Game Mechanic For High Energy Subspace Defensive Shields

The term Shield or defensive field refers to high energy subspace defensive shields which are generated by a shield grid or emitter array to protect a ship from damage. Shields absorb the energy from incoming impacts, energy, or explosions and redirect and disipate the energy accross the entire shield area. Shields are transparent and globally surround the object being shielded. Shields can be detected by sensors as a subspace energy field. Shields require a lot of energy to operate and cannot be left on indefinitely as this will eventually overload the shield grid. To extend Shield use they can be osscilated at lower power settings from emitter to emitter or array to array to prolong their duration. Shields can also be used to protect against damage from navigational hazards such as meteors, radiation bursts, or high gravity fields that are too large for the navigational deflector to redirect.

1. The player must declare they are activating shields at the beginning of their movement phase.

2. The player than determines the Shield Duration Time by Rolling 1d10 + Hull Size to deterime the number of turns the shields can operate at Full Power. (I.E. Die Roll 7 + HS 6 = 13 Turns Or 130 Minutes).

3. Players needing to prolong shield use can declare that they are ossiclating shields but shield strength will be reduced in half and duration will be doubled (I.E. 26 Turns @ Half Strength)

4. To determine the Shield's Strength at full power divide the ships full hull point value in half. This number represents the total number of HP of damage that the sheild can absorb while it is activated. Any weapons hit on the players vessel will first do damage to the shield until the shield's HP reaches 0 then the remainding damage points will be taken by the ship. This simulates the shields abosrbing the hit until they are overloaded or depleted. If a player is oscilating shields, the amount of HP of the shield is reduced by half but the shield will last twice as long. Once the shield has been overloaded / depleted it must be repaired during the repair phase before it can be activated again.

5. Starships can also extend their shields to cover any ship in immediate proximatey (Less Than 300 meters away and traveling at the same speed and heading) but will reduce the shield strength by half at the normal time duration or to 1/4 if the shields are oscilated.

6. When a Shield reaches its duration limit it will automatically shutdown to avoid damaging the shield emitter grid / array. The shield can then be reactivated in three turns or thirty minutes (game time). When the shield is reactivated all of its HP will be restored so long as the system is not damaged or destroyed in which case it will require repair before operating.