One thing has been frustrating me about shields. The way they work is that if I have 5 shields on a ship damage is randomly assigned to a different shield each time. Big weapons can punch through shields, making a hole. This is great, it makes sense. However what doesn’t make sense and what is frustrating about it is that it stays that way… I have 4 remaining shields but incoming fire keeps going through 1/5th of the time for the rest of the battle, even though my crew knows quite well that shield 5 is down.
I know we don’t want shields to be invulnerable, and I like the fact that big weapons will knock them out. However let me propose this: After fire has ceased, if the shields can recharge back up to 100% of their current level (i.e. 4/5 shields up, all 4 at 100% strength) Then and only then do we allow that ship to re-modulate it’s shields, she shields then act like they have been hit by a disruptor, they go down and it takes a few seconds for them to come back but when they do come back the shield meter now reads 100% and the shields now act like they have 4/4 shields, the 5th being taken out of the mix.
This means that ships can respond to the loss of shield modules and then stop taking internal hits through the lost shield. There is a cost for this behavior: shields must be down to accomplish it. Plus this event would make a nice bit of fluff for the gratuitous chatter line: Shield remodulation has begun, let’s hope they don’t catch us with our trousers down!
Why did I think this up? because it was wickedly frustrating to have one of my cruisers endure the lost of just one of many many shields early in the survival mode battles and for that one loss to mean that the ship was soon to be ground to meat from multiple internal hits in the next barrage.
Thoughts?