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I've never posted in X2 before but I just had a thought about advanced shields.
If this has been brought up before, I apologize as there's just too many threads to read on this subject.
Considering that in regular sfb, there's an unofficial legendary officer that can transport through minimum shields. One could surmise that that ability is standard in X2. The ability to transport through minimum shields.
Why then am I posting this here in the X2 shields subsection instead of elsewhere?
Because I would think another advancement in shields would be having the ability to lower specific shield facings to minimum for this purpose, allowing the other 5 shields to remain at full strength.
Well, that's it, for what its worth.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Friday, September 28, 2007 - 10:55 am: Edit

Well it's always good to have fresh blood.

I've never heard of this unofficial rule before.
I guess if there was a cost involved (say 1 point of energy instead of 0.2) then it could be good but it'ld need to have some good playtesting as specific shield reinforcement can be generated instantly with BTTY and X2 ships have quite a bit of BTTY (even if we never see 5 point BTTYs). The lack of massive damage from H&R is somewhat counter balanced by ability to directly hit specific SSD boxes.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Friday, September 28, 2007 - 10:56 am: Edit

What would be the requirments of the other guy's shield to be?

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Friday, September 28, 2007 - 02:47 pm: Edit

I think Glenn's talking about being able to lower shields to minimum instead of dropping it and being able to ue transporters through it, not necesarily beaming thrugh someone else's minimum shields.

That's your first question Glenn.

Can somoene beam thrugh an enemy's minimum shields?

If I drop my the shield facing the enemy to minimum and my enemy drops his to minimum that's facing me, can we drop BPs on each other or do H&R raids?

By Glenn Hoepfner (Ikabar) on Friday, September 28, 2007 - 02:59 pm: Edit

I would say no. The ability to beam through minimum shielding is that the shielding must be generated from the ship that's doing the actual transporting.
It's just a means of making it safer to transport personel or an object in the heat of battle.
I'd emphasize that transporting through an enemies minimum shields (or even an allies) should never be possible.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, September 28, 2007 - 05:38 pm: Edit

I'd say OK to that since it seems reasonable that eventually the technology should allow the ship that is both generating the shields and the teansporter beam should be alb eot know all of the frequency and power setting to allow the transport (regular shields are just to much to overcome).

However, I'm iffy on dropping individual shield to minimum. Since X1 minimum shields are 10 points I'd say that is fair protections. What I'd be cool with allowing is dropping to minimum shields and back to full at will (eight impulses at a time). Works out just the same in a duel but gets progessivly more dangerous as enemy presense grows.

Also, to transport through minimum shields it should cost one point of power per transporter (instead 1/5).


Two good uses for this I can see.

Boarding a ship that still has an armed Ph-3 or two (freighters?) and transporting a T-Bomb where a Ph-3 is flying around (fighter/shuttle). I suppose you still couldn't transport a t-bomb in a nebula but it would make doing so easier in an asteroid field.

By Glenn Hoepfner (Ikabar) on Friday, September 28, 2007 - 08:06 pm: Edit

Those are fair compromises. I really didn't think this proposal would have been considered new considering all the posts on the subject.
I still like the idea of minimizing individual shield facings, but I'm not married to it, so I'm good.
Cool.

By Douglas E. Lampert (Dlampert) on Friday, September 28, 2007 - 09:51 pm: Edit

IIRC Standard rules the minimum shield boxes are the FIRST boxes destroyed and the LAST boxes repaired. This makes this rule rather limited, you need a nearly undamaged shield facing your enemy for it to be useful against a ship. It's more useful for beaming down to a planet or something.

Unless X2 ships have some ability to destroy the minimum shield boxes last I don't see the problem with letting individual shields go to minimum.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, September 28, 2007 - 11:31 pm: Edit

Well, X1 can repair shields one for one so I expect no less for X2. That means pretty fast shield repairs (six at a time).

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Friday, September 28, 2007 - 11:36 pm: Edit

We might toy around with minimum shields a lot.

Any want to change the shield rules so that the minimum shield boxes get hammered last (not first as the rules currently stand) and thus if an EPT or three happens to mess up but not totally kill your shields, you can save power by running at minimum levels?

Any one want the ability to drop the rear three or forward three shields to minimum and pay half the shield cost for full power and half for minimum power? Thus a cruiser would cost 1.5 power for shields if running with the rear shields at minimum and a frigate would cost 0.75 power for shields running full at the front and minimum at the rear.

Any one want to argue that the higher level of energy of paying full shields but opperating some minimum shields (for the full turn) would allow any DamCon performed on that shield to be twice as effective (up to a limit of the maximum number of minimum shield boxes)? This way a ship with a heavily battered sheild #1 can pay for full shields everywhere but run the shield #1 at minium and place four points of Dam Con there and get four shield boxes repaired. Allow it to work in conjunction with CDR and regenerative shields and suddenly you get this ability that an X2 ship is a tough nut to crack when it gets so badly damaged that it needs to run minimums.

I think we should allow beam-through friendly X2 ships' minium shields as that would help transefer of important things (like Admirals or Data cubes) without putting the other ship in danager...even if we put the cost up by the high energy amount again, such that 1 point becomes 5...or we could set the energy cost at 0.2 for no shields, 0.5 for your own minimum and 1 for your own and a firendly X2 ship's minimum shields. Which is worse, being the ship who's closer to the enemy with a minium shield ( probably facing away from the enemy ) or being the ship who's 5 hexes further away but has to lower a (probably facing the enemy) shield to a level of dropped...with all the Phaser-5s around, that special ability might not be a blessing but rather a curse for the other ships in your squadron.

I would like to say that there is the potential to kill an enemy shield outside of effective range of the enemy weapons (Say a Lyran X2 with Ph-5s and Disruptors at R8 ) of a GW ship and then close (espcailly if we sup-up the transporters allowing them to reach R7 or something) and harm the enemy before he reaches effective range (R5 transporters act before R5 Phaser-1s under the sequence of play).
I'm not saying I'm against the idea of beaming through minimum shields...just that I'ld love to hear about some playtesting results before I made my mind up.

Slight changes to minimum shields could create a new plataue (like getting criplled allows you to drop life support) that could be a an actual common feature of combat and that could be quite interesting. But the baility to jam 15 odd points of specific shield reinforcement (25 if we go to 5 point BTTYs as discribed an H5.5) onto a 10 box shield to protect you from internals whilst you beam over H&R teams also smells like it might not play nice with GW. That's not to say it will...it is after all a small zone (30 odd sheild damage extra is the differance between being perfect for this act and being the same result even if you kept shields at full) so it might not come up too often and thus be a game breaker gor X2 Vs GW.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Friday, September 28, 2007 - 11:51 pm: Edit

Hey..wow...XD9.21 just messed up my examples and the X2 frigate would repair 6 shield boxes maybe even 8 with regenerative shields, for just 4 power per turn and CDR wasn't even touched...thanks Guru L.K.!

Six shield boxes on an XCA plus regenerative shields ( probably another three ) plus CDR (Does XD9.21 apply to CDR or not?). We could easily be looking at 12 shield boxes per turn for the first 6 turns and 9 there after...for just 6 points of power per turn.
Is that going to create a falvour where GW ships must kill X2 ships quickly if they hope to survive or it going to create a situation where the enmy can never break through the enemy shields???

By Glenn Hoepfner (Ikabar) on Saturday, September 29, 2007 - 01:32 am: Edit

Honestly, I'm all for simplicity.
A ship (ship A) generating a shield can transport through his own minimized shields.
Even if there is a friendly unit (ship B) with minimized shields nearby, ship A cannot transport to them through their shields. Without this exclusion, there's just too much room for abuse in scenarios.
I'm not big on the idea of fractioning out shield costs based on which facing is minimized. Too complicated. The standard of EA should still hold true. You pay minimum or full shields at ea. If full, you can minimize or drop a facing shield for whatever reason. If minimum, you must use reserve power to bring shields up to full before you can begin toggling at will. Just like pre-X does.
I suppose, ultimately, my original proposal was to have transporters function through their OWN minimum shields. Nothing too spectacular but kinda logical in the natural progression of things.
As for making minimum shields get hit last, I've always viewed shields as in layers of protection, the bottom layer being the minimum shields, the upper layers being the shields at full strength. It's always made sense to me that minimum shields should be the last to be hit, but svc made the rules and I never argued. Maybe this might be an opportunity to turn that around in X2.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Saturday, September 29, 2007 - 02:58 am: Edit

Well you can transport in and out so that you can perform H&R so ships might launch a shuttle beam out under minium shields and then beam from the shuttle to the other ship under minium shields. This way you risk getting your platform blow or you risk getting the arrival ship getting smashed...and so long as players have a choice I'm okay with it being limited.

The only problem with X2 ship having minimum shields being last that I can see...is that it might embarrass players who've already been doing it that way with GW ships.