Damage Bleeds Through Shields
Post ideas and suggestions on new features or improvements here.
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posted on March 24th, 2011, 5:53 pm
the evidence in trek was conflicting, thats for sure. canon contradicts itself. we see that borg ships nearly always have no shields, weapons just impact the hull, and that adaption is their primary defence. but chapman is correct in asserting that the probe had shields in the 1 episode it appeared in, the phasers hit something that glowed and the drones/hive mind talked about "regenerating the primary shield matrix". shields were also mentioned in another voyager episode
so whether borg ships have shields or not cannot be decided on evidence from canon, as canon has evidence for both sides. in TNG i think all appearances had no shields, just some EM field around the ship. tokra should really be on the side of no shields, as he seems to prefer older trek to newer trek. ie tng > voy.
i personally like the way it is in fleetops currently, makes the borg unique.
i prefer to think that when it looks like the borg ships were being hit on shields, that it was actually adaption that was doing the shielding. like with drones, they have no normal shields, until they figure out how your guns work, then they can take the shots. i would think that the ships do that too.
the only contradiction is the episode where 7 goes mental in the episode with the raven, and immediately blocks phaser rifles' shots with her adaption shields. which is odd as you'd think that the tech to generate that would be bulky, too bulky to make with nanoprobes, otherwise what is the point of all the visible cybernetics. also its possible she figured out in detail how voyager's particular phasers worked, maybe they were all set on the same freq by default, and nobody bothered to rotate them as they didnt expect 7 to go nuts and have adaption again.
so whether borg ships have shields or not cannot be decided on evidence from canon, as canon has evidence for both sides. in TNG i think all appearances had no shields, just some EM field around the ship. tokra should really be on the side of no shields, as he seems to prefer older trek to newer trek. ie tng > voy.
i personally like the way it is in fleetops currently, makes the borg unique.
i prefer to think that when it looks like the borg ships were being hit on shields, that it was actually adaption that was doing the shielding. like with drones, they have no normal shields, until they figure out how your guns work, then they can take the shots. i would think that the ships do that too.
the only contradiction is the episode where 7 goes mental in the episode with the raven, and immediately blocks phaser rifles' shots with her adaption shields. which is odd as you'd think that the tech to generate that would be bulky, too bulky to make with nanoprobes, otherwise what is the point of all the visible cybernetics. also its possible she figured out in detail how voyager's particular phasers worked, maybe they were all set on the same freq by default, and nobody bothered to rotate them as they didnt expect 7 to go nuts and have adaption again.
posted on March 24th, 2011, 6:31 pm
Maybe make it so that they some ships, like the scout cube and probe, have shields. Because with a complement of 5 drones, the scout cube could be taken by a single ship with it's shields down. Because of the relative size of the probe, it would be an inefficient use of resources to create armor strong enough to not need shields. So the shield in that case would be just enough to reinforce the hull. While the scout cube would have shields to prevent transport. While the remaining vessels would be big enough to be able to have super strong armor.
For my original idea (and the idea of this topic), I was thinking that the RTS_CFG should have the default shield protection set at 0. While the other shieldProtection commands are unit-specific and all are just high enough to prevent the ship from being destroyed before the shields are gone. Some ships and probably most stations, would have a shieldProtection value of 1. While most others could have that value at something like 0.7 to 0.95. I figured that the hull integrity should be around 50 to 75% when the shields go down. Makes for a nice anti-capture feature, because even if you stop firing as soon as the shields go down, you'll have to make major repairs before you can use the captured unit to it's full potential.
For my original idea (and the idea of this topic), I was thinking that the RTS_CFG should have the default shield protection set at 0. While the other shieldProtection commands are unit-specific and all are just high enough to prevent the ship from being destroyed before the shields are gone. Some ships and probably most stations, would have a shieldProtection value of 1. While most others could have that value at something like 0.7 to 0.95. I figured that the hull integrity should be around 50 to 75% when the shields go down. Makes for a nice anti-capture feature, because even if you stop firing as soon as the shields go down, you'll have to make major repairs before you can use the captured unit to it's full potential.
posted on March 24th, 2011, 7:10 pm
Maybe choosing specific type of ships, like long short medium, or cruiser destroyer specifically for this. I mean, I don't see this affecting larger battleships... they should be able to withstand it. But for smaller or medium ships, this could be a consideration for damage to go through the shields.
All support ships perhaps once shields are damaged to a certain extent transfer the damage between the hull and shields. For instance, after a certain point when shields have been damaged there are 3 shots fired. The first shot does no damage to shields, and hits the hull on a weakened area of the ship. The second shot is fired at a part of the ship that is still well shielded, and the shields absorb all the damage. The third shot hits the hull, again hitting parts of the ship that are without shields. er i dunno, maybe fleetops already has something like this.
If we had a way to show how this is affecting our ships, we could also create a new set of commands, something like fleet patterns. You could order your ship to attack in certain manners. For instance, the commands could include: keeping certain parts of the ship facing the enemy (choices would be front, back, left, right, top, down. which ever part has strong shields). Similarly, you could target certain parts of the enemy, ie, target front back etc. You could set a point system for each area suggesting extreme to low damage. If enough damage is done to a certain part of the ship severe damage or even hull collapse and explosion could result. If you have a group of three against one, instead of draining all the shields, then all the hull - target certain parts exclusively to either promote severe subsystem damage, or if say the front and right and bottom hull are all severely damaged then hull breach follows.
Give point system to the health of these sections, and once enough damage is down, critical systems fail.
All support ships perhaps once shields are damaged to a certain extent transfer the damage between the hull and shields. For instance, after a certain point when shields have been damaged there are 3 shots fired. The first shot does no damage to shields, and hits the hull on a weakened area of the ship. The second shot is fired at a part of the ship that is still well shielded, and the shields absorb all the damage. The third shot hits the hull, again hitting parts of the ship that are without shields. er i dunno, maybe fleetops already has something like this.
If we had a way to show how this is affecting our ships, we could also create a new set of commands, something like fleet patterns. You could order your ship to attack in certain manners. For instance, the commands could include: keeping certain parts of the ship facing the enemy (choices would be front, back, left, right, top, down. which ever part has strong shields). Similarly, you could target certain parts of the enemy, ie, target front back etc. You could set a point system for each area suggesting extreme to low damage. If enough damage is done to a certain part of the ship severe damage or even hull collapse and explosion could result. If you have a group of three against one, instead of draining all the shields, then all the hull - target certain parts exclusively to either promote severe subsystem damage, or if say the front and right and bottom hull are all severely damaged then hull breach follows.
Give point system to the health of these sections, and once enough damage is down, critical systems fail.
posted on March 26th, 2011, 4:05 am
about Borg shields, What I think happens is, the shield are actually hull reinforcements so we don't see them but they're there and they prevent transport to the ship. and when the shields are down, well you transport through. also, I think Borg ships are like assault ships (they can beam to a ship without lowering shields).
posted on March 26th, 2011, 6:29 pm
The big thing about Borg shields, from what I've pieced together from the shows, is that they don't raise them until they are adapted to the weapons incoming. That way, there's no waste of power from maintaining such massive shields all the time. And if your weapons are weak enough that it would cost more power to block them than it would to regenerate the damage, they won't bother raising them either.
There are the two Voyager references to shields just being up, but that's Voyager borg, not borg borg.
I think that the best way 'shields' could be set up for borg would be a module that gives you a toggle ability, which causes damage to be done to Special energy instead of the hull, and lasts until the special energy runs out. Call it 'Fractal Adaptation Prediction' representing the borg running an advanced program to determine which frequencies are going to be used upcoming, allowing them to adapt to the constantly rotating frequencies.
There are the two Voyager references to shields just being up, but that's Voyager borg, not borg borg.
I think that the best way 'shields' could be set up for borg would be a module that gives you a toggle ability, which causes damage to be done to Special energy instead of the hull, and lasts until the special energy runs out. Call it 'Fractal Adaptation Prediction' representing the borg running an advanced program to determine which frequencies are going to be used upcoming, allowing them to adapt to the constantly rotating frequencies.
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