[Locutus of Borg]

This is also a problem in Star Trek with the borg (ooooh me)

A shield is a field modulated to a frequency which is supposed to absorb,deflect beams which are modulated to any different frequency. If they decided to load their ships with flak guns, Shivan shields would be worthless ****.

[Woolie Wool]

FreeSpace is not Star Trek. There is no frequency. FreeSpace ships do not have to flicker their shields on and off to allow them to fire through their own shields. Also, flak cannons are much less effective than most laser weapons against shields.

[Mad Bomber]

The same is true of all shrapnel-based weapons (and small railguns for that matter). Witness the ineffectiveness of the MX-50 and Maxim against shielded craft. (You could probably knock a fighter around well with a large enough railgun slug, though.)

High-energy things (explosions, beams, plasma) and directed EMP (Circe, SDG, Banshee) work quite well, though. If the code allowed for it, I'd guess nebular lightning would, too.

[Woolie Wool]

Lightning wouldn't carry enough energy to do much to a FreeSpace fighter.

[Agent_Koopa]

Lightning wouldn't carry enough energy to do much to a FreeSpace fighter.

Well, it's clearly enough to scramble the displays on the HUD, which can be incredibly impressive if you think that the HUD is a transparent LCD or a screen onto which a projector displays data, but slightly less impressive if you think that it's a hologram generator of some sort. But seriously, I had huge trouble believing that nebular lightning was enough to affect the very light waves on their path to the screen, or to affect the operation of an LCD or something similar, but that they were incapable of disrupting an energy shield. I don't know, it's just my personal opinion that energy shields should be flickering, uncertain things.