Poll: Cityship Shields

In public forums because the Users already know about the Cityships and everyone has a oppinion on this topic.

Locutus had the idea that the Cityship dies when the shields are down.
Would completely ruin the gameplay for me.. this idea.

If you argument

has only 1 shield and needs it to keep the air

I would say

They are the Ancient Tech-Gods, who even manage to make their ships survive in the Corona of a Blue Supergiant, what in the world would keep them from sealing the other Cityships (except for Atlantis which we really know from the series its not sealed)?

Further even if all biological Alterans are dead that doesen't explain why the ship instantly explodes. For real that Ship would whether just stay in space without manovering or it would auto fight by the Computer AI. And we know they can build AIs as smart as that because they built Asurans.

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Cityship with Stealth Ability.

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I like to use one Cityship with stealth ability. Thought about Oberoth on Asuran Side.
We know Cityships had no identical constructions so its possible that other ships had 2 Generators, one for Shields and one for Stealth.

But that doesn't mean we should deny the series when we don't have to.

We have to, in order to have Cityship as playable spaceship. As the name implies it is not just a City, its a Cityship. Technically it is not even denying as the only thing we know is about atlantis, not about its sister ships.

City Ship + cloak = City Ship - shield = Everybody dies

City Ship Variant + second Shield Generator + cloak = City Ship shielded and cloaked = Everybody lives in peace.. for a while

My suggestion would be to add a slow health loss to the City Ship while the shields are offline.

Sounds better then a explosion, still the metal material of the city can withstand the pressure of hundreds of bar on the ground of a ocean. Will the cold space environment damage the Hull in any way? I don't think so.

Deactivating the weapons instead also doesn't make sense because it's hard to explain why they work again in the next battle if the City Ship survives the previous one.

Yeah, true. Even in the vanilla game, if you have your Home One Calamari flaggship damaged down to the last hardpoint and it survives you can send it right into the next battle and after 3 seconds of playtime the whole capital ship with km of lengh (which was ready for decomission before) instantly recovered to full health.

But since those that know Stragate by heart will immediately question the survivability of a City Ship in space without shields we should at least mention something about that in the ship's description.

Indeed we would mention it.

Anyways, I appreciate your reflection ^^

I readed your post yesterday, just was too tired to answer ^^
Appreciate your ability for objectivity very much

Forget about any auto damage or even death once the shields are down - but rather make the shield of the unit really strong, even more than now, but in turn I'd decrease the actual health and hull armor.

Thank you very much for dropping the damage idea.
While I could live with Stronger Shields and useless material substance approach under hard pain,
I still would prefere to keep my current layout of shield and hull, because You guys got Atlantis, exactly as you want it to use for the Future GCs in the Woolsey version. Please leave the version of mine alone.

I wouldnt be able to preventing you from doing it, its just the one thing I like to keep like for example Locutus didnt wanted further new unit types in the PP.

Even if we assume that the city could be entirely sealed, that would still emphasize the point that the ship is doomed in one way or another without the shield, which is still the general idea I'd want to go for.

Yeah. I agree. The steel buildings are exposed to damage as any other metal structure.

I once saw a documentation about 2nd World War and the battle of the battleship Bismark VS 6 Allied sea ships.
The Bismark was made of steel and was able to resist a few torpedos and hundreds of grenades before it finally sunk.
Now Atlantis is definitely not as protected as a dreadnought, but the material of its buildings is still steel and plenty of it.
So I think it wouldnt just be destructable like a paper toy, but still easier then with shield.

Now, I can offer to take 25% of the Hull strengh away and to put it into the tactical_health instead. Because <Shield_Refresh_Rate> is already at 70 (Delphi) and 80 (Troy), otherwise indefeatable.

However, and that's my point, I want to ask a different question: Why would you want to cloak a giant city in space?
First of all, there is the fact that, logically thinking, every enemy would see it disappear, and just assume it went into cloak mode, and would just keep firing at that position.

Thats easy. Well, sure they would fire the old position when they know where it is. Its a potential last resort to flee.
In real life the Army always try to cloak its vehicles: Tanks, Fighters, Warships they all use a cloak color. They stay relatively cloaked while they approach enemy terretory (before fist contact) so they have the momentum of tactical surprise. You would be a really astonished Wraith who suddenly see a huge City appealing out of the nowhere.
And a Cityship is the most expansive resource so its definitely worth to protect it, remember how easy it was for SGA evade Fleets of Hives while they are in a stealhed and secure jumper?

Secondly, the unit is pretty slow, so it's not like you could use the cloak strategically very much, for example to secretly move behind enemy lines.

Luckily the void space is a infinitely bigger medium.

Does this really open any new (and useful!) tactics for the player? How does the gameplay benefit from this?

I was scared to ask for a playable stealthable unit so I tought of Oberoth bugging the player and then stealthing away.

But if we give it to a player he would certainly enjoy having actually really the control of the stealth function "in his hands". Sure he knows Cityships theoretically have the ability to cloak, somewhere hidden in the Story. But its something different to have it manifested in the game through this ability. To take control of a Cityship and give the order to stealth.

Dont know about you, but I pretty much enjoy the imagination of me pulling the lever to trigger the stealth, and seeing ingame how my action changes the phenomenal appearence of the Unit. So far for the feeling,

From a strathegical point of view it is a other defensive ability like Power to Shields, Invincability, melias Ability and such stuff. They are very handy if you are in a bad position and need a opportunity to reorganize and give the shields some time to recover (especially if shields are among the few other chunks that keep the ship together ^^)