I think its time a new shield tier was added for ship installation, not planetary protection though.

Right now the largest hull is 1105 installed, whereas the highest shield installed is only 559.

Shielding really should be stronger than a ships hull. Sci-Fi shows have taught us for years that if a ships loses its shields, "We can't take another hit Captain"". So why this game employs a system wherein hull is higher than shields is beyond me. :p

I would like to see at least one new tier of shield at around these markers;

Light Multi-Spacial Shield - Shield +679
Multi-Spacial Shield - Shield +756
Heavy Multi-Spacial Shield - Shield +884

Research Costs - 750,000 Research Per Tier

Build Costs;

Light Multi-Spacial Shield - Shield +629 = 2.5 Bil + 120 Aidonium
Multi-Spacial Shield - Shield +699 = 3.3 Bil + 160 Aidonium
Heavy Multi-Spacial Shield - Shield +80 = 4.4 Bil + 200 Aidonium

+1

Scotty always said it best!

I would like to see a new research tier for shields as well. But you have two posts on how much shield they would get that are different on each. I think it should look more like this to be honest.

Light Multi-Spacial Shield - Shield +640
Multi-Spacial Shield - Shield +712
Heavy Multi-Spacial Shield - Shield +804

Or something near that. Your jumps where just to large. And maybe even add one after this then. Also if you could post the description for the shields that would be awesome.

lol yah i copy pasted them to begin with, and then changed the values hence the differences. I'm good with those values you've suggested.


Description:

The Technology for these shields was found in a cluster of derbis, on the outer edge of our galaxy near a spacial tear. Whilst still foreign to us, we believe that the technology will allow us to sustain much higher speeds of space travel, perhaps even allowing us to traverse to other galaxies, long fought to be beyond our capability.

I like another tier of ship shields.

That said, how many nukes did the Ronald D. Moore hit the reimagined (and UNshielded) Battlestar Galactica with in the four seasons of the show?

shield doesn't have a nice and clean pattern in value growth over the tiers, but from the rough trend of it, i'd say 650, 720, 800 or something to that effect
space is pretty clean thou, 54, 55, 56

But yeah, should have more shield tiers

I would love to have more shield tiers.

Agreed i completed that tier already and im only rank 139 completed rank 106

It's certainly a soft tree, and Obviators are unimpressive.

Perhaps for the next tier AFTER Multi-Spacial shields, Containment Shields and Containment Barriers.

Light Containment Shield: +850
Containment Shield: +920
Heavy Containment Shield: +1,000

Description: Shielding device created as a result of studying the fields generated by Containment Cages and Containment Missiles. Still in the prototype stage, the shields are rather unstable and require a large amount of maintenance just to work properly.

Quasi-rift Generators:
Generates a Quasi-Chaotic rift around the ship, nullifying any and all forms of energy, matter and spacial fatigue.
Light Quasi-Rift Generators: 1050
Quasi-Rift Generators: 1080
Heavy Quasi-Rift Generators: 1150

Ok, maybe its just me missing something here, but what exactly does the shield technology have to do with the speed of space travel? though i like the idea, i think the description needs some work.
But i like the spacial tear idea.
Heres my take on what a spacial tear could do for our shields.
I could imagine Shields you would need to have finished researching the Mark I proxy-universe reactors to get access to.
Finishing proxy-universe MKI unlocks a mission (Those who have already finished-Proxy universes, would just get the mission, without having to finish the research again.) (obviously) that mission in turn unlocks a new research tier in shields on completion.
Here's how that would work:
The Mark I Proxy universe reactor fails catastrophically, starts overloading, and is ejected from your ship, when it explodes, it causes a rift in space into an alternate universe, this unlocks a mission chain:

(mission name)
Into The Tear.(example)
200 energy times 90?
1 completion.
completion reward? Suggestions?
(Description)
This is captain (player name's) log.
We had an unforeseen incident with one of our Prototype Proxy-universe Reactors, there were some malfunctions in the design, that caused it to overload and explode, we believe these issues have been fixed, we were able to jettison the reactor before it exploded and our ship took no damage. However, the subsequent explosion tore a hole in the fabric of our universe into an alternate one. We have picked up a distress signal, with a very familiar energy signature, originating from within the tear, we will proceed to examine this.

You finish the mission called Into The Tear, or Enter The Tear, or something similar to that, which leads to another mission, called Friend In Trouble

Friend In Trouble.
260 energy times 50.
1 completion.
Description
(unstable message)
Once inside the Alternate Universe you pick up the distress signal.
Help.. *crackling* ship damaged *static* venting atmosphere. *something-that-would-indicate-an-unstable-communication* under attack. *you-guessed-it* please.. render assistance. *transmission ends*
You begin traveling to their aid.

(mission name)
380 energy times 120.
1 completion.
Description:
When you reach the source of the signal, you find three ships engaged in combat in a field of burning debris, orbiting a small moon, two of them are attacking one, a ship that looks oddly familiar, it's the ship that sent the broadcast, they are asking for you assistance again. Before you have a chance to respond, one of the other ships opens fire on you. You return fire, and working together with this familiar-looking ship you manage to destroy the attacking ships.

After that mission is completed you get this message(appears in a window maybe):
Captain, the ship we just rescued is hailing us. (needs improvement)
-Open a secure comm-link. (this is you saying this.)
When the Link is established, you see to your amazement... Yourself... Your looking at a version of you from another universe. Incredible.
You are both equally shocked and amazed by what you are seeing, you stand there in silence, looking at each other, until your other self finally breaks the silence and says: Thank you. You have saved the lives of not only me, but my crew as well. if you had not show up when you did, we would for sure be dead now. We owe you our lives.
you: I'm sure it is nothing you would not have done your self.
"you": Nevertheless, i feel we must repay you. Let me explain to you why we are here. We are testing out a new kind of shields that we have been developing in secret from the rest of the galaxy for some time, that are meant to give us a decided advantage over our enemies on the battlefield. We came out here to test it, on what we believed to be a small outpost, that was supposed to be guarded by a single ship, of the (insert enemy race). But as we arrived we fell into an ambush. They had some sort of jamming system, preventing our engines from firing, so we could not escape. We managed to destroy a large portion of them, proving that our shields work, but there were simply far to many of them to achieve victory.
Let us repay you by giving you the research material needed for you to research and create these shields for your self.

Then there is possibly a little more Dialogue. also some of the details need some work.

Light Hyper Rift Shield. 54 size. 665 shield
Medium Hyper Rift Shield. 55 size. 735 shield
Heavy Hyper Rift Shield. 805

A further improvement to ordinary Rift Shields.
Needs a way cooler description than that.

This is basically how i imagine adding new shields to the research.
Some of the details clearly need some work, but its a good concept.
Thoughts or ideas anyone?

If your shields are stronger then you can travel faster, due to the shields not being depleted so fast by spacial turbulence/satellites impacting the shields. You won't need to take detours around asteroid belts, as you can just go straight through them. You also won't need to stop to let the shields recharge as often at way stations or wait for repairs to be done.


As for the mission idea, thats a -1 from me. I want another tier of research for shields, i don't wanna have to spend 70k energy on missions to unlock a new shield tier that gives just 4k extra shield.

Well, if your shields are stronger you can travel further without having to slow down or stop to recharge, but you wont actually move faster.
And as for the mission, im just trying to bring something new to the game, we need some new stuff.

There are many new mission idea's out there and new missions are getting added all the time. If Dan adds new missions to the game that are huge like that then they should unlock new NPC's more then anything I think.

Now about the shields making your ship move faster. This could be true because as others said the better your shields the more they can take. So say you can go faster but if you did your ship would be ripped apart because your current shields could not take everything that was hitting them. However I do agree that the description for them could be better all though I have no thoughts on how as of right now.

I also think that as Dan adds one new research tier to the list he should just up grade all the others with it. I say just double the research of everything (save base tech) and be done with it. lol That would give many higher ranking players much more to do and even allow us to work on our ships more and make the game fresh and new for us. I also think that he should make the research requirements for them get extremely high the further they go on making research worth more again. But I don't see that happening any time soon so just one tech for now would be awesome. lol

you know I would be happy with any new tech tiers tho weapons do not have a aidium tier yet also Dan was talking about possibly new tiers would have ability modifiers so they are more worth the space and upkeep. I also would love a new tier of resources.

Another tier would certainly be nice. An idea I had was to just increase the amount of shielding current mods give you, rather than adding a tier. Cost and upkeep would be increased a bit, too.

Remember that the shields are rechargable, whereas hull isn't. This is the main reason they are so much lower than hull. However, I agree there does need to be something beyond what we have. I don't even use shield mods on my ship yet this is the only tier I have maxed out.

I am neutral to the suggestion, as I am sure Dan will be putting more tiers in for most tech sooner or later, but I do hope he reads through this as there are some decent suggestions on the details.

I actually really like that a mission unlocks the final tier of research, but I agree it does seem like there is no reward from the mission itself. Perhaps the mission could drop a blueprint for an "experimental ... shield", which you can then fit as the first level of the tier, allowing you to then research the normal and refined versions of it as the second and third tiers.

I would really like to see some better shields out there. Since shields can recharge you think that civilizations would work more on making them stronger as the shield is supposed to take the damage not the hull (why call it a shield otherwise?). I would also like to see them have much higher research costs as well, as the last ones were so easy to get.

Missions unlock new research, we already have a mission called Shield Strength Test, it would be nice to expand that. It would also give research a storyline and more meaning beyond just getting new toys. Could even use an npc find to start the mission chain like a few others.

Stronger shields: to give people more of a reason to have them along with hull. Maybe have the new shields offer 3/4 of what hull does, and possibly release a few more mods that give a % boost to shields. (I know we need to keep hull important though, but I am a fan of the idea of a ship relying more on its shield then hull) Possibly for new shield research split it into 3 different lines making it a true research tree. Having research for shield size, recharge and boosters(increases shield by %).

Not sure how it would work but with the bioship mission chain right now it would be interesting to have new hull research to give it a very slow recharge (like 1 hp per minute or something), if that happened it would be interesting to have energy recharge slower if the shield is damaged to simulate the shield systems pulling energy to resupply the shield. This would also give more meaning to energy beyond just doing missions and pvp/pve, possibly also have it like the hull were you could instantly repair the shield but have it take energy instead of credits. Have this accessible from the combat screen since in battle a lot of movies talk about dumping energy from the ships weapons or other systems to reinforce the shields. It would still give a use for the artifacts that are used to expand and restore shields as not everyone would want to use energy to repair their shields.

It would be nice if shields could be changed around also to recharge at a steady pace instead of jumps (right now after the time is up you get x number of shield points), however I know this would most likely put a larger strain on the servers that handle the game.

-1 to any kind of hull recharge.

+1 to shield recharge from energy - 20% of your max energy bar for 50% shield restoratation.