The Environmental Starship Shield was designed by Galactic Horizon in mid YE 40 as part of their larger ambition to expand into the starship construction market.
Designed to be a secondary device to standard starship shielding, the ESS offers protection against environmental effects and space anomalies. While it offers a lower defense against enemy fire the ESS is designed to protect ships from cosmic anomalies and problems such as the electronic interference from nebulas. However like all good things, there are drawbacks in the system, this shield cannot be active at the same time as another shield system and it has a much lower damage threshold against enemy fire.
The specific nature of the hardlight shield makes it very susceptible to high energy and beam weapons, while physical attacks such as missiles and bullets can quickly wear it down. Large objects such as debris from asteroids and destroyed ships are weak against the hardlight composition along with electrical attacks being almost completely blocked by the grounding system built into the emitters.
General info for the ESS. It's the first shield system designed and created by Horizon and functions to shield starships from the various natural dangers of space.
| Stats & Info | |
|---|---|
| Nomenclature | GH-S1-S4000 |
| Designer | Galactic Horizon |
| Manufacturer | Galactic Horizon |
| Type | Starship Shield |
| Classification | Environmental |
| Price | 2 500KS |
The ESS was designed and developed in mid YE 40 by Galactic Horizon as they expanded their product line further towards starships. With the previous success of other components, the company continued the trend and designed the ESS as an alternative and backup style shield system for their later spacecraft models.
While Horizon had been designing ships for other groups their own ship designs were constantly being adapted as they learned from constructing for others. With the dangers of space being just as prominent as hostile ships the ESS aimed to fill that gap in the defensive systems of a spacecraft.
Barrier: When activated the shield projects in a wide bubble around whatever ship it is installed on rather than the conformal type. When projected the surface of the shield has a yellow glow over a triangular lattice.
Engine: The shield engine is similar in design to a standard transformer containing a large central unit surrounded by smaller control points and connection ports.
Emitters: Each emitter has a short, fat cylindrical generator with a wide bowl-shaped hat similar to the design of an outdoor heater.
Barrier: The end product of each component working together, the barrier projected by the ESS is formed of a hardlight composition with specific physical traits. The barrier deploys in bubble style rather than conformal, this allows the hardlight component to block and deflect most slow-moving debris and mid-tier enemy fire if using physical munitions. The slight modifications to the emitter output and energy input allow the barrier to be manipulated and generate a complete circuit, this allows the barrier to negate most electrical surges from outside sources such as electromagnetic radiation and fields like those inside a nebula.
Engine: The shield engine is usually located within the engineering area or applicable substitute within a starship and is little more than a large energy transformer. It has various capacitors and regulators to take the power intake from the ship and send it to the barrier modules. The engine is also able to take excess energy feedback from the emitters and store it within several large capacitors for backup power.
Emitters: Positioned at key points on the hull of a starship with a main module located either at the top or front of the hull. The emitter modules are comprised of a hardlight generator with a bowl hat atop it to facilitate the generation of a shield. Each emitter is designed to have a high tolerance for energy feedback allowing them to absorb energy from the shield and send it back to the engine.
The following table is a basic guide to the effects of certain damage types on this shield system and how effective each type is, with negative numbers being less effective and positive being more effective.