test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Rethinking Extend Shields: From Target to AOE
teleon22
Member Posts: 424
Currently Extend Shield works by essentially firing a continuous beam at a single target ally. It improves your target allies shield damage resistance and shield regeneration rate. Even if you ally leaves weapons range, the extend shield effect maintains its effect over its duration.
What if however, extend shields did exactly the same effect to target allies over an Area of Effect shield Buff. Say 5KM in all directions to form a sphere whereas any allied player or pet within the sphere of influence would benefit from the Shield Regeneration and Damage Resistance Buff. Wouldn?t this make more sense both gameplay wise and lore wise in a Star Trek Game?
We already know that the Science Rank VIII Profession has an ability that in a similar way provides damage resistance over an Area of Effect. Therefore we can conclude that it is technically and mechanically feasible within the STO game engine to do these types of things.
What are your thoughts from a PVP standpoint? What are your thoughts from a PVE standpoint?
What if however, extend shields did exactly the same effect to target allies over an Area of Effect shield Buff. Say 5KM in all directions to form a sphere whereas any allied player or pet within the sphere of influence would benefit from the Shield Regeneration and Damage Resistance Buff. Wouldn?t this make more sense both gameplay wise and lore wise in a Star Trek Game?
We already know that the Science Rank VIII Profession has an ability that in a similar way provides damage resistance over an Area of Effect. Therefore we can conclude that it is technically and mechanically feasible within the STO game engine to do these types of things.
What are your thoughts from a PVP standpoint? What are your thoughts from a PVE standpoint?
Post edited by teleon22 on
0
Comments
Lore wise, extending shields over 1 target seems feasible using your shield array. Extending over 5 ships without severely compromising your shields seems extremely less feasible.
Heck I'd say it'd make more sense if the Extender actually incurred a shield resist penalty for extending their shields. As it stands now, it seems like this extra shields resilience comes out of nowhere. Then again, same arguments would be valid for TSS, whether the cost be Aux power or shield resists or what not.
Gameplay wise it would encourage that undesirable Fedballing again. Considering the magnitude of the shield resist boost, that would also be some pretty mean team durability that could be chained almost indefinitely by 2 cruisers.
[23:35] Horta deals 1738411 (1538303) Toxic Damage to Centurion Engineer with Corrosive Acid.
^^^^ this ^^^^ is very true and I couldn't find any logical explanation other than some mumbo-jumbo you name it. Why there is no resist penalty, no power drain or you name it, I have no idea. Or, at least make part of the damage to the extendee apply to extender. Right now, it doesn't have sense.
Hear! Daughters too.
The blood of battle washes clean.
The Warrior brave and true.
We fight, we love, and then we kill...
How i would do it:
Extend shields allows your to extend your shields around a target up to 5km away. the target of the extend is provided with an additional layer of shields that absorbs incoming damage first. Since the shield is extended it is less effective then a normal shield and has increased bleed through, twice the normal rate. 20%, and 10% for resilient shields. Damage gets first subtracted from the extended shield, then the targets shield and then the targets hull.
Similar to a 5th shield facing added to the target that must be overcome first.
Important would be that the shield of the ship that does the extending does gets damaged. It does not creates extra shield power out of nothing.
Still would not fix the problem with 5 man teams all cross extending each other. Shield resistance stacking probably should suffer from diminishing returns along the same lines as to what hull resistances do. Extend shields should have some consequences for the caster and it should have its range reduced. If the maximum range for any of our weapons is 10KM it just seems absurd that you could "extend" shield coveragre from one ship to another 7.5 km out.
If you severley limited the range of extend shields then it would force an escort who is getting the coverage to take more of a defensive posture since it would limit his freedom of movement in order to recieve the benefits. As it stands now you can fly around without a care in the world going about blasting whomever while recieving a tremendous shield resist buff. When you get 4-5 copies on a single team it can make it almost impossible to overcome. Even with a PSW to knock one off there is another that can be cast instantly. RSP is used to fill in any gaps in coverage if need be.
Gets back to why teams end up running 3 science for the SNB's usually. I still contend that SNB is not implemented or designed well. Yea teams need it in large part because of the poor implementation of extend shields. I'd LOVE to see science captains actually benefit the team in ways besides SNB. Give them something that is maybe a bit more interesting besides "let us know when your subnuke is back up".
The typical pre-made is traditionally 1 tac, 1 eng, 3 science....3 science for really nothing more then SNB. That alone should be an indicator that something might be borked. The argument that nobody would ever die without SNB is a poor one. If matches depend on having SNB to effectively kill a ship then why not address the reasons for it rather then have a crappy designed counter? Again, this is not a call for a nerf to science captains, rather it's a call for making them actually useful for something else besides SNB....yes nerf/change SNB, Extend and redesign Science Captains from the ground up?
The reason I want it to go from a single target to an area of effect is because as an AOE shield Buff it will have less time on target that it currently does now. Honestly, how many battles are you really in were the taskforce stays so closely grouped?
As it is now, an escort will come within range, receive the bonus and fly all
about. If they were to be forced to stay within range, they risk losing their greatest advantage being mobility. In that sense alone it is a give and take.
As for cruisers stacking it one after another on each-other, they do this now, at least if it was an AOE Shield Buff one might now be able to use an AOE attack like GW, Tykens rift or other to break the group up and therefore breaking the extend shield buff.
As an AOE Buff, there become more soft counters to the effect.
EDIT: Heck, even tractor beam repulsors becomes a counter to Extend Shield if and only if it becomes and AOE effect rather than a Beam to target effect. I don't really think you thought this through all the way... :P
1. Extend shields with a un-shielded target. In this case, the shield bubbel is expanded to encompass both ships. The shield is, however, impenetrable by other ships or torpedos. The shield is also weakened, because of strength is spread over a larger surface.
2. Extending to another shielded vessle. This is a process where shield frequencies are matched, and the shield is enlargened to encompass both ships. The shield is, however, impenetrable by other ships or torpedos. Both ships contribute to the strength of this joint shield, and it is a bit more stable because of it's two power sources. This also makes it more effective at handeling spike damage.
So in STO, we generally have the 2. scenario. Ofc, making a bubble for two ships is not viable. There is however room to adapt some of the functionality....
My proposal:
When a ship is extending shields, their shields should become as one. One shield, with the combined HP of both shields, plus a increased resistance. Meaning that if you fire at an extended escort, and his shields are dropping, the externder would experience the same.
Example with made up numbers:
Cruiser:
Shield capacity - 10,000
Shield resistance - factor of 500 (made up number for hidden math)= actual resistance of 30% due to deminishing retuns
Shield regen - 300 per second
Escort:
Shield capacity - 8,000
Shield resistance - factor of 200 (made up number for hidden math)= actual resistance of 15% due to deminishing retuns
Shield regen - 150 per second
When extending:
Shield capacity - 18,000
Shield resistance - factor of 700 (made up number for hidden math)= actual resistance of 35% due to deminishing retuns
Shield regen - 450 per second
See? we add up the numbers, and make one big shield with combined stats. One thing HAS to be changed for this to work: The ability must block RSP from being applied, at least by the extender.
Compared to the current ES, this would mean both ships would benefit, but also both ships suffer. It also adds for the fun circumstance of a cruiser under attack, when seeing his shields failing, can leech on to the shields of another ship, and steal it's shields!
I think this would make for fun gameplay dynamics
I?m on the Fence about making Shield Energy Damage Resistances have diminishing returns like that of the Hull Resistances. It is already very difficult to get your hull damage resistances up to something like 60% and Hull resistances are possibly not even Hard Capped. Although, best of luck to you with achieving more than 70% which already means you have invested over +700% to all damage resistances or something outrageously high. Look for example at the ablative hull armor generator to see what I mean.
As for shields, it is Hard Capped at 75% and even at 75% shields fall fast against Escort and the amount of damage Buffs/de-buffs that can be stacked against you. I?m not really convinced that it needs to change, but, I simply don?t know because of how un-balanced and how many issues there already are with mechanics working/not-working.
Remember the shield DOFF issue. LMOA! Sigh...
maybe a science captain version of it.....
or a science bo power version of it...
hmm....
I say give us this in place of photonic fleet.
nah itd be a more appropriate replacement for science fleet.
otherwise sci captains would have 2 shield resist boosters that could stack and make your team unkillable.
For the love of ... Are we living on Naboo!!!
"You almost got us killed. Are you brainless?"
"I spake."
"The ability to speak does not make you intelligent. Now get out of here."
Just a wee poke in the ribs no hardfeeling meant bud
Lol, it's exactly what I was thinking while skimming through this thread, based on your sci revamp post, then I read this one. Having a shield resist area would be a cool sci ability, or even better, an area where weapon damage is reduced. That would have more sense IMO. Regarding extend, power to shields from caster should stay at least the same (since in theory I don't see a reason to decrease, you need it to "extend"), I'm thinking either have the caster and target shield be both affected by damage, either a small resist to target cumulated with shield damage to the caster when target is under fire. Another idea would be to leave extend as is except target gains a resist and caster looses some resist. This would also give more sense to an engi that can mitigate better a shield resist loss.
As a side note, I'm leveling a fed, and other than waiting 1+hours for commander level pvp, it's nice to re experience how clean low level pvp is. Plain and simple, not so many heals, abilities, etc. Maybe whenever the pvp revamp happens (if it happens) some queues with tier 2 and 3 ships wouldU be an interesting addition.
Hear! Daughters too.
The blood of battle washes clean.
The Warrior brave and true.
We fight, we love, and then we kill...
While the idea sounds fun I think it could be problematic. Extending would you now allow to stack EPtS of two people for example. In fact you get a huge shield cap with lots of resists that would make matters worse I think.
But one could modify your idea a bit. Just keep extend as it is but instead of actually dmg reduction apply the dmg mitigated to the one using extend. So the nothing changes for the target but the user gets hurt a little too.
My stomach is clear and my mind is full of bacon!
well that would be ok as well, and easier to balance...
and it would offer some new gameplay dynamics
Something like Subspace Dampening Field: Science Space Ability- Your ship draws auxiliary power to generate a subspace dampening field around your allies within 5-10km of your ship. All incoming damage is reduced by 10-15%. Lasts 30 seconds
Subspace Dampening Field I (Lieutenant): AoE Damage reduction by 10% to all Allies within a 5km range.
Subspace Dampening Field II (Lieutenant Commander): AoE Damage reduction by 12% to all Allies within a 8km range.
Subspace Dampening Field III (Commander):
AoE Damage reduction by 15% to all Allies within a 10km range.
this is basically what scattering field does. and since it reduces damage it only applies to hull resists which isnt that useful. scatterfield needs to be a shield resist power. not a hull resist power.