Question on shield assist mechanics
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I’m trying to understand how efficient it is to assist shields, versus building additional ones. I could do sandbox experiments but figure some of you have these answers already.
Does assisting a shield cost only energy?
Does it just repair the shield under fire, or also speed up getting a collapsed shield back up?
Are there aspects on factional diversity or T2 versus T3 shields that change how wise it is to assist shields?
Curious to hear some advanced players’ thoughts on this.
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No, you also spend mass-̶t̶h̶e̶ c̶o̶s̶t̶ i̶s̶ t̶h̶e̶ s̶a̶m̶e̶ a̶s̶ i̶f̶ y̶o̶u̶ w̶e̶r̶e̶ b̶u̶i̶l̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ a̶ n̶e̶w̶ s̶h̶i̶e̶l̶d̶.-̶t̶h̶e̶ c̶o̶s̶t̶ i̶s̶ t̶h̶e̶ s̶a̶m̶e̶ a̶s̶ i̶f̶ y̶o̶u̶ w̶e̶r̶e̶ b̶u̶i̶l̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ a̶ n̶e̶w̶ s̶h̶i̶e̶l̶d̶.
No, it only repairs the shield while it is up-once it's depleted, you are wasting your bp as it does nothing.
It's related to question 1: the smaller the shield, the cheaper/faster it is to keep it up, but you risk a big shot taking it down before you can even start repairs or that it gets destroyed directly. Cybrans have both the cheapest and most expensive shields, which are generally considered the worst at arty wars if that's what you are asking-Seraphim's ones are instead arguably the best. Still, the ability to sequentially upgrade shields can be useful as it's a quick way to get a shield back up-Aeon used to have t2 shields that couldn't be upgraded (unless my memory fails me) b̶u̶t̶ t̶h̶a̶t̶ w̶a̶s̶ p̶a̶t̶c̶h̶e̶d̶ a̶s̶ a̶ b̶a̶l̶a̶n̶c̶e̶ d̶e̶c̶i̶s̶i̶o̶n̶.
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Assisting costs mass and energy, if you have any. However, if you're stalling mass, unlike any other construction/assistance the rate at which you restore the shield health doesnt decrease. So for example if the only thing you are spending mass on is assisting the shield, and you spend 20 times your mass income assisting, then you are effectively assisting for 5% of the normal mass cost.
As to assistance costs, these vary by shield. Seraphim T3 are the most mass efficient for assisting, while Cybran are the worst. Assuming my figures (from 3+ years ago) aren't out of date, as examples, if considering in terms of how much damage you restore per mass assistance cost, you'd restore 5.79 health per mass for a seraphim T2 shield, or 6.40 for a seraphim T3 shield, or 3.19 from a Cybran T2 shield.
Usually assisting shields is good when defending against artillery since it's a low apm option. In theory the cheapest maintenance option would be shield cycling but that would require a lot of apm. The other option is building new shields so when an existing shield is about to fail you construct the new one.
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Maudlin is correct that assistance costs vary by shield, since it is based off of regen rate, repair cost, and RegenAssistMult.
Documentation on github repo:--- How much buildpower is required to provide 1x of the shield's regen rate.
--- The cost of assisting a shield isrepairCostRate / RegenAssistMult,
--- where repairCostRate is determined by Unit:UpdateConsumptionValues
---@field RegenAssistMult? numberThese are the buildpower and mass efficiencies considering that repair cost is 0.75x the unit cost and RegenAssistMult is 60 for all shields.
Shield AssistRegen/BP AssistRegen/Mass Sera T3 2.80 6.06 UEF T3 2.18 4.40 Aeon T3 2.50 5.69 Cybran ED5 2.33 5.19 Cybran T3 ED4 2.17 4.13 Cybran ED3 1.87 4.35 Cybran ED2 1.47 3.29 Cybran T2 ED1 0.75 4.38 Sera T2 2.55 6.07 UEF T2 2.00 5.11 Aeon T2 2.30 6.07 Considering that defending a T3 Aeon artillery costs at least 165 mass/s, and a Mavor at least 550 mass/s, it is well worth economically to spam out multiple shields (they cost around 3.4k mass each) instead of assisting one, although it is riskier because the enemy can retarget the artillery, let all your shields get up, and then come down all together in the next few artillery shots as the overspill and splash damage take effect. Good for game enders that you need to protect at all costs but also need income to build.
2 Aeon T3 artillery one shot a shield and it is impossible to assist to prevent that currently.
Assisting works at full speed if you're stalling but that's a hard to fix engine bug/performance heavy Lua fix.
[Does assisting] speed up getting a collapsed shield back up?
No it does not. That is determined by the shield recharge time which will be added to the UI soon.
Aeon used to have t2 shields that couldn't be upgraded (unless my memory fails me) but that was patched as a balance decision.
The balance team does approve of letting them be upgradeable but there is simply no animation for doing so.
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This is great to know. Thank you deletethis, Maudlin and Nomander!
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There is some loss of efficiency in overlapping sheilds, right? In other words, an arty shot will damage multiple shields simultaneously.
So there may be efficiency in working different shield heights (t2 unit shields, UEF bubble SACUs, T2 shields, T3 shields, and different factions). Right wrong?
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@Defiant Yes you do avoid splash damaging multiple shields, but smaller shields also have less HP so they often lose most or all of their HP to overspill before the large shield actually goes down. Shields of the same tier but different factions don't have such an HP difference but they also can't easily cover each other fully. And in general, overspill just makes stacking many shields rather inefficient.
Still, this is the kind of the best way to get lazy shield micro, and it's a decent last barrier of protection in case your T3 goes down but the arty shell hits a T2 shield (especially Seraphim T2).
If overspill is removed, like with the nuclear repulsor shields mod, then hiding shields behind eachother by height becomes very powerful, and takes up less space than spacing out equal size shields. Such a technique is especially potent in that mod since it has absolutely huge shields.
