Not sure if this has been mentioned already, but obvious enough for a space themed world... but I would really like to see an item that generates a solid wall of some kind of energy. Probably something like a small orb that you can toss onto the ground or a wall that prevents anything from moving through it until it gets destroyed. This could add another tool for a supporty type character... Force fields please? Edit: What we have so far... Force fields come in a few shapes and sizes depending on what material used to craft the force field. The force field generator would be crafted out of a precious metal + some kind of energy source in the presence of a crafting item, such as a battery or power generator. This creates a small spherical item, the generator, about the size of a baseball which can be thrown to deploy a force field at the target location. Friendly creatures may pass through your force field, along without receiving any damage or negative effects associated with said force field, while enemies may not pass through the force field until it is destroyed. When the force field is destroyed, the generator ball falls to the ground, able to be picked up and used again after it recharges over a set period of time. The force field uses a moderate amount of your battery power and lasts for about 10-30 seconds, depending on your crafting materials, or if its health is depleted. A force field's health varies based on what material is used to craft it. The rarer the material, the stronger the wall's health. Any precious metals may be used to create the force field generator. Generally, force fields come in two shapes which may be decided upon usage. They are either the shape of a vertical wall about 2 characters high or a dome shape about 3 characters wide. They appear to be a light blue wall or dome of energy. Elemental force fields: Crafted out of some kind of elemental related material and a standard force field, these have different qualities based on the element used. They still function as a standard force field, absorbing damage until they are depleted. Elemental force fields also take greatly reduced damage from attacks of its elemental type, about 75% less damage. They also recover health very slowly when placed in/on/near their element. *Fire: A wall of blazing red-orange flames. The fire force field damages any nearby enemies per second with fiery damage. Wall shape. Below average health. *Also generates a small amount of light, like a candle. Strengths: Resistant to ice and energy based attacks. Weaknesses: Water-based attacks extinguish the wall, removing its damage over time effect until the wall is reset or broken. Water: A dome of semi-transparent blue water. A water force field heals any friendly creature within it. Also creates a pocket of air when used underwater, which displaces the mass of water equal to the mass of the force field. When the field is destroyed/deactivated, the water back into place where the field was. Dome and *wall shape. Moderate health. *The wall shape does not heal, it only absorbs damage. Strengths: Resistant to fire-based attacks Weaknesses: Ice-based attacks cause the wall to freeze and break. Earth: A strong field of rich dirt and stone. Increases nearby ally's attack and defense powers slightly. Also, stronger than the other types of force fields. Wall or dome shape. Very high health. Has a long cooldown when broken or deactivated. Strengths: Resistant to most physical attacks. Weaknesses: Energy-based attacks. Water-based attacks turn the field into mud, deactivating the wall and creating a slippery area around the force field. Air: A lightly colored blue-green wall of swirling air. Repels most physical projectile attacks, can be deployed midair to float and be used as a horizontal platform. Wall or dome shape. Low health. Strengths: Resistant to energy-based projectiles, physical projectiles bounce off the wall in a random direction. Weaknesses: Weak to melee attacks from any type of weapon. Light: A glowing wall of prismatic colored light. Repels energy and light based projectiles, along with illuminating the area around it. Wall shape. Moderate health. Strengths: Energy-based attacks, melee and projectiles Weaknesses: Physical-based attacks, melee and projectiles Shadow: A deep ink-black gooey-like dome. Drains light away from the area around it, creating an area hidden from monsters. Slowly loses health if used in direct sunlight. Dome shape. Low health. Strengths: Used for camouflage, should not be used for taking damage Weaknesses: Light and energy based attacks instantly destroy the wall. Ice: A crystalline wall of white-blue ice. The ice force field chills melee attackers, giving them an attack speed debuff for a short time. Also temporarily freezes nearby water when active. Wall or dome shape. Moderate health. Strengths: Resistant to water-based attacks Weaknesses: Melts when hit by fire-based attacks, destroying the wall. Ballistic weaponry deals extra damage to the ice force field. Energy force fields: Energy force fields are intangible walls of energy. They are more advanced then the standard force field, being crafted from a force field + some kind of energy source. Except when noted below, any creature is able to pass through them, however, any creature, friendly or non-friendly, receives the full effects of the field. These are all wall shaped. Positive: A glowing wall of brilliant white energy. Heals any living creature that passes through the wall for a small amount of heath. The heal is on a fairly long cooldown of ~15 seconds to prevent abuse. Damages any undead or non-organic creatures which pass through the wall for a moderate amount of damage, perhaps 15% of their current health. Above-moderate health. Negative: A bleak wall of dark-grey smokey energy. Harms any living creature to pass through the wall for about 15% of their current health. Also heals any undead or mechanical creature to pass through the wall for a small amount of health with a cooldown of ~15 seconds. Basically, an opposite version of the Positive force field. Above-moderate health. Plasma:This wall of glowing purple energy disintegrates anything it touches, dealing a moderately high amount of damage to anything that passes through it. It can take up to around 1-3 attacks, depending on the attack strength, before dissipating. The wall also destroys when any creature passes through it and goes on a fairly long cooldown. Intended to be a mid to late game item. Extremely low health. Acid: A toxic wall of green liquid. Passing through this wall causes moderate damage to anything not made of glass. Creatures which pass through this walls take moderate damage, decreased by armor, and receives an armor reduction debuff for a certain amount of time. Acid-based creatures are immune to its effects. Moderate health. Magnetism: A pulsating wall of yellow-white energy. Metal creatures passing through this wall become pushed out the other side and become stunned for a few seconds. Any electrical devices which pass through this wall malfunction for about 20 seconds as well. Can also repel any metal-based projectile back toward the user; the projectile becoming magnetically charged and attracted to the user's metal weapon. Any metal melee weapon that attacks the wall is repelled, preventing damage to the wall. Moderate health. and still, more to come edit 2: added energy walls to the bunch, which counts as any intangible wall edit 3: updated force field description and overall clairty edit 4: added field strengths and weaknesses to elemental fields.
Of course, there'd have to be tiers of generators. Say, a Tier One Force Field Generator would be made with X amount of batteries (or some sort of power source), X amount of metal, and be able to sustain a certain amount of damage. A Tier Two Force Field Generator would be made with X + 10 power sources, X+10 metal, and sustain even more damage. Then higher tiers could possibly deflect damage back at the attacker, particularly when the attacker is using melee. However, it could reflect bullets and lasers and the like, at least partially. Also, what about health restoring force fields? You take a regular force field, and add in some healing items, and then it heals slowly over time. To borrow from Borderlands - an ammo restoring force field? The possibilities are endless - just like Starbound.
Yeah, these are great Also, I would like to see dome shaped force fields, perhaps ones that you can drop at your feet, big enough to shield yourself and some teammates who are close by. Or perhaps elemental force fields that either come preset based on how you craft them or change their properties based on what planet you use it on A fire force field could damage nearby enemies per second and could occur more frequently on a fire-based planet, while a water force field could bestow healing to those inside or create an air pocket if used underwater and would be more common on an aquatic planet. A humble suggestion, I think force fields would be awesome
I decided to create a fairly large compilation of some ideas in a single post: copy pasted to the original post, please see that post for up-to-date info Force fields come in a few shapes and sizes depending on what material used to craft the force field. The force field item would be crafted out of some kind of energy + a certain metal. This creates a small spherical item about the size of a baseball which can be thrown to deploy a force field at the target location. Friendly creatures may pass through your force field, along without receiving any damage or negative effects associated with said force field, while enemies may not pass through the force field until it is destroyed. When the force field is destroyed, the ball falls to the ground, able to be picked up and used again after it recharges. Generally, they are either the shape of a vertical wall about 2 characters high or a dome shape large enough to hold 3 characters. If stronger materials or a higher level force field is used, (to make more advanced force fields, such as the elemental ones) the force field will have a larger area of deployment, along with more health and stronger attributes. Elemental force fields: Crafted out of some kind of elemental related material and a standard force field, these have different qualities based on the element used. They still function as a standard force field, absorbing damage until they are depleted. Elemental force fields also take greatly reduced damage from attacks of its elemental type, anywhere from 50-90% less damage. Fire: A wall of blazing red-orange flames. The fire force field damages any nearby enemies per second with fiery damage. Extinguishes when in contact with water. Wall shape. Below average health. *Also generates a small amount of light, like a candle. Water: A dome A water force field heals any friendly creature within it. Also creates a pocket of air when used underwater. Dome and *wall shape. Moderate Health. *the wall shape does not heal, just absorbs damage Earth: Increases nearby ally's attack and defense powers. Also, stronger than the other types of force fields. Wall or dome shape. Very high health. Air: A lightly colored blue-green wall of swirling air. Repels most projectile attacks, can be deployed midair to float and be used as a horizontal platform. Wall or dome shape. Low health. Light: A glowing wall of prismatic colored light. Repels energy and light based projectiles, along with illuminating the area around it. Wall shape. High health. Shadow: Drains light away from the area around it, creating an area hidden from monsters. Slowly loses health if used in direct sunlight. Dome shape. Very low health.
Well.. this is just my opinion, but what if it was so that certain types of forcefields repelled certain types of elements? In example..A Fire forcefield would be able to stop 90% of the fire that was blown at it and the other 10% would go through?It would also be fairly weaker to Water type attacks so it would only stop 20% or even 30% of the attack and the other 80/70% would go through and hit you. This balances things out(somewhat), in case of PvP (I honestly can't remember if there will be PvP or not). I also have to say that I agree with Rainstorm about the special 'features' each shield has, like the air bubble underwater on the Water forcefield, and the Light forcefields emitting a light or my favourite, the Shadow forcefield acting as some sort of camouflage Of course this only applies to elemental shields, the regular shields would stop all attacks fully but are very weak compared to all the elemental shields, and they would just shut down after a number of hits.
Yeah, these suggestions are great! Hopefully a developer sees this suggestion, or more people keep adding stuff to it Lemme update my post to include these...
Hum.. this would really give us access to some nifty tactics if it was actually implemented Fire based weapon + Earth Shield = Shield getting disabled due to it being turned to glass, add a bullet to that and the shield shatters completely, or heck, Earth Shield + Water based weapon = The shield collapsing due to mud, causing everybody within it to be unable to camouflage (if ever added?) and a movement debuff due to being knee deep in mud, heh.
Yeah, I like these. If you used a strong base material to craft an elemental force field, enemies/other players would have to use a different strategy to get past the force field, which could encourage creativity or having a variety of weapons on hand cookie for you
I find it extremely likely that this will be implemented because... Thread has been confirmed as being in games, so they will have "fields." I'm looking forward to a support based character so I'm hoping more types of forcefields make it into Starbound. Also, how hard would it be to break a water shield underwater? Seems like it'd be rather difficult as it would restore itself from its' surroundings until either burst damage outdoes the healing or the battery runs out.
Ah, didnt see that before, well cool . And yeah, if force fields did have the ability to heal themselves, it would be at a fairly slow rate of healing, not fast enough to withstand constant damage, but enough to recover fully over a few minutes. Let me add that in...
Well, I have a very weird view at things.. but when I read what Herbert said about it regenerating underwater. I just got this wild image into my head of someone freezing the underwater bubble and the water shield remakes itself and then the ice spreads into the new layer and it continues to do repeat until the water shield just generates water on itself and short circuits
Ohh, also, the underwater shield would have to move the existing water, raising the water level, or when it died water would rush in to the air pocket and there would be overall less water.
Hmm.. looking at it that way, a Water shield could absorb the water inside of it to replenish itself...
Well the shield itself does not recover on its own, it needs to be in contact with its own element. And then, it would only recover health very slowly.
I'd rather not drain the water from any of my things, I'd much rather have it temporarily rise in water level that would decend. Also if it used that water to replenish itself the only way to breathe inside of it would to have it damaged so it would nom on the internal water. Imho, Moves water > deletes water > noms on inside water
Yeah, I have that down, because destroying water would be a pain to deal with... and it might be abused or something. The water force field shall only displace water when activated, then water will fall back into place when destroyed. And all the force fields have the needed materials to form inside the generator sphere without needing to be on/in/near its element, so you can have water force fields on land or fire force fields in the forest
As for the elemental fields, thinking these can be permeable to their specific elements? Unsure how the usefulness of this could be exploited, depends on game mechanics really, but a field that can be rigged to permit only certain objects/types/elements to pass through could be practical. Otherwise just a plain forcefield barrier, energy driven, and as mentioned in a rank/tier system would be fine by my tastes, wouldn't need too much variety to enjoy it.
Well, this is amazing, we all managed to agree on everything. I'm surprised with that and I hope the developers notice this and include it in the game.
