Armor enhancing shields

[Petrus]

We were talking on IRC about the possibility of shields that wouldn't block shots, but would enhance the resistances of the players armor. For example, you might have a shield generator that gave no actual shielding, but enhanced laser and kinetic resistance by 25% and blast by 15%. So a player with 50% resistance to all of these would take 25% damage from the first two and 35% damage from blast, instead of 0 damage for the first barrage of shots and then 50% damage afterwards. Depending on what shield items you created, it could give players some interesting variation to play around with, and allow heavier use of the cool armor we find in the game, for those that choose to do so.

It would also be nice to know what the player's base resistance was, or if quantifying it for the player would ruin the feel of the game, then at least something like "instant death, extremely weak, very weak, weak, normal, resistant, very resistant, extremely resistant, immune".

[Burzmali]

The player has no base resistances. All resistances are dependent on the shield or armor impacted.

[Fossaman]

And it would be nice to know about those, Burzmali. Obviously.

[Burzmali]

There in the XML. Unless you mean you want to see them real time...

[Petrus]

Yes, what I meant was seeing the resistances of the player's armor. If a player had 4 different types of armor then obviously you'd have the possibility for 4 different sets of resistances.

And yes, I meant it would be nice to see it updating in real time, as well as to see the effects of the various pastes you can apply to it, without going through the XML.

Please let me know if there's anything else I can clarify.

[Burzmali]

What are you trying to do that requires the runtime resistances of a ships armor?

[Betelgeuse]

hmm having items that mimic certain kinds of explosions would be interesting such as antimatter explosion from an overheating shield. Without the resistances you can't tell how much damage to do to the shields and armor.

[Burzmali]

(shpDamageArmor) or (objRepairArmor) with a negative number will damage armor.

(shpRechargeShield) with a negative number will damage shields.

All that is missing is a (shpDamageShield) that lets you damage shields with a specific damage type.

[Betelgeuse]

oh cool didn't know that shpDamageArmor accepted damage types

[Betelgeuse]

just to clarify the resistances from such a shield should be added to the armors resistance not multiplied. The shield would be useful throughout the game and not just early on due to the reducing returns on higher resistance in the multiplying system (its the same problem as with the paste system).

edit: had an idea for the cpu. it could give you an stat screen that would tell you the exact stats of your ship (max speed armor resistances and whatnot)

[Blinzler]

you mean like a - Scanner?

[Fossaman]

That sounds more like right clicking on the 'my computer' icon and choosing 'properties' to me.

[Blinzler]

Ah... guess I've been writing faster then properly reading...

edit: had an idea for the cpu. it could give you an stat screen that would tell you the exact stats of your ship (max speed armor resistances and whatnot)

D'uh...

Btw. I like this idea for enhancing armor stats by overlaying a shield. Question though - when something hits the armor/shield - it all get's taken from armor? And the shield itself doesn't receive any damage, increases in fuel-consumption?

[Petrus]

The idea for the ship armor status readout would be to indicate what numerical resistances the ship has to the player, without forcing them to dig through the XML. Not that it's difficult to dig through the XML, but this way newer players will know what the resistances are and if a piece of armor or resistance modifier changes between baselines it will be more obvious.

The armor enhancing shields as I envision them would not block any damage, but merely help the armor resist it. They would have a constant energy drain unless they were disabled. I guess a savvy player could have them disabled to save on fuel consumption until they got into a firefight. This could help offset the disadvantage of not actually blocking any damage, just reducing damage.