Shield Regeneration Lasers

[John Streutker]

I don't really like the shield transfer aspect, I think it should use your weapon power just like a normal laser with a large fall-off in efficiency. And while it is harmless to you (the healer) the target is still being fired upon by a beam of energy, it should cause heat damage while bolstering the shields. Maybe limit it to one "healer" per "patient" to avoid creating an invulnerable killing machine. Having the beams from two different healers at the same time would bork your shield modulation and stall the shield regen effects while still leaving your systems to absorb the heat of two beams, doublt heat damage and no shield healing.

I think there are plenty of way to make this fit as a logical weapon at also limit it to "acceptable" power.

 

[Jack Schitt]

Laser absorption shields

How about a modification that's basically the reverse of the regeneration laser?

The absorption shield.

Pros:

• Detects the signature of incoming laser fire and modulates itself to draw partial power from the beam and maintain charge in its capacitors. Effectively slows down the attrition rate from laser fire.
• A property of the detected signature is derived from the power plant feeding the lasers, so all lasers from a single ship will be affected.

Cons:

• Remodulation takes a quarter second or so and can only modulate to one signature at a time, so making it vulnerable to simultaneous or alternating fire from two or more ships.
• More vulnerable to kinetics and rails than a regular shield of the same size.
• If a regeneration laser is used against it for two seconds, it causes an absorption spike that destroys the emitter and requires a repair at a station. The pilot gets a cockpit warning that this is happening, so can attempt silent running, chaff or evasive flying to protect the emitter.

 

[John Ring]

@Jack Schitt
I very much like this idea. +1[up]
(Although I know it's not coming...)

 

[Jack Schitt]

@Jack Schitt
I very much like this idea. +1[up]
(Although I know it's not coming...)

Almost certainly not. Just spitballing some ideas around the whole frequency/signature matching thing. IIRC right back in the early days of the DDF there was talk of using this sort of thing to allow small ships to pass inside the shields of larger ships and be protected by them. Or, conversely, for small aggressor ships to match frequencies of larger enemies and pass inside their shields to do direct hull and component damage. Neither of those ever came to be, and the relatively skin-tight nature of the shields ED eventually got means they probably never will. But this new regeneration laser modification certainly opens up the possibility for other related mechanics. It'll be interesting to see if FD runs with the consequences of this technology, or just limits it to the regeneration laser.