Beam frigates vs turrets under FF?

[Sizzle]

Thought I'd post as a question before I called this a bug.  I have a save available in case you guys think this is not quite normal behavior.

I had a group of beam frigates attacking through a shield at some sniper turrets that were protected by said shield.  Beam frigs have the 'fires through shields' attribute after all.  however, mousing over the sniper turrets, I noticed they weren't taking any damage whatsoever!  Sniper turrets are immune to sniper shots, and I thought being instant travel, the beam frigates might fall under that category, however they're marked as beam shots, so I am unsure. 

Opinions?  If the snipe turrets should be immune shouldn't the beam fridges not shoot at all, thus not wasting fire against targets they can't hurt?

Feel free to move this post to bug reports if you think it merits it, and I can attach a save (though it should be simple to reproduce via spawned ships).     

[keith.lamothe]

I had a group of beam frigates attacking through a shield at some sniper turrets that were protected by said shield. Beam frigs have the 'fires through shields' attribute after all.

Forcefields and shields are two completely different things; every ship has shields which decrease the effective range of stuff shooting at it (and thus chance to hit), forcefields are those actual visible areas that protect things under them.  Ships that shoot through forcefields will list ff's on their immunity list.

And the immunity to sniper shots has no impact on beam weapons, just fyi.

Anyway, you aren't the first to confuse ff's and shields, and presumably you will not be the last

[drum]

i think its really easy to get confused with the beam frigates since their shots are drawn through the ff to the target but arent damaging it... i wonder if they do any damage at all to the ff?

[Epsilon Plus]

I think the way beams are drawn in AI War is what causes behavior - I'm assuming they're drawn between two units, and getting them to stop directly at the forcefield would be difficult. They still do damage to the force field, just not to what's underneath.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, we can actually get it to draw the right distance with a little extra math, but it can be a little unreliable; for instance see the heavy beam cannons firing at something under an ff; sometimes it stops at the ff boundary, sometimes not.

[Ozymandiaz]

The FF immunity used to confuse me about if I got a damage reduction from shooting from under it or not.

[Buttons840]

The FF immunity used to confuse me about if I got a damage reduction from shooting from under it or not.

Same, does a sniper turret firing from under a Force Field have a damage reduction?

[Sizzle]

Forcefields and shields are two completely different things; every ship has shields which decrease the effective range of stuff shooting at it (and thus chance to hit), forcefields are those actual visible areas that protect things under them.  Ships that shoot through forcefields will list ff's on their immunity list.

And the immunity to sniper shots has no impact on beam weapons, just fyi.

Anyway, you aren't the first to confuse ff's and shields, and presumably you will not be the last

Well dag nab it!!! 

Now that you've reminded me, I knew that!

But yes, it would be handy if I hadn't been led down the garden path by the shots making it to the destination, that and putting in (yet another) vote for changing shields to be ECM, and effects that reduce shields to be ECCM.  Fires through shields becomes 'immune to ECM'.  I'm aware this has been suggested before and shot down (there must be shields around the shields lol)  but just letting you know there's another vote in favor of something to make the two concepts more distinct from each other.  Community feedback and all that.

[superking]

why not allow beams to fire through FF? beams being drawn as penetrating the FF but doing no damage has caused me confusion also

[CogDissident]

I had a group of beam frigates attacking through a shield at some sniper turrets that were protected by said shield. Beam frigs have the 'fires through shields' attribute after all.

Forcefields and shields are two completely different things; every ship has shields which decrease the effective range of stuff shooting at it (and thus chance to hit), forcefields are those actual visible areas that protect things under them.  Ships that shoot through forcefields will list ff's on their immunity list.

And the immunity to sniper shots has no impact on beam weapons, just fyi.

Anyway, you aren't the first to confuse ff's and shields, and presumably you will not be the last

Actually, why not change the text of "shields" to "deflectors"? It means almost the same thing, and nobody is going to think "shoots through deflectors" is referring to a force field. And Shields are the ones that deflect shots anyway.

[keith.lamothe]

Actually, why not change the text of "shields" to "deflectors"?

You are not the first to ask, and you will probably not be the last   But it was decided quite a while ago to leave it as-is.

[superking]

why not allow beams to fire through FF? beams being drawn as penetrating the FF but doing no damage has caused me confusion also