New Shield System - Guides

This is a (hopefully) comprehensive guide to the new shield system. If you don't want to read walls of text, the pictures should give you a good enough idea to get started.

Base Health + Passive Regen

All ships have 2000 base HP, visible as 2 green segments on their health bar.

All ships passively regen 100 HP/second. Once the base HP is filled, this passive regen will fill other pools of health.

Minimal Setup

The starter ship contains two tanks for shield fluid next to a Navigation Unit, which functions as a primitive shield projector. Crafting more tanks will increase the health pool, but passive regen will slow with more health due to leakage.

Component Overview

A basic shield setup looks like this:

• The shield cores are consumed by the generator.
• The generator creates shield fluid, which is usable shield HP.
• The tank stores shield fluid (HP). Each tank holds 500 fluid and will link with neighboring tanks.
• The shield projector activates a bank of neighboring tanks, making the shield fluid usable at the cost of some efficiency.

A minimal setup only requires tanks and projectors, but would have to rely on passive regen.

Obtaining Components

Shield Cores, Generators, and Projectors are dropped by blue bots in Finch and Sparrow. Fluid Tanks can be crafted in machine fabricators.

Tanks, Projectors, and Leakage

All tanks of shield fluid leak over time. Larger systems leak more, making them more wasteful. Passive tanks leak at 1%/second, while active tanks leak at 2%/second.

Tanks of shield fluid can be either active or passive. A bank of tanks is active when an adjacent projector is enabled. Projectors can be toggled by clicking on them. Navigation Units function as shield projectors which are always enabled.

Only active tanks count as usable shield HP, but they will leak twice as rapidly. Passive tanks also receive boosted generation efficiency.

HP from shield fluid is visible in a ship's health bar:

Shield Generators and Efficiency

There are some rules when placing generators. In order to function, a generator's face must be touching a tank or another valid generator. It may touch two tanks and/or generators, but it will only select one to power. There cannot be cycles or generators facing each-other.

Shield generators must be loaded with either Shield Cores or Shield Boosters. Shield Cores provide approximately 5000 HP, while Shield Boosters provide only around 500 HP. Continued use of Shield Boosters is not recommended.

Shield generators have an efficiency stat which is influenced by several factors. It is determined as follows.

Start with a base efficiency of 100%.

• A shield generator connected to a passive tank will receive a 100% efficiency bonus.
• A shield generator with an optimized matrix (see next section) will receive a 100% efficiency bonus.
• A shield generator with a broken matrix will receive a 50% efficiency penalty.

Next, the efficiency is adjusted based on the number of total generators. Adding more generators to a ship provides diminishing returns. To get the final efficiency value, multiply by 1/(-px + p + x) , where p = 0.9 and x is the total number of shield generators.

Assuming no other bonuses or debuffs, this should provide around:

• 100 HP/s at 1 generator
• 357 HP/s at 5 generators
• 526 HP/s at 10 generators
• 625 HP/s at 15 generators
• 690 HP/s at 20 generators
• 816 HP/s at 40 generators

Generator Matrix Optimization

Generator efficiency can be increased through matrix optimization.

Clicking a generator will show a UI similar to this. A colored maze and text input are shown. Entering the correct code will boost efficiency for 30 seconds, while entering the wrong code will decrease efficiency for 30 seconds.

The correct code is determined by moving from the upper-left start of the maze to the lower-right exit, along the colored tubes, and noting which colors are touched. For this maze, the sequence of colors is blue, magenta, orange, yellow which corresponds to the code 5623. These colors always correspond to the same numbers. Each maze has a single, unique solution.

A colorblind mode for this minigame is available in the game settings.

This will take a long time for me to understand

same here

Size of the equipment annoyed me at first but its not so bad; just have to jam them where i can a bit. Besides, its just a small storage sacrifice to have a very sizable sheild system.

Completely changes the game's mechanics, old players may quit the game

Yeah bro... like now i need to scrap all of my old ships + now i also need to understand the new sheild system... all of this happen bc of phone healers :(

this is so hard to understand

what??? my brain

i feel like i should quit tbh this gonna take along long time for me to understand this

now we have to destroy everything and rebuild but I consider that with a way to restart the game since people are going to have to mine more of those things and build new ships(so clearly I disagree)

It looks like an ok replacement, however it will take some time to understand and idk what was wrong with the old system. I also feel like I should quit too.

Sounds fine but very confusing. Personally, I feel like this is the time where a new interactive tutorial should be added instead of fully relying on a massive document which not only skips a major part aka using the mechanics in practice but also some data is outdated.

OH NO!

Honestly, a change in the right direction, although unfair to collect at first, and def unfair to beginners. We'll see how this goes

please no

After hours of farming blue bots, I got a litteral pile of sheild cores, zero sheild generaters, and zero sheild projectors, and on top of that all of my ships have been nerfed. I farmed for 3 hours. If the drop chances don't get increased I might quit, because it is very frustrating to get nerfed and then be completely powerless to update my ships, and I also did see other people get those items to drop, but only people who had much better ships, which has me questioning rather or not those items are patron or combat power based in terms of drop chances.

Edit:finnaly got the generator and projector, after another hour of farming

NO FLUX TANKS - WTF???

UPDATE: Uh, you can build flux tanks for 64 metal....sorry

This is completely game breaking and too complex for regular players to understand. If this update does not get any good fixes I am sure that many players including me new and old will quit the game.

Cogg, if you are reading this, stop. I like your game and ideas but this one is just too wild. I actually don't know what to write anymore.

It's stupid, battle ships now need a lot of more space to place this system.

"Next, the efficiency is adjusted based on the number of total generators. Adding more generators to a ship provides diminishing returns. To get the final efficiency value, multiply by 1/(-px + p + x) , where p = 0.95 and x is the total number of shield generators."

JESUS

Just trying to work out if generators can be connected end to end to boost production? (diagram seems to suggest this is possible)

Fundamental risk here is turning a social game with clans and network effects into a solo game with no real 'heart'. Dred has a special connection as a result, will it survive losing this?

I don't get any of this....

One other thought...why make these 'items' to be collected like pokemon? Why not make them (for a price in iron, flux, explo or rubber)? It favours clans with industrial scale harvesting operations, how would a noob last long enough to enjoy the game?

this is like cancer

It will be a bit hard to do the math

am i the only one who understood this?

do all tanks boost the leak rate, or does a connected group of 5 have a diff rate than a connected group of 6 on the same ship?

Now to farm materials we have to farm both the regular bots and the new shield bots which makes it quite longer - or try farming enough metal to provide energy for the generators

Why can't we just have an auto ship healer with the limit of 1-3 per ship (depending on size, more healers can be added).

How fast are shield cores consumed? I'd like to find out how many I need to store

Also I think you should keep old shield cores because its good to have a way to craft them even if its not as effective

cool

pro

It sounds a little sad for others that need to scrap their ships, but is a good idea for not using the shield bots for cheat their ships, now that is history now.

this is a pretty good idea and seems to lower the overall health for ships. it also makes shields more than just making ur ship bigger

been shooting down blue bots for 20 minutes, no generator yet. Bad rng?

the materials are hard to get but the way to use them seems kinda simple

I love how detailed this game is getting

ngl i did not like it at first but i think you made it betetr

ллл

pro

Bro Cmon I know there where some problems with the old systems but really, this is just too complex, me and my freinds are donw with this

This is a nice update

Don't feel like pretty much learning the game again. I hate to say it but I think its time to quit after playing for so long.

Add Usernames back.

I don't like this update tbh, i would rather have the old version

I don't like this update tbh, i would rather have the old version

thx bro

This is an epic update!! Cuz solo players are always unable to defeat clan with a lot of shield-users.

with this system, we can optimize the ship and make space to put a lot of tanks/generators.

something interesting i think so

super unfair for noobs

you know you can just get starter ships and then export the tanks and nav from that

I LIKE THE OLD SHIELD SYSTEM BRING IT BACK

"Complaints Complaints Complaints" I played old Dred initially because it was a unique game that offered my ADD-addled brain something to tinker with. Considering all the simple contraption-materials and variety of combinations on offer, it did this well, and i enjoyed it. This new stuff, while a small hassle to acquire, is even more fun things for me to tinker with! And while the old shield system was convenient, I like not having to have to spam-click or make a bunch of my friends be present on my ship to have a reliable protection system. I can finally have viable Auto-Loaders as a solo player without having to do a bunch of other mumbo-jumbo. Perfect!

good idea