Welcome to yet another news update!
This time I'm going to give you are rough idea of how the new shield system currently implemented on Bretonia, Liberty and soon Rheinland.
Basically, it came about while I was thinking of the differences between Sins and Freelancer... In Freelancer when your shields go down, they remain offline for a certain amount of time before they start regenerating themselves again.
Sins however has your shields constantly regenerating every second regardless of incoming fire or shields being down etc.
In my desire to make taking down a ships shields more serious, I devised a cunning plan!
Basically, I decided to make shield regeneration part of the 'shield' ability along with the factions unique shield ability. By doing this I was able to craft the ability to regenerate shields and provide it's unique ability while the shields are up, but when a shield becomes critical (a certain % into red) these effects cease until the next cycle of the passive ability.
This means depending on how long it was since the last cycle, your shields could be disabled for a random amount of time (up to the total cycle time, which is 30 seconds on a Light Fighter (slightly more on larger craft)
One the ability cycles, it is set to give a quick boost the shield strength, and then if the shield remains stable (ie: Doesn't get hit with damage knocking it out again) it will resume it's normal regen etc.
This means when a ships shields go down, it might be better to retreat rather than take lots of hull damage, especially on Capital Ships since they don't regenerate hull like Fighters do.
The numbers and times are subject to change as I balance the system, but so far it is working as desired.
Eventually I will also make tech upgrades which will level up the abilities for each shield class.
As a quick overview, since Sins can't have the strong and weak vs weapon types on shields like Freelancer has, I decided to give each shield type some special effects based on the idea of the shield technology.
Liberty has 'Graviton' shield technology, which wraps their shield in powerful spinning gravitational fields. This makes them effective against physical weapons like kinetic rounds, missiles and torpedoes as the field often slaps them aside reducing their accuracy and damage potential, represented by extra damage resistance to physical weapons.
Bretonia utilises 'Positron' shield technology, which encases the hulls of their ships with a layer of charged anti-electrons that atomise incoming fire. They are paired with special energy sinks that absorb a percent of the heat generated into their capacitors. Hence Bretonian ships absorb a % of damage as energy. (which combined with abilities like shield batteries will make for some tanky Brets.)
Rheinland has 'Molecular' shield technology, but as for their special effects I will get to that another time =P
Anyway, hope everyone is enjoying the latest Alpha build! I am currently working on a patch to fix a few bugs and oversights so I hope to have that ready soonish.
Nice idea.
Yup i like it. :)
Love the idea, will add so much more to the game play!!