[Spaceships] Structural Integrity Field Generator
 

Structural Integrity Field("SIF") Generator (TL^) [any!]
This system provides bonus HP to the entire ship by using force fields to support its structure, and buffer attacks that have already penetrated. It would, of course, be irresponsible to use this in place of a regular force screen generator, but it's useful for ships that have maxed out force screen generators already.

If a generator is shut down or disabled, the max dHP are simply subtracted, and current dHP are reduced proportionally. For example, if a craft with 20 regular dHP and +45 dHP from an SIF is reduced to 15/65 dHP and its SIF generator is disabled, it's left with 5/20 dHP.

Use the table for Exotic Laminate armor(p13, Spaceships); a generator has the listed cost, and provides bonus dHP equal to triple the listed US dDR. A smaller system provides ×1/3 dHP for -1 SM and ×1/10 dHP per -2 SM; a larger system should be represented by multiple regular systems.
Repair Skill: Armoury (Force Shields).

Design Switch: Streamlining Reduces SIFs - Use US/SL as appropriate, but quadruple instead of tripling. Using US for all craft is based on the way HP work in VE.

Design Switch: Ground Zero Is 'Ard - A SIF generator can't be disabled; when it would normally be disabled, the craft instead loses 1 current dHP per 40 max dHP or fraction. The craft in the example above would go to 13/65 instead of 5/20 dHP. This is normally a setting-wide design switch, but if it's optional, it doubles the cost of a SIF generator system.

Optionally, cheaper, bulkier generators can be achieved by basing it on lesser armor types, but using an armor type with special effects(like Ice or Etherwood) may be more trouble than it's worth.

Not sure how useful it is, but it provides a way to get more "slugging matches" from Spaceships. It was scaled so that the HP granted by one in each section, divided by the DR granted by a corresponding armor system in each section, would equal the point cost of DR divided by the point cost of HP. This was then assumed to be the effect of installing two -1 SM SIF generators and a -1 SM internal-fuel two-point reactor, in order to account for being a high-power system. Some of the multiplier was then compensated for by selecting the US dDR, unless you throw the design switch. (More precise would be ×3.26 instead of triple and ×3.95 instead of quadruple.)

Thoughts, comments, rotten fruit? :J

Re: [Spaceships] Structural Integrity Field Generator
 

If I recall correctly the concept of using a Structural Integrity Field on Star Trek was invented after one of their art people superimposed the outline of the Enterprise-D over the Paramount lot. When they realized its size they also realized it would probably not be ridged how the envisioned the internals and invented the SIF technobabble to explain it.

Re: [Spaceships] Structural Integrity Field Generator
 

A cool idea. You could alternately have it give the ship the equivalent of Injury Tolerance: Damage Reduction while active. This would avoid the complexity of a split-dHP score. A single SIF generator provides extra HP of about double the craft's basic score, so it would be equivalent to IT:DR x1/3. Each additional system would add two to the divisor (1/5, 1/7, etc). Since you're already treating the system as Injury Tolerance instead of Ablative DR or Extra HP (if the system shuts off, you're relative current HP stays the same) this could help simplify the math.

Re: [Spaceships] Structural Integrity Field Generator
 

Hm... when TL is high enough, why bother with a physical structure at all?

Re: [Spaceships] Structural Integrity Field Generator
 

So you don't have to breath vacuum when the power goes off.

Re: [Spaceships] Structural Integrity Field Generator
 

Well, the same critique applies to a structural integrity field.

Re: [Spaceships] Structural Integrity Field Generator
 

Yeah, the idea was to keep the resolution of the larger dHP stat, since hefty IT:DR has resolution problems. Also, it was originally intended for use on any "ordinary" armor, which got moved to a footnote. OTOH, this is the simplified system…

In posthuman space games, I have a meme I've reused of Precursor artifacts only having a fraction of their structure. The rest wasn't lost to time, it was originally forcefields, and part of the problem of figuring them out is guessing what the fields did.

Re: [Spaceships] Structural Integrity Field Generator
 

Actually, it arose when somebody realized that no known materials were strong enough to stand up to the routine accelerations and decelerations and rapid maneuvers portrayed on Star Trek. The SIF was their handwave to explain why the Enterprise-D (and other ships) retain their shape when making velocity changes of significant percentages of c in a few seconds.

(Presumably the earlier incarnations like Kirk's also had SIFs, since hte logic is sound.)

Re: [Spaceships] Structural Integrity Field Generator
 

I did something similar with the semi-mythical crashed mothership in a 'lost colony' campaign when I needed to justify how a ship that large could crash without quasi-apocalyptic consequences to the planet.

Extending it to objects other than spacecraft had never occured to me -- I like it.