The idea of bleeding through shields is also from the klingon polaron torpedo. I THINK it might work the way, that the torpedo is surrounded by a certain field of polaron particles, that will work against the shield system to disrupt it for a short period of time, making a hole into the shield system, where the torp can slip through.
The only conventional vessels (not Borg, etc.) that should be able to compare to the Negh'Var are the 1500-meter-long Jem'Hadar Battleship, and the 4500-meter-long Jem'Hadar Dreadnought (with the former probably being roughly comparable).
I think so too. The Neggie should be between them. The dom dreadnought is a class higher than the Neggie, the largest non-borg vessel, that is not a super-ship (like the husnok) or borg-cube. The dom-dreadnought is in no question also transporting a founder or two at a time, since this powerhouse is safer than a planet with shields. But back to the neggie, it should be one of the most powerful ships ever seen. There may be a federation ship that might be able to fight en par with it, but nothing comes into my mind, that is canon. Maybe something like the Dauntless-class...
that could potentially allow for performance increases by multiple times, are still limited by a number of factors, like the ship's power generation capabilities.
Well, you may also change modules. The Nebula-class got a sensor or battle-module. The Neggie can also have multiple modules mounted (seen in the different canon-versions) or the Vor'cha. I think it would be pretty neat to have "module-points" on the ship, where you can install additional modules, that are more or less self sustaining. For example, the Vor'cha module on the back could be enhanced with an energy-module and two disruptor-banks. The energy-module contains a secondary reactor, that powers the disruptor banks. Likewise, you could add a shield generator, additional sensor-arrays, a shuttle-hangar and such things.
The rest of the upgrades would be internal and are maybe limited by:
- size
- energy-consumption
- crew to operate with it
- costs
- actual technology level
For example, what would happen, if you upgrade your photons to quantums? You need another bank, that is a little larger and you need more energy to power them. This way, a small destroyer like the sabre class will be out of energy after firing a single quantum torpedo for quite a time. So yes, you could handle the balance, if you limit the maximum power your ship can generate by the main reactor and this reactor is limited to the size of your engineering-bay. You might upgrade the reactor itself, but the max power bonus should be around 33% to 50% from introduction to scrap-yard of a class.
If you then change the system upgrades to be more efficient or have a little more capability, then you have effectively limited the maximum upgradeability of a ship which is good for balancing.
As for shields, I'm not a huge fan of a forced facing system. We do see that in Trek on occasion, but rarely. The vast majority of the time, the shields operate in sync as a single facing, and it's only been in a handful of situations (often in low-power modes like in Nemesis) that we see shields operate with separate facings. Players should have the option of switching to a facing system to conserve power when they're low on it, or in the rare occasions when having separate facings instead of a single facing would be tactically advantageous, but in general the 'normal' mode should be a contiguous facing, imo.
Well, yes to a certain degree. I dont want to see a fixed facing, like 6 facings (forward, aft, above, down, left, right) but something like "area of effect". Lets say, a phaser hits your ship, then an area of your shield grid is weakened. This aera will slowly regenerate with the help of your shield generators.
So if you take a hit in the front and in the back it is not a bad as if you would take two hits in the back. At the same time, the rest of your suggestion is fitting to that outcome, so I would gladly see some bleeding, if you get hit by high energy weapons and no bleed, if your sovereign ship gets hit by a K'tinga disruptor.
Thats why I want to see something like one or more secondary elements on the systems, like density, polarisation, re-flow-rate, regen-rate, max-output and so on, so you can play with this effects and make the game more vivid. Not just "Oh, shields are up. *fire* Oh, shields are down." Thats just too plain for Excalibur.
(the effectiveness of this system was superbly demonstrated by the USS Prometheus, the only ship known to have Regenerative Shields
Well, shields do always regenerate. Maybe, you think of a different kind of regeneration? I think of that regeneration like 1% in 5 seconds. Not 80% in 0.5 seconds. This would be super-regenerative. But I dont know how to balance it. Maybe like this: You have to kill the shields with a single salvo. This is possible, if you have enough firepower and the max shield output is relatively low. If you dont manage it --> Shields are back to 100%. If you manage it, the shield grid must reset which will take 10 seconds or more. Maybe this way...
If Excalibur could incorporate the ability to switch between a single, contiguous facing with a shared energy reserve and active reserve generators that allowed the generators to withstand much greater single hits at the cost of greater reserve consumption per damage sustained, and multiple facings with split reserves and a lowered resistance to concentrated powerful hits but that have lower reserve consumption per damage sustained, with 'bleed-through' windows before shields spike up that allow a small percentage of weaker beams and a larger percentage of stronger beams and even larger percentage of pulses to 'bleed through' the shields to the hull, and shield generators that can be overwhelmed and forced to shut down independently of the shield reserves that would allow massive weapons salvos to completely overwhelm a ship's shield generators and punch through to the hull before shields have been completely drained, that would be awesome, imo.
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Now we do the same with weapons (beam, pulse, mass-based, torps, missiles, and so on), armor (single layer, multi.layer, ablative, regenerative...) and we have a NICE set of tools.
