Re: [FT] WotW #10 Damage Shields (Was Real Shields) (long)

Well, this one's gone a bit quite - most of the arguments seemed to
revolve about the effects of adding a defence to weapons that did not
previously have them - and the effect of relative effectiveness of
weapons of a 'defend against all' shield.

So granted an omnipotent defence will cause problems - as everyone would
want one - having a number of specialist defences againsts different
types of attack should cause less problems - if they are made exclusive
- maybe.

In summary:

Damage Shield - in some ways this is like the 'armour generator'
proposal - as written, it defends against everything.

Globular Shield - firstly - why does it KO the ships FTL drive for 2d6
turns after it is switched off? As it cannot be used with anything else
- I'm not sure it would see much use.

Mass/Energy Shield - again a 'defend against everything' - and it could
slow the game time (beams will need resoving indivdually).

Pinpoint screen - first thought _why_ can it block area effects? - I'd
remove this ability.
Also - I think its a bit unwieldy.

Void Shield - effectively works like regenerating armour - so as Oerjan
says - works better of bigger ships with more crew.
I've already proposed one possible solution to that - another would be
to remove the regeneration dependence on damage control (and hence ship
size) - each damaged void shield box is regenerated on a roll of 6 on
1d6 (roll for each damaged box, during damage control phase).
Assuming an average game length - it should be possible to come up with
a reasonably balanced cost.

In terms of genre - I don't believe I've ever seen a Kinetic weapon used
in Star Trek - so Trek genre designs don't need Kinetic protection :-)
- ok, the piblished PSB for deflectors says they would defend vs.
kinetics - but the published PSB doesn't match the observed effects
either :-).

Any further comments?

Charles