Variable Force Fields Regeneration Rate?

[MaxxSterling]

How do you get around players just continuously shifting 1 point of force field to the front to absorb 800 trillion points of damage and then just do it again, until they've used up 1800 points worth. I personally hate the way force fields absorb the last blow but I don't want to house rule stuff either. I realize older books allow for blow through and still damage ships, but newer books made it so that a force field absorbs all the final damage, I assume to make it less deadly on sdc players. But for ship combat, it can take forever.

[Tor]

Where does it talk about force fields absorbing the last blow? I think the RUE thing that's GI-Joeish was for body armor, not force fields.

DB3 does talk about reducing missile damage to the hull by using a force field, but I don't think that applies to anything else.

Which newer book extended the GI Joe thing to force fields? Can't remember seeing it, but I miss/forget stuff.

[MaxxSterling]

I may be confusing shields with armor, but I thought shields worked the same way with RUE. If I'm wrong though, and I hope I am, then that solves my dilemma somewhat. I'll look in the book again, hopefully in the meantime, someone else can chime in. And yeah, that whole armor thing absorbing the last blow, I hate that. It should have some sort of canonical limit to it.

[Glistam]

I may be confusing shields with armor, but I thought shields worked the same way with RUE. If I'm wrong though, and I hope I am, then that solves my dilemma somewhat. I'll look in the book again, hopefully in the meantime, someone else can chime in. And yeah, that whole armor thing absorbing the last blow, I hate that. It should have some sort of canonical limit to it.

It does have a limit: common sense.

[MaxxSterling]

^No, not actually. Canon doesn't state a limit that I'm aware of and doesn't state within "common sense".

[Nekira Sudacne]

^No, not actually. Canon doesn't state a limit that I'm aware of and doesn't state within "common sense".

It also dosen't state that it applies to force fields, only armor, nor does it state anywhere that force fields are treated like armor.

[drewkitty ~..~]

tor is correct that the GI Joe rule only applies to Body armor.

With any FF any damage not intercepted by the FF is applied to the next layer of xDC.

[MaxxSterling]

Thanks Tor and Drewkitty ~..~ thanks for that clarification, it had been a while since I ran this game. You're one a very few that always do a fine job of answering questions on here.

[Tor]

On top of this, to support the idea of there being no GI Joe rule for force fields, is an example in Dimension Book 3 page 108. The bottom of the left column discusses a single laser beam doing 2000 MD hitting a Berserker Warship's force field, depleting the 1000 MDC of the force field and continuing to inflict 1000 MDC to the main body.

The best tactic I can think for ships larger than 100 ft (smaller ones have shields too close to the body for this benefit) would only work exclusively against missiles: keep shifting 1 MDC to the side being hit by the missiles, so you effectively are dividing all missile damage by 10, kind of like having a phase shield up. This requires allowing your main body to take damage though, so it doesn't come without cost. Also requires one of your crew to spend a melee action after each volley to restore 1 MDC to the facing shield.

Another interesting bit here is the 5%/melee rule is only for VARIABLE force fields. It does not appear to benefit non-variable (normal) fields. It would not apply to:

the Battleram Attack Robot (DB2p133)
Phalanx Main Battle Tank (DB2p145)
Maniple IFC APC (DB2p147)
Rain of Death Troop Transport (DB2p167)
Typical Merchantman (DB2p172)
A-1 Avenger (DB3p70)
Ovoid Combat Robot (DB3p73)

There's actually no rules about if or how the force fields on these vehicles regenerate at all.

Barring that, I would probably go with the lower 1 MDC / melee rate that Naruni Force Fields have in Mercs/Phase World, as a house rule. Or perhaps 1 MDC / minute if you want to be less generous. You could even be super-stingy and house-rule something like 1 MDC/hour. The force fields present in the Ulti-Max power armor or NGR Missile Platform or even some of the Naruni Enterprises vehicles (look at their hover tanks) are pretty slow and it may well be that these undefined non-variable force fields regenerate at slow rates like that rather than the quicker rates of Naruni body/power or borg/robot fields or the epic-variable fields we see in larger spacecraft.

Prior to DB3 introducing the regeneration rate for variable fields, a lot of other ships in DB2 were similarly undefined fish out of water.