if i use shield over enemies..

[goobie]

what would happen if i use my shields over enemies? are they protected and have 75% less damage as well? or would the shielf effect only work on me?

[Arcain_One]

Last I checked, forcefields still push non-friendly, non-forcefield immune ships away. I also think that the forcefield immune ships that can get in will not benefit from the field with your ships attacking it, but I'm not completely sure about this.

[keith.lamothe]

Some forcefields (like shield-bearer ffs) don't have the push effect.  But a ff will not cover an enemy ship, nor affect its attack power.

[goobie]

Last I checked, forcefields still push non-friendly, non-forcefield immune ships away. I also think that the forcefield immune ships that can get in will not benefit from the field with your ships attacking it, but I'm not completely sure about this.

i don't think it'll push enemies away..if thats teh case i can mass abuse it by putting it all over the wrap gates.. :DDDD

[Fleet]

Has anyone else played with riot control starships, heavily reinforced with forcefields, set up in a line formation and group+formation move to send entire waves into minefields? With enough starships, even on normal caps, I can clean sweep a whole system!

[keith.lamothe]

I haven't actually done that, but the Riot FF's quite intentionally have the push effect   Group up, and do a little "crowd control"

By the way, did you mean that it would actually push minefields out of the way?  It shouldn't do that

[Fleet]

No, I mean push enemies into the minefield. This can be pretty darn effective if instead of a line formation, I set them up in a circle around the wormhole. A thousand AI units in concentrated goodness, which I can move at my leisure.

[keith.lamothe]

Wow, that's pretty brutal

Can also use push-ff's of various kinds to make sure that ships coming out from a specific wormhole are within the cone-of-action of a battery of heavy beam cannons.  There are several swarmer type ships, in particular, of which a high-mark HBC can kill a _lot_.

[Malibu Stacey]

Last I checked, forcefields still push non-friendly, non-forcefield immune ships away. I also think that the forcefield immune ships that can get in will not benefit from the field with your ships attacking it, but I'm not completely sure about this.

i don't think it'll push enemies away..if thats teh case i can mass abuse it by putting it all over the wrap gates.. :DDDD

AI's used to do this in v3 to you sometimes at higher difficulties when attacking your worlds. I haven't played enough of v4 to have seen it yet but I expect their behaviour is unchanged.

[Draco18s]

i don't think it'll push enemies away..if thats teh case i can mass abuse it by putting it all over the wrap gates.. :DDDD

Keep in mind that enemies will not get STUCK under the FF.  You'd need a minimum of four force fields to lock down enemy units on a warp gate.

This thread does remind me of a time where an enemy did get under one of my FFs and my ships started damaging my FF trying to get at it. XD

[goobie]

i don't think it'll push enemies away..if thats teh case i can mass abuse it by putting it all over the wrap gates.. :DDDD

Keep in mind that enemies will not get STUCK under the FF.  You'd need a minimum of four force fields to lock down enemy units on a warp gate.

This thread does remind me of a time where an enemy did get under one of my FFs and my ships started damaging my FF trying to get at it. XD

waittt...do you mean we can actually use force fields to lock down enemies on a warp gate?? i didn't know that. In fact I'm not even sure if enemies could just move into our force fields if they want to. I thought they actually attack our force fields until its gone so they could proceed to damage our ships?

that's why i don't understand, if shields have to be knocked down before the enemies can reach us, won't they accidentally get stuck into the shields if we place it over warp gates?

[Mánagarmr]

You’re still not quite catching on. If a forcefield is placed on a wormhole, enemies will be pushed OUTSIDE the forcefield, not be stuck inside it. Also if they try to travel through a forcefield, they will be denied entry and thus have to travel around it.

So any enemy entering the system "inside" a forcefield, will immediately be bumped outside the forcefield, away from the wormhole. They do not get "stuck" inside the forcefield unable to get out.

The idea that was used back in the day (that I think was nerfed) was to place four forcefields around a wormhole, like so:

FF    FF
  WH
FF   FF

To leave only a small area around the wormhole. The FFs would overlap and create a barrier that ships couldn't pass.

[goobie]

FF    FF
  WH
FF   FF

whoah, thats an awesome idea!!!!

[keith.lamothe]

It doesn't work as well as you might think, in a lot of cases, but it can be effective.  Another thing that is a bit more efficient is to put a forcefield generator smack on top of the other end of the wormhole so that enemy ships can't use that wormhole until they destroy the ff.

Of course, for both setups there are still the ff-immune ships that fly right through.

[Draco18s]

FF    FF
  WH
FF   FF

whoah, thats an awesome idea!!!!

Note that it takes four of your 6-8 force fields to do.  It's not actually that effective.