Starship Corporation

I think shields need a little TLC. My main concern is that it doesn't make sense that a shield generator supposedly creates a spherical shield (hence the circle), yet it only affects one deck. Considering the price, I propose one of the following changes:

1) Shield Generators affect all decks with the same size circle on every deck. This is the easiest to implement.
2) Shield Generators would have circles larger than currently and affect all decks, but the circle is one square smaller for each further deck (so the circles directly above and below would be slightly smaller than the deck the shield generator is on, but the same size as each other).
3) Shield Generators would affect the entire ship equally, with the number of generators determining how much damage the shield can take. Maybe have a front and rear arc, or four arcs, depending on what you want. This is the typical space sim setup.
4) Shield Generators could be assigned to one of four arcs, with every ship having four arcs. This would allow players to make certain arcs stronger, or just have one shield generator on the front arc, etc.
5) Shields could be handled the same way as the armor, and added directly to the hull. These would in essence be powerful electromagnets installed in the hull plating rather than a force field.
6) Shields could remain as they are and simply cost dramatically less. This is my least favorite option.

If someone has additional ideas, feel free to add them.

I'm more in favour of one large shield generator room that surrounds the ship.

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So, do you mean #3? Or do you mean something more like there's one room and one room only (like the Bridge, Computer Core, etc.)? I could see something where there's one room and you could choose how much power to spend on it, with more power giving you stronger shields.

Yes to the first statement. On shield like a computer room.
And yes you always hear about applying more power to the deflector shields. So yes

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If ( x = 1 && y = 1)
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i think, realistically, all of these ideas (or most of them anyway) can be implimented at the same time, think of it as preference, say you have both directional shields and shields that engulf the entire ship, these are both equally useful, a ship that is slow and not very manueverable would find more use out of all engulfing shields despite the cost of such a power consuming shield, (i would assume such a shield would be more costly anyway) plus, there is the added disadvantage that once the shields go down the entire ship is exposed. now say you have a faster, more evasive ship, and instead of having shields that engulf the entire ship it only has shields that independantly cover the four sides; (fore, aft, port, starbord) these types of shields, while weaker, are likely to have faster regen times, with this in mind the faster ship should be able to turn it's broadsides easier to accomidate whichever sides have fallen first to prevent destruction.

with this train of thought and strategy in mind i think it's reasonable to say that most types of shields can be made available at the same time

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"Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, ease after war, death after life does greatly please."
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So lets say two types of shield.
A normal ship shield the covers the entire ship.
Then have a deflector shield that can act like the current one. But it is bigger and covers all decks. You would need to add then to your ship to get extra shielding eg: front back left and right. Giving you a shield and four deflector shields

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If ( x = 1 && y = 1)
{ PooIsEaten = true; }
Else
{ PooIsEaten = false; }

And what about different shield system



Shield system have two componets:

Shield generator - can be placed inside hull and generate resources for shield (same as cooling system)
Shield emitters, arrays - must be placed outside hull on armor layer. We can now have this choices for armor layer: none, doors, armor, shield and armored array (armor + shield array)

Each array generate flat hexagonal force field few meter from hull. Every array cover 10 squares and can overlap each other.

One important question is, what the shields are used for. Should they only defend a part of the ship or the whole ship? What dangers can shields be used against (laser weapons, missile weapons, asteroids, boarding ships)? And should the shields be static like armor or dynamic (e.g. changing shield arcs).

Some thoughts for the different ideas:
1) Shield with same circle radius on all decks: Defending important parts of the ship. In a ship fight, they should be used to protect the most important parts of the ship (bridge, power generators, fuel tanks, etc.). If shields work against asteroids, they could be used to protect the front of the ship, when the ship is flying fast through an asteroid field. If shields work against boarding ships, they could be used to protect the entrances to the ship. This shield could be overpowered for ships with many decks, as they do more shields for the same power (except if the shield needs extra power for each deck).
2) Shield with reduced radius depending on the number of decks to the generator: Like 1), but not overpowered on ships with many decks.
3) Shield around whole ship: This shield would reduce the overall damage to the ship. Depending on the shield strength (respectively number of generators), it could even be a complete defense against weak attack ships (or asteroids or boarding ships if the shield protects against those).
4) Shield on one arc: This shield could be used if one side of the ship is more in danger than other sides of the ship. Front arc for boarding ships or for protection against asteroids. Side arcs for battle ships with many weapons on the side (that are normally not protected by armor). Back arcs for fast transport ships, that only want to escape. Perhaps this shield could also dynamically change the arcs of the shield depending on the direction of the danger (either by the player or automatically).
5) Shield instead of armor or in addition to armor: Shield instead of armor would only be usefull if the shield is stronger than the armor or the recharge speed is fast enough to cancel all damage as a shield without armor would probably be destroyed easily. Shield in addition to armor would cancel some damage to the armor and would be good against low damage, low precision weapons with high fire rate (as these weapons would spread their damage on different shields). These shields could also be usefull if armor and shield have different strength against different weapons.
6) Circle shield on only one deck: Like 1). They should have a great radius (or dynamic with power usage depending on radius) as it would be really annoying to find suitable places for them if they have a radius that is too small.
7) (by Shania): Shield generators and shield emitters on armor: This is like a mixture of 4) and 5). With these shields you could secure some areas, that are normally less secured because of missing armor (like weapon slots, cargo bay doors or ship exits).

Shanias shield system got me a new idea:

two components:
Shield emitters - must be placed outside hull on armor layer and they must be connected to the power system. They generate a shield like in Shanias pictures if they are ON. They can be turned ON/OFF by clicking on them. They don't need power, if they are OFF.
Shield control (optional) - Automatic controls for shield system. Can turn the shield emitters ON/OFF automatically on special circumstances. For example you could set, that on code red all shield emitters should be turned ON. Or you could set, that all emitters on a side under fire should be turned ON. By clicking on the shield control you can also manually set the shield emitters on one side (front, back, right, left) to ON/OFF/AUTO. Shield control must be connected to power but does not have to be connected to the shield emitters (it works remotely).

I kind of like the idea of embedding the shields into the hull but in that case they shouldn't be considered shields, they'd be a type of hull plating. Similar in concept to the way polarized hull plating worked in the TV series, Star Trek: Enterprise. Energy shields could be implemented as a navigational system like deflector shields to protect from small object impact while armor (and polarized hull plating) could be used as defensive systems.