Monday, April 23, 2012

[REL][FA] Experimental Squareshields

Hi guys, I would like to present you my first FA mod :mrgreen:
I worked hard on it and I never made a mod before so please leave feedback and comment!
I used the Supreme Shields (1.2) mod from GJohnny (thanks for allowing other users to use your stuf!) as a starting pattern so I won't have to mess around on finding a good model of a civil building for each faction. (I was too lazy to rename the IDs so my mod won't work together with the Supreme Shields mod, but I would have never advised it anyways to use both mods together due to balancing issues)
I wanted to create a mod I can play on with friends so I wanted it to be
1. balanced
2. fun
3. useful
How to combine those 3 factors? Well, I found a way, I will describe how I did it. To just have an experimental shield wouldn't be useful at all, there are already T2 and T3 shields so just making a larger and stronger shield wouldn't have a purpose. The Supreme Shields mod tries to create a useful new building by making it a artillery stopper but making it too large to defend against air. Nice idea, but I wanted to make something new. With the help of ThaPear (thanks alot for that!) I was able to make a large square shield which is higher than every other shieldbubble (so they won't overlap) but I also made it low enough for bombers to fly above the shield instead of under the sphere (gunships still can kill the generator, but some T2 shields around it will save it from gunshipassaults). This makes the shield a perfect first line of defence and allows even the largest builings to be placed at the edges of the shield without some parts going outside the "ceiling" of the shield. The shieldbubble is pretty large and has alot of regeneration and energy (it can defend against one scathis with the help of 1-2 engineers) but it also consumes alot energy (8500).
Now you may ask: "Nice, it's fun to use and it's useful, but what about the balance, your first point on the list?"
Well, I handled it by making overlapping parts of the squareshield BOTH taking full damage when something hits a overlapping spot --> The shields are pretty large, when building 3 of them next to each other they may help defending against groundtroops as the x and y axis won't overlap, but the z axis overlaps on nearly all the area. --> The enemy can just use a bunch of T3 bombers or other strong units which shoot from above (Czar, Mavor, etc.) and make all 3 shields go offline at the same time. To recharge it takes 80 seconds. And as ALL THREE shields are offline at the same time they can be killed quiet easy.
--> This shield is a "one building for one base" complex. It's not useful to build more than one shield in one base. It's a strong defence against artillery (if not spammed), ground forces, ships and aircraft (except gunships), but building multiple ones won't increase the effect in a efficient way. It's your first line of defence, but having 10 of them in your base just won't give you a greater advantage than just having 1 or 2 well placed ones.
Screenshots (don't mind the low energy consumption, my new version has 8500)
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Mod download:
http://www.mediafire.com/?cqeyzw5ldlqvnqm|||This looks really cool, thanks for sharing.|||Don't forget to leave feedback :mrgreen: Btw, is there some way to make the shieldrangering a square instead of a circle? Would like to add that for verison 1.1 (and tell me if you find bugs, playtested alot but if there are bugs left, tell me :wink: )|||Gonna play a game with this now so will let you know how it goes!|||looks interesting, i'll have to try this out. as for the range ring, i myself don't know much about that, i THINK you might be able to alter it i honestly don't know, best bet would be to post a topic in the mod dev forum|||@Hawkeye
If you want to steal the scripts or something else feel free to do it. :mrgreen: I would like to see which crazy ideas you come up with. A flying unit which creates a squareshield UNDER it defending the ground but leaving itself vulnerable would come in my mind here :lol:

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