Player Features and Ideas Discussion

EVE used to have shields like that. There were changed into the "skin hugging" effects they are now for performance reasons (if I recall correctly... I may be wrong).

It had to do with how weapon fire effects hit only specific points on the ship, looking weird as it goes through the shield bubble. Instead of fixing points of contact, CCP went the lazy route with the skin hugging shield effect. It's pathetic.

Things such as this have no impact on the server whatsoever. But don't really care for bubble shields myself.

Not exactly, depending on how complex the implementation, server side code could potentially be needed (I don't think this is a good idea though). If one ship were to block the path of a shot traveling to another ship, then client side code only would be insufficient. However, I'm sure it's not possible for this to happen with current mechanics anyway, so it's probably a non-issue.

Do you also want stuff on your ship exploding and malfunctioning while your shields are still up? Consoles exploding and crew members dying even though your ship is still technically fully protected?

I've always thought a shield that didn't conform to the contours of a ship was incredibly stupid. Somebody's aiming at you but misses your ship due to some brilliant maneuvering on your part ... but the shot still hits because your shields are a huge bubble.

I've also always thought a ship with fully functioning shields should be invulnerable until those shields are brought down. There shouldn't be any "EPS conduits" or whatever technobabble-devices overloading. Why even have shields if damage goes through them anyway? Not that it happens in EVE, but still...

Its not the damage that goes through the shields so much in those tv shoes/movies its the internal shield generators, etc. having to draw more power than they should in order to continue operation against heavy fire :D causing internal issues with other systems.

Shields are specifically designed for combat defense. Those systems should be reinforced by design so such power draw doesn't overload anything.

But I suppose the shows would have been a lot more boring without explodey stuff during combat.

Conformal Shielding, as some in this forum have been calling it, seems to me to be built more around the design concept of the hull and armor of the ship being used by the shield field generators as an amplifier to create a shield around the ship. As projecting a seperate force field (bubble shield) as it would technically be properly called, would require massive amounts of power, the size of a ship that could generate enough electrical power to generate a seperate force field (bubble shield) would be a couple city blocks long and wide. So for a bubble shield to be generated, you would need a power source big enough to supply a small city. In other words... a Titan, Dreadnought, or Carrier. Anything smaller would only be able to fit a conformal shield because there would not be enough room to fit the gigantic magnetic projector coils needed to project the force field (bubble shield) away from the surface of the ship. If I remember correctly, the only ships in Star Trek that could be fitted with shielding, were of star ship class size. The Captain's pennace and the small drop ships didn't have shields because they were to small if I remember correctly.

Besides, a bubble shield would actually get hit by incoming fire MORE than the conformal shield, as it would present a MUCH larger, and therefore easier to hit, target. It would also increase the signature radius by about double or triple as it would be consuming ALOT more electricity.

On Star Trek, the Enterprise had 6-8 Dylithium Crystal chambers, each of which was a SEPERATE power generator.

Our ships here in EVE have just one Capacitor, and that varies in size by the size of the ship. Capacitance does not generate power, the dylithium crystals were a power generation source; they produced their own power. New Eden Ships are only capable of storing and releasing that stored power. Said power seems to be gathered from solar radiation, and some possible other sources.

A bubble shield would also have another problem... the conformal shield is attached to the skin off the ship in a way that could be used to gather and absorb energy. This energy is then transmitted into the capacitor. This is why it takes so long for the capacitors to recharge. If our ships were generating their own power, cap recharge times would not exist... of course we would have to worry about our cores going into meltdown when the hull was breached by an antimatter shell and blowing half our fleet apart in the resulting explosion. And a bubble shield would not be able to gather (if at all) any energy in as efficient a manner, as there is nothing behind it to reflect the energy and channel it along the shields absorption flow lines.

In other words... our confromal shields are more efficient, better working, stronger, tougher, harder to hit or target, provide a lower signature, use less power, and do not rely on a bulky dangerous NUCLEAR power source that leaks radiation and explodes if you breathe on it wrong.

I would suspect the reason why the New Eden Star Gate, the one from the EvE lore that stranded our ancestors here in New Eden thousands of years ago, was powered by either a nuclear fission reactor or dylitium crystals, and had a catastrophic meltdown... and THAT is what caused the original gate to explode and collapse the wormhole that stranded us all here away from earth.

i like hte hull hugging shields they look cool... however ccp really dumbed down the graphics when it comes to weapons effects.. all mining lasers and strip miners make the same sounds, all use the same boring blue beam, same with the drones, the weapons all have underwhelming sounds now things were better the way they were i miss that splash effect torps used to have it was attention grabbing too, whoevers running the art side of things is getting extremely lazy