Shield & Hullplate Feedback

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Since returning to PrUn, I have looked into changes made to hull plates which includes mitigation modifiers to shields (reduces the amount of hull plates needed to repair). I also released a Ship Repair Calc. spreadsheet which can assist players with designing & upgrading ships with various modules. I would like to bring up several observations regarding ship design and modules from the ship rebalance. Specifically:

  • Shield Mitigation
  • Hull Plate Variation

Shield Mitigation
With shields reducing hull plate repair costs, shields and expensive hull plates have become a viable late-game option. Despite the high up-front costs, ships with these modules boast extreme durability and only need to be repaired once or twice a year. Demand and availability for these modules seem to be growing as awareness increases.

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Compared to advanced shields which block 100% damage of a specific type, or 70% in the case of Specialized Anti-Rad Plate (SRP), there remains little reason to use basic shields even when those are produced at half the cost of advanced shields. Using the Ship Repair Calc, basic shields (meteor, heat, & rad.) typically increase costs unless a ship is flying a very hazardous route. STL-only ships that fly limited routes seem to be where players are most willing to add shields to counteract specific hazards (usually micro-meteorites).

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The opportunities for basic shields to be worthwhile are limited and they just seem to be there as a stop-gap until players can make advanced shields. Advanced shields should outperform basic shields but not to a point where basic types are overshadowed.

Hull Plate Variation

Shield mitigation has increased the viability of flying ships with expensive hull plates. However, Reinforced Hull Plates (RHP) and Hardened Hull Plates (HHP) are hardly ever produced because they are overshadowed by Advanced Hull Plates (AHP). AHPs are better than RHP & HHP in damage reduction and maximum G-forces for the same mass & volume ratio. Alternatively, Lightweight Hull Plates (LHP) and Basic Hull Plates (BHP) out-compete RHP & HHPs in price & availability.

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I would like hull plates to become more specialized with each offering unique tradeoffs.This could help establish a niche for each plate type in different categories (volume, mass, damage reduction, and/or G-forces) in addition to an economy to support them.

For example: HHP could be changed to 14t / 0.5m^3 while retaining part of the damage reduction. This type of hull plate would help increase a ship’s FTL capabilities by decreasing emitter size and increasing parsec/hour while reducing STL capabilities with its higher mass.

Design choices such as these could shake-up how ships are built and give players additional options. The current decision is a no-brainier and boils down to either LHPs or AHPs by the late-game since the mass/volume numbers for RHP/HHP/AHP are the same.

Overall, I believe ship design and ship modules are in a better state and interest has developed for high-end shields and AHPs. If mid-tier plates and shields are intended to be a stop-gap product than they are well-positioned.

I’d really like to hear what other community members have to say about current ship design & modules!

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I did some investigation on shields with napkin math to see if they were worth using

  • Whipple shielding was generally a little under break-even for general purpose flights.
  • Thermal shielding is sometimes very helpful for specific planets, decreasing damage by >.2%, otherwise it’s generally not worth
  • Rad shielding, like thermal shielding, was sometimes useful for certain systems, but generally not.
  • I could never find a planet where G-seats mattered

I think a quick hack would be to require one shield per two hull plates so that the benefit per cost of all shielding was instantly doubled. Another one could be to make every ship repair take a minimum of 24h so that repairing half as often, for example, would save a few percent on ship capital costs. RHP and HHP could probably just be removed from the game as we already have enough combinations of ship shielding and plating. Perhaps RHP and HHP could instead be combined into one type of hull plate (still called RHP) that is used as in ingredient to AHP so that there is at least a market for RHP.

A better way to make shields more useful would be to totally redesign the map so that systems at the fringes of the galaxy are far more resource-rich but also more perilous to traverse. You could combine this approach with other financial incentives to settle the outer sectors. But this would probably require a total reboot of the game.

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