Shields

[Firetooth]

I have two suggestions to change how shields work. One is minor, one is major.

The first is pretty simple. In reg, it takes days between runs, whereas in turbo most people wait a day between runs. This should be reflected in how long shields last in reg, especially given you have 100 less turns in reg so don't want to be wasting a shedload of turns raising shields. The first cast of shields in reg should raise shields for 24-48 hours.

The second suggestion is that the power of shields should be lowered. I think they discourage takedowns through there sheer power. It is usually impractical to do takedowns on somebody who raises their shields until they gather a lot of net, which I personally think is annoying. Particularly for solo players, as the damage they can do in a takedown is already limited. I'm not sure what the best way to balance shields is, but I would like to see their power reduced a little bit.

[taekwondokid42]

I don't know about in turbo, but in reg you have to spent about 1/4 of your turns raising shields if you want to stay protected for the whole time between runs. If you space it out among healing, it ends up not costing nearly that much, but it does affect your total amount of loyalty gained.

And as much as I can tell, having shields up cuts the damage you take by 1/3. As far as stealing is concerned, stealing is still pretty strong even with shields up, taking something like 2.5% cash. One thing that I noticed is that, at least in turbo right now, attacking is really expensive. It's the culture we've made for ourselves because we always end with lots of NW and no troop hole, but if I want to attack in turbo I need to keep around a ton of NW for troops to not desert, and if the person I'm attacking has no troop holes, I need to keep around a lot of troops (usually rats). This is also true for leader missions. They are expensive in terms of leadership and they also take lots of turns. Turns that won't be spent gaining land.

I suppose that's a bit of a good thing.

[Firetooth]

OK, I really don't like how shields work at the moment. My problem is they discourage takedowns, and don't take int account the user's leader defence. I find it completely ridiculous somebody with 10mil leaders can't do any significant damage to somebody with 2 mil leaders just because they raised shields. I have three suggestions as to how to "fix" them:

-Remove them. I don't really get why they are needed tbh, they just discourage against takedowns.
-Nerf them. At best, they should halve damage taken (I still think this is too generous). Reducing damage taken by two thirds is just ridiculous
-Add an offensive "remove shields." I seem to remember Valhall had something similar? If you want to keep shields, this is probably the best option. This actually makes shields serve a purpose, as they are pointless unless you keep a leader defence, whereas it is currently possible to have bad leaders and shields and not expect significant damage. You'd nee to have significantly more leaders then the defender to do this spell, more so than for the other offensive missions.

[Shadow]

really it's only murder that is useless because of them, and next month I am making murder as powerful as it was before. Let's see how that works out before we change shields too much.

[Ruddertail]

Takedowns should be hard. And as somebody who generally runs as few leaders as I can, I like shields.

[taekwondokid42]

2 things I don't like:

1. Murder is too weak
2. Sabatoge is too weak

but I think the fix is too much. 2% would have been enough for me. We'll see how it plays out though.

As it stands, solo indy players are already alarmingly impotent because they can't make enough money to fund a run. (this might not be entirely true, life is much easier with 50% tents, something I wasn't previously doing)