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Shields at 40%! Or why we do not need Star Trek shields


Christopher

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Our own Steven S. Long wrote Spacedock back in the day.  In that book, his shields had a Protection rating and a Threshold.  Protection is the amount of damage shields can take before collapsing completely, and attacks above the Threshold are what bleed through to affect the ship directly.  That's why you can have people being thrown around and system damage happening without the shields actually being down.

 

How to model that in Hero terms, now that would take some more thinking.  If I have any great flashes of insight I'll let you know.

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Actually, you just solved the issue that was being talked about after I originally posted that: 'what about too-weak shots that don't take the shields down at all?'  Those would (presumably) be taken care of by the ship's basic DEF.

 

Thing is, though, that ships in Star Trek don't have armor.  Basic DEF from being a tritanium-whatever hull, sure, but they don't have armor, ablative or otherwise; get through the shield, and so long as you can damage the hull, hey, you're blowing holes in the ship.  (In Star Wars, they have deflector shields, sure, but they also have armoring; this is one of the reasons why flying a craptastic TIE fighter is basically signing up for the Suicide Squad - barely any deflectors, no fraggin' armor at all.)

Actually Federation Starships do have armor. They are certainly not the main defense, but not using any armor would just be stupid. Even the Galaxy class has some armoring on the hull.

 

The Defiant was noted for having exceptionally good armor, but that also turned into a negative plot device once:

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/USS_Defiant_%282370%29#Ablative_armor

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Ablative_armor

 

Sometimes. Many times Hero is way too expensive for some simple effects. A Light spell, lantern or flashlight, is way too expensive to model using the official Images, Only to Create Light methodology. Some of us have just gone to using a variant of Enhanced Perception (Normal Sight), Only to offset penalties from Darkness. It is cheaper and does pretty much the same thing. It is the danger of a cost system. Not all the costs are weighted in the same way that I or somebody else would have them. Ever seen the arguments (especially in 5th Edition or lower) about the relative cost of Characteristics?

I know three solutions to the light problem:

1) Some semi houserule like you made

2) Buying an Active version of Sight (you can see, but you can also be seen), using one of the Advantages.

3) Just defining a Light power, derived from the "Images, Only to Make Light" build. Same way growth, shrinking, density increase and Resistant Defenses are clearly derived from other builds. I wrote something about this, but I can't find it right now.

 

Our own Steven S. Long wrote Spacedock back in the day.  In that book, his shields had a Protection rating and a Threshold.  Protection is the amount of damage shields can take before collapsing completely, and attacks above the Threshold are what bleed through to affect the ship directly.  That's why you can have people being thrown around and system damage happening without the shields actually being down.

 

How to model that in Hero terms, now that would take some more thinking.  If I have any great flashes of insight I'll let you know.

Barrier is the most obvious way. But as I said in the beginning, it is also one of those "overly complex, overly simulating" ways that ends up costing a lot of points and having humongous complexity/use ratio.

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Our own Steven S. Long wrote Spacedock back in the day.  In that book, his shields had a Protection rating and a Threshold.  Protection is the amount of damage shields can take before collapsing completely, and attacks above the Threshold are what bleed through to affect the ship directly.  That's why you can have people being thrown around and system damage happening without the shields actually being down.

 

How to model that in Hero terms, now that would take some more thinking.  If I have any great flashes of insight I'll let you know.

 

Defense and Stun.

 

So let's say my ship has 15 Def, base.  And I've got my shields, which are +25/25 Force Field.  So I'm 40/40 Def total.  My ship has, say 200 Stun.  And I get hit by a 15D6 attack.  My opponent rolls 54.  I take 14 Stun.

 

Worf:  Shields holding sir.  Shields at (math) 93%.

 

Now I get hit with a 20D6 attack  Bad guy rolls 70.  I take 30 more Stun.  I have 156 left.

 

Worf:  Mild damage sir.  Shields at 78%.

 

Now my opponent hits me with a really big attack.  30D6.  He rolls 105 Stun.  I take 65.  My ship's Con is 50.

 

Worf:  Main power is offline sir!  Weapons are down, shields are down!

Captain:  Get them back up, Mr. Worf!

Crewmember goes flying through the air with exploding panel.

(next phase, after ship recovers from being Stunned)

Worf:  Rerouting to auxiliary power.  Shields back up sir!  Shields at 45%.

 

There you go.  Simple and elegant.

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Sometimes. Many times Hero is way too expensive for some simple effects. A Light spell, lantern or flashlight, is way too expensive to model using the official Images, Only to Create Light methodology. Some of us have just gone to using a variant of Enhanced Perception (Normal Sight), Only to offset penalties from Darkness. It is cheaper and does pretty much the same thing. It is the danger of a cost system. Not all the costs are weighted in the same way that I or somebody else would have them. Ever seen the arguments (especially in 5th Edition or lower) about the relative cost of Characteristics? 

 

Your second statement is spot on with any point buy system.

 

I agree with you, although that isn't the only reason my stuff came out unbalanced.  I ended up with a huge number of advantages and limitations on everything.  By the time you have half a dozen or more modifiers in each direction, you've managed to stumble over at least a few combinations of options that don't work as well together as you might hope.  Realistically, some limitations are worth more or less depending on what they are used with.

 

I haven't seen the arguments about characteristic costs, but I can guess at some of them.  As I indicated, I got into Champions back in the early days.

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