Hi Steve
You mentioned elsewhere you were thinking about revisiting how shields work, so here are a handful of ideas to help get the old neurons firing.
1. "Like armour", where the shield is like an extra belt of armour, so your two strength shield would be the like a thickness 2 armour belt and the regeneration rate is how many destroyed boxes it can fill in.
There are a couple of possible variations on this:
a. The shield belt is moving, so the position of any holes would change. When hit, you randomly determine where the hit on the shield is and then randomly which bit of armour is below there and then overlay the weapon damage template.
b. The shield is "fluid", so whilst it starts out 3 boxes thick for example, as damage hits it, boxes flow in to fill the gaps, so the shield never has holes in it after damage, but gets progressively thinner.
2. Traveller 2300 Style, so the shield strength is the chance for the hit (or alternatively each point of damage) to be harmlessly absorbed. It was a 10% change IIRC, so a 3 point shield absorbed 30% of hits. That'd be a bit too good I think, but you could easily do it per % now, so a 10 point shield is 10% of hits (or damage) negated. No need for a regen rate.
3. Lensman shields. The shields absorb all damage, but as the amount they hold increases, some starts to leak through until the shield "goes black" and collapses. Regen rate in this case would be how quickly the shields "radiate" damage out of their capacity.
4. Leave it as is, but tinker with the strength/regen rates
In fact, why choose? Have them all (but not on the same ship)
Stephen
