I know that shields on caps ships have been brought up a million times and the idea I have has probably been brought up before, but is it possible that you could make it appear that the shields have a limit of absorbtion before they get penetrated. For example, when your fighter fire its lasers at a cruiser and impacts, but doesn't do enough damage to bring down the ships hull integrity below the 1% of damage( 100% and doesn't go below to 99%) Then the particles that spew off the hull is different. Just changing the particle g/fx. But when it does go below 1% (goes from 99% to 98%) that shot will show the usual particle g/fx that we normall see. It may not be true shields , but at least it would kind of look like it.
Another idea would, that could you possibly allow ships to have 2 hull integreties where the first shows the shield absorbtion, but once you destory it then it goes into the "2nd hull" which shows the particle damage? I know Tachyon does this.
