shields

[superzip]

shield: it will have the same effect as walls, (hold back creeps but it will not destroy them. but not as long maybe 5-7 sec if at 100% energy)
it will have a range there is a little smaller or the same as the blaster.
when the creeper reach the shield, it stop, and begin to drain energy from the shield, but it don't hold back spores
if the cheaper touching the shield whit 0% energy it will be destroyed instant.

[Aurzel]

the creeper will drain the shield but will it be able to be resupplied? so that a shield that's only say less than half surrounded by creeper can hold it back indefinately given a surplus of energy and can it be moved like other turrets?

[superzip]

yes if it has a good energy flow to the shield it will be able to hold indefinitely, like if you base is surrounded with blasters or molters but it will not need as much energy. of course the more creeps there is the faster the shield will fail, and i don't think it shut be moveable be course it will make it to powerful.

[betadata]

I like a shield Idea :)

[Aurzel]

i think its ok if its moveable otherwise it'll be a bit of a waste to build it then you have to abandon it

[Jobran]

I think it would be great (!) to have something like this.

[Karsten75]

I think of blasters as the ultimate moving (movable)  shields.

[Kotarski]

If you had a choice when you placed it to either have an area effect (like with turrets) or a point to point effect (like with relays) then you could choose to block off a canyon or protect an object.

[knucracker]

I considered a shield, or a force based unit during dev.  Basically, it just pushes the creeper it doesn't destroy it.  It basically acts like a mobile 'wall' projector, except it takes energy to maintain the mobile wall.  I never implemented the unit, though, for time reasons and balance concerns.  It certainly sounds like fun, but it would take a little bit of work to implement and to balance.

One model for the shield unit is that it projects a circular wall around itself.  Another model is that is projects a line (vertical or horizontal), but you have to decide which way it faces.  In both cases the 'wall' that is projected is thin, weak, and takes damage very easily.... it is just constantly being repaired by the unit projecting it (and that unit requests energy for every wall segment).  Note that the shield wouldn't look like a wall it would just be modeled in the game in a similar way.

One legit concern is why you would ever build one (this relates to the balancing issue)?  After all it doesn't do anything but delay the creeper's advance. A blaster might have the same effect as holding back the creeper while also destroying it in the process.  If shields are too cheap, then everybody will build them and surround emitters with them early in the game.  It may also make it too easy to create artificial lakes that can be mortar'd or drone bombed.

Anyway, if I get a chance it may be something I'll actually experiment with rather than just hypothesize about.

[Aurzel]

shields could be used in maps like loki where you have overwhelming amounts of creeper, a wall can aid your weapons in destroying the creeper while you build out collectors, granted its limits are many but if its balanced carefully enough i'm sure we can find uses for it

[superzip]

One legit concern is why you would ever build one

well i don't use storage unit, i just built a lot of reactors :)

and i was hoping it will be a round shield.

[RG]

Perhaps if instead of working like a wall it worked like an intermittent barrier?

So if you built a shield generator you would have to wait for it to charge up, then when it is finished charging it would project a barrier for 10-15 or that would stop, slow, or limit the creepers movement. Then the barrier would go away while it recharged.

[knucracker]

Interesting idea....

Another idea (thinking along the lines of simplifying the concept as much as possible) is just a unit that is essentially a movable 'wall'.  This unit doesn't blow up when touched, but it does stop creeper from flowing through it.  It takes damage, but if connected to the graph it will request packets to repair itself.  The unit might be a 2x2 square and you could fly them and move them around as you wanted to make a little castle for yourself.  The repair cost would be 'not cheap'.  The damage would also be proportional to the depth of the creeper touching it.  So if you are holding back a 4 level high wall of Creeper you better hope you have storage on hand to keep the levy repaired.

I could see doing a unit like this since it would fit in with the game mechanic and interface pretty well.

[NoobSauce]

When I read "shield" my mind went to energy shields rather than tower shields.

That is, a building that protects other buildings in range, giving them a blue bar of extra health that would be replenished with energy requested from Odin City.

Though, now that I think of it, that may be harder to implement.

[Aurzel]

actually you could just have a wall builder, it fills up on packets and once its full it sends out a little probe to build a bit of wall where to specify