Planetary Shield strength zero after patch

[Jobster]

Has anyone else noticed that planetary shield strength is at zero while stopping power is at 100%. What exactly does this mean?

[The Bursar]

Well, from what I know of shield mechanics this means that the shield will stop the first shot you take at it entirely, but goes down immediately. kinda dumb really; shoot a single pd nuke, then Steller convert it with the shield down...

[Antimatter]

wtf so it would be probably better to set it to like

100,000 point, stopping power 99% or so so that planets will be actualy tough to invade other than troops and ships. but due to its immense power the recharge would be relativly slow.

[Jobster]

It is annoying that details such as shield strength are not clearly explained in the manual or readme. Anyone else have any thoughts on how a planet's shield works?

[Antimatter]

i personaly think it should act like normal shield but with like 5x the power, etc.... and something like 90-99% blocking...

sort of like courscant in starwars, in the expanded universe, with the rogue squadron and lusankya super star destroyer, that's what i'm talking about, something that is tough than hell to penterate.

[tiger00]

no, no, no. Stopping power = % of a shot/missle that the shield will stop every time (if it has shield power left)


So, some shields have lower stopping power (sp). If a shield has sp = 50% that means that half of the energy is GOING to hit your armor. Now, you alos lose some of your shields energy/points/power/life whatever you want to call it.

If you don't have any energy/power left than the stopping power is meaningless anyway.


The point with planetary shields is that they will stop *everything* until they run out of energy (although shield piercing weapons may modify this)


and you're right it isn't explained well... or at all :)

[The Bursar]

That's the point, 0 hps. I mean, that means that after 1 hit the shield goes down and the planet is free to be shot to hell. So stopping 100% is useless unless since you have no hps to block the hits, isn't it? :rolleyes:

[Craig P.]

Originally posted by Jobster
Has anyone else noticed that planetary shield strength is at zero while stopping power is at 100%. What exactly does this mean? It means the shield might as well not be there, if correct. 100% stopping power means all damage would go to shields, but zero shield points means that all that damage then bypasses the shield.

[Phaedra]

"Yes, they work. I verified this by setting up a game where I knew the shield level tech of the defending shielded planet and knew the total warhead strength of the missiles fired at it. The red damage value was correct. "

Tom Hughes, designer MOO3

===============================

It seems they work, somehow

[Jobster]

Well if they do work I do not recall seeing a blue glow when the planet is hit by weak weapons. Also there seems to be an awful lot of percentage this and percentage that in the tech descriptions but no real info on what it all means. So even if the shields work I would like to know how. What I miss most about MOO2 is the simple and clear way things worked and were explained in a decent manual.

[Flinx]

Originally posted by Jobster
Has anyone else noticed that planetary shield strength is at zero while stopping power is at 100%. What exactly does this mean? This is what it said pre-patch too.

[Craig P.]

Originally posted by Jobster
Well if they do work I do not recall seeing a blue glow when the planet is hit by weak weapons. Also there seems to be an awful lot of percentage this and percentage that in the tech descriptions but no real info on what it all means. So even if the shields work I would like to know how. What I miss most about MOO2 is the simple and clear way things worked and were explained in a decent manual. Read space combat mechanics. We know how everything but ECM and ECCM work.

[Flinx]

Originally posted by Jobster
Has anyone else noticed that planetary shield strength is at zero while stopping power is at 100%. What exactly does this mean? ...And so what exactly is going on here?

Anyone?


.

[hoof1]

You will not see a blue number on any shielded target *unless* the armor behind the shields was able to completely deflect the damage (no armor damage).

The way it works is that you will see red, if *any* internal damage is taken. You will see yellow if the armor took damage, but no damage went to internals. You will see blue if the armor completely deflected the damage (I assume you need shields too).

This is what the deflection value is for in the armor description. This is the amount of damage per hit that the armor will ignore. If it goes over this amount the armor and potentially internals will take damage.

Since the planets don't have a deflection value (each point of damage does one point of "internals", all you ever see is red. Thus unless you do controlled experiments (such as shooting a gauss weapon with a known damage value at a planet), you will not easily notice the effect of the shields, except maybe that you're having a tough time damaging the planet.

[Azariel]

You will see blue numbers telling the amount of damage your shields received unless
some damage penetrated a) shields and b) armor deflection, and damaged the armor. You will see yellow numbers telling how much armor damage was done unless
Some damage penetrated the armor and internal damage was done. You will see red numbers telling how much.

The actual calculations are:
Take the damage done by a weapon, lets say 100.
This will be compared to shield stopping power, say 50%.
50 points will pass shields, 50 points will be absorbed by shields.
If the shields had a) power 100 they now have 50. If they had below 50, b) say 20, they will absorb 20 damage, the excess will pass on to armor.
Case a) 50 passes the shields, and is done to armor. If armor deflection is highter than 50 nothing happens. only damage taken were the 50 shield points, you'll get a blue number.
case b) this time even 70 points passed the shields since any excess damage after shields are 0 is passed on.
Now take the percentage of armor left. This is the chance that damage will be done to armor instead of hull. Obviuosly, the more damaged the armor, the more likely are shots to hit the hull. Again, any excess damage after armor is reduced to 0 is passed on to hull.
In the given example of strength=0 this means that all damage will pass the shields, no matter what the stopping power value is.


A planet has no armor, so we should be able to see a) red numbers or b) blue numbers.
If the shield stopping power was really 100% every damage should go to shields, until they are depleted. thus, any weapon that doesn't exceed the shields strength, shouldn't be able to du hull damage, thus show blue damage numbers.
But if the shield stopping power is below 100% even as high as 99% there will never be blue numbers, since a small fraction of damage will always pass shields. Without armor=red numbers.

I have to see blu numbers yet, so i tend to think that stopping power in the military screen is not stopping power as in design screen. Perhaps this was to be a modifier, like stopping power=100%, 150% if a certain building is added to military DEA. In that case the shield stopping power of the actual shield tech is the reference. Seems likely imho.

[Vallis]

Here are the space combat related Planetary Shield Generator statistics from TachTables.txt:

ShdStr *= 20
Recharge *= 5

Note that the (*) indicates that these numbers are multipliers. Presumably, they multiply the base values of the most advanced shields possessed by your empire.

If this is the case, Class V Planetary Shields would have a Stopping Power of .66 from the Class V Shields (the Planetary Shield Generator does not modify the Stopping Power), a Shield Strength of 6,500 hit points (Class V Shield's ShdStr of 325 x Planetary Shields ShdStr Multiplier of 20), and a Recharge Rate of 170 hit points per second (Class V Shield Recharge Rate of 34 x Planetary Shield Generator Recharge Rate of 5). Therefore, Class V Planetary Shields will absorb 66% of all damage (from non-shield-piercing weapons), which hits the shields and subtracts from the total 6,500 hit points. Those hit points are gradually restored at a rate of 170 hit points each second. The remaining 34% of the damage hits the planets "hull", causing the red numbers every time. (Note: Shield piercing weapons modify the target shield's Stopping Power, reducing the Stopping Power by the weapon's Shield Piercing Pertentage. For full details on how space combat works, see visage's Space Combat Mechanics Guide (http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=290129).)



Addition stats for the Planetary Shield Generator include:

Cost=100
PlanDef += 3
CollatSz=30
CollatDs = 60
CollatCl=0
Employee = 0.2

PlanDef is marked with a (+), which means that it is added to another statistic (in this case the planet's Planetary Defense). All the other Planetary Shield Generator statistics have no (*) or (+), which means they are base values. I am not completly clear on how the three 'Collat' stats work, but I know they have to do with the chances that the Planetary Shield Generator (or building in general) gets destroyed during bombardment or ground combat. CollatSz (Collateral Damage Size) determines the chances of a building getting hit in these combat stages, with larger buildings (higher values) being more likely to be hit. I think that CollatDs refers to the building's hit points. I do not know what CollatCl is. Employee of .2, I believe, means that it takes .2 population points to run the Planetary Shield Generator, and Cost is self explanitory.

There are many values throughout the various spreadsheets that do not match with each other. Based on my personal observations, and from what others have siad, TechTables.txt tends to take presidence over most other spreadsheets. It contains the values and statistics for the vast majority of the technologies in MOO3. I hope this helps to clear some things up.

[Flinx]

Originally posted by Vallis
I hope this helps to clear some things up. Yes it does! Thank you very much!

So the shield strength is NOT 0 and the stopping power is NOT 100% and these numbers should in fact be the result of the above calculations for your current best shield tech.

[Iskabis]

Originally posted by Vallis
<snip>
Cost=100
PlanDef += 3
CollatSz=30
CollatDs = 60
CollatCl=0
Employee = 0.2

PlanDef is marked with a (+), which means that it is added to another statistic (in this case the planet's Planetary Defense). All the other Planetary Shield Generator statistics have no (*) or (+), which means they are base values. I am not completly clear on how the three 'Collat' stats work, but I know they have to do with the chances that the Planetary Shield Generator (or building in general) gets destroyed during bombardment or ground combat. CollatSz (Collateral Damage Size) determines the chances of a building getting hit in these combat stages, with larger buildings (higher values) being more likely to be hit. I think that CollatDs refers to the building's hit points. I do not know what CollatCl is. Employee of .2, I believe, means that it takes .2 population points to run the Planetary Shield Generator, and Cost is self explanitory.
<snip>
CollatCl is collateral class. 0 is military, 2 is civilian, and i think 1 is economic. i can't remember right now where i found this info, so i'm going by memory on which means what. definitely only values are 0-2, and i'm 98% certain those are the classes. not sure what the class is used for, though - maybe it determines the Sitrep line where some <class name> buildings are scrapped for lack of maintenance??

for the rest, you're correct.

-rhyssan

[Da_Blade]

The different classes have different chances of getting hit in ground combat i think.

[Vallis]

Originally posted by Da_Blade
The different classes have different chances of getting hit in ground combat i think.

They may have something to do with whether or not the building gets targeted in ground combat. I suspect they also would be used to determine whether military or economic spies attempt to sabotage the building.

[Da_Blade]

Thinking of it: there's three setting on collateral damage setting, and also 3 damage classes, they might be very interconnected...

You should be able to modify it by making one common building of each class huge and see how many get destroyed during each setting of combat.

For instance: make mining military class and size 30,000, make bioharvest economics 30,000 and industry civilian and 30,000. Should be interesting.

[zanzibar]

Originally posted by Craig P.
Read space combat mechanics. We know how everything but ECM and ECCM work.

Now, thanks to this thread (http://www.ina-community.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=305313) you also know how ECM and ECCM work!! ;)

[Ron_Lugge]

IIRC the "strength 0 stopping power 100" is a display bug.

[Iskabis]

Originally posted by Iskabis
CollatCl is collateral class. 0 is military, 2 is civilian, and i think 1 is economic. i can't remember right now where i found this info, so i'm going by memory on which means what. definitely only values are 0-2...
<snip>
just remembered where i found this info, and my memory was correct. you can figure it out by cross-referencing between (post-patch) wsTechnology and TechTables. TechTables uses 0-2, but wsTechnology translates that as:
Collateral Damage Category = Economic
(for example).

in case anyone wanted the reference... :)
-rhyssan