Creating actual core shield equipment slots likely means I have to make new wares. It means descriptions, factory compatibility, freighter compatibility, and the ability to purchase them for your ships. It'll take a TON of experimentation to get any of this done; I get a headache just thinking about it. Until then, default gear is the way to go. It's kind of why I call them "core" shields, as they are hard wired into the ship. Think of it as hull integrity if you like.
It was actually quite funny sending my test Taranis against a station and it's ships when it had a 10gj shield fitted
By 10GJ, are you using the X3 scale which means 10 million health? That would more than triple the Taranis' endurance!
I suppose I should explain my stance on the matter. Core shields are
not for absorbing capital fire, and it's not meant to nullify a proper station defense. I don't think it's a good idea to have capital ships go through a significant battle without taking
some kind of damage. Core shields are only a stopgap so you don't have to fear crappy OOS raiders from wearing down your fleet(of course it would help if ships defended themselves, but that's for another mod). Taking 10K damage here and 50K damage there adds up. A little bit of frequently used shields will negate that and make patrols worth while.
The core shield will give you some breathing room when a ship gets worn down to 10% and you have to frantically get it repaired, but it won't let your ship enter another major battle. Stuff like that is how Xenon Q's rampaged across the X3 universe. Broken ships should be easy pickings.
I deliberately kept shields light: 15K/40K/150K/400K for most ships. The Arawn has a super slow 1mil, and the Xenon has a fast 600K. That makes the core shield about 5% for civilian ships and 10%-20% for war ships.
The way that surface shields work is that you have to break the shield before you can damage the component. Core shield regen is slow and easy to suppress. If you can break the shield, there isn't much point going after the generator. If I could change that (like having the component unprotected ), it'd be really cool to have core shield generators as ship targets. I'll try doing the Arawn, because it's an annoying shield and flying inside is fun. But without extra options there isn't much reason to do any other ship.
In my own Hull Shield mod, I notice that the game doesn't "layer" the shields as some might expect. Rather the Hull shield just protects the Hull from damage while surface elements are still exposed. I.e. I can still attack and disable say the jump drive or individual weapons on a given ship, once I've brought the local shielding down.
Shields have a "group" property that shares damage with all turrets in the same group. The hull does not have a group, so an ungrouped shield only protects the hull. I don't think it's possible to have it both ways.
I kind of like it, because it gives a nice general purpose protection combined with a focused turret protection. The overall shield combo on a ship is nothing to scoff at.
I've done almost the same thing more than a week ago, the difference of my mod is that it transforms the existing surface shields to cover the hull also, and total shield strengh was depended on number of shield generators
(taranis has 17 generators 100k each = 1700k shield), shield regen multiplies also. if generators are destroyed, no shield will be protecting the hull
Careful with how that works. Try launching a novadrone at a turret cluster on that ship. It'll probably deal absurd shield damage because of splash damage multiplying across the surface elements.
My concern was that in my only paritially upgraded Skunk, I take out surface elements in seconds...seems a little over-powered to me.
Surface elements are
stupidly fragile, like 1K health compared to a surface shield's 50k/100k/150k. It's probably better to buff the turrets a bit rather than protecting the whole ship.
