[##UnknownPlayer##]

Pardon my ignorance if this has already been mentioned (I got lost in the beam peircing shields debate, but I was just wondering if perhaps an option in the table files could be added to allow beams to penetrate shields as determined by a ship.

My reason for asking this: I've got an idea that what would be great to have in FS2 would be a shield generator ship, that would project a huge forward facing shield in front of it. For this to have some value, all beams would have to be blocked by it (making the fighter ability to fly through it really important).

But essentially, I'm wondering if we should have beam-shield peircing determined in multiple places - by the beam itself vs regular shields (and whether if it peirces it should also drain shields) (table entry), and by the ship itself (two options - one dictates whether beams marked as peircing peirce, the other if peirced should shields drain out).

Obviously the ship's options are overriding, but are optionally specified.

[karajorma]

I don`t mind the idea as presented here but what would be nicer is if each weapon had a shield pierce value.

Then what you could do is give each shielded ship a resistance value in FRED.

If the ships resistance value was higher then beams wouldn`t pierce the shield. If it was equal or lower the beam would go through (damaging the shield on the way).

Doing it via the ships table would work but all ships would have the same settings. Doing it via FRED allows you to set it. This means that if you also make an accompanying SEXP you could alter the shield piercing in the middle of a mission (allowing you to simulate the uber-shield you mentioned being turned on or off)

[WMCoolmon]

Excellent idea, Karajorma!
It would need an extra int in the ship_info and weapon_info structs (if there is a weapon_info struct ), so it might break multiplayer.

[karajorma]

Well the number idea would be my favourite way to do it but even if that can`t be done a SEXP would be much better than doing it via the table.