One of the thing that's bothered me most about Aegis besides it's coverage area is that it's not much of a shield. In a close fight I've had enemies clip through me and my shield to attack either me or my teammates, which doesn't exactly make me feel capable of protecting anyone. More like a bullet sponge with no substance. There needs to be some element of deterrence added to the shield to really make it function like... well... a shield. So I was thinking about how a lot of people have been wanting a shield bash but how about instead of it's focus being damage it being that deterrence. It would do SOME damage, not so much as a knife strike, maybe only effect shields even. But more important than any damage capacity, the ability to push an opponent AWAY. Like if they could somehow code it so the bash would apply the same effect as a jump pad (but to a MUCH lesser magnitude) either from the shield or target actually struck with it, that pushes them away in the direction the MAX is facing 5-10m (maybe the knockback distance could vary with cert levels.) Could this be abused? Will trolls love this? Probably. But an infantry unit can walk backward about as fast as an Aegis MAX can walk forward with their shield up, so the offensive capabilities are limited to begin with.
SOE would need to change the unit type to vehicle, since only vehicles have unit2unit collision detection. However they'd need to add exemption from roadkilling as - even tho it would be funny - charge! would be the most dangerous ability without this addition. Just have the roadkilling option re-activated when the shield is up, so infantry would just bounce off like a from a gently moving lightning or flash (plus damage). Also max vs max it wouldn't work (since there is no roadkilling between vehicle units) To me this sounds reasonable, however SOE seems to be very economical with the collision detection, so I'm not expecting this in any form to be implemented.
This would be as opposed to adding collision. If there was collision it wouldn't even be an issue that would need a suggestion to fix. I'm just talking about an effect added on to a proposed melee attack while the shield is up.
