Shield vulnerabilities to encourage 3D movement

JdeFalconr

Join Date 05/2006

Shield vulnerabilities to encourage 3D movement

Right now there seems to be a lack of any reason to move three-dimensionally with your ships. What in the world does it gain you to have ships above or below your opponent? I think that shields should be changed to encourage attacks from above and below. A few possible ideas:

Increased damage from above/below.
Shields "leak" slightly from above or below
Shields will only operate in one ship half (Fore or aft, I would imagine) so the opposite will be vulnerable (frigates only)
Shields attacked from an area not at their front will protect differently
Shield mitigation does not take effect from attacks either above or below that ship (for non-cap ships)

Please note that considering cap ships' size and power that most (if not all) of these should not affect them. I would expect a capital ship to have multiple banks of shield generators that would likely nullify these weaknesses.

Also, if these were implemented it would necessitate the ability to change a ship's facing in 360 degrees. If a ship is now more vulnerable from certain directions you'll want the ability to position your ships to defend against that. Additionally you would need the ability to place structures in 3D (perhaps you already can...).

As it stands 3D movement is just an afterthought, a kind of curious oddity of the game and has no real use. I think this would give players BIG reasons to use it. Thoughts?

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How do you make the plane go form 2D to 3D

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Yes, it's called a bug!

Possibly, or maybe Ironclad couldnt get the AI to use the Z-axis so it cant make those jumps, so they added the z-axis movement so you could at least manually do it.

I only play large muti-star maps so maybe you have not found out the advantages of z-axis (though these strats are useless on single star maps)

Strat 1, I spilt my forces into 5 groups, 4 roving attacking groups and one defense group. The single defense group has to protect all my star systems, so it needs to be able to jump to other stars fast. I park that group high above a stars pole, advantage, almost no movement before it jumps to any star on the map, infact it almost always jumps without moving at all.

Strat 2, I always leave a scout parked at stars and to avoid them getting attacked I park them way up on the z-axis and nobody messes with them.

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How do you make the plane go form 2D to 3D

First you have to go into options and map a key to z-axis. Once done you select the ship\ships you want to move then click the movement key, a grid will show up and when you hold the mapped z-axis key you will be able to move your target up and down on that axis.

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