New shield types

[Enoki]

Here are two new "shield" types to consider for ships. I haven't really thought about the space and energy requirements for them at this point. Maybe someone can work those out. But, both are absolutely feasible and relatively low tech enough that they should be included in the game.

The first is a magnetic shield. The ship generates a strong magnetic field around itself. This is effective against particle beams, plasma, and fusion weapons, causing them to scatter along the magnetic field reducing their effectiveness.

The second is a gaseous or liquid layer shield. This one is emitted by the ship from storage tanks and forms over the outer hull held in place by the gravitational field of the ship. It erodes over time, but within a battle it is considered stable. The thickness of the shield is dependent on the size of the ship, the gravitational field available, and the amount of gas or liquid available to form it.
That means larger tanks and a stronger grav field on a larger ship forms a more effective shield.

This type of shield is effective against all typical starship weapons except meson guns and missiles.

After all, if an asteroid or planetoid can have an atmosphere, however thin, then there's no reason a ship can't have or create one too. We know per current rules that most energy weapons are less effective in atmospheres, then having one around your ship would reduce the effectiveness of those weapons in the same way.

 

[infojunky]

The first is a magnetic shield. The ship generates a strong magnetic field around itself. This is effective against particle beams, plasma, and fusion weapons, causing them to scatter along the magnetic field reducing their effectiveness.

Note, vacuum itself is pretty effective against charged Particle Beams, and Magnetics fields are ignored by Neutral Particle Beams.

 

[Straybow]

Liquid "armor" is probably not going to be very effective. It could be reflective to a degree, but 20th century laser research showed that lasers tended to create bubbles of vaporized material that cut the effectiveness of a "beam" laser. So, most weapons development has employed some kind of interrupted beam, with pulses and pauses measured in microseconds. This allows vaporized material to expand and evacuate the material being "drilled" through.

For soft targets this is unnecessary, as the vaporizing matter becomes an explosion that tears through the tissue rather than being held in place against unvaporized metal or armor.

If the liquid armor is being held in place by a generated gravity field, that field won't be strong enough to contain the liquid/vapor when the weapon hits it.

 

[kilemall]

2300 had sort of a 'Sand in Magnetic Field' Shield which seemed imminently logical, if you can do fusion containment you should be able to hold less dense/energetic matter with reflective/absorptive properties.

 

[mike wightman]

Those 2300 screens also had the advantage that you could adopt that great sci-fi trope of 'more power to the shields' (to make a more dense field in a given target aspect) or 'concentrate all power on the forward shield' i.e. make that aspect denser - note this is not part of the rules but is an easily adopted house rule.

 

[Enoki]

It would be equally easy with a liquid shield held in place to a good degree by the gravitational field generated by the ship to load it with "sand." That is, produce a slurry rather than simply a dust cloud.
One clear benefit of this would be that the slurry being a liquid would behave as a liquid. You have to add energy to it to vaporize the liquid along with the refractive value of the sand. The liquid would also dissipate heat far better than a dust cloud meaning you have to add more energy to vaporize it.
Then there's the tendency of a liquid to self level meaning as you do vaporize it, more liquid tries to move into the void.
The liquid might also form gas bubbles rather than a vapor and entrain some of the sand with it.

Such a system might resemble a icy comet with the ship trailing a long plume of ice vapor mixed with sand. I would think as this expands off the lead ship other ships could try to enter the plume and use it for protection or concealment too.

A variant would be to use a slurry that is allowed to become a solid. This would give the ship the equivalent of an ice layer of material that was specifically designed to maximize the amount of energy required to cut through it. A poor man's shield, but probably lighter than adding solid armor.