7.4 Armor, Shields, and Auto-Repair |
All vessels are equipped with some degree of armor plating or shields that will prevent direct damage to the vessel's hull for a period of time. Like weapons, armor and shields have directional mounts, as they too are systems. Some armor system slots will be full mounts, while some armor will only cover one side of the vessel while additional layers coat the rest of the ship.
The fundamental difference between shields and armor is that shields recharge more quickly than armor auto-repairs itself. Also, shields can be re-routed using the indicated keys on the devices to transfer shield power to a particular quadrant/arc. Once a layer of shields or armor on one quadrant has been completely drained, the hull and ship systems are open to any damage the enemy's weapons can inflict. Shields can be toggled between their normal operation mode, an overcharged Defense mode, which recharges the shields faster at the cost of a much higher energy drain, or simply turned off. Pressing CTRL+S will cycle between these modes.
In addition to Armor, K'Luth ships and all stations are equipped with special auto-repair devices that automatically repair a ship's hull over time, yet do so slowly.
In addition to being displayed on your ship's Systems bar, the status of your Armor and/or Shields is displayed as a series of rings around your ship. Armor is rendered in green rings, shields in cyan. As your armor or shields take damage, the number of rings around your ship will decrease, and the color will change as well. Armor will fade to yellow and then red, shields will fade to dark blue and then purple. If your ship has shields which are operating in Defense mode, an additional white ring will be displayed around your ship, though this is a purely cosmetic effect. |