[Grey Wolf]

There would me multiple shield HPs for each ship, one assigned to each shield sector. They would take the same amount of time to charge, but they would not all be able to take the same amount of damage.

This would be good for making ships such as Heavy Assault fighters, bombers, and shielded capship designs.

I'm not sure how you would code it, but for the TBL entry, you could add 6 lines, labeled $ShieldsR, $ShieldsL, $ShieldsD, $ShieldsV, $ShieldsF, $ShieldsB. If they weren't present, the game would look for the standard $Shields.

[IceFire]

Mmm....much like Wing Commander games.  I thought those were always interesting as a number of enemy ships had some really strong fore and aft shields but had weak middle sections.  It was tough but catching them on the middle sections was deadly.

I bet FS2 at present globally deals with the sectors.  And this might be a bad thing to change...or cause some major headaches.  What about shield equalization on player fighters?  That would be a bit odd...maybe?  Not sure.

[Knight Templar]

would this be to serve as like a certain ship has really strong foward sheilding but crap aft or something liek that?

btw the last wing commander i played was academy .. and the computer i ran it on (oh... this was 5 years ago) wasn't fast enough to play it..hmm

[Bobboau]

I think this could be done

[Grey Wolf]

Knight Templar: Yep, that's exactly the idea.

Also, you only need 4 entries, not 6

[KeldorKatarn]

*bump*

Just reminding Would be a nifty feature still

[Mobius]

So...you want something like this:

Code: [Select]

$Shields: (80) (120) (120) (40)
?

[chief1983]

God those FotG badges are everywhere

Really I think:

$Shields:  ( 80, 120, 120, 40 )

would make more sense.  Similar to $PBank Capacity.  Would be nice if it worked with the n-segment shield code in Wanderer's branch too.  So if you have 2 segments, you'd only define two integers, etc.

[Mobius]

[Reprobator]

if we can make invisible shields, that would simulate some sort of directional hull hitpoints 

[chief1983]

Surface shields are already invisible, just put that flag in your ships.tbl.  Of course, they were never _intended_ to be invisible, so no guarantees they'll stay that way

[Wanderer]

There are couple of things that need to be considered....

First... should non uniform shields be represented on screen.. Scale the max against the max of any of the segments, or scale the color on the shield indicator against the current segement?

Then... should equalize strength equalize it in uniform scale regardless of the segment strengths or should it make the equalization on segment basis (that is first calc the sum of shield power div by max shield strength and multiply the max segment strengths with the result)

Anything else?


There was an idea of giving shield recharge cap. That is sum of the max shield power. Would enable classic 'double front' shields (that is sum of segment strengths would be higher than the max shield power enabling you to reinforce segments if required)

[chief1983]

Edited IRC discussion about this:

Code: [Select]

<Wanderer> chief... as i had to enable access to the other objp info when enabling n segment shields it should be rather simple to implement the varying shield segment strength thing
<chief1983> I kind of figured
<chief1983> but I didn't want to assume :)
<Wanderer> there are things though
<Wanderer> for example what should happen when equalizing shields
<chief1983> well the shield code I ran across while fiddling with the patch I made, seemed like it does some strange things
<Wanderer> oh?
<chief1983> I think equalizing should distribute based on those divisions
<chief1983> lots of assumptions about how it was dividied
<chief1983> *divided
<Wanderer> so div current sum strength with total full strength and apply that as multiplier to each segments full strength?
<chief1983> yeah pretty much
<Wanderer> how should the shield thingye be drawn on the screen
<chief1983> or switch to percentages and back
<chief1983> which sounds about the same thing you said, and yours probably has less rounding
<Wanderer> max is the max of the highest of the segments
<chief1983> actually I think it should be invisible to the user
<Wanderer> or max is the max of the current segment
<chief1983> I think max is max of the current segment, but that might be a question for that thread
<Wanderer> first one would show the weak spots on hud
<chief1983> that's why I kind of don't like it'
<chief1983> it'd be kind of confusing for one
<chief1983> so yeah, wanderer I think that equalizing should be done with the ratio like you said and that a segment's max is it's own regular max
<Wanderer> then i just need to figure out how to handle the energy transferance and that should do it
<Wanderer> that is then i can start coding it
<chief1983> energy transference only deals with the sum normally doesn't it?
<chief1983> I wouldn't think it would matter if it was broken into different maxes or not
<chief1983> we're likely to use this shield thing on a few ships I bet
<chief1983> maybe
<chief1983> dang
<swashmebuckle> I think it would make sense for ships that have obvious turret blind spots to have stronger shields in those areas to moderate cheapness on the player's part (IE the TG corvette trick)
<chief1983> since we're on this shield thing, I wonder how much work it would be to let you throw energy from one segment to another, even at full shields, so that one segment has higher than it's normal max.
<chief1983> heh
<Wanderer> it wont
<chief1983> so that at equalized, the sum in each quadrant doesn't go above its max, but you can still shift great amounts from the other segments to one
<Wanderer> er?
<Wanderer> chief.. what did you mean by the equalized quadrants thing.. if you have quads at max and they are equalized you shouldnt be able to transfer anything anywhere
<chief1983> Well, my thinking is this.  Even when they're likely at full strength, the fighters in star wars could still put full front or full rear deflectors.  if both front and rear were already at full, why would you do that?
<Wanderer> weeell... in sw games fighters generally started at 50% overrall shield strength
<swashmebuckle> ah, deflectors on double front?  That seems like a good idea
<Wanderer> in oldies that is
<Wanderer> we still would lack controls for settign such things
<chief1983> also
<chief1983> they called it 100% though
<chief1983> and then justified it by charging them to 200%
<chief1983> I basically want that, but without the overcharging
<chief1983> so you can always throw your shields around however you want
<Wanderer> well
<Wanderer> in short you want the strenghten one segment code to actually reset the segment max values?
<chief1983> if that's what's necessary in the code it might not be worth it
<chief1983> I was just wondering if you could make one segment have more than that max, without actually changing that max
<chief1983> I don't remember what the code looked like well enough to know if that looked possible
<chief1983> if it requires changing the max then that's probably more of a pain in the ass than it's worth.
<swashmebuckle> They do talk a lot about angling the deflector shields a lot...it seems like setting all your shield emitters to project all to one side is a pretty common SW tactic.  Could you make the game stop halt shield recharge at 50% of the total capacity, then just double all of the ships' shield strength in the tables?
<chief1983> that's probably easier than changing the max of a segment
<chief1983> but still kind of a hack :)
<swashmebuckle> Then you should be able to equalize as normal, but use the up and down arrows to give yourself extra forward/aft protection?
<Wanderer> well... that might work
<swashmebuckle> Heh, if it works :D
<swashmebuckle> holy crap that's an ugly smiley in this program
<Wanderer> it would also allow hud to show how the shields are balanced
<chief1983> heh
<chief1983> I actually think that method was proposed way back with the old SWC team
<chief1983> in the old SWC code request thread
<chief1983> although I think they still wanted the TG method of continuing to charge above 100%
<Wanderer> question is... what do you want?
<swashmebuckle> plus, pilots would play in constant fear because full charge would be a half faded-out shield blob on the HUD
<Wanderer> shields to bleed out if there is no sufficient energy?
<swashmebuckle> that would be sweet
<chief1983> honestly I don't know about that one yet
<Wanderer> think and then lets if those ideas can be put into code
<chief1983> if the shields use real world capacitor technology it kind of makes sense
<chief1983> but there's no reason to assume they would lose energy when not being actively charged
<chief1983> is there?
<Wanderer> humm... space dust?
<chief1983> that's reaching :P
<swashmebuckle> hehe
<chief1983> yeah there's a lot of things that could be done to make the shields a bit more star wars-ey
<chief1983> but the system works fairly well for now
<Wanderer> well you could assume the tech is not perfect and some say arcing might occur and bleed out the shields slowly
<chief1983> I'd rather see a couple more tweaks to primaries first
<chief1983> true
<chief1983> if we really wanted to do that right every ship would have a drain multiplier or something
<Wanderer> yeah...
<chief1983> besides just how much energy the the shield system has
<chief1983> then some ships would drain slower than others even at the same shield power
<Wanderer> basically have drain value and then the recharge value... recharge value would be multiplied by the amount of 'power bars' set for the shield