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First off this isn't about which is better, this is which do you personally prefer as a way of representing shields. For those unfamiliar with deflector shields they're in the new starship operations manual and basically give a ship a damage threshold negating X damage and an increase in armour values (TL and AC). Essentialy normal shields are star wars negating all damage till their brought down while deflectors are star trek negating some damage and slowly becoming less effective as they get hit.
For me I find myself rather conflicted I do like the idea of an impenatrable bubble around a ship keeping all damage out as long as its got power but somehow the deflector shield feels a little more real. I think if given a choice I'd go with the normal shields but it'd be a tough call.
Deflector shields sound more fun in general. More exciting, dynamic.
Regular shields are just extra HP.
I've yet to actually playtest deflector shields, but I plan on having some NPC ships with them to fight against the players to see how useful they are.
I haven't had a chance to test them out yet, but I like the idea of Deflectors. As Lethallin says, regular shields just felt like extra HP. That said, I'm not enthused by how fiddly the deflector rules are. Every time damage gets through them, you're supposed to decrement their DV/-, which just seems like another fiddly number to track. I'm not sure why they couldn't have just been designed to give a modest amount of DV/- and call it a day.
The loss of deflection value reminds me of the Staged Penetration of armor in Mekton Zeta, and I never had any problems with it in that system. I'm looking forward to using deflector shields and seeing how they shake things up.
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I haven't had a chance to test them out yet, but I like the idea of Deflectors. As Lethallin says, regular shields just felt like extra HP. That said, I'm not enthused by how fiddly the deflector rules are. Every time damage gets through them, you're supposed to decrement their DV/-, which just seems like another fiddly number to track. I'm not sure why they couldn't have just been designed to give a modest amount of DV/- and call it a day.
Given even the most powerful is only 20 reduction you might be able to just not reduce them especially since the amount they go down varies depending on what actually penetrates them. Not sure of the impact though.
I prefer regular shields because they are more predictable, and from a combat standpoint they're going to be end up being better in most situations.
Deflectors are more interesting, and work better when your ship outclasses the enemy ship such that there weapons cannot pierce your damage reduction.
So a high level dreadnought isn't threatened by a seemingly endless number of low level ships because they can't cause enough damage to get through the damage reduction.
I some respects, I wish you could combine both but choose to only apply one or the other against a given attack.
Regular shields work better against equal or high level opponents, deflectors work better against low level enemies.
However, in Starship combat you're basically never fighting a swarm of low level enemies (at least in any of the written adventures I've played) and so in my opinion deflectors aren't of any value in the written adventures.
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Regular shields (especially at the levels people tend to purchase them, but that leads into the optional ship budget limitation rules) are definitely going to be the stronger approach, most of the time.
But we've already seen that regular shields with no limit on your spending are way too strong for published content. That's been one of the problems with the balance of shipbuilding since the beginning, along with the low, low cost of turrets.
Not being stronger than regular shields is a big part of why I am eager to see how things play out using deflectors, and possibly some ablative armor underneath them, instead. If they prove to be viable, without being as powerful as giant regular shields are, while preventing Divert to Shields from being the only thing an engineer does (by setting things up so that system damage will happen without already being in Death Spiral levels of damage), that will be a huge improvement to the system.
Still need the experience in game to see if that's how it ends up going, though.
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Honestly I think if players are going to use deflectors, it's a situation where regular shields need to be removed from the game universe and substituted for a combination of deflector shields and ablative armor.
But I agree with you Hammerjack, it could make combat more interesting and more challenging. Though I must admit as a player I absolutely wouldn't want this, as I do enjoy the thrashing our starship gives to the enemy.
But it can be quite boring for a lot of people, and only the pilot has any real agency.
Everyone else can just write a simple routine for their behavior during starship combat.
I think something that could work is allow players to have a crew on board their ship once it gets to a big enough size and allow each player to run an additional character in a role that isn't currently being performed. These NPC crewman would have a skill bonus based on the level of the ship (though not sure exactly what it would be) and the enemy would get an equal number of roles as the PCs (to keep things balanced).
That way players feel like they get to do more and combat can be more interesting by getting more kinds of actions than just the basic required pilot, engineer, science officer, gunner.
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Honestly I think if players are going to use deflectors, it's a situation where regular shields need to be removed from the game universe and substituted for a combination of deflector shields and ablative armor.
That is how I would run it. Instead of each ship deciding which type of shield to use, each campaign would decide on which type of shield technology exists in the universe. Keeps things consistent. Only one set of rules to learn.
And from the look of it, the deflector shield rules are a lot more complicated than the regular shield rules. But from just a quick reading, I think they are also a lot better for player engagement, and story tension from perception of risk.
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Remaining with the this is not a debate about which would be better but I have to admit the deflector are interesting. They have a low damage protection 20 at best and they drop 1-4 each hit but they also have an increase in AC/TL that don't decrease. So the ship is harder to hit but takes more damage when it is. I'm just not sure that its enough for them to work well alone and adding armour does add to cost of BP. We'll have to see.
I know this is extreme, and not a real example but lets consider 500 single manned fighters vs a capital ship.
Even if the capital ship has the biggest shields you can buy, 600 points which is divided by 4 arcs (150 per arc) they can still bust through the standard shields and deal damage, likely substantial damage too.
Now, such a scenario should never really happen but it's technically possible.
However, if they reduce damage by 20 all those fighter's weapons will do nothing. And the capital ship will slowly kill them all.
I know this is extreme, and not a real example but lets consider 500 single manned fighters vs a capital ship.
Even if the capital ship has the biggest shields you can buy, 600 points which is divided by 4 arcs (150 per arc) they can still bust through the standard shields and deal damage, likely substantial damage too.
Now, such a scenario should never really happen but it's technically possible.
However, if they reduce damage by 20 all those fighter's weapons will do nothing. And the capital ship will slowly kill them all.
I'd hope with those 500 fighters one or two of them would have some kind of shield penetrating weapons like buster cannons. And if enough of them were equipped would wear down that deflector shield quickly.
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I'd hope with those 500 fighters one or two of them would have some kind of shield penetrating weapons like buster cannons. And if enough of them were equipped would wear down that deflector shield quickly.I know this is extreme, and not a real example but lets consider 500 single manned fighters vs a capital ship.
Even if the capital ship has the biggest shields you can buy, 600 points which is divided by 4 arcs (150 per arc) they can still bust through the standard shields and deal damage, likely substantial damage too.
Now, such a scenario should never really happen but it's technically possible.
However, if they reduce damage by 20 all those fighter's weapons will do nothing. And the capital ship will slowly kill them all.
I really would be interested in seeing some game play and whether the loss/gain works out or not on them. They also get 1-2 for diverting power to shields and 1 per 150 PCU. so a ship with 300 could potentially restore 4 deflection a quadrant per round I think. My concern is that normally shields will stop up to 150 of the first shot while deflectors or negate 20 and heavy weapons can do 60 or more damage and capital/spinal mount weapons can deal hundreds of damage. Stoping 20 points of that 600 points vs 150 may seem accademic but what about 20 vs 150 against a 200 damage attack?
I really would be interested in seeing some game play and whether the loss/gain works out or not on them. They also get 1-2 for diverting power to shields and 1 per 150 PCU. so a ship with 300 could potentially restore 4 deflection a quadrant per round I think. My concern is that normally shields will stop up to 150 of the first shot while deflectors or negate 20 and heavy weapons can do 60 or more damage and capital/spinal mount weapons can deal hundreds of damage. Stoping 20 points of that 600 points vs 150 may seem accademic but what about 20 vs 150 against a 200 damage attack?I'd hope with those 500 fighters one or two of them would have some kind of shield penetrating weapons like buster cannons. And if enough of them were equipped would wear down that deflector shield quickly.I know this is extreme, and not a real example but lets consider 500 single manned fighters vs a capital ship.
Even if the capital ship has the biggest shields you can buy, 600 points which is divided by 4 arcs (150 per arc) they can still bust through the standard shields and deal damage, likely substantial damage too.
Now, such a scenario should never really happen but it's technically possible.
However, if they reduce damage by 20 all those fighter's weapons will do nothing. And the capital ship will slowly kill them all.
I was under the impression fighters could not mount heavy weapons, and I'm fairly certain spinal mount weapons are right out.
That's why I was using such an arbitrary and crazy example. If fighters can mount such heavy weaponry that the can routinely exceed the damage reduction of the deflector shields then there is no point in the deflectors existing at all.
Fighters can't, but once you get to the scale of heavy weapons, a single persistent particle beam will get 15 damage through the deflectors on average. If you have two that have been twin linked it's 50 damage past the deflectors.
Fighters can't, but once you get to the scale of heavy weapons, a single persistent particle beam will get 15 damage through the deflectors on average. If you have two that have been twin linked it's 50 damage past the deflectors.
Yeah, the point I was trying to make is that deflectors have a point in which the far exceed standard shields in terms of performance, but it's a very narrow and limited scope and doesn't reflect the kind of combats PC ships would expect to see.