Shield Management Today

Current shield management is handled through a dedicated context on the CVI (Combat Visor Interface), or on a Multi-Function Display. Here, one can redistribute the allocation of power to each of the various shield faces, as well as monitor the status of each shield face. Shield allocation is handled by positioning the allocation pips for both your ship’s longitudinal and vertical axes.

Shield Management Tomorrow

But that’s just the start! We are currently developing a much more comprehensive system, which will premiere on multi-crew ships (before being adopted back to single seaters.)

The multi-crew shield management screen allows a support crew member to manage both the shield generators installed on this ship and any shield segments generated. The multi-crew shield management screen also allows from more granular control of the ships shield generators. A mockup of the shield management screen is included, which breaks down into several individual pieces.

Action Shelf

The Action Shelf shows all available actions as tabs much like the way the management pages are shown on the single-pilot ship HUDs. The Action Shelf consists of the following:

Action Tabs: The actions available to this station – usually limited to three actions. Each shows an acronym for the action the tab represents i.e. PWR for Power Management

User details: This section shows who is logged on to the action

Settings: Opens a settings panel

Ship Information Section

This is your overall view of a ship’s shield situation. It shows the general ship information, of use to any crew member. The 3D schematic shows a holographic view of the ship including components, shield segments and hull damage, which the player will be able to maniupate by dragging and dropping the mesh. Rotate, zoom and pan! The player will also be able to select objects by left-clicking. Objects so selected will indicate the status of individual components.

Information included in the ship information section is as follows:

Power Usage: Shows the condition of the power plant, whether it is online or offline, the total power points available, the current idle usage and the potential power usage (if all components are active.)

CPU Usage: Shows the ships’ CPU usage and load, whether online or offline, the total CPU cycles available, the current idle usage and the potential CPU load (if all applicable components are active.)

IR and EM output: These function exactly as the IM and EM output meters on the AC ships HUD . Each bar shows the ships current EM or heat output. The minimum bar value represents zero (i.e. no heat or all power is off) and the maximum bar value represents the highest potential heat or EM output for that ship with all fitted components active. As a predetermined amount of time expires a new bar is added to the graph and the other bars shift to the left.

Presets

Each action has five presets allowing the player to save their current configuration or recall a saved one. They may also import presets from ships of the same type. This will allow pilots to have favorite options selected depending on the situation. Want more power to the shields when you’re in an asteroid field? Or want a setting that reduces your power entirely for a quick escape? The presets let you make these choices quickly!

Generator Info

This section shows all the shield generators installed on the player’s ship and allows the player to tweak their performance. The Generator Info pane further divides into several subsections.

Installed Generators: In this example, there are four slots here which can be taken up by shield generators. This allows the player to gain basic generator information at a glance. This section shows:

If the generator is powered on or off

If the generator is disabled or destroyed

The current damage level of the generator

These buttons can be selected to show more information about the highlighted generator. Once selected the panel to the right is filled with additional information:

The name of the generator

Heat levels

Generator Priority: The player may also set the performance priority of the generators with the caveat that increasing performance in one area reduces the effectiveness of the other two. There are three attributes the player can tweak:

Maximum Shield Points ( MSP ): The amount of shield points that the generators have to distribute between all shield segments. Although this increases the strength of the shields it also puts more pressure on the power plant which must spend more of its time and output regenerating the shields. Shield Regeneration ( RGN ): This is the amount of points the shields regenerate per “pip”. Increasing this reduces the time it take to take the shields back to full health when damaged. Shield recovery ( REC ): When a shield segment is taken down it requires time to recover i.e. before the regeneration starts. During this time the players’ ship is vulnerable. Increases this attribute reduces the amount of time needed to the shields to recover.

Generator Priority Example

This example assumes tha the player has a single shield generator capable of generating 100 shield points. It recharges at 10 shield points per second and has a recovery time of 2 seconds. In the default positon the bars are shown at 33% each.

If the player fully prioritizes the MSP attribute by 25% the RGN and REC are both decreased by 12.5% each

Shield Segments

This section allows the player to manage up to six shield segments and allows the same functionality seen on the single-player ship HUD.

Change priority levels: The player can prioritise a particular segment by modifying the slider. Increasing the priority of a shield segment takes the required shield points from all adjacent segments but does not require any more power to achieve.

Reinforce: Reinforcing a segment allows that segment to exceed its normal maximum limit. This is achieved by shunting shield points from all other segments. This is not a safe procedure and draws additional power from the plant equal to the amount of shield points transferred.

Boost: The player can boost the regeneration of a shield segment. This draws power directly from the plant to achieve the boost.

Social

Social?! That’s right: on larger ships, you will want to interact with a crew of friends and NPCs to balance shields as needed. Imagine your buddy reporting his shield has taken a hit and his turret is now unprotected… so you can reroute power to cover him quick!

In addition to the standard flight log, the social panel will display messages relating to actions: player requests, damage to ships or weapons and critical component states. Notifications are requests or commands from other players which appear as selectable buttons in the list. Each button has the following attributes:

An icon indicating the action required. For example a power on/off request would appear as a power icon.

The name of the player that sent the request

A brief description of the action requested

Selecting a request opens the request window where the operator may accept or decline the request.

That’s our vision for shield management in future iterations of Arena Commander. The hope is that it will be both simple and complex: easy to pick up, hard to learn. And as ships get larger, we see it as an opportunity to encourage players to work together to better crew a ship… and to have the experiences they’re craving after a lifetime of seeing multicrew ships in films and on television!