Force Fields & Disruption Weapons

Force Fields & Disruption Weapons:

In both Robotech and Rifts: Phase World there are weapons that destabilize/disrupt force fields by creating holes in them. These can be easily abused by people mounting the Silver Hawk disruption equipment on individual missiles. This would basically negate the effectiveness of shields against missiles. The Robotech Invid Invasion shield destablizers open holes in shields for huge periods of time and can also negate the usefulness of shields. To come to terms with these, the author, with some help from others, has worked on some revised rules for these systems.

The first item to be addresses is the shield disruptor on the Silverhawk power armor. Many individuals have suggested the idea of missiles outfitted with this system. If this could have been done, it would have been done a long time ago. This seems to indicate to the author that the system does not work that way. The easiest way to explain the reason why this system does not work this way is that the shield disruption takes about a second or two to complete the disruption. A Silverhawk must match both the ships speed and acceleration in order for the system to work and that a missile moves much to fast too provide the necessary time to cause the shield disruption. The missile would collide with the undisrupted shields long before the system would have time to take effect.

The second item is the shield destablizers from Robotech. They create a hole in a shield for several minutes before the shields can be closed. This effect was originally applied to Invid style shields that are fixed and cannot be easy reset. In Rifts: Phase World the shields are variable and can be reset much easier. To balance the weapons against the shields, it would make sense that the destablizer would be less effective against them due to their variable nature. This would mean that the holes can be closed when the shields are reset, normally at the end of a melee, the hole can be simply closed but until that occurs the hole remains open and can be fired or moved through. Because the holes opened by these Robotech style destabilizers are relatively small, targeting through them with large weapons is difficult. Heavy weapons retain their standard strike penalties versus small targets when used in this manner

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By Kitsune (E-Mail Kitsune).