Mod Design Overview

*Note* Mod is not 100% compatible with creative mode, but still mostly works.

Unlike other MODs I have decided to take a different approach in that a ships/stations may only have one of each block type active at a given time, all additional blocks serve as backup in the event the active block is destroyed. Another unique aspect is all of the blocks in this mod communicate with each other and add additional functionality to each other. Finally, unlike other mods the power usage of blocks in this MOD is not related to the number of blocks, rather its related to the amount of available power and how that power has been configured to be used.

This MOD is designed to be highly efficient and performance friendly, supporting up to 1000 shields on screen at any given time. The MOD has also been designed and optimized specifically for an optimal multiplayer experience with large servers running over a thousand active shields. This is possible because of special code designed to put shields to sleep when they are not interacting with the world and to unload them entirely when no players or moving entities are around. In addition this mod is heavily multi-threaded, with good distributed utilization across 16 cores in testing.

There are new commands too that you can bind keys to to control shields and move the HUD icon now. Shield quick keys default to off, you must enable them with below commands.

• Action Key: NumPad0
  
• NoShunting: NumPad5
  
• Left: NumPad4
  
• Right: NumPad6
  
• Shunt Up: NumPad9
  
• Shunt Down: NumPad3
  
• Shunt Front: NumPad8
  
• Shunt Back: NumPad2
  
• Kinetic: NumPad7
  
• Energy: NumPad1

You can also move the HUD around and scale the HUD
Movement: Arrow keys
Scale: -/+ on Numpad

Hello, Engineers. This guide provides a overview of how the Defense Shields ModPack works, so here are some visual aids. The Control block controls your shield emitters, all settings for the shield are on that and the emitters will not work without them.
There can only be one active control block on each shielded grid (you may have more than one as backups, but only one will work to operate shields).

You may have more than one emitter, however, each emitter over 1 serves as a backup/standby emitter and does not increase shield hp (Active block's names start with [A] while backup blocks start with ). The emitters must also be on the hull (outside) of your ships/stations. The emitters need line of sight to work, if they aren't out in the open they will fail to operate and report that they do not have line of sight, both in game and in their block terminal. When the shields do not have line of sight you will see a graphical sphere form around the ship, orange lines mean no line of sight, while green mean those points are visible.

Structural Integrity mode makes the shield much more tolerant to brief grid max power reductions and also improves collision protection. You no longer take damage from voxel collisions until shields drop (good for mining), However you will take 16x more damage to your shields from weapons.

The green hashes are how fast your shield is recharging, the red hashes are how much dps your shield is receiving. For instance, if you are receiving damage and you have green hashes, it means that your shield is still gaining HP even though you are receiving damage. If you go to the right while taking damage and the red dashes fill up you are not gaining HP and your shields will be losing HP.

The shield modulator allows you to set which type of damage your shield is better at defending against. When you access the modulator on the terminal you will see a slider that sets it to either energy or kinetic protection percentages.
Ideally you want whatever number is lowest to be at “1” to reach perfect modulation to incoming damage. Modulating left or right will either bring you closer to that “1” or farther.

The modulator also has a password/frequency button where you set the password/frequency of your shields so that ships can pass through each others shields (This works even if a ship does not have a shield).

The modulator password MUST match whatever password is set in the Shield Controller generating the shield the ship with the modulator is entering, this will allow commandeered or neutral grids to enter the shield.

Also on stations, the enhancer block doubles the amount of power required to maintain the shield, but also decreases the amount of damage it takes from collisions and eliminates the scaling penalty.

** Directional shields was added to give shield users active control over the effectiveness of their shields. Where skill and planning can be decisive, but mistakes are very costly.


The shunted sides will flash every 5 secs when Up, and enabled.



** Each shunted shield side allows shield pen on that shunted side, where 90% of the damage bleeds through and if the projectile continues on to hit the grid it will receive this damage.

** Each side shunted will improve the effectiveness of the other sides, proportional to the number shunted.

** Reinforced sides also receive shield pen prediction, the more sides shunted the more protection. If all 5 sides are shunted the remaining side can prevent full shield pen projectiles, partial shield pen projectiles will be blocked with fewer sides.

** The shield terminal does not currently display stats on the shield shunted feature, but it will in the future.

** This feature is in addition to shield energy/kinetic modulation, the resistance bonuses DO stack.

** Right now directional shields only affects WeaponCore Projectiles, it has no influence on collisions or vanilla weapons at this time.

The shield modulator allows you to set which type of damage your shield is better at defending against. When you access the modulator on the terminal you will see a slider that sets it to either energy or kinetic protection percentages.

Shield penetration chance is now displayed on the left of your HUD next to the shunting bars. The higher this percentage gets the higher the chance that your shield will allow penetration from incoming rounds. Maximum penetration chance is ~55%. The more sides you shunt on your shields, the slower your heat will scale against your penetration chance for the defended side(s)

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Extend Shield: Does it protect other ships? How far can it extend? How does this effect the shield strength?

ANSWER: expands the shield bubble which surrounds your ship. allowing friendly grids to be better protected by larger shield instead of needing to be within a close distance
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Spheres Shield: Yes it makes a sphere but to what advantage?

ANSWER: NO advantage, it's just round
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Fortify Shield: What percentage does it increase the shield and in what way?

ANSWER: increases the perimeter of the shield barrier to better protect from damage and to increase hp boosts the ship shield by 33% for a single hit.(at the cost of moving fast, speed is limited to ~10m/s)

The Shield Air Pressurizer only works on station(static) grids, it has to be connected to the same grid the shield emitter is on and be connected to a source of ice. If shield goes down, all air in the shield will be lost (Buggy, due to keen changes).