[S-99]

I don't know if this would work or not, but those who have watched Robotech/Macross, you know that before they found out how to shield the sdf1 completely, they came up with point defense shielding.
They had like 3 heavily concentrated force fields that ran freely all along the hull.
The shields would be used to intercept Zentraedi missiles and stuff, and worked really well unless...
One of the ladies in the point defence shield control room freaked out on her trackball interface and missed an incoming missile(hitting the ship instead of the shield).

Anyway, sounds like something command didn't think of.
They only knew how to shield fighters and shielding ships larger than fighters was difficult.
Though the shivans could shield a whole entire super-destroyer.
Using point defense shielding along the hulls of not the strongest cruisers like aeoluses and fenrises, would make them last a lot longer.
Point defense shields could do stuff like intercept bomb and missile fire, and more turrets would be used offensively, as opposed to shooting down bombs with flak or lasers.
Point defense shields could be used to intercept laser fire.
Maybe even for defense of beams, though beamfire is the least predictable thing.
You don't know where a beam is going to hit until it hits, and sweeper beams are unpredictable as all hell to tell where they will sweep across your cruiser.
To intercept a beam with point defense shields, it'd probably be the result of lucky positioning.
Anyway, having a system like this on especially the weaker cruisers would be a huge hand up for much longer survivability rates.
Hell, they'd be useful on huge ships like orions and stuff(super-destroyers and juggernauts don't really need them, being they're already hard as **** to kill), but you know, i was just using weak cruisers that big difference would be more noticable.

[FireCrack]

So kind of liek the I-War LDAs?

Anyway, sounds like something command didn't think of.

Unless ofcourse freespace sheilds have the effect of cutting in half wahtever part of the ship they happen to intersect.

[Shadow0000]

This is one of the Shield defenses that I known since I was child.

If you remember the Robotech, without going with much detail, that was the Super Dimensional Fortress Macross (Model: SDF-1 Macross), I don't really believe FS2 terran's has a "Super" so complex, not to talk about it's capabilities to transform (and kill some civilianz inside, that was funny...who damn desing it ?).

Not only that but there are no Terran Capital Ships with shield capabilities. Only the Shivan's Lucifer....so even when talking about be able to alocate 3 layers of Shields around a ship is even far from it....

---------------------------------------------------------------------

The problem with this, is also IA, I don't really believe a player could do this, if you remember Robotech the 3 girls were managing 1 layer, so a really "Intelligent" IA would be needed....

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Aside from that, this system wouldn't work for FS2 engine, since Beams automatically travel to the locked location, which is the worst thing that I find in the whole game, this prevents lots of excellent effects and tactics from being done. That means Beam just ignore Shields, if you set the Flag for No_Beam_Piercing the only difference is that the Damage is taken from Shields HP instead of HitPoints........

[S-99]

Well i figured in the least it was a sweet enough of an idea to at least ponder, but i guess not(i didn't post this in the scp forum).
Plus like i remembered enough of how the sdf1 shields were controlled that i mentioned it when i posted this topic.
Yes the lucifer was the only example of a capship with shields(nonterran or vasudan for that fact).
I'm sure command could afford to try to modify any of it's ships.
I mean they sure were able to modify a bunch of orions with beam cannons.
Not to mention all the war ships as small as cruisers.
Like the only ship that couldn't be modified with beams was the typhon.
Among designing such a system like the one in robotech/macross, there would be the possibility you would need to design a ship a new ship for it.

Plus the fswiki doesn't say anything about the fs-shields having the affect of cutting whatever it intersects, otherwise that'd make a sort of a sweet melee weapon.
Well if you wanted to(say fs2 engine did support it), start off with something less antiquated like only bomb interception, you could just tell it to intercept incoming bombs and nothing else.
Turrets do a lot of switching targets.
Why wouldn't the shield system something similar, just wouldn't be shooting.
And who here plays a campaign where they can play as a capship anyway(besides a test mission).
When people have a modified mission to play as like a deimos, well, you're certainly not controlling every single turret manually.
The only thing the player controls is the maneuvering of the ship, target acquisition, and turning your beams on and off.
Certainly the **** that on controlling where the shields would position themselves along the hull at the same time.
And beams can penetrate shields, but survivability of a capship would still be increased a good margin.
It'd be an excellent bomb or missile defense in the least.

I'm not talking about actually applying this, just saying it's a cool idea to get away with shielding without shielding the whole ship(if command was able to design such a shield system).
Certainly be cool if  had an fs3.
Fs2 is different in so many ways compared to fs1, fs3 would most likely have that aspect.
But, we don't know if     would try to get away with using a modified fs2 engine, since fs2 is using a modified fs1 engine.
Certainly be a cool thing if fs3 had any type of capship shielding, say like the robotech/macross thing.

[Shadow0000]

I'm not talking about actually applying this, just saying it's a cool idea to get away with shielding without shielding the whole ship(if command was able to design such a shield system).
Certainly be cool if  had an fs3.
Fs2 is different in so many ways compared to fs1, fs3 would most likely have that aspect.
But, we don't know if     would try to get away with using a modified fs2 engine, since fs2 is using a modified fs1 engine.

I think naming FS3, was worse than naming the shield idea, which I find totally right, I have tried to do some things which seems to be impossible also.

The problem, is that the SDF-1 shields work as Sub-Models:

Ex: a Shield is only seen and supposedly active when a bomb or something damages you...

If you remember Macross/Robotech, once they go in to Battle, they activate the shields permanently, and the n the main problem which is rotate it through the model. The Model is not spherical so you cannot rotate it, and leaving a big marging would produce lot's of trouble, with smaller ships that fire near it...this would be the main problem...harder than the IA one, which probabily it's possible to do something with the actual features...

So, they go around the surface, that's pretty hard, again the problem is that the IA would have to "intercept" the bomb, in this case try to stay of the incoming bomb, shoot, etc...

But the profit in this kind of shield system would be without doubt for intercepting Beam from another ships

[S-99]

well even if the shield only appears when hit, step in the right direction.
but in gameplay it'd be too hard to exploit the weakness of the shield.
it'd be priceless to hear command say"well some bombs will hit, and some wont, hope for the best."
in other words it'd make the game unbalanced in a serious way if the shields weren't visible, you wouldn't be able to exploit the weakness of the system if invisible.
Sort of like how other ships have strengths and weaknesses that can be exploited.
Yeah the AI would have a hard time for bomb interception, the AI would need to be smart enough to target any random bomb fired at the ship, and followit completely until blowing on impact, not to mention being able to target another bomb and move in time to intercept another one if say flak neutralized the first targeted bomb.

Another idea for shielding was strapping bosch's mom in front of a lesser subsystem on the hull iceni.
I mean, that'd just really redirect a ton of enemy fire along a less important part of the ship, while its engines aren't being disabled for it's run to gamma draconis.

[NGTM-1R]

You know, I'm surprised I didn't think of this before. It's clearly possible to generate partial shielding, the FS1 cutscene about the shield test shows that. I think the problem is that it can't really be moved around, so it would essentially be static and therefore useless.

[Eightball]

Not necessarily - you could power up only sections of the shielding as the need occured - ie, to repel Cyclops torps.  This might save energy (though it also might not - powering the shields up and down probably costs more than just leaving it on).

And I though shields couldn't stop beams?

[S-99]

Yeah beams can pierce shields.
Probably most likely due to the fact that a beam is such high energy focused on whatever it's blasting
Beam defense should be scratched.
I mean after a while due to normal weapons fire your shield does turn into wet tp.
Partial shielding is still a cool idea.
Though i don't know where you'd want to position the partial shielding, it'd be a system useful for a weak cruiser like an aeolus if they could switch shield energy to different quadrants like we can with fighters.
Just that aeolus is too big, so they'd be switching the whole entire shield to a different area of the ship completely.
Either that or just having a frontal shield would be completely awesome for head on attacks.

[Getter Robo G]

Make me a octagon.cob with a temp texture  and then copy it and make the outer copy the shield. I will see how it goes as I was working along similar lines for Gundam... If this works, it would be a real cheesy way of getting the effect in Robotech 2.0, but I am willing to try this. I won't say exacly how, I'll leave that for a surprise , but I DO have a idea I think is feasible... ;D

  Originaly I worked on remote bits but never found an appropriate model, recently I remembered how they work together and can shield a mech so I was going to make a new pof of a triangle with 4 shields and using fred switch out the bits for the shield one. At the very least it would make a cool cut-scene.

L8tr! [EDIT] (%$# do you know how many times I need to proof read hese posts now, bloody cataracts!)

[StratComm]

The shield mesh a) should have no UV mapping or it may screw up the converter - at best it should have no texture - and b) shield meshes really don't like being high-poly, so if you just replicate the hull of a capital ship and inflate it a little bit, you're probably going to run in to problems.  I don't want to stop you from trying by any means, but I wouldn't keep my hopes up about it.

[The Spac]

It could be easy to implement partial shielding on a capital ship, have a shield sub system that you have to destroy first before you can commence bombing, would that not add more to bombing runs?

[Eightball]

Wouldn't the sub-system be shielded, though?

[S-99]

I'd find that fun for bombing runs.
In a tedious fun kind of way
Well, as for shielding for subsystems is usually depleted uranium.

[FireCrack]

Hmm, i just watched the lab scene again, found it odd that there was no terran->vasudan translator...

Anyways, it seems possible, though there may be the need to move physical equipment around the surface of the ship to move the sheild itself...

[The Spac]

Yeah the subsystem could be shielded, but I was just thinking if it wasn't it'd add a new gameplay dynamic in. On larger ships like destroyers you could have 2 shielding subsystems. people in fighter craft would have to take out the shield subsystems so that the bombers can then make their attack.

[S-99]

That's one thing about the Robotech/Macross thing didn't have.
They were operated by ladies in a control room moving the shields around the hull of the ship controlled via trackball.
The thing with the shields moving along the hull is that they just sort of floated around along the hull where the trackball was making them go.
Realisticly, you probably would need physical equipment to move the shields around.
That'd make having two point defense shield subsystems interesting.
One subsystem would probably be the shield generator, the other subsystem controlling the movements of the shields.
Blowing out the shield generator would power off the shields.
Blowing out the movement subsystem, would make the shields unable to move again, hopefully where the shields came to a dead spot is where they're needed the most since they wont be moving again:p
That would be sweet.
If you were to need physical equipment on the surface of the hull to do all of this, why not put the shield generator in the equipment that will also be moving the shield.
A little fighter shield that runs along the hull with magnetic legs or wheels or whatever it uses to get around.
Which raises another thing, there should be no problem if say you were to shield a turret with like a fighter shield or something, turrets are around the size of a fighter if not smaller.
I mean objects smaller than fighters have been shielded before like the stiletto missile.
I wonder why gtva hasn't shielded turrets or other missiles or bombs besides the stiletto.

[Porthos]

Not to be going off topic or anything, but do any of you intend to watch the Robotech: Shadow Chronicles thats coming out? www.robotech.com


All this talk of Robotech makes me want to go watch Macross for old time sake.

[S-99]

Speaking of macross, do a search for "macross zero".
And download that series.
Roy fokker is in it, takes place in the unification wars about a year before the zentraedi came.
And more overly, it takes place 9 years after the alien ship fell, that got rebuilt later by the humans and was the sdf1.
It also takes place when the veritechs were brand new and still used fuel(not nuclear power like the later ones).
The veritechs were developed afterwards because the rebels already had a transforming fighter/mecha, that was just raping the UN.
You know the people in macross zero flying standard fighters are literally screwed(that would be mig29's and F-14's),  until the veritech came out.
All the mecha battles are done in cg and stuff, you also learn a lot more about how the veritech operates, which is sweet.
Anyway, you should download the series, so far it's five episodes.
I don't know if they're making more, i've only seen the first episode which is sweet as hell.
http://www.macross.co.jp/zero/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macross_Zero
I think macross zero was made like in 2004 or 2004 or something.

I will have to watch shadow chronicles, i saw the trailer and i think i know what it's about.
The sdf3 assistance mission?
I remember there was like only one cartoon that had the sdf3 in it, and it was before it got deployed, then the rest of the story was only as books, because the rest of that part of the story as a cartoon got burned in a building fire, which majorly sucked.
But, hey, this is going to be sweet:D

[Porthos]

Yep, The episode your refering to I beileve was Robotech: Sentinels, and It was a 1h 30min movie following Rick Hunter's Expeditionary Force, I was looking so foward to that way back then. Still followed it in the comics. Apparently, Shadow Chronicles takes place after the last episode of The New Generation, when the SDF-3, Rick Hunter command ship, failed to defold. I was so mad that you never really learned what happened to Admiral Hunter. Well now we do.