OK, I've read some of the posts about large shields being useless because bombers fly right through, units drive through, etc. but I was thinking of a way to use this: Siege shields.

Nearly indestructable shields that cover a diameter of < 3-4km. They would be tech 4, and take 10 - 20 k energy to run, but provide your base with an anti T3 arty, Mavor (Ugh), Scathis shield. This shield would require the attacker to send either an army through or a bomber swarm to kill the power generators, or the main generator if they can manage it, to allow the base to be shelled.

Really only useful in long games on big maps, but provides interesting tactical AND stratigic options.

Released!!!! http://www.supcomsource.net/files/file.php?id=8203
http://d2kstudios.com/downloads.php?file=24
http://www.rtscommunity.com/rts/index.php?p=getitem&db_id=3&item_id=82

sounds interesting, hope you dont run into any probs

Very interesting idea.

Well, there are some ideas being thrown around in the real world shields thread... you could look there...

Also, making the shield very large but putting the center of shieldness(?) below ground by a lot would produce a very flat but large shield... might be what your looking for...

Interesting thought.

1. Nukes do detonate on the shields and if the shields can take the brunt the stuff underneath survives. For proof just drop a nuke on a shield gen and during the replay reduce speed to -10 and use the spacebar +camra angle change to look at it from the side.

2. If you look for the thread on these forums for the "Shield Cannon" the GPG staff basicly go about explaining shields a little. You can inverse them and/or choose what passes through them. Most shields allow allied fire through them but this can be changed from what I understand.

I personally think anti artillary shields would be great. Maybe find a way to use the "Shield Realisum Mod" that was just released to effect the power drain of it while its taking damage. Though i think his mod effects shields globally instead of 1 specific type, just an idea

nice idea, but i have one question: normally, all shields melt together under the biggest shield. Wouldnt smaller shields be useless untill the big shield is destroyed?
If you have a lvl 1 shield under a lvl 3 shield, you only can see the lvl 3 shield and if you drive under this, you are also inside the lvl 1 shield. This effect would happen with the lvl 4 super shield too i guess...

i don't think that's how it works. When you've got a whole bunch of overlapping shields they all work as individuals. It's only the visuals that make it look like they've merged. If you walk a bot under one shield and try to shoot it's neighbor the shots will impact the neighbor's shield (which is inside the first shield)

From what I understand, shields are a sphere or a cube (Or a collection thereof, though that brings possible performance issues) with various scripts attached that allow them to impact things. You can change what will impact or pass through them completely freely, be it nuke, friendly / foe fire, artillery only, or what have you.

Also, shields don't "merge", they just overlap... thats why I always build my shields close enough that they are inside each others radius, if possible: you can't just walk under the shields perimeter to destroy it, you have to walk all the way up to it or bring the other shield gen's shield down.

We can mod cubic shields?? Is that true? That would be so much more useful, cos buildings are square!

Can we do any other shapes? Faceted polyhedrons would be cool...

Thanks for the info. I'll go check the other threads and see what they do.

hey guys! what if, instead of building a massive genorator, you had to build 8 smaller ones. kinda make the outline of the shields with the smaller ones? that way your enemy through intel could figure out what u are doing. maybe this is impossible, i dont know if the sheild's need to stay in a "circle" around the generator or what. If not what if you needed to build 8 smaller generators in a square to get a huge shield. im gonna go check out that realistic shield topic and investigate this. its intriuging.

what i say...take it or leave it just throwing out ideas

Yeah, I've thought about that, but I have no idea how to actually do it. I'd also like a shield to shrink as it takes damage but remains impervious (untill it gets to small, then the generator burns out and explodes ) (Got that idea from Weber's "The Armageddon Inheritance" Good series.)


edit: Oh yeah, does anyone know how to make it stop things from both sides? Othe posts say it can be done but not how. And what would you need to do to keep your units from fireing while the shield is active 'cause it would be annoying to lose planes, turrets, etc to T3 arty trying to shoot through something it can't.

A thought struck me when reading the first few lines of this thread. Specifically the huge energy tag it has on it. Why not give a choice? Your version or this option; you can build a primary T4 Shield Generator Pylon that will cover 1.5 the area that a T3 Shield Generator with 3 times the power draw of a T3 Shield Generator and then use auxiliary pylons to spread the shield radius around bumping up the power requirements by 1000 power each?

Creating a shield by building 4 small units at the corners would be clever, cos it stops the annoyance of having a shield generator in the safest bit of the shield, messing up your resource matrix. Means it's easy to drive into and kill the shield gen, though.

On shape, can clever shapes be done? Like a vaulted shape - a curved dome that's square on plan?

one of the other threads on shields mentions you can do spheres and cubes right now, but i don't know if other shapes can be modded in or not.

The closest thing you can get to a fancy shape is a mesh shield. A Mesh shield is basicly what the Obsidian and the Titan use.

In simple terms you take an existing model (as new ones can't be imported yet), increase its size a little, give it a shield texture instead of then ormal unit textures, and give it shield properties. Then overlay it on the unit in question.

However its a royal pain in the butt to do properly sometimes

back to the idea of a super huge shield, couldn't you, in theory, make a mesh shield of say, an oversized czar, and have it generated buy a building? do these mesh overlay shields have to be used on the actual unit they are created from, or can they simply get their size and shape from the unit's data and be spawned on their own?

edit: the point being that it being disc shaped would allow it to get quite large before its tall enough for air units to fly into it. forgot this part

In Theory you could link any shield mesh to any unit. Basicly there is a line in the code for a mesh shield that asks you what mesh you want to use. And because the mesh is essentually its own model after you set it up you could attach it to anything.

Haven't tried it yet myself but the way the code works it looks like it shouldn't cause any problems

I'm only passing on what was said by a Dev, in another thread. No need to be sarcastic. And he said it was limited to spheres and cubes, and that it wasn't possible to distort the shape of said objects (except by having more than one of them). I wanted to get an ovoid shape shield, 'ya see.

Just got back from testing the UEF Shield.... and it worked beautifully.

Stoped all the AIs T3 Arty cold and if the AI wasn't so friggin dumb would be balanced since the coverage area is so huge.

Don't remember tha map's name, but you can see which one it is by looking at the minimap. It's a 20/20 I think and that clump of black near the center is the shield's edge with the generator being in the center of my base. If you look carefully, you can see the 6-7 T3 Aeon Shields near my big one. They're the little glowy blob! Big, no? In fact, the smallish looking blast on top is a NUKE!!!!



Sorry for the poor quality, my puter is only single core and it dies rapidly with large numbers of units in play

By the way, does anyone know how to make screenshots in supcom? I know about using print screen button, but I can only grab one at a time with it.

As a note, I just rushed to get the thing done (takes about 30 mins with one T3 Con at 12 M and ~200 E) and didn't have enough defences so the puter actually pushed me back from the edge of the shield and it took me another 10 -15 mins to get back to the edge. If the puter didn't just attack the closest base, it could have just gone around any meaningful defence I could have mounted at the shield's edge (means good balance).

Oh Dear Lord!!!
I like how you casually announce that the small flash on the top is a nuke lol. Though i think the shield may be a little over the torp. On a smaller map (10x10 or 5x5) the thing would cover the entire field lol.

Thats the idea. It is so big that it is only useful on large maps. Personaly, id like to be able to resize it in game to fit your needs, but I wouldn't begin to know how to do that. I'm finishing the versions for the other sides tomorrow and I'l release it if a mod site would take it.

Currently, the things are fairly impervious, but if you keep a constant bombardment up with high damage guns, it would eventually go down. The easiest way though is to drive through and blast the power plants, fly through and do the same, or drop 5-6 nukes on it (using 5-6 launchers). Antinukes still can intercept before the nuke hits the shield, but if you aim at some random edge, you can hit it without difficulty. And when it goes down, it STAYS down for a good 5 mins. Of course, they could have another generator built but unused.

Oh, an interesting problem showed itself during the continuous T3Arty bombardment, and the 3-4 nuke launchers on continuous fire... The damage decals still show even though the shots hit nowhere near the ground. This can cause EXTREME LAG (think of seeing a solid black line on the map under the shield and then realizing it's the combined decals from an hour long bombardment. All packed into the space of about 4 T3 power plants in a line. My admittidly crappy computer droped the framrate to half till I zoomed out too far or panned away. My base was the vitim of nearly 40 nukes in total on the SAME SPOT (Over the course of an hour). I just couldn't look at my base up close for the rest of the game.) Does anyone know why this happens and/or if there is a way to fix it?

Ready for release!!!! it works for all sides YAY!!


Now I just need to figure out how to release it... Anyone from any modsites wanna host it?

thats awsome, I had been trying to create my own last night, but had some glitches, and wasn't sure what I was doing really, couldn't find a tutorial to make a new unit. copied the entire units folder over, changed the names on all the files to match the new ID, and started changing a few things around for size. The mod was listed, but no shield was avaialbe to build.

Uploaded here http://www.supcomsource.net/files/file.php?id=8203

Enjoy!!