Shields

 Hi Neutrino, welcome! Good thoughts, but there are a few more factors to consider.

In SC2  had a large focus on resource management from gathering RUs, spending fuel, and conserving crew with several ways to obtain your goal, each with their own risks. The key early game tool was the lander which tied your crew and fuel usage to the flagship. This was a mechanic which affected decision making - do I risk fuel and not make it home, or do I risk crew and not be able to fight my way home?

Yes, shields can work as the 'health' mechanic in the game but there needs to be a way to tie it into all aspects of the game. If the lander is then shield based, what happens when we lose 10 in a row? We would then have another issue of assuming we have infinite crew (yes, one could argue they are drones).

And don't forget the nostalgia factor. Keeping the mechanics similar with the original games has been a big area of discussion. With the intended modding tools there has been discussion on the community to recreate SC2 in SC:O. If we change the mechanics too far, that may be difficult to achieve (but shouldn't be the driving force).

From a story and logic point of view, I do like the concept of the fuelling stations. I'm not against a shields concept, it just needs fleshing out on why/how it is superior. Hopefully the modding tools will allow some ability to enhance that gameplay in the campaign game.

If you haven't already make sure you jump into Discord as well. There has been several discussions are this and other topics like reduced flagship functionality based on diminished crew levels.

I don't like it (sorry).

You're trying to squeeze "realism" into the game, but it's not about being as realistic a space sim as possible, there are plenty of games that try to do that. StarCon is (and always has been) it's own beast, and one of the major factors of StarCon is that crew and energy/fuel are your resources (for the melee part of the game). Changing that would be denying the canon and I personally would hate it.

As for reduced flagship functionality based on crew numbers, that's a bit dumb too. At the end of SC2, you fly the SaMatra with one single crew member, just as you can fly any ship when it's down to one crew. It's canon that this is possible because of all the functionality of the ship being channelled through a single control system.

I say leave it as it is. There are a thousand other space sim games people can play if they want "more realism". I just want Star Control.

I don't really care other than the fact that shields would be more apt based on the health bars currently in play.

The health bars don't look like the crew bars of old and do not function like they were made of discrete little squares either. One build even had a "texture" of squares on one of the crew bars, but it still acted as a flowing bar rather than discrete units.

One thing that crew does better, though, is being able to transfer them across ships. Also, shields make a better special ability.

A simple "barrier shield" doesn't really add much, it is just another layer of defense.  The simple shields used in most games are essentially just extra hit points that self-regenerate while the actual hit points don't.

Realistic shields are far more complicated than would be appropriate for Star Control... and really have never been seen in any game that I can think of... except for three that don't actually exist;-)

Unless they want the shields to add some simple additional aspects to the combat such as shield piercing weapons, a potential device that brings down enemy shields, etc, there really isn't much reason to have shields.  If you want to maintain the same balance of how survivable the ships are, and therefore how long the fights last, then for every point of shield defense you would remove a point of health... so what is the point?  It doesn't seem worth it too me to add shields for a few simple extra weapon/device capabilities that aren't needed to make enough really interesting stock ships for SC anyway, while at the same time that makes it not like Star Control which did not have shields.  

There really isn't much reason to add them, other than to increase the potential variety of weapons and systems that interact with shields in unique ways.  But that isn't really Star Control, is it?

1 + 1 = Chess.

EDIT: And based on IBN's post, I'd agree with him.  From his description of how the health bar functions... it already is a shield, not crew units.  It's just a shield that doesn't regenerate.  They are probably doing it that way because it is easier to make it appear to be balanced with an obscure sliding bar than it is with specific numbers.  A sliding bar that is largely a mystery to the player is easier to make it appear to be balanced than 6 or 8 or 10 crew units where the player sees and knows the exact numbers and math of the situation.  

Don't think of the crew as singular but more like as a plural group term.

Visualize it this way. What we see as one crew is actually the minimum amount of people in a team called a crew needed to operate the vessel. Don't think about how many people makes a crew that is not need. Let's just say x people = 1 Crew. That x could be 1 or it could be 100.

So a vessel with 10 crew has 9 backup teams that can operate the vessel. When the final "crew" dies. Then no one is capable of operating the ship.

So then that solves your problem. A crew is the the minimum team of x amount of people needed to operate a vessel.

I don't know... what's the point? It seems more like a "me-too" mechanic, just because everyone has rechargeable shields these days...

First, to clarify, I don’t want shields to be “rechargeable” in battle or even between battles for the campaign (except at starbases for a high cost in energy). Of course, there could be special exceptions, but in general, the shields would work like a “health bar” that allows some interesting possibilities. Plus, there’s the fact that it’s a little unusual for shields to work like this, so it may be a fun concept.

Inferno83, regarding landers, I imagine that they would work like ships in that they would have non-rechargeable shields. This would create the need to actually have more than one lander (since how many of us actually lose landers after figuring out how to read the weather?), potentially adding to the cost/benefit dynamics in arranging how things fit into the mothership. Overall, the concept of non/limited-rechargeable “shields” as the base mechanic would serve as a fun new concept, keep the melee play mostly the same as before, slightly tweaking some campaign tradeoffs, and allowing future expansions to tie into the concept (such as damage to individual components of ships after penetrating the shield, instead of just destroying it in one hit, which would be convergent with the old system - overall, it would be nice for expansions to add some new gameplay concepts instead of just campaigns and ships, though the latter should of course be the main focus). The hop would be that aside from renaming “crew”, which always annoyed me a little, the general concepts and nostalgia would be preserved. Also, what is Discord, and how to I find Star Control Discord?

Bleyborne, I agree that the general baseline concept should be the same for melee. The “realism” isn’t really important, but I think non-rechargeable shields would be more internally consistent with the heart of the game, which matters to me. Ultimately, it’s just a “health bar”. I agree that loss of functionality due to reduced crew is a bit screwy and would be hard to implement. Future expansions could involve damaged modules, with the possibly only being important on really big ships, which have been mentioned as a potential gameplay element.

IBNobody, crew could be transferred between ships, but this doesn’t seem too important, and can perhaps reduce the number of hard decisions players need to make. I agree that actual rechargable shields or short-term Yehat shields are special, and I’m definitely not suggesting these for most ships.

Kavik_Kang, those ideas for weapons are interesting. I think the “baseline” game probably wouldn’t include them, but they could add some unique possibilities for expansions. As for a health/shield bar vs. crew, one could still divide it into individual units and/or just put a number next to or in it.

Xenove, I would actually expect that a ship in combat would need less to operate it that it would normally carry. No maintenance or shift requirements there, and lots could be automated for even a single person to ultimately control if necessary. Of course, the idea that the ship could function at full capacity if it were so damaged as to leave only one crewman alive is a bit strange, and the original inspiration for my post.

Cuorebrave, I’m thinking “non-rechargeable shields”. It might actually be a little more fresh from a conceptional point of view, and as a baseline, have the same characteristics as the original Star Control.

 Neutrino - just sent you a PM on how to get to discord.

 If we look at many science fiction movies (Star Trek comes to mind). We see that it is only those at the bridge who do any actual controlling for fighting. However the Enterprise is full of other "crew" that are just cannon fodder to create the drama of loss of life.

You don't actually see the hundreds of crew members in the Enterprise controlling the ship when fighting or in fact when doing anything else. And a lot of processes can be and are automated. Many times we see Captain Kirk going it solo.

Yes it does sort of look weird that a ship can be damaged enough that there is still only one crew member left and the ship is still battle worthy. It doesn't create much realism.... but then Star Control is not about the realism..... it's about the adventure and so we would probably not want to manage crew, shield, armor, structural integrity, ship components etc.

Usually you would find such components in games like Pirates or other seafaring games where you had to check your crew levels which affected speed in various actions, the condition of your sails which also affected speed, hull structure which is basically your health, etc.

Let's just stick to crew.

This is all getting pretty detailed for a top down arcade game.  If you want to be realistic about it...  Ships in sci-fi are based on the wet navy ships of WWII.  This evolved from early sci-fi and was solidified by Star Trek.  But the ships of WWII moved very slowly.  That bridge command structure you see in sci-fi works at 33 knots, even 60.  But at "space ship speed" by the time the captain might have the thought to say fire the enemy ship is already 1,000,000 miles behind him.  Getting "realistic" ruins a game, you have to stick with that WWII theme or it doesn't work, and if you came up with a "realistic" command structure on the bridge all the sci-fi fans would say it was "wrong".  It would probably be really boring too, as in a computer and no people involved with "flying".

And in the case of something this simple, there is no reason to even think about the bridge.  When it comes to the shields, I would make a game like this with shields.  Unless I was making Star Control, then I'd make it like Star Control:-)

Do I load up my lander with a full crew contingent, or do I keep the crew aboard some of the ships in my fleet to fight off any hostile ships I encounter?

That was the hard decision we faced in SC2. It was a valid decision, and it still is in SCO.

(Who would ever use non-rechargeable shields? Also, what kind of player would want shields that didn't recharge?)

Yes I agree with IBN.

Crew restrictions adds an aspect to realism that gives it more of an adventure feel.

As in you are in an expedition and you need to decide how many people to send foraging, how many to send exploring, and how many to defend the base camp.

I remember the times when I had such low crew numbers that I would send my landers with just one crew because at that moment in time I had more than enough landers and not enough crew. and having 2 or 3 crew doesn't make enough of a difference in the beginning because they can all die easily in one go by just one environmental event.

I think that it also kind of makes sense to just use crew. Because shields, hull and technology can be repaired or replaced rather easily but crew is a different matter.

If you think of it then we are removing those elements by assuming that shields recharge, hulls are fixed, etc. But crew can only be acquired from star bases or planets or other ships. So crew was ultimately the most important resource that was fixed if you rescued the Shofixti .

In other games where you play solo then the focus is in upgrading your shields and armor and hull to survive longer.