The point is to phase out the Star Army's "all combat is power armor combat" policy. If we can get Nekovalkyrja with personal shields that make them a little more damage resistant, maybe we can get back to our infantry roots.Wes, just so you know, I'm not in support of that. Will the new DR thing in the works be able to support something like this? Definitely.
Should it, though? I do not think so.
Nekovalkyrja have followed a dumbing down process. They are in good shape right now. Personnal shielding is not a variable I believe should be included with them, especially with player characters. Not to mention that usually, when GMs try to have unarmored away teams, it's because they want things to be more barebones. This, to me, makes the move disingenuous.
Not to mention that the smaller example of shielding we have in the setting are on power armors, whom require lunch-box sized power supplies and significant hardware, and that being in proximity of forcefields is typically harmful to living creatures.
We have good setting dynamics going on here. Why rock the boat when the current setup is well-justified?
God Fred, you're helping them win.So, we'll have nekos in miniskirts with personal shields now.
I think it's just too magicky, and if there were personal shields, wouldn't armor become obsolete?
I'm against personal shields unless the body is built to emit them (such as the NH-32). Fred explained it best. It changes the setting from armored soldiers to people in miniskirts being able to stop bullets. That feels lame and overpowered to me. Plus it would probably require some sort of DR revision to make them useful. What's the point of personnel-scale shields when armor-scale weapons are going to instantly cut through them? Power armor is the way to go. The only people I could think of that might even use personnel-scale shields are police and civilian VIPs.
My stance on this is giving players and GMs the option to present personnel scale combat with weapons below the PA range in a different way. Neither avenue is better than the other merely different. A soldier, or individual in general wearing armor or a shielding system, or a combination of both is going to have different worries and their tactics are going to change in the field. Armor ablates, and deteriorates over time, where as the shields would provide indiscriminate defence against a few things before needing to recharge. How one handles the course of combat would differ widely as one manages the resources and benefits of each system.I really don't think personal shields do much of anything to make infantry plots without power armor more believable/likable/probable.
With this I would argue that some people might want to use the shields in a scenario that is less than a power armor engagement. It could be interesting flavor wise to have some people in what looks like plain clothes be shielded, or have elite police units that have shielding to augment their armor. It's more about flavor below the PA scale than function. These aren't supposed to replace PA, just give narrative options. Whether they get used or not depends on the themes and situations presented.Unless personal shields somehow are made better than power armor there's no real reason not to equip it.
I understand this sentiment from an OOC perspective with the issues of new players frequently failing to use what is inherent within the race which I believe was what led to the production of the NH-29 and later NH-33. At the same time from a lore perspective I really hate this attitude. Neko shouldn't be human. They're engineered war machines, representing them as being human, and complaining about their inhumanity seems counter intuitive to me.And having built in Neko shielding is just going to cause people to complain again/more that Neko aren't human enough for them. You're just going to have more instances of people looking silly because they didn't fly away OR activate their shielding.
I would disagree with this statement, for the simple fact that even with PA and Starships the existence of much more effective shields than what would be available at the personnel scale doesn't render armor useless.I think it's just too magicky, and if there were personal shields, wouldn't armor become obsolete?
Part of this answers @Wes' stance on the matter already... He's suggesting a body type which has built in functionality, which is exactly what he expressed would be needed for him to be okay with the idea.I'm against personal shields unless the body is built to emit them (such as the NH-32). Fred explained it best. It changes the setting from armored soldiers to people in miniskirts being able to stop bullets. That feels lame and overpowered to me. Plus it would probably require some sort of DR revision to make them useful. What's the point of personnel-scale shields when armor-scale weapons are going to instantly cut through them? Power armor is the way to go. The only people I could think of that might even use personnel-scale shields are police and civilian VIPs.
I don't know why certain nefarious factions with access to scalar literally didn't just fire them at planets and wipe them out in minutes without even needing to glass them, but that would be really really boring if they had. At one point every single one of Yamatai's armor articles had a specific paragraph in their shield systems stating their immunity to scalar. That's how bad this thing was.
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