Subset Games Forum

Hi guys! Quick props to every modder here, you guys are awesome and make this game awesome as you are!

As a mod user peasant, I had an idea that i'd really like to share: the directional shields.



This type of shield wouldn't replace the traditional shield, but rather go alongside it: the directional shields would occupy drone slots (in a way similar to the shield overcharger,but without consuming drone parts).

The idea is to add new possibilities and forms for weapons, while making shield managemant more interesting.

• Risk reward : for 1 energy each, these shields are more efficient that the traditional ones, but way more risky
• Weapons that can direct fire along a vector wuold be stronger against this kind of shields (also aiming would be more interesting than just coordinating volleys)
• Projectile speed matters more, since the rotational speed of the shield is not instant --> blind spots
• A little bit more RNG in the fights: even a heavily defended ship can be hit if you can find the blind spot in the rotating shields.
• Attributes to shields! Since these shields are drone parts and can be found/bought, they will have attributes (slow/fast/%resist to ionic and so on)
• The reactivation time could be weighted depending on the type of projectile (ie: they could be more effective than the traditional shields against ion, but less against heavy lasers)
• More variability in ship start setup: some ships could start without traditional shield and with 1-2 levels of directional shields, without being crippled.

Just an idea, if someone wants to take it up i would be honored!

Sadly, this can't be done the way you want it, to my knowledge. Drone hitboxes can't be that big.

I'll look into making it work in some other way.

We also tried a bomb workaround ages ago, did not work out.

Sorry to hear it
Thanks for your patience, sleeperservice


ps: deploying an array of drones that cover the required arc with their hitboxes wouldn't work I guess?

Drone hitboxes seem to be just a few pixels wide. There is not control about where drones spawn and the player would have to manually deploy 50+ drones, the UI can barely support five.

Thank you! Maybe I will try to study the modding guides before proposing other Impossible ideas

Sleeper Service wrote:We also tried a bomb workaround ages ago, did not work out.

Oh gods. That's gloriously insane.
What might be interesting is making shields almost invisible, and altering the shield collision sprite. Not the same as rotating shields, but still cool looking.

Sleeper Service wrote:We also tried a bomb workaround ages ago, did not work out.

Wow. How do those Shield weapons work exactly? I wonder if it could be tweaked to be viable, even if it's not related to the directional shields thing.

Hubnester wrote:Wow. How do those Shield weapons work exactly? I wonder if it could be tweaked to be viable, even if it's not related to the directional shields thing.

These shields are visuals only. They are basically large, long living bomb graphics, but they do not have any collision to them, so there is not much to tweak. I tried this based on some rumors. I once hear that bombs actually could be detonated by weapon fire to the same room, implying that they had some collision detection going.