Personal Force Field & Tactical Shield

Started by Salvick, May 12, 2020, 06:12:20 PM

Salvick

Hello guys. We've been talking about an idea with some players on my team and I wanted to drop it here to see if someone else contributes to elaborate this concept.

Personal Force Field / Tactical Shield



Personal Force Field would be a new implant that allows the player to get protection to either push forward or run away without taking damage in combat for the time it is enabled but it makes you lose your ability to use any weapons. You toggle the force field the same way as the helmet light and it has a slow cooldown between activations. Also if it gets destroyed it will burst a small energy field that will damage you and any nearby players and creatures.

The idea is that a player could act as protection for the team to reach better ranges when willing to use heavier and faster guns than the sniper or survive for a while when dropped out of the mech and such..

Its power source should be the power bank although this "force filed" could add a new portable power source based on pragmium, similar to the core reactors, that could also be used for the plasma guns and other stuff too.



Tactical Shield is an item that allows the player to move towards the line of fire absorbing any possible damage from impacts and energy weapons but not from explosions, however, the kinetic impacts will slow down the player that is holding the shield while it still provides protection against piercing ammo .

It is cheaper to make than the force field, hence it is a lower tier alternative, and it doesn't do any damage when it is destroyed. Can be dropped at any moment and its health points are lower than the force field.

It should be relatively weak, you can't use any weapons when carrying the Tactical Shield although you can switch to it slightly quick from your quick-access bar and the stamina should also be reduced faster by the impact of its weight.

I can imagine some situations where you pull the Tactical Shield but your opposition slows you down by the impacts of their guns giving them time to run away while also providing more defensive uses when covering a team mate placing bombs or building a Li/Oil Extractor.

Also the slowing down function could be accumulative, let's say 1 impact = 0.25 secs of effect so a shotgun in example would make the effect last longer or instead of making it relative to amount of impacts make it work in relation to damage.



Hope you guys likes this idea besides if it is even possible and I hope to read some suggestions and opinions on how this would work, or fail, and how to improve it.

Regards,
Sal.


Lurler

Thank you for the ideas.

I was actually also thinking about either force field or power armor or something similar, but we can't quite find the best approach to this yet. Currently there is just no way to balance this properly. It will either be too overpowered or too useless :)

I guess we need to add a few other things first to make combat more complex and not reliant of raw firepower first.

Salvick

Yeah, combat right now, imho, offers too little alternatives once you reach the higher tiers, I mean no one is using the lower tier weapons against T4 ones, unless they run short of resources, which usually leads to stick with the T4 gear most of the time.


Have you maybe thought of any weapon mods? I'm thinking, what if T3 technologies allow for some mods for T2 guns, like an extended magazine for the Machine Pistol, improved rifling barrel for the Luger providing some extra range, then at T4 you get mods for the T3 weapons like a fast reload mod that shorten your magazine size or a cooling jacket that provides higher rate of fire for some of the 10mm guns and so on.

I imagine something that would just balance lower tier guns up to match them with the higher tier guns aiming to provide more variety of play styles that still challenge the most powerful guns. Might be really hard to do this but I just wanted to drop these ideas.

Then the shield and force field could fit better when it comes to team work.


It is great to read that you had actually been thinking of something like this and I hope to see what would you come out with some day.


Thanks for the reply Lurler.