A crazy idea I've spun around...

You know how in Star Trek, the Enterprise can raise and lower its shields... wouldn't it be cool to do that in Nova? Have no Shield Bar, instead a real shield as an outfit? Here's my idea... I haven't tested it yet, since I've been very busy.

Make a special fighter bay called a "shield generator" that has literal shield bubbles for fighters. Theses "shield bubbles" will have only enough armor to keep them from blowing up right after launch. They have no speed, and instead constantly fire a tractor beam to keep them moving with your ship. And cannon shot fired at you hits the shield first. And missiles will be stopped with a PD burst that drains a little shield energy from the bubble. Using a method from the Nova Hacks topic, you could launch shield layers from the same outfit of different size and strength, giving yourself a layered shield affect. The largest and outermost shield layer will be the weakest, but have the highest recharge, with each enclosed layer stronger and slower recharging then the one outside of it.

Possible problems I thought of, with possible solutions:

Will the shields travel with you in hyperspace?
I don't know. Either you would have to always lower your shields before hyperspace, or you could give each bubble a jump of fuel so they can jump with you...

What if I custom-shape the shield bubbles to the shape of the ship? Will the shield change orientation correctly?
Give it a better turn rate than your ship, yet just no speed or acceleration. I think that would work...

What do you guys think? Such a generator would not have to be a cheat outfit. If a shield layer is destroyed, you will have to land to "repair the generator", either through a mission, or an outfit. Also, it can easily be arranged for it not to be a cheat to simply lower and re-raise your shield to return to full strength. Make the reload very long, and instead have each layer as a separate outfit, so it would take time to raise the shields back up.

This post has been edited by Geek : 12 March 2008 - 11:13 PM

@geek, on Mar 13 2008, 04:06 AM, said in Shall we raise the shields, Captain?:

Theses "shield bubbles" will have only enough armor to keep them from blowing up right after launch. They have no speed, and instead constantly fire a tractor beam to keep them moving with your ship. And cannon shot fired at you hits the shield first. And missiles will be stopped with a PD burst that drains a little shield energy from the bubble.

I think you have some confusion about how some of this stuff works.

1. A carried ship with 0 speed will not move, and it is never going to fire a tractor beam at you.
   However, you can give the ship a speed of 1 and it automatically keep pace with you. This leads to a couple problems.
   You'll be able to order your shield fighters around: stop, attack, return, etc.
   The will not stay under you, they will fly in formation behind you.

2. I don't think shield work that way. All weapons strike the shield first (unless shield piercing) regardless of unguided projectiles, rockets, or missiles.
   And you'll have difficulty trying to drain shields with weapon fire.
   Or is there some different mechanic regarding shield bubble sprites?

This post has been edited by Desprez : 13 March 2008 - 12:52 AM

A slight re-wording to make things a bit clearer:

A carried ship with 0 speed will not move at all.
A carried ship is never going to fire any weapon at you, let alone a tractor beam.

Incidentally, escorts will always enter hyperspace with you, regardless of whether they actually have any energy for jumping. I think.

If a carried fighter has, by default, zero fuel, it will be "abandoned" if you jump out of the system. (That is, if the ship type never has fuel)

It will send a message on the comm saying "Don't leave us behind!" or similar, and try to dock with your ship before you jump out.

If it doesn't make it to you before you leave the system, you will lose it.

This post has been edited by Eugene Chin : 13 March 2008 - 09:06 AM

is it possible to have a weapon outfit, that raisesd your shields? (like a missile. each time you fire it, it increases your shields by a small amount. fired with the second trigger.)

I am not sure how you would get the shields to decrease when you get hit, though. any ideas?

No ideas, but shields like that is a cool idea.

Its possible in a way. You could do it but it would have to be triggered by aborting a mission in-flight rather than firing a weapon.

@eugene-chin, on Mar 14 2008, 01:05 AM, said in Shall we raise the shields, Captain?:

If a carried fighter has, by default, zero fuel, it will be "abandoned" if you jump out of the system. (That is, if the ship type never has fuel)

Well there you go... learn something new every day.

Using an abortable missiosn to grant shield boosting outfits, etc. has been discussed in several threads, and this works, HOWEVER one must realize that the timing differs if the caps lock key is down.

For instance, there is a slight delay before the special dude ship warps in. Normally, this delay + death time equals the time you get a shield recharge. But with 2x speed activated (caps lock) the warp in time remains unchanged (in real time), but frame rate is still doubled. Therefore you'll effectively get double the recharge while waiting for the ship to warp in.

If this variance is acceptable, then go for it. Just know that it is there.

Side note: Does negative armor recharge work on carried ships? (that is, can they die automatically by this if you launch them?) I'm under the impression that this doesn't work.

If you make the effect last long enough, it won't really matter. just tune down how strong it is to counter.

@desprez, on Mar 13 2008, 04:14 PM, said in Shall we raise the shields, Captain?:

Side note: Does negative armor recharge work on carried ships? (that is, can they die automatically by this if you launch them?) I'm under the impression that this doesn't work.

If you pilot a ship that has 0 armor, it will explode upon entering gameplay, if it has negative armor, the indicator in the menu screen will say that you have died already.

@coraxus, on Mar 14 2008, 02:01 AM, said in Shall we raise the shields, Captain?:

If you pilot a ship that has 0 armor, it will explode upon entering gameplay, if it has negative armor, the indicator in the menu screen will say that you have died already.

Actually, I think the screen says you died for 0 armor too.

But I wasn't asking about the player's ship.

@desprez, on Mar 13 2008, 10:24 PM, said in Shall we raise the shields, Captain?:

Actually, I think the screen says you died for 0 armor too.

Well, I think it's the same message you get when you get killed regularly in some ways when playing Nova, I know because I tinkered around with adding negative armor to a ship I was flying in. At any case I wouldn't know what would happen to AI ships if they had negative armor.