[TrashMan]

I recall there was some experimentation where the ships hull was counted as shields (as long as you had them specified in the TBL) but it had no hit effect.

So what's up with that?

[Trivial Psychic]

Its there.  I was playing FSport with the HTL Lucifer in place of the shielded version the Port includes.  When I shot the model, I heard the impact sound, but saw no impact effect.  Bobbeau had suggested that he could have an impact effect added, but nothing had come of it.

[Flipside]

I don't think Bobb could do anything about that until he'd done the work-through on his decal code that he wanted to do. I suspect the two would use precisely the same functions. That's probably why it hasn't been done yet

[Starman01]

Indeed, surface shields are working. They play a sound, protect the ship and are visible on the hud. Unfortunately, no shield hit effect.
But maybe in the future.....

[TrashMan]

They don't reuire a special flag or something similar?

All I need to do is give the shield some strength in the ships.tbl, right?

[Tolwyn]

you have to add surface shield flag in the tbl (for each capital ship)

[ARSPR]

Ooops I was going to make some tries in order to take out the mesh-shielded but low-poly Lucy from FSPort. But I do feel this can only happen if surface shield hits are properly rendered (If you want a "pretty" fully replacement, I mean)

Could any coder add this feature to his ASAP to-do list, please?

[Freespace Freak]

I was messing around, doing some Fredding with the FSPort, and put the Lucy with an Orion.  I noticed the Lucy's indicator had shields around it, so I fired on it and the shield effects worked fine.  It had the little glow at the impact and the impact sound and everything.  Even the Lucy's shield indicator flashed in the quadrent I fired upon.

[Flipside]

FSPort has a shielded Lucifer models iirc

[NGTM-1R]

At the moment this would be ideal for a new, absorbative shielding type. If you want to use it that way in your campaign.

[Nuke]

im not sure about this but it might be possible to script in a shield hit effect.

[Mefustae]

FSPort has a shielded Lucifer models iirc

As does the Diablo in Into the Depths of Hell chapter 3.

[Colonol Dekker]

Bobbaus shielded deimos...
http://archives.volitionwatch.com/fs2/mods/models.php3

With visible effect. Didnt old WC Saga have shielded caps too?

[Flipside]

Yep, you can get the effect by rebuilding the model, but the SCP was sorking on an effect that didn't require re-compiling, it relies on the Decal code, which is waiting to be revised, but I suspect it will rear its head again

[Starman01]

Didnt old WC Saga have shielded caps too?

We tried more than once. But we could have either ridiculous big bubble shields (kinda useless by the geometry of our capships) or we have shieldmeshes with either huge faces and therefore huge and strange hit effects, or they crash the entire game. I tried to make combined shields
of more than one bubble, but at the gluelines were rendering problems again, or they crashed

[TrashMan]

I can live without hte hit effects for a while (I'm testing something anyway)

what's hte flag?

[gevatter Lars]

An idea I had some time ago was about haveing two hit animations.
First is played as long as the shields are up and shows a shieldhit.
Second is the normal hit animation that is played when the shields are down.

Don't know how hard it would be to code that.

[Starman01]

Obviously it's hard to make the hit effect for the surface shields. It's tragic (but we can live with it). Other things are more important

@Trashman:

The ship.tbl flag is as follows :

"surface shields"

[Mav]

Didnt old WC Saga have shielded caps too?

We tried more than once. But we could have either ridiculous big bubble shields (kinda useless by the geometry of our capships) or we have shieldmeshes with either huge faces and therefore huge and strange hit effects, or they crash the entire game. I tried to make combined shields
of more than one bubble, but at the gluelines were rendering problems again, or they crashed

Huh? - Did my cruiser-shield crash at any time for you?

It wasn't completely done    (maybe to 95%; oh, and the terran ship I was assigned afterwards is shielded to about 50%... wasn't very entertaining to make, though )   , and I don't feel like doing shieldmeshs-only again (because its a lot of work for not much effect and because I have better things to do), but as far as I remember, it did work, at least so far as it was completed.
Still, seeing real capship-shielding as unpractical (but NOT impossible), it's quite valid to ask for the hull-shield implementation... (so - no real complains at anyone in this discussion)
(also, surface-shields should help preventing suicide shield-penetration runs in multiplayer-missions... )

Oh, and congratulations for getting the Mod mostly finshed (which is something I usually miss to accomplish with my stuff ) . I'll certainly play it at some time, though currently there are other things to do (so - no feedback from me for now ).