InnocentBystander wrote:One of the things an STGOD doesn't focus on so much is "how much shields" a ship has.
Ah but it's for visual variety. For the 'armoured brick' ship designs, you've got beams and shells smashing into the armour, tearing out glowing gouges, sections being breached and depressuring, turrets getting mangled by lucky hits, eventually the frame buckling, sections flying off and the ship turning into a smashed up hulk (optionally blowing up for those with antimatter or similar power plants). Generally you have to flay the armour off and then strip the life out of the ship with a pounding rain of shells/bolts/beam (though some weapons may do 'batter with proximity explosions' or 'cut the heart out with a single super-beam' instead).
For a 'fields heavy' design you've got a rainbow spectrum of colours and glancing lightning as the shields reach capacity, flashes of local burnthrough caught by secondary shields, flares of radiation as the shields begin to break down, flashes on the hull as the superconducting layer tries to minimise the damage, then as everything overloads and lets go a tremendous shattering explosion of spars, modules and nacelles that turns into a cloud of expanding wreckage wreathed in lightning and plasma and convulsed by secondary explosions. Instead of 'wear the ship down' you've got 'pour energy into it until she canna handle any more' (though with some burn through and localised damage to keep the battle damage narrative somewhat interesting
).
Usually I prefer the former style in sci-fi, but as I say if everyone else is going for that I'd adopt the later for variety. Though everyone is likely to target my fragile-looking Trek-like ships
