• Registered: 2021-03-01
  • Posts: 17

Topic: Bi-Directional Shielding

Had an idea and wanted to see where it could go; was thinking about a fleet set up where smaller escort sized ships use standard shield rules, and larger capital sized ships used the directional shield plug in rules. For midsized cruisers I wanted directional shields but with them only having two sectors (fore/aft or port/starboard). How could I figure this within the rules framework? Easiest idea I had was to figure it as standard direction shields with fore and aft values but have not checked if that works yet. I have no idea if it would unbalance the game, this may be something someone's considered before and discarded as broken. Any advice or input would be appreciated.

  • Registered: 2012-04-21
  • Posts: 99

Re: Bi-Directional Shielding

An interesting concept, ala the Heavy Combat Vehicles from Babylon 5 Wars.

For shields, if you were to keep the Fore/Aft or Port/Starboard values the same, there wouldn't be a need to change the calculation. For different Fore/Aft values (I can't see a need for different starting P/S values), A simple fix in Drydock would simply be to use the Fore value in the Fore/Port boxes, and the Aft value in the Starboard/Aft boxes. You'd need to recalculate the shield box values manually.

Screens... A simple plug would be 22.5 SU per Box. For DRAT for F/A screens, a F screen counts as 1.17 hull boxes, and an aft counts as 0.83.  For P/S each would count as 1.00 hull boxes. Fixing this in Drydock like above is not as easy, and would require some serious tweaking.

  • Registered: 2021-03-01
  • Posts: 17

Re: Bi-Directional Shielding

Yeah, in order to keep it simpler I think I might just limit it to aft/fore divisions and stick one of the side arcs with the same values. I'm more worried about getting the function down in play vs saving a few SU to use somewhere else (taking hits and losing shields costs you half your coverage instead of only a quarter). It may make the ships ever so slightly weaker or stronger but I don't think it should be enough to hamper play. As for screens (in universe armor) I'm thinking I'll leave it as either composite or quarters only. I don't see a reason to have armor working in the same manner. Now I really need to break down and start doing some math to get the fleets designed. I never got an answer on the dry dock question so I'll be hand designing all of the ships it seems.

  • Registered: 2012-04-21
  • Posts: 99

Re: Bi-Directional Shielding

I just realized that bi-directional shielding will probably be covered when the SFB/SFU Andromedan book comes out.