bluesaberist wrote:Or how about a visible shield? So that you can see the bubble.
As for OddBob original idea of flicking the shield on an off to fire: Why stop there? Wouldn't it make sense for the shields to have to be turned of for sensor sweeps? Maybe the LRS should have only a quarter of the range with the shields on. Each shield could have an extra modifier to tell the game what things can't work with the shield on. This would make it so that different kinds of shield would cause different things to not funtion. So maybe one shield would cause LRS to stop funtioning, and another shield would make it so you can't dock with anything. But as this would require you to turn the shields on and off quite a bit, maybe the shields should turn on with the same hit points they had when they were turned on. The main problem with all of this is that it would incourage stand off fighting even more so.
Before you read the rest of this reply, know that you strayed off topic. We are talking about armor, not shields. Ok, you may continue reading now.
Hmm, the visible shield idea, I've heard that before, and It doesn't sound so great. One problem would be, how would you see your ship? Unless you put a "Not so visable" green, purple, or whatever color you want, layer over the Ship images, it would be a hard effect to get.
I like the Sensor Sweep idea though, but only if it means adding a new item that allows you to "Scan" a certain area on the map (when you bring up the system map) and reveals any stations within the "Sweep" area. So basically just a modified System Map ROM, that would actually be a device to be installed.
The part where you talk about "Telling the game what things do not function with the shield on" would just be extending the WeaponSupress (I think?) modifier to work on things more than Weapons, adding a Nil to certain functions, etc.
But I believe we were talking about armor, right? Maybe there should be another topic for Shields.