Protoss Shield Omnidiscussion.

It has already been shown that Immortals die instantly when hit with a Nuke. There is obviously a point where the Hardened Shields will fail. Again, I relate this to a metal beam supporting a heavy load. It will always be able to support heavy loads, but if there is an exceptional circumstance, then it will fail. Buildings' shields do work against Nukes, but they fail. They begin to buckle against any damage that is applied. Once enough damage has been supplied there is nothing left of the shield, so any more damage will effect the building directly. If the shields have buckled or failed, and the building is still alive, then it will begin to repair itself, and the cycle continues.
Also, the Hardened Shields do not use the same technology as the ordinary shields. So just because normal shields still work against Nukes and other heavy impact abilities (even though the unit is always killed in the process), it doesn't mean that Hardened Shields would.

 

One thing is that the ability to survive a single nuke blast (second means gg) would make the Immortal quite unique and with 20 HP left it would not be high on the threat list since you probably have an army and the enemy has.. the immortals

 

I think it would be good if they could survive Yamato Cannons and Bonmbardments, but end up on about 50 health or so, but I think that if the Immortals can survive a Nuclear Missile, it's a bit far-fetched. Nukes, at least, should be able to destroy Immortals in one single blow.

 

but a yamato blast is just a concentrated nuke

 

You already said that :
Why not let only normal damage activate the hardened shield and not the special attacks? That's the most simple option.

 

Explosive and concussive damage still needs to activate the shield. Otherwise Siege Tanks wouldn't activate them, and Immortals are the classic counter to powerful units, like the Siege Tank.
@ ijffdrie. A Yamato isn't a concentrated Nuke. A concentrated Nuke would have to be even more powerful than the Nuke.

 

Good thinking on that one. It would actually be so powerfull that it kills everything in one shot.
But still, like I said like two times before, just don't let the hardened shields be activated by specials. That's it.

 

I've said that as well. Hardened Shields should only work on direct damage attacks, and not on abilities like Nuclear Launch, Yamato Cannon, Psionic Storm, Bombardment, etc, etc.
I'd actually proven that the Hardened Shields do not activate against Nukes in that video that I posted. So chances are, if they don't activate against Nukes, then they won't activate against all the other abilities either. What would happen if the Queen cast Spawn Broodling on an Immortal? According to the people who say that they should be able to survive these abilities, 2 Broodlings would be spawned but the Immortal would have only lost 10 of its shields.

 

But the damage Broodlings do is direct damage to the hp for as far as I know. So that may not be such a great example.

But you are right, in the gameplay video they die from a nuke attack, so abilities may already not activate the shield. But if that's true, why are we having this long discussion about how much damage specials might do then? :

 

The problem is that this is still a powerful unit, even without the hardened shield, so infantry isn't going to cut through them like butter. They're still relatively effective against infantry, but they're just not cost effective in that type of combat. That's why they've come out as "overpowered."

You guys are talking about percentages and things like that too often. In my opinion, Starcraft should only ever use one percentage: 50%. Reduction of damage by half. Easy numbers to compute in your head. None of this 20, 30, 45% crap.

So if you're worried about the shield being too OP versus higher hits, just put a cap on the damage. Any attack up to 100 will be reduced to 10. Anything above that initial 100 damage will be dealt.

So you have an Immortal hit by a Yamato (for example's sake let's say the Yamato does 200 damage). The first 100 damage will be reduced to 10, but the second 100 will do full force. So the Immortal would take 110 damage rather than 200. No percentages involved. Everyone is happy.

This would also allow for productive counters of the unit. You can either go below the shield's damage threshold or you can go above it. This might allow for more units to effectively counter the unit, like the Warpray or the MS.

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As for the shield armor discussion, which is what this is topic is about after all, I'm in partial agreeance that shields need to have a default level for each unit. So the MS should have a base shield armor of 3 or so, just like a Battleship.

It's not exactly fair that half of the unit's health is unaffected by "armor" upgrades, but if you think about it, there is a specific reason that this happened in SC1. Obviously, all the Protoss units are incredibly durable, and often times their un-shielded HP is greater than their foe's entire HP. So including armor at a base level for the shields is impractical for balancing reasons.

However, in SC2 the shields may need this boost because of the increased ferocity of opponent's weaponry and increased reliance on shields to survive. So it's a careful balancing game. Either the system stays as it is, which means that all shield armor must be purchased (relatively cheaply for the amount of armor you'd be gaining) and continue the initial trend of only additive damage types.

Or Blizzard would take the path of base armor and possibly not include shield upgrades because larger units would already have an impressive base armor.

But I think the general idea here is that the Protoss shields regenerate, and therefore don't need the armor reduction, but rather effective micro to sustain them. There is always an option to upgrade the shield armor to counter the increase in damage achieved through enemy upgrades at later stages in the game so that you can maintain the intial balance.

 

On the lighter units like zealots and dragoss the unshielded HP was greater than the enemies but I have noticed on some of the larger units like reavers and carriers the total with SP and HP is sometimes below that of the enem equivalent. The carrier has 50 less combined damage taking ability over the BC and I don't think the extra armor point balances that out

also @ Itza. You mentioned concussive damage. Thats gone. Now we have bonus damage to certain units

 

First of all, just because there's a video showing Immortals dying from a nuke doesn't mean anything as to this discussion. We aren't talking about how the shields ARE, anybody can see how the shields are. We're talking about how they SHOULD be. Factors in this discussion are therefore: realism, lore and unit balance.

The point was mentioned that just because normal shields work against nukes, that doesn't necessarily mean Hardened Shields should... To this I say, "huh?" Hardened Shields are supposed to be an improvement over normal shields. They trade off ineffectiveness against nominal damage to effectively cancel out extreme damage. That's their whole point. They function to essentially nullify extreme stress. That would indicate that the shields work in parallel to the attack upon them. The stronger the attack, the harder the shield becomes. If the Hardened Shield is both ineffective against small attacks AND large attacks, then why would the Protoss bother coming up with it? To cancel out medium strength damage? That seems a rather silly notion.

Secondly, as Bird of Prey says, and has been mentioned before - the single best way for the Immortals to earn their name, is the ability to survive a single nuclear blast. We already have units that can survive Yamato Cannons, etc... but if a Nuke is dropped, and Protoss mechs come firing out of the maelstrom of energy... you can imagine the Terrans giving them the name 'Immortal' in stunned fear. On the other hand if there is still a way to strike down a so-called "Immortal" with a single blow... it makes the name rather flimsy. Call it the 'Durable', maybe the 'Long-lasting', but 'Immortal'? Nah.

As far as something like Broodlings, Broodlings are not an external attack. The damage doesn't come from energy originating outside of the unit. Which is why Broodlings do infinite damage. They rip the unit apart from the inside, against which the unit has no defense. Shields and armor prevent external forces, they can't stop something from hurting the unit that is already inside them. So Broodlings would still do infinite damage, if they are in the game - and have no bearing on this discussion.

Joneagle's solution is effective too as far as I'm concerned. Basically it just removes the current problem from one cap, by adding a second cap. The exact number would just have to be high enough so that only ability attacks could pass the threshold, and it'd work. I still don't necessarily like the idea of Siege Tanks doing the exact same damage as Cobras tho. Just like it should be easy to figure out exactly how much damage your units do... the game should also be intuitive in other ways too. In my opinion it should be easy for players to understand that their heavy hitters are not very effective against Immortals... but it's hard to understand a complete, and seemingly arbitrary, cutoff.

 

This isn't true. The original statement by BirdofPrey in this thread about the Hardened Shields was the following.

BirdofPrey didn't ask "how do you think the Hardened shields should work?" He said "How will this work?" I showed how they will work against Nukes by showing that they do not reduce the Nuke's damage to 10.

The Hardened Shields aren't the same piece of technology as the normal shields, which is why they work so differently. Just because both shields look similar, it doesn't mean that they are the same piece of technology. There would have to be a stage where if an extreme amount of force is applied, the Hardened Shields would fail. The Hardened shields should activate against all attacks, except for the extremities. They shouldn't activate against extremely weak attacks, and they should activate against extremely powerful attacks, and if they do, they should fail because there is far to much pressure for them to withstand. The Protoss are not a perfect race. They wouldn't be able to create something that could withstand an infinite amount of force.

The Terran do not name the Protoss. The Protoss name themselves. This is proven in several quotations like "Carrier has arrived". The Protoss would have named them as Immortals, it has nothing to do with the Terran naming them that because they can survive a Nuclear explosion (which they can't).

I was waiting for someone to say this, because it means that the Immortals would still suffer from the heat damage caused by Nuclear Missiles, Yamato Cannons, Bombardments, etc, etc. Armor and shields aren't able to stave of the heat. As I said before, even if they are able to ward off the initial damage from the Nuclear explosion, the heat would be enough to finish them off. Heat damage would be internal like the Broodling, not external like damage from Siege Tanks, etc.

But Immortals have a slow, but powerful attack. They take a while just to kill a single Marine, purely based on their slow attack speed. Weak units are usually small, and able to be mass produced, meaning that Immortals would have a hard time taking them on.
Also, StarCraft should definitely use percentages, and not just 50%, but 10%, 20%, 38.65%, or whatever is necessary. They are an effective way of balancing certain aspects. However I don't think that they should be used in calculating how much damage is done to the Hardened Shields. Attacks should either do between 1 and 9 for weak units, 10 damage from powerful units, or kill the Immortal in one go, in the case of Nukes.


Easy on the quotes.

 

Who says shields can't block heat?

Also the Protoss may have named them Immortals but there would be a reaons why they would choose that name and not something like Elder. Surviving a nuke would be one of those reasons.

It does add to strategy having the shields block Nukes since it manes that the nuke is no longer the end all and you have to get some basic infantry even late game to deal with them.

 

Heat is internal. It is not a defined force.
The Immortal cannot survive a Nuke, because of the heat produced when it goes off. Immortals are called Immortals, because they pretty much are. Only a small amount of direct damage is able to get through each shot. If the Immortal truly was immortal, then it wouldn't even be able to die. Immortals give the sense of it being a hard unit to take down. The name shouldn't be taken literally. The Stalker isn't able to 'stalk' an opponent, although its Blink ability pretty much makes it able to pounce. The Stalker doesn't actually stalk just like the Immortal isn't actually immortal. The names just give a sense of the units' role, etc.
Nukes were never the end all. They can easily be stopped if the player acts quickly enough. If they aren't stopped, then they will easily take out the front line of defense, but just because you are hit by a Nuke, it doesn't actually mean that you have no chance of winning.

 

You need to take physics class. Heat is generated by the body internally but when generated by a nuclear explosion is transmitted through convection (movement of hot air) and infra red radiation. Since the shields can disperse shockwaves some warm air can also be diverted and since it is able to stop a laser it can stop infra-red rays since both are electromagnetic radiation.

Also I never claimed heat was a force. It is energy however. Shields and armor are designed to disperse energy. Be it a heat shield dispersing thermal energy or tank armor dispersing kinetic energy

 

Actually from what I have seen the Immortal is a weak unit. Zeals, Marines(Backed by Medics maybe), Zerglings all pretty much gnaw a chunk out of them easily enough. Its the larger units that make immortals shine. I can already tell that really the immortals will be for late game when some guy masses their favorite high tier units that does a billion damage per attack. As soon as he does pump out like 12 immortals and watch and laugh.

Anyway about the rest of the shield conversation. Really they seemed to work fine in Starcraft. Major alterations aren't needed. Things like no shield battery, ok increased regen outside of combat. Solved. Those things are needed but nothing balance altering.

Summation:
for(ideas = 1; ideas <= launch; ideas++)
if(BIG == alterations)
starcraft2 = 'OH NOES';
else
starcraft2 = 'BOOYAH';
printf("%c", starcraft2);

Edit: Stop talking about real physics and "real" nukes when concerning game design. You wouldn't have to worry about a nuke heating up an Immortal because the EMP blast(that not only shuts down the shield but shuts down the entire system of all electronic things) that hits 4 seconds before the damage wave comes would completely mess up the Immortal in an actual blast.

 

This is sci fi right? I am going to assume that it is, considering we dont know of any aliens out there (that we know of) and as a human race we sure dont have the technology of long range space travel.

So with that in mind, most sci fi things involing shields treat them as a wall or permeable membrane depending on there usage either way I would say they can probably withstand some heat. Now as for the hardened shield acting like a steel gireder who knows that is true? No one maybe the reason the shield only activates when 10+ points of damage is that it uses the energy it is hit with to protect itself so stronger the hit the easier it is to shrug off, wait a second that would mean a nuke would be less effective than a tank and a tank would be less effective than a cobra, hey maybe that explains all of those arguments as to why they do similar amounts of damage...

Now if you ignore the sarcasm it isnt that bad of a theory and it would explain away alot of people's qualms. Now before you start going off and saying that is impossible remeber this is a sci fi game we are talking about anything is possible....

@ItzaHexGor please stop assuming real world physics always apply think of what we are disscussing right a telepathic alien race that has the ability to travel thorugh time and space in ways we obviously wont understand for a very long time if ever. If we were talking about the Terrans then some physics arguments are valid but still that is more just common sense physics not the, "this cant work because our current understanding of thermodynamics......" well you get the point.

As for the question I made this post awhile back on how I believe Protoss names work.

EDIT: Sorry ItzaHexGor I didnt mean for this post to be the third head bashing in a row.

 

I don't see the problem with one unit being able to survive a nuke.

 

I'm not trying to apply real world psychics to this discussion. I am giving real world example of what I feel should happen with the Immortal so that no-one misinterprets my idea. With my girder example I never said anything like "and once the force is greater than or equal to all the pre-existing forces plus the natural resistance tension of the girder it will fail" I am saying that there should be a certain stage where the Hardened Shield fails.
Also, heat wouldn't be an instant attack like a bullet. It damage the unit over time in extremely fast ticks. So if the natural heat damage is 50 damage per tick, and the Hardened Shield was able to be activated against heat, then the Immortal would reduce it to 10 damage per tick. But because the ticks are so close together, it would still be enough to take out an Immortal extremely quickly.