either convincing you that they can't be balanced, or getting you to show me some numbers I didn't think of that show they can.

As for shield max-energy-capacity and shield energy per second vs shield hp, Its just what we name a number, so what's the difference? If you have an idea here different from a conventional relatively fixed value then I'd love to know.

As for speculation vs testing and made-up numbers:

-Testing with mods in SE1 has shown me I'm right,

-Speculation because we can be in different time-zones and cooperatively test math in out heads instead of having to find a time to meet up in a game,

-Those numbers are unreasonable, and I can add numbers or subtract numbers, but I can't seem to make them reasonable myself, the hope is that either I convince you that shields are unbalanced no matter what you do, or that you come up with numbers that work and show to me that I am wrong.

"the hope is that either I convince you that shields are unbalanced no matter what you do, or that you come up with numbers that work and show to me that I am wrong."

Bro, how about You come up with numbers that seem reasonable to you, as you seem to know it best. Have at it.

Second, "shields are unbalanced no matter what you do", really? So all the pure pvp games that use shields are unbalanced? LOL. Ok... That is straight up ridiculous to say. Shield are balanced just fine, they just take away from the emphasis on build integrity. Reality check here for you: SE pvp is glass-cannon city. In the current state of it, you literally blow up from 1 railgun shot. Now look here, I find such things satisfying as all hell. I like to pub stomp the hell out of my Smurf queues, okay? Now, I will also be mature enough to say that it is also a very steep and punishing skill curve, something which potentially keeps out a lot of players from ever engaging in it at all. I really know exactly why you don't like shields. Your arguments show that balance is not and never has been the main issue with it however.

Show me some numbers that would make sense to you.

"Bro, how about You come up with numbers that seem reasonable to you..."

-Tried, failed, if it were that easy then I'd have done that by now.

"So all the pure pvp games that use shields are unbalanced? LOL. Ok... That is straight up ridiculous..."

-If you've got a server I am not aware of that has managed to balance shields properly, why not identify it that it may be examined?

"I really know exactly why you don't like shields."

-This just looks like one of captainbladej52's taunts, which isn't a good thing given a lot of cap's arguments are often obviously either fallacies or unjust accusations against the person cap disagrees with of whatever cap has probably very justifiably been called out for doing recently. If you've got something to say then say it, if you have a question about my motives then ask, vague taunts are unproductive.

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So... the more I look at this, the more this looks like you want shields just because you think they are cool (they are), but you can't come up with an adequate solution to the balance issue that holds together when someone puts it under the proverbial microscope. "I want shields because I think they are cool even though they may not be balanced" is a perfectly acceptable argument to make, but if you can't solve the balance issue then the solution isn't to taunt or throw fallacies around until the people you disagree with go away, the solution is to come up with a way to get shields added in that circumvents the balance issue entirely.

-In this instance, having considered the topic of shields for longer than people have been asking for them to be added to SE2, I'd recommend asking for Keen to create a set of shield-blocks with different general functions and properties in line with how people generally want different types of shields to behave, and then simply leaving them disabled so that in a vanilla game they do not show up in someone's list of placeable blocks. If they do this then a modder would only need to write a mod that just switches "shield(type)enabled=false" to "shield(type)enabled=true" for the particular type of shield they want (and possibly tweaks the values to their exact preferences). This would allow a balanced vanilla game for new people to learn how they want to play and for hard-sci/purist players to enjoy (and make it easily visible to these people from the server list whether or not they are looking at a server that is likely to be running shields), while also allowing people that want shields to have them in an effectively Keen-supported mod, and creating something of a tutorial-mod for aspiring modders to start with.

So, any thoughts?

@Gaz: see this is exactly what Tael does. He keeps saying he can't find numbers he likes or similar, therefore it's impossible because HE couldn't find something he liked and no one should be allowed to have it. Then when you call him out on his bogus logic he hides behind the "why you mad/taunting" type of gaslight because he knows he's wrong. I've been creating content for games for over 20 years and even when he had me and a couple others who have made stuff telling him he's wrong, he still won't listen. And he LOVES to hide behind "muh balance" as though that isn't already the most subjective thing in existence. Doesn't matter to him that servers have to pick and choose which settings they want and can just tick things on/off with a click of a box. If he doesn't like it, then no one should be allowed to have it because "it can't be balanced" as though everything in the game revolves around pvp. And even if they were automatically as OP as he claims, heaven forbid the pvp guys have to be the one to make a sacrifice for once when they're always demanding everyone else do it.

Doesn't matter how many times I've explained to him balance is subjective and he's free to alter the balance for his own worlds and go with a shield-less server without demanding everyone else not have a feature purely because of him. I DESPISE interdiction type devices but if clang forbid Keen were to ever make one it would be instantly disabled on my servers. Folks who want it could still use it.

@Tael: it's funny dude, because the only people complaining about me are you and your little pal up there. It's also funny that you can't seem to keep my name out of your mouth despite the whole "I'm not reading anything anymore" junk. Funny to me that you love to dish heat but can't take it. You also prove once again your own stubbornness and willful ignorance on things. Heaven forbid you have to tick a box to disable shields should they get added and an update be made with someone other than the pvp types in mind for once. Heaven forbid the pvp guys take one for the team for once when always demanding changes to plans for pvp reasons. You ever going to use something other than the same gaslights and non-arguments?

@Tael

"-If you've got a server I am not aware of that has managed to balance shields properly, why not identify it that it may be examined?"

I actually meant Games that were designed to have pvp in general. Pvp "games". Not space engineers specifically. No I understand that a hacked-in mod with clunky mechanics because that specifically happened to be the only bypass available made by unpaid teens is not going to be balanced... Should I go on? Are there no pvp games that use shields effectively in a balanced way that may even have dedicated e-sports events? Hmmm...

No I think that space engineers is left to be very bland out of the box and left to fill in the gaps, which is exactly why more is better. Not because of shields specifically, just more systems, more variation, mechanics, etc. I don't think it will be super hard for Keen to execute in a better way than it has been, so that shouldn't be a reason why it can't work.

It has been done, (since... Basically every space game ever), it will keep on being done, it will make space engineers better and there is no reason to not have it. Balance literally depends on changing single variables if you know anything about how games are made. That's like the last thing you should worry about when discussing new ideas for an entirely new game. That comes way down the line after everything is released, i.e. buffed/nerfed etc.

Can you give me one good reason why shields are something impossible to balance given full control over the values?

...And here I'd hoped to genuinely discuss the issue, silly me...

"I actually meant Games that were designed to have pvp in general. Pvp "games". Not space engineers specifically."

Comparing a theoretical shield in SE to a shield in EVE, Halo, or Starcraft is false equivalence. Shields may serve a similar purpose across multiple properties in a given genre, but the rules behind them that affect the game's balance are entirely different.

"Can you give me one good reason why shields are something impossible to balance given full control over the values?"

-Given your taunts, attempt at false equivalence, and willingness to ignore possible solutions, it looks like you're fishing to get an answer trying to prove Russell's Teapot doesn't exist. I invite you to prove it does, and wish you the best of luck.

Tael running away and gaslighting with his tail between his legs trying to pull a "no you" and dodging questions he has no answers for and pretending he's won something, welcome to your typical day ending in y.

"but the rules behind them that affect the game's balance are entirely different."

So, that provides good examples for integrating shields in this game then, because the rules actually haven't been made yet. We are talking about SE2 FYI, because it looks like you think that some rules cannot apply to it as if it's already a finalized concept.

Well, this has been an interesting discussion and I hope it gave people more ideas for the development of this game. I'm not seeing where I am taunting you, but the solutions have definitely been ignored by you and provided by me, as you have incessantly been asking for them, without acknowledging them regardless of constantly being provided with them. I have provided concepts that did not rely on exact numbers and were different than the current shield mod in SE1, but took away key strengths and weaknesses of it after extensive testing and analysis. Yet you felt the need to put arbitrary numbers on it and "Shield HP" which was not mentioned either which just shows you are not even remotely engaged with the discussion.

My idea is that energy capacitors fill up an "energy bar" similar to hydrogen in the screen. This energy can either be put to shields or other systems (e.g. thrust, weapons, cloaking, jump drives, EMP, etc.), so you can't use all systems (including shields) at once. Then shields could drain a set percentage of energy per second as well (and it could scale up with size, e.g. 20% increase for 100% "size" increase, whatever you may classify as "size"). This meant that regardless of max energy capacity (capacitor stacking), it would only be able to be up for let's say 100 seconds, after which the energy would be 0. Then shields would drain additional energy when being hit, through a certain formula, which could instead scale with max capacity, so a ship with more capacitors would have a more durable shield in terms of being bombarded. Now, for the energy regeneration when energy was not directed to any system, this speed could rely on power generation of the grid. Here this number would be able to scale more with the grid in terms of effectiveness, but you wouldn't be able to hold up a shield while it regenerated. Then to top it off, EMP mechanics would also exist, with robust limiters on it such as range and delivery method, while at the same time being counterable by turning off electrically powered blocks. I think this would provide players with ample gameplay strategies to make shields not feel as jarring as they have been in the SE1 mod (which depending on the set of mods made the game completely unplayable, I agree).

Just summarized the current concept once again in case some things weren't clear as they may have been drowned in the discussion.

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As a sole PvE Player I don't think shields fit in SE since it removes a lot of depth from ship design. Stuff like additional armor around critical components, armor vs maneuvrebility, redundant conveyor systems or spread out magazines against magazine racking simply don't have to be considered, if your have a shield.

I would rather have some automatic repair system to easily repair damage out of combat.

Also shield mods will exist, so anyone who wants to play with shields can do that without forcing everyone else to also play with shields.

@ captainbladej52

A real "shield"? It can be invented...

For example, an inflated bubble or membrane made of an emulsion of water, detergent and powdered iron (or tungsten) - in encounter conditions at kilometers per second, this would have truly devastating effects on missiles and rockets. (Ignoring the speed limitations in SE)

The shield is not designed to stop a missile, but to disrupt it and disable it - the debris will fall on the protected ship.

The material consumption to maintain the shield would be about 10 kg of emulsion per second for a shield 100 m (= 7853 m2 = ~10,000 m2) in diameter and a density of 1 g per square meter.

The layers of the shield would be deposited "behind" each other, from the inside out (flying away from the shielded ship and then swelling and disintegrating).

The shield projector would be a ship-mounted "surface" device (it would have to be built on the surface of the ship), measuring 10x10 meters, and a shield with a diameter of 100 m would create 50 meters from the ship once per second (i.e. the membrane would fly away at a speed of 50 m/s). The projectors are stackable and scalable, the membrane has limited shapeability - a very small ship would only need two projectors to create a spherical shield.

The lifetime of each layer of such a shield would be only units, tens of seconds at most, but it could work.

This doesn't change the fact that I consider shields to be a pointless concept.

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@semtex interesting... I generally am opposed to shields because its just generic, uninspired sci fi slop, but if they specifically worked only on specific types of weaponry, like rockets, it could make for an actually interesting (and realistic-feeling) gameplay mechanic.

Currently, there is no known theoretically proven possible way to make shields outside of suspended plasma, which would create a shield that is literally solid glowing light and could not be seen through, and would have minimal protective properties, which I can imagine we all agree couldn't work. But from a gameplay mechanic, selectively protective shields could be interesting, if balanced well.

@xyz xyz: Strongly disagree. First off, if a build is crap it's not going to do well. If said build gets shields then it's now a crappy build with shields. Having shields doesn't relieve people of the duty to make their builds actually work as you still have to worry about what happens if/when the shields fail. If people want to put all their eggs in one basket and rely solely on the shields, that's a them problem far as I'm concerned. Also makes it easier to wipe them out if/when I fight them because one their shields drop they're done. So I've got to ask, what's the downside there? Also to this point, I've seen a ton of variations on the "takes away depth of ship design and you don't have to consider things like x" and it basically boils down to the same things. folks not liking that they're getting beat by designs they consider to be inferior and thus blaming it on the shields. I'm not accusing you specifically of that, merely stating that for most who raise that argument, that's their hidden motivation when they're made to defend their position.

At the end of the day if you have little Timmy facing off against Johnny 2x4 and little Timmy shows up with a ton of shields, and Johnny brings his unshielded ship, Johnny is still going to win if he's got the better ship and is the better pilot. Timmy's shields will only delay the inevitable. As another scenario let's say Timmy brings what he considers the best meta ship ever and Johnny brings a ship that's "a bad ship too reliant on shields". If Johnny beats him, then Timmy can whine all he wants and blame the shields, but it means Johnny's build isn't as bad as Timmy made it out to be, even if Timmy doesn't want to admit it.

Likewise SE as a whole is an arms race of who can bring more of what to the table and knows how to use said what better. If I see a ship that's got a ton of armor, shields, I'm going to bring more guns to the table to get through that armor and overwhelm the shields. If he knows that's how I'm thinking he's going to try to adapt. And thus goes the cycle.

"Also shield mods will exist, so anyone who wants to play with shields can do that without forcing everyone else to also play with shields."

Now to this point specifically, this is where I'm calling outright bs to put it bluntly as this is not a valid argument to make. This is an infinitely recyclable argument that can be made about anything that could ever possibly exist in game and is not valid, especially on its own. You want stronger armor, use mods. You want more decorative blocks, use mods. You want more weapon types, use mods. You want a food system, use mods. You want weather, use mods. You want (thing here), use mods. By the logic of the "just use mods" argument we may as well stop all development of the games and just let modders do all the work so no one is forced to play with anything they don't like. We know there is a food system of some kind coming in 1.207 of SE1 which means we will likely have a food system of some type in SE2. I'm not a fan of food systems 99% of the time because they're often little more than "eat/drink this or die" with no benefits other than not dying. By your logic they shouldn't add a food system because that forces me to play with something I don't like and the ultra survival junkies can do their thing without forcing the rest of us to suffer. See how that works now?

Now that said. No one is forced to play with anything they don't like in SE1 or SE2. In my case specifically if the food system turns out to be a carbon copy of "eat/drink or die" I will either mod it to make it more tolerable. Or if I just don't like it at all, I'll turn it off for my worlds. Then the food system lovers get their food system and I don't have to partake. Likewise people such as yourself will have the same option with shields. You can mod them to your liking, or you could turn them off. If I can tick a single box to turn a food system on/off, you can tick a box to turn shields on/off. It won't kill you. Not all updates have to be made with every person in mind as you're never going to please everyone.

"Also shield mods will exist" as if that's ever going to be balanced lol. Yeah we might as well let modders take care of it for free, because fk the community right. Who cares about how much work it is, get cracking. What a thoughtful argument yeah. Also, as if build integrity isn't still going to be exactly as important as it was before, with maybe more emphasis on reactors or capacitors (but it could still be capped off, or e.g. not let capacitors/generators stack upon themselves apart from modules) plus EMP mechanics that can disable shields instantly, even they're countered with turning off blocks, and maybe give shield generators some warm-up time, that would still be some seconds of time without a shield. Also obviously when the energy runs out or the EMP goes through then the build suddenly matters a lot. None of these arguments actually hold or even attempt to be constructive, very unfortunate.

Yeah but for the sake of fun game design sometimes it doesn't have to solely rely on realism. In fact most games are supposed to be an escape from reality, but yeah arguably Space Engineers is not really a game, but it's trying to. Marek has stated this in the latest blog update.

Another similar piece of information - the lifetime of a black hole the size of a proton is 6.5 milliseconds.

I provide this information to understand and simplify the discussions.

Simple: devices like gravity generators, jump engines, not to mention interdictors or tractor beams should be devices weighing (ready to operate and in operation) hundreds and thousands or tens of thousands of tons.

One more thing:

The famous Soviet "Tsar Bomba" converted about 2.7 kg of matter into about 245,000,000,000,000,000,000 Joules (245 petajoules) of energy in about 40 nanoseconds. Which is about 55-60 Megatons. The instantaneous energy output was roughly 1% of the power of the Sun.

When a black hole the size of a proton is vaporized by Hawking's process, 50 tons of matter (18500 times more) is converted to radiant energy in a time of 6.5 milliseconds (160 times longer)...

The instantaneous energy output would be roughly 115% of the Sun's....

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That initial idea probably wasn't as good as it first looked - these are energy output levels for a slightly different level of the game than SE...

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