[REQUEST/SUGGESTION] Bleed Through Shields

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

If it is at all possible, I would like to see this become a thing.


The dynamic for shields in the X series has been the same for fifteen + years. Shields are pretty much an afterthought along side the rest of the combat system. (All the effort obviously goes into the economy dynamics if the game. Combat has suffered substantially) And as a result, over the course of the games, shields have always caused problems in the balance of various ships. In X2, the shield dynamic pretty much made small ships instantly die to large ships in short order. In X3, the system was the same. Now, in X4, there's a very obvious attempt by the DEVs to reverse the 'you die fast to anything an kilo larger than you' by giving the shields the 10-second charge delay so you can make a difference in a fight. The problem with the delay being that it's easy to exploit by having a low power, fast cooling, high rate of fire weapon with a fast projectile. You can force shields to be down indefinitely.

I'd like to propose a shielding system that tosses out the current mechanic in favor of 'bleeding damage'.

The shields 'should' work as thus.

A shield at full power absorbs all units of damage given to it. However, around 75% charge, the shield begins to suffer damage 'bleed-through'. A percentage of each shot's damage passes through the shield to affect the hull. It starts at 1% damage bleed at 75 or 74% shield integrity, and slowly increases towards 90 or 95% damage bleed as shield integrity pushes towards zero. Shields are always trying to recharge (pull the delay out entirely), so getting shields TO 0% integrity is theoretically near impossible, but when shields are down to 10% continuously from incoming fire, the amount of damage bleeding through them means that doesn't really matter.

As an example of what this does. Let's say a shot does 100 MJ of damage. From 100% to 76%, the shields absorb all the damage of the shot. At 75% shield integrity, the first 1%, or 1 MJ of that damage passes through the shield and does 1MJ of damage to the hull while the shield takes the other 99 MJ of damage. At around 37% of the shield's integrity, the bleed through is 50% damage. 50 MJ of the shot damage affects the shield, while 50 MJ of damage goes directly to the hull.

"What does this do?"

Theoretically, this changes the fight dynamic from more raw numbers and better ships, to who is better at delivering sustained or sharp bursts of damage. The ability to deliver direct hull damage early in any fight means that the player gets meaningful damage application in, without having to completely cheese the recharge exploit. Any break in delivering damage is a chance for the opponent to get shields up, but the damage is still partially done. The player is not hopelessly outclassed in his fighter by a large capital ship in which you can never get shots through at all, but the player is not handed a persistence kill either by merely snaking a shot in every five seconds.

"What else can this do?"

Shield 'types' can be made more exotic by tweaking some of the values. For example, a 'tough skin' shield can be created by lowering the point where bleed-through starts. From 75% integrity, to 50%. This would be useful on fighters, where the hull integrity is lower and you rely more on shields to keep you alive. Conversely, a 'fast recharge' shield can be applied to a capital ship, but you penalize bleed through and make it 85% or even 95% as the start of the bleed, but make the shields recharge at double the rate. Since the capship has more hull points to chew through, and a larger service crew doing repairs, the vessel can afford to soak more direct damage, and allow damage to distribute more evenly among the shields and the hull. This translates into the ship coming out a little more tough than a straight 'chew shields, then chew hull' battle.

Thus, you can make three shield categories almost immediately. Fast charge, balanced, and tough skin rather than the Mk I, Mk II, Mk III setup of 'good, better, best'.


This can also increase the usefulness of smaller missiles, as the timing of missiles can be capitalized on to match when a shield isn't full. The large burst of damage on a weak shield passing through to the hull can make the missile bite harder without making it overpowered. A good hit with a cheap missile could even lead to a direct kill without breaking the bank. Obviously, this sword cuts both ways, and you could be the victim of a well-timed shot. But them's the risks.

"Any unintended side effects?"

Shields and boosting are linked. It's an odd mechanic meant to be a trade-off system, but it's a clear attempt by the devs to mix up combat more. However, it's not intended to have continuous charging shields in play. As a side effect of delay-less shield charging, boosting in combat will be a lot more common. However, the player must still beware boosting, because it does lower shields more often and makes it easy for direct damage to be dealt after only a short burst of thrust. Thus, the mechanic is not wholely ruined like the instant recharge shields mod. This can be seen as both good and bad in many way.


Suggested additional game modifications:

- Faster projectile weapons with longer ranges.
The additional boosting means a lot of harder targets to hit. Being able to take shots at longer ranges accurately will be critical.

- Long range missiles (20 km or more)
Give missiles more purpose in the wider battlespace.

- Crew payment and vessel decay.
Keeping large ships fully staffed is expensive. And all ships should require some kind of upkeep to keep them operational. This makes maintaining an effective fleet cost the player money.

[XTC0R]

Some interesting ideas. I'm not sure if OOS battles would also be able to use this battle calculation method?

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Some interesting ideas. I'm not sure if OOS battles would also be able to use this battle calculation method?

Should work. I'm assuming the script would have to override the shields at impact. So you just override the damage numbers to go 'this does X % hull damage'.

[Matterom]

Some interesting ideas. I'm not sure if OOS battles would also be able to use this battle calculation method?

Should work. I'm assuming the script would have to override the shields at impact. So you just override the damage numbers to go 'this does X % hull damage'.

This would be a very slow implementation, But not impossible and quick to do. as you cannot intercept and change the event outcome, you would need to be changing the shield value/hull value on each instance of damage.

[dionnsai]

Utilize crew engineering skill to improve shield efficiency. Maybe shift your proposed bleed threshold numbers down 5 points per average crew engineering star?

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Utilize crew engineering skill to improve shield efficiency. Maybe shift your proposed bleed threshold numbers down 5 points per average crew engineering star?

I would personally refrain from bloating concept requests in this system until a working prototype is up.

Heck, for making crew more functional, I'd suggest an entirely separate mod.