Shields

It does make them come back faster, doesn't it?

 

Gameplay-wise, shields were underpowered. They took 100% damage no matter what hit them. even a ghost would do their full damage against shields. I tihnk that's not very fair, having half of your health not be included in the size/damage ratios.

 

But they recharged, and you could recharge them with a very cheap, effective building qucikly.

 

Not buildings. I always hated that. Why can't I recharge my photon cannon right next to the shield battery?????I think it's ludicrous that a tank in siege mode would do 70 damage on zealot's shield. It should only do 35. Why does the shield get such a disadvantage? And just because it'd made from a generator doesn't mean more advanced units like the carrier can't have a Better generator, or produce a better shield from a different generator

 

yea, i was always annoyed when i couldn't recharge my photon cannons sheild

 

back on topic, I don't think we can a unit have more base shield, logically, upgrade the shield is a technology upgrade, and
every unit use the same technology, but hero have more power (energy)

 

OK the arguement that all shields are the same technology and thus can't be different levels is flawed. Lasers are one technology and the power output of different lasers is drasticly different.

Wouldn't it make sence for a HUGE capitol ship with MASSIVE power generators be able to power a more powerful shields than a lowly infantry unit with a micro-reactor? and wouldn't it make sense for them to use the most advanced technology on their expensive ships with thousands of souls on board and then use lower tech mass produceable generators with a lower rating for the ground troops so they can afford to outfit everyone?

 

Bird, I can make the same argument the other way around as well. One mini generator for the lowly warrior that only has to power a shield and maybe one or two devices overly a relatively small area, meaning the shield should be strong for what little it has to cover. One super massive generator will produce more shield and power but look what area that shield has to cover? Also look at all the other crap that generator has to run, engines, life support, maintenance/production bay(Carriers), etc.

I don't believe they could have found some power generator that gives exponentially more power the larger the device that is producing it gets. That just doesn't make sense physics or otherwise. Now of course generators that give more power additively(meaning smallest produces X, add in another smallest you get X+X, instead of exponentially which is X^2, then X^4, etc.) is completely possible. Hell it is even likely.

But then again what am I arguing? Its a game and the back line story doesn't mean jack if the game play sucks.

 

Well here is the mathmatical counter to your claim Ace_Bear. The shield protects a surface area while the reactor would produce so much energy per volume. Surface area is measured in something squared while volume is measured in something cubed so avaible volume will grow much faster than surface area. Take a 1x1x1 cube for example it has 1 u^3 of volume while it has 6 u^3 of surface area but if I double the dimensions on it (aka make it bigger) so it is now 2x2x2 it now has a volume of 8 u^3 vs. a surface area of 24 u^2 volume grew by a factor of 8 vs. the surface areas factor of 4 so if I keep making the object bigger I will keep getting more volume per surface area or more "reactor space" per surface area for the shield so in fact an enormous thing like a carrier would have access to alot more energy for shielding that something small like a Zealot.

 

But your volume you have to shield also expands on this exponential scale(p.s. you did Surface Area wrong, you were assuming 2d object for the Surface area, squaring the object gives you the surface area of one side, its 6xU^2 for cubes and 2ab + 2bc + 2ac which most objects fall into this category rather then cubes anyway). Not to mention the amount of power needed to run the numerous other functions on a Carrier. The size of the reactor to produce a higher shield would most likely be so enormous other stuff would have to be cut out.

But as I tried to say before, the background of the ship is less important then the actual game play value of the ship. And changing the base carrier shield is not going to affect game play tremendously.

 

OMG, my point is simple, shield are like battery, charge it so it can absorbe more damage ( match the quantity of energy of the impact). So, a larger ship could have larger batteries ( hold more energy, more in game shield point) or bigger reactor (recharge the energie faster). but it is the SAME TECHNOLOGY, I mean they work the same way. So if we put a hero unit with more base shield , we should change ''plasma shield'' to something else i.e. ''Neutron shield'' so the base technology is different which explain why the shield can absorb more damage.

again, unlike laser, plasma shield don't exists ( or not yet)...

 

The way I figure it is that HP is protected by armor which reduces damage taken by the armor value and the carrier and BC had 4 and 3 armor respectively able to reduce damage by 6 or 7 when upgraded so infantry can't really touch it but the problem arises that the BC has 100% of its hitpoints receiving the full 6 point reduction will only 2/3rds of the carriers health receives the reduction and the other 3rd not only supplies 3 or less reduction but is gimped in that it takes no size related damage reduction so infantry that would have trouble taking out the armor due to having concussive damage would blow right through the shielding effectively making it worth much less than 1/3rd of the carrier health. This happens similarly on all protoss units.

I think it would be nice if there was a higher base shield on more expensive units similar to how they have higher base armor. That way I don't have to worry about losing all your shielding to otherwise weak enemies.

Now I can survive and encourage the carrier base armor to be lowered if the shield level is raised for balance sake and also because it promotes racial differences because thenTerrans focus on physical armor while the Protoss are concerned with energy fields and the method of dealing with them and the units to do so are different.


Also mike may I point out that like there are many different batteries that supply many different amperages andvoltages. A D cell can output more energy than a AA cell once again SAME TECHNOLOGY but designed differently for different devices. If I had a ship I would certainly make sure my shield generators can put out a significant ammount of juice.

Gameplay wise I just think the shield needs a general redesign since it was so heavily gimped in SC1 and due to the massive viulnerability of the shields didn't provide as much of a racial separation as it could. I would like the shields to become something more than just some regenerating hitpoints to actual protection and allow the pProtoss to leverage this differnce and further separate the races thus making the more unique and more enjoyable.

 

yeah but you can't compare shield with hp, coz hp is represent abstractly (what if BC )the units's vital power, so armor is just there for gameplay and balance issue, so yeah, I agree we can change base shield to help balance unit.

don't try to figurer it out the mechanism , there are to much problem (i.e stake damage)