Shields as an armour system.

From the K&C GD thread about armour systems, I hijacked the shield system and suggested it as an alternative to armour categories.



I will use shield and armour interchangeably.



If we use the shield system in sc/fa/sc2 as an armour system in K&C, we instantly get a highly visible system that shows what units have armour at all. If the UI shows how much armour enemy units have at all is up to playtesting.





If the shield on units does not recharge by itself, we have a limited health buffer where the actual unit does not take any damage to its hitpoints. meaning shield regeneration and rebuilding is disabled, aka set to zero.



So a knight with 500hp and 500 shield will be able to absorb 500hp worth of damage before taking any *real* damage to its hitpoints. You are not left guessing what the knight's armour value is, or what its hidden multipliers are: your have its armour readily available and can quickly glance how much it has left, and how much armour your units have, how much armour your enemy units have, and so forth.



How does this system deal with armour penetrating weapons, then? There are many ways to to deal with it, and the method i'm choosing is to have a simple number value in unit's weapons that will tell how much % of the weapon damage will be inflicted upon a unit's hitpoints.



i.e. A crossbow deals 50dmg per shot, and has a "ShieldPiercePercentage = 0.1," value, meaning that the weapon will deal 50dmg to armour AND will deal 10% damage to the unit's hitpoints. so 50 armour damage and 5hitpoint damage. As an example.



The shield disruptor Aoen t3 unit has the following line in its weapon pb: "ShieldDamage =1300," which is another way of dealing with armour, except that it only does that damage to shields. The system could be used as a magic spell or ability to degrade armour, and when linked with a damage-over-time functionality, you can create armour-corroding weapons and spells for specialized units, as upgrades, or as researched unlocks.



Having shields/armour not recharge at all is a suggestion, and you could add a bit of depth (aka micro) to the system by having blacksmith buildings and/or units repair armour while at base and/or while near the front.



Magical shields would work in a similar way, just with a relatively high recharge rate due to being magical in nature.



Having a blueprint override for the shield bar colour would also have its uses.|||I suggested a related idea for SupCom2... but I don't know how well it would work for K&C unless the shields are based around a lot of 'High Fantasy' magic.



Instead of what you're talking about though (armor=a general damage blocker/reducer), I'm interested in seeing flat, Bomb-Bouncer-esque shields used to provide armor-facing mechanics like you see with tanks in many WW2 games.



One problem with combat maneuvers in SupCom is that there's often very little reason to flank an enemy. Armor-facing systems (i.e. heavier armor in front, weaker on the sides and at the rear), provide a good reason to try and outmaneuver opposing formations... Which encourages more sophisticated strategies like using some forces as bait, or to pin enemy formations in place, before revealing your flanking force in an ambush.





The great thing about shields for this system is, as you say, that they're external to the unit and so clearly visible. What I'd like to see are 'flat' energy shields like the ones on the bomb bouncer, only turned 90 degrees so they're vertical and projected in front of a unit, (and scaled down in size of course).



Then you could have slow moving formations of heavy 'tank' like units like Percivals, with increased resilience on the front. This is great because it makes those units cooler and tougher, and it encourages combined arms more. (A shield wall line of Percivals could be blocking low-arc fire from the front so arty/mortar units behind them were safe).



It also encourages more interesting unit counters from the enemy.

-Arty/mortar units can attack from above or behind, bypassing the shield.

-Fast moving units can flank or surround the Percivals, attacking from the sides or rear.

-Heavy assault units can attack from the front, using raw DPS to break through the shield.



Doing things like this to increase the need for combat maneuver also makes terrain more interesting. If your attack works the same from any direction, then the terrain is less important because you always want to do the same thing, move to attack range and shoot.



But if the front of a unit is stronger than the rear, then the terrain matters because a narrow canyon or ridge on one side will limit your options for maneuvering around the Percivals. That same group of Percivals is much more vulnerable in an open field because fast moving attackers can come from any direction.|||I think i made myself badly understood. By visually indicative i meant the shield bar that all shield-enabled units have.



The only "shield"/'armour' that would have any kind of visual model would be the magical kind.|||Double post. Again, armour has same meaning as shield.
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