why are shields the way they are

[Ursus]

According to the description text, shields modify damage before passing it to the hull. However it seems pretty clear that shields prevent any and all damage from getting to the hull. If you shoot a weapon with 1000 damage at a ship that has a sliver of shields, then those go down but the hull isn't damaged at all.

Is this a disco thing or freelancer? Can it be changed back or is that too difficult to code/balance/whatever?

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Discovery 24/7 Negotiating Tactics:

[Crackpunch]

SNAC to a freighter? Destroyed.
SNAC to a small transport not mounting the big shield? Destroyed.
SNAC to a bomber? Destroyed.
SNAC to a fighter? Destroyed.
HM to a cruiser? If it's not heavily armoured, destroyed.


Let's keep things the way they are.

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[Ursus]

So ... too hard to balance?

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Discovery 24/7 Negotiating Tactics:

[jimmy Patterson]

not the SNAC wars again....


we know there overpowered we know people want em changed we know it wont happen lock thread before flamewars please

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kudos tommeh for sig

[Camtheman]

Its a Freelancer thing.

I brought up quite a while ago that we should have laser weapons that can easily destroy 'devices' on a ship (like a rather old dead game called Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, the laser weapons penetrated the shields, not affecting their integrity against other weapons to precision destroy devices.)

Can't be done.

Freelancer Logic = Weapon > Shield > Hull

[Ursus]

At this point I'm mostly just curious why things are this way and I wasn't sure if it was in vanilla. I've seen the same model used in other games so not really surprised to see it here, just noticed that it's COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from what the texts all say. So first thing is, why not just make a single shield type? Either that or edit the Wiki and infocards to say ALL SHIELDS ARE THE SAME IGNORE THE RP

I will note that SNAC and other torpedo/missile could potentially be "fixed" by adding a minimum arming-distance, IE must trave something likel 1.5k before arming, otherwise it's just a brick in space. I don't know if that's possible (or desirable), just saying torpedo shouldn't be the only reason.

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Discovery 24/7 Negotiating Tactics:

[Hielor]

At this point I'm mostly just curious why things are this way and I wasn't sure if it was in vanilla. I've seen the same model used in other games so not really surprised to see it here, just noticed that it's COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from what the texts all say. So first thing is, why not just make a single shield type? Either that or edit the Wiki and infocards to say ALL SHIELDS ARE THE SAME IGNORE THE RP

I will note that SNAC and other torpedo/missile could potentially be "fixed" by adding a minimum arming-distance, IE must trave something likel 1.5k before arming, otherwise it's just a brick in space. I don't know if that's possible (or desirable), just saying torpedo shouldn't be the only reason.

Can you give examples of the text you're talking about? The different shield types are not the same...

[Ursus]

Can you give examples of the text you're talking about? The different shield types are not the same...

Hm, I dunno. I don't know if it's actually written somewhere that shields are supposed to modify damage before passing it to the hull. However we have weapons that do shield-vs-hull damage, and text that says shield types will increase or decrease damage, which cumulatively implies that the shields modify damage before it is passed to the hull.

Except they don't. The shields absorb all damage until they are depleted, and from then on damage is passed directly to the hull.

So what do the shield-vs-hull stats mean in that scenario? And what does it mean to modify hull damage?

As to how they are practically different, I dunno. Shields that are succeptible to certain damage-types will be knocked out faster by weapons that do that damage? That is different in a way that is not really meaningful unless you are just looking at what kind of weapons do the most damage then you can figure out what type of 20% difference will have the most effect. It was also stated somewhere else that 4.86 would have flat shield damage, so it will be absolutely meaningless then--shields will deplete at the same rate regardless of type. Shields that have been depleted do not modify hull damage (right?) and once they are gone there is no modified hull damage (which does not exist anyway). So it will be absolutely meaningless.

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Discovery 24/7 Negotiating Tactics:

[Unseelie]

Shields resit damage in varying ammounts. As in, they take 120% damage from some, 100% from others, and 80% from the rest. This is why only the shields that are strong against sheildbusters work.

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[Hielor]

Hm, I dunno. I don't know if it's actually written somewhere that shields are supposed to modify damage before passing it to the hull. However we have weapons that do shield-vs-hull damage, and text that says shield types will increase or decrease damage, which cumulatively implies that the shields modify damage before it is passed to the hull.

I didn't arrive at that conclusion at all.

Except they don't. The shields absorb all damage until they are depleted, and from then on damage is passed directly to the hull.

So what do the shield-vs-hull stats mean in that scenario?

I'm not sure what you mean by "shield-vs-hull" damage, do you mean weapons that have more shield damage than hull damage? I've never seen a "shield-vs-hull" stat.

Weapons do a certain amount of hull damage if they're hitting the hull. If they're hitting the shield they do half as much damage, with the exception of pulse weapons which do a lot of shield damage and very little hull damage.

As to how they are practically different, I dunno. Shields that are succeptible to certain damage-types will be knocked out faster by weapons that do that damage? That is different in a way that is not really meaningful unless you are just looking at what kind of weapons do the most damage then you can figure out what type of 20% difference will have the most effect. It was also stated somewhere else that 4.86 would have flat shield damage, so it will be absolutely meaningless then.

4.86 is only flattening pulse damage, i think. Different weapon types still do 20% more against shields that they're good against and 20% less against shields that they're bad against.