Mass cost of assisting shields

[Ruger]

While testing Hive powered Shields I noticed something, Why does assisting shields against incoming damage cost so much negative mass?

I done some science:
Using a GC for consistent 2500dps + kept adding build power until the dps was exactly matched. (each race are using their own units).
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Seraphim: T3 shield + 22 T3 engy + 1 T2 engy (892.5bp) = almost 1to1 counter, cost: -551mass -10668e
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Aeon: T3 shield + 25 T3 engy (1000bp) = perfect 1to1 counter, cost: -586mass -11040e
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UEF: T3 Shield + 38 T3 engy + 1 T1 engy (1145bp) = almost perfect 1to1, cost: -689mass -11878e
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Cybran: ED5 shield + 35 T3 engy + 1 T2 engy +2 T1 engy (1072.5bp) = close to 1to1 counter, cost: -1168mass -17791e (!!!!!!!! gimped cybran shield)
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lets look at the mass costs of the Aeon perfect counter without the -mass:
Galactic Colossus, total: 27500mass.
vs
T3 shield (2400) + 25 T3 engy (11000) + 4 T3 pgen (12960) + 2 T2 pgen (2400), total: 28760mass.

Even with these very rough figures you can see If it were not for the negative mass, shield assisting could become a viable strategy in some cases. I understand the massive energy cost but it seems odd having to spend mass to stop damage when the GC is spending none to make it and the shields themselves spend no mass to regenerate.

with the current -mass It means the only form of effective shielding is the overlapping crap that currently happens.
Without the negative mass you could even assist shield against T3 arty and even Scathis, this would open up a new method of countering these "game enders" but at a reasonable cost.

Currently this strategy is only really viable with a paragon (boo!).

What are your thoughts?

[ZeRen]

this is weird for me too

[rootbeer23]

I understand the massive energy cost but it seems odd having to spend mass to stop damage when the GC is spending none to make it and the shields themselves spend no mass to regenerate.

in a fight of 2 GCs and one under the shield, you spend -600 mass for 40 seconds and are left with one
perfectly healthy GC and -24000 mass. in this scenario the value is actually reasonable.
versus a t3 artillery (600dps) i assume you would spend -150 mass/s and thus you could neutralize
the cost of the artillery (70k) for 450 seconds. i find that reasonable too.

but the amount of Build capacity you need is too high. moving engis from A to B is no fun in large numbers.
it should be possible to do this kind of thing with free floating engis, which on average are not numerous enough for this
job. thats because the mass cost already pays the bill.

with the current -mass It means the only form of effective shielding is the overlapping crap that currently happens.
Without the negative mass you could even assist shield against T3 arty and even Scathis, this would open up a new method of countering these "game enders" but at a reasonable cost.

Currently this strategy is only really viable with a paragon (boo!).

What are your thoughts?

excellent idea.
nobody uses it so it obviously it needs a buff.

[ZLO_RD]

you are not supposed to have defence that allows you defend from anything, shields already perfecly defending from many types of weapons

[JeeVeS]

For future reference, this belongs in General Discussions or the Suggestions sub-forum

Shield assist has a rightful place as an emergency measure against things like arty and satellites. Reducing the cost of this substantially would give cybran and uef a considerable advantage. Assisting a shield versus mobile units like land experimentals is goofy as they can obviously just walk in.

[Ruger]

you are not supposed to have defence that allows you defend from anything, shields already perfecly defending from many types of weapons

What Im talking about is mearly reducing the number of shields required but at a higher energy and buildpower cost (the mass cost is already spent on the buildpower). Many overlapping shields would still be more efficient, however at the cost of real estate.

For future reference, this belongs in General Discussions or the Suggestions sub-forum

Shield assist has a rightful place as an emergency measure against things like arty and satellites. Reducing the cost of this substantially would give cybran and uef a considerable advantage. Assisting a shield versus mobile units like land experimentals is goofy as they can obviously just walk in.

It was my thinking that this may have been a bug. I was using the GC as dps test only, obviously it would just walk under the shield and pee on your buildpower...
T2 Shields already counter satellite, and 4 or 5 overlapping T3 shields already counter T3 arty. What is the problem of having 1 T3 shield that costs more energy than 5 T3 shields countering T3 arty?

If this is supposed to be an emergency measure then UEF and Cybran are already at a massive disadvantage. Cybran sheild assisting costs almost double the -mass and -energy of any other race with a roughly similar buildpower, and hives do not auto assist shields so that is no help (also they arn't as efficient as T3 sera/aeon engys). UEF also has an increased mass cost but their buildpower is wildly inefficient (especially drone stations, also don't auto assist). I fail to see how UEF and Cybran would get an advantage out of this, yes hive assisted shields would be easy to set up but its paid for with a massive energy cost...

If anything removing or reducing the -mass cost would actually level the playing field of this, as Aeon and Sera still have the most efficient high tech buildpower (i'm discounting T1 engys as their nudgefest would be unsustainable).


What I'm taking about here is a method of making things like T2 artillery more useful, currently if you are being bombarded by navy you have several options:
1) the most popular approach, massive hover spam (barring cybran).
2) for cybran only, acu torp upgrade and HARMS (wagner/brick torps might aswell not exist, and Megas get absolutely binned by battleships)
3) T2 torp bombers, they get absolutely shut down by the ridiculously high cruiser AA dps (seriously a T2 unit with beyond T3 AA dps...), and they also have asf to run from, only Aeon has this option as a Solace can kill cruisers quickly.
4) strat bomber, not as mass efficient as torp bombers but an option for non Aeon, again cruiser and asf counters.
5) least popular, T2 arty + shields, you simply cannot build enough shields to hold back a navy bombardment long anough for T2 arty to do enough damage.

What I'm proposing is mearly an option for reducing the number of shields needed in an area but at a greater energy and buildpower cost for each shield (you would essentially be overcharging each shield), overlapping shields would still be more efficient but it cannot sustainably scale due to real estate, also you wouldn't have much room left to actually cover anything... With this shield assisting method you could build an effective anti navy firebase that iss powered by many pgens behind it, this method would be totally countered by having its energy grid attacked... which makes sense.

I just don't like the idea that there is no viable land based counter for navy, also massive overlapping shields looks stupid and doesn't fit with the aesthetic of the game. Again this would just be an option in areas where you cannot afford the real estate of a massive overlap shielding.

[Deering]

Moved to Suggestions

[Ruger]

More science...

2 overlapping HSD pulse stop a Galaxy Class Battleship (450dps) at a cost of 6000mass to build with -800e upkeep.

1 HSD pulse + 155 buildpower stop a Galaxy Class Battleship at a cost of -4612mass to build (T1 engys) with -94mass -1954e upkeep.

With the current negative mass the Galaxy pays for itself against the assisted shield in 85 seconds.

The problem however lies in the range of T2 arty which is exactly equal to to that of a battleship at 0-128 (excluding Summit Class as that is a UEF racial advantage).
In the overlap the first shield will fail exposing the artillery to the battleship which leads to its almost instant demise (~45000hp + dodging vs ~3000hp can't move).

With the assisted shield, 2 T2 arty (roughly ~220dps) would take about 3 and a half minutes to kill the battleship (providing no misses), with the current -mass thats long enough to pay for a Monkeylord. However the T2 arty would not be exposed as easily unless its supporting power grid was compromised.

So I think the huge energy cost of the assisting method is payment enough. How do you spend mass assisting a shield anyway? do the engys piss metal into the air?

[ZLO_RD]

1 The problem however lies in the range of T2 arty which is exactly equal to to that of a battleship at 0-128 (excluding Summit Class as that is a UEF racial advantage).
In the overlap the first shield will fail exposing the artillery to the battleship which leads to its almost instant demise (~45000hp + dodging vs ~3000hp can't move)

2 do the engys piss metal into the air?

1 what is the problem? Usually people say that battleship sucks cause is you start adding more t2 shields it will be hard for it to do anything, even tho it was designed to kill such bases.

2 same as they bring reclaim in storage and bring it from storage when they build, and they piss mass on shield generator so it uses it and and additional power to regen more but not collapse cause of overload

Did you tested how long it takes to kill 6 t2 shields with a battleship, I also didn,t even knew it has same range as arty, because usually it it not very effective against not cybran navy, usually people use air or scatis or sneaky naval exp rush to deflect naval attacks, land exp can work very well in shallow water

[IceDreamer]

The way I see it assisting shields is supposed to be a high-cost last-ditch desperate method for keeping one shield up just long enough for another to come online, or for your forces to kill the attacker, it's not supposed to be a constant thing. The whole reason you can't do this is so that to have a good defence you HAVE to use up real estate.

T3 Artillery and above are called Game Enders for a reason: They are meant to end games. They cost such a significant amount of mass that you're supposed to have an army to take them down by that point. If you don't, the whole idea is that you can never defend efficiently against them, otherwise there would be no way to really END a big game. We don't want a return to Vanilla's ubershielded basewars, and those were with a 240,000 HP GC with 12,000 DPS!