Star Trek shields

[Chris Goodwin]

The shields in Star Trek don't act like DEF. Usually it goes something like this:

*BOOM*

Captain: Status!

Officer: Shields at 89%.

*BOOM*

Officer: Shields at 78%.

And so on. No damage seems to get through until the shields are scrubbed away. Therefore....

Give the ship something like 10 DEF; it seems pretty tough on its own, but not overly so. The shields become:

+100 BODY, Not vs. Destruction (-1/2), Not Protected By Base Vehicle DEF (-1/2), Requires Functioning Vehicle Power Supply (-1/4), OIF Vehicular (-1), Not vs. Successful Find Weakness Roll (-1/2). Active Cost: 100 points, Real Cost: 27 points

10 PD 10 ED Force Field, 0 END Persistent (+1), OIF Vehicular (-1), Requires Functioning Vehicle Power Supply (-1/4), Not vs. Successful Find Weakness Roll (-1/2). Active Cost: 40 points, Real Cost: 15 points

Healing: 5 BODY, Regeneration, 0 END Persistent (+1), Self Only (-1/2), Extra Time: 1 Turn (-1 1/4), Requires Starship Engineering Skill Roll (-1/2), Requires Functioning Vehicle Power Supply (-1/4), Only Affects Shields (-1/2). Active Cost: 100, Real Cost: 25

All hand weapons in the Star Trek setting have Not Vs. Starship Shields (-1/4 at most). Note that they could potentially cut through the ship's skin if their DCs are high enough.

It's one of those common sense, fits the setting things that damage to the shield's BODY doesn't subtract from the ship's base BODY score when the shields go down.

The BODY is Not vs. Destruction in the sense that the Enterprise has, for the sake of argument, 24 BODY. Giving it +100 BODY would ordinarily mean that the ship would be totally destroyed at -124 BODY. Instead, it's totally destroyed at -24 BODY.

The Not vs. Successful Find Weakness Roll Limitation reflects the times when the starship's weapons are reconfigured to the opposing shield's harmonic frequency or whatever so that it can shoot right through them. If you don't like using Find Weakness for this, change it to Not vs. Weapons Configured to Shield's Harmonic Frequency (-1/2).

The Regeneration reflects the ship's engineers working on the shields.

You can season these writeups to taste.

Comments?

[Michael Hopcroft]

Aside from wondering how a ship can carry 1,500 people and still have only 24 BODY....

Just what does BODY measure here? The bulk of the material of which the ship is composed? The structural integrity of the vessel? The ingenuity of the FDamage Control teams? The tensile strength of duct tape?

[Vanguard]

Actually .. I'm not too sure how Star Hero does thing. But it helps if you think of it this way.

A vehicle has X number of body PER hex size. So, if the Enterprise is a craft that's 25 hexes long by 20 hexes wide ... each of those hexes has, for example, 24 body.

Of course, this is just my opinion and how I would do it. YMMV

[Victim]

I figured that Ablative Forcewalls with some healing would work for shields. Of course, I developed that model for starfighters in computers games - most of the time, shields would work as you described. However, since fighters are small, big capital ships will often blow through the craft's shields in one shot.

[Chris Goodwin]

Originally posted by Michael Hopcroft
Aside from wondering how a ship can carry 1,500 people and still have only 24 BODY....

Ok, 36. I was picking a number out of the air.

Just what does BODY measure here? The bulk of the material of which the ship is composed? The structural integrity of the vessel? The ingenuity of the FDamage Control teams? The tensile strength of duct tape?

It measures the ship's ability to not be destroyed. It can be any or all of those things.

[Peregrine]

I second Ablative as the best answer. Star Trek shields ablate as they are hit, and pass damage through to the ship without going away completely.

[DarkGreen]

I often build shields (on supers OR vehicles) with the limitation "leaky".

An example would be shields that leak 10% of damage (-1/2). That way you get all the sparks and dramatic damage the ST ships clearly take before the shields fail. The limitation value is based on the value of taking -14 on each point of def and averaging out the activation rolls so that the 10% average gets through. You can use that rule of thumb with the activation chart to give disad values for other shield types that leak more or less damage.

As for having the shields go down completely, isn't that what the ablative variation in the rules is for? There's a variation under ablative that says something like "you always lose DEF equal to the DCs of the incoming power" or something like that (not near my book). You can modify that for starship combat into "lose DEF = DC/X" as you like and combine it with the leaky shields rule, above.

What I really like about this is that both disad constructs are basically right out of the book.

-DG

[Mightybec]

Originally posted by archer
The shields in Star Trek don't act like DEF. Usually it goes something like this:

And so on. No damage seems to get through until the shields are scrubbed away. Therefore....

In the Star Fleet Battles rules, there's an optional rule that lets 17.5% of damage bleed through the shields and start to damage things. Usually when the Enterprise is hit, it knocks things around, which could damage sensitive electronics.

Mightybec

[Syberdwarf2]

If StarFleet has such wonderful technology, how come they can't build a decent sheild that isn't blown away after a couple of shots? Let alone cure baldness?

[Mightybec]

Originally posted by Syberdwarf2
If StarFleet has such wonderful technology, how come they can't build a decent sheild that isn't blown away after a couple of shots? Let alone cure baldness?

Great point! They had pills to cure kidney failure in Star Trek IV, but Picards scalp could blind you.

Mightybec

[Syberdwarf2]

Originally posted by Mightybec
Great point! They had pills to cure kidney failure in Star Trek IV, but Picards scalp could blind you.

Mightybec

Oh, I can see it now.......
Picard gets wisked away by Section 31, never to be seen again for at least a month or three. Then, upon his return, the Enterprise is asked to escort an experimental ship from the Utopia Planitia Shipyards; The Folicle Class (Defiant Variant)
It seems to be armed with a new technological breakthrough......

The 'DOME' generator.