A take on energy shields - say no to bubbles

[PopeUrban]

I'm not seeing a use case for powered plating compared to thrusters here. Even if we grant you that the design of all of the electrical engineering in the game changes just to accommodate them (which seems.... an unlikely design given the rest of the game) powered plates have the same vision obstruction limits as normal plates. The "power savings" for these theoretical hybrid mining/combat or whatever ships are more easily and effectively employed by togglable thruster groups.

Unless you're telling me that a powered plate is worth more that two layers of armor, which, quite frankly, is overpowered and makes traditional armor obsolete out the gate. Take a look at the media we have available. While it may increase your weight (again, strap on more thrusters, you're more likely to survive a firefight) it isn't going to appreciably increase the profile of your ship to just bolt on another armor layer. This isn't space engineers, armor isn't cube shaped. It's armor plate shaped.

 

[<C:\AMWild✦>]

While I am also opposed to shields as a protective field covering an entire ship, there is an alternative: directional shields.

Directional shields would function like a weapon, in that they project an effect ahead of them that largely or completely neutralizes incoming fire from a particular threat axis. It would cover only a few degrees of arc. From any other axis other than the one that the shield is aimed at, incoming fire would be fully effective.

A directional shield could be mounted fixed in a particular direction, or mounted on a turret.

Such a shield should consume a lot of power when active, so that no ship could afford to completely englobe itself in them.