[Suicide Junkie]

BTW, the unchoosable racial trait colony tech thing didn't pan out.

Instead, I've gone with 2500-point racial traits for "Rock/ice/gas natives"
You should have to make some fairly big sacrifices to take a second livable surface... I'm also certain that more balancing will be needed in that area.

Shields, I've decided, will have four variants;
- Phased vs Non-phased
- Fully Leaky vs Semi-leaky
The first is obvious, the second not so.

What I have at the moment is "Shields" -> "Semi-leaky" and "Deflector shields" -> "fully leaky"

The deflectors have shield and crystalline effect of 2-14 points depending on tech level, at 40kt each.
The shields have 20-100 shield points and 4-20 regen per turn, per 40kt.

Combat sensors and ECM are downgraded to 5-15% effects, but I'll probably add more levels and use "add-on" components to boost their power a little bit.

Racial combat bonuses have tighter limits, and the base to-hit is only 60% -3%/square.

There will be no weapon mounts like in regular SE4, so damage will remain manageable with respect to the deflector shielding physics.
There will, of course, be some weapons with large punch and long reload or large size.
Heavy hits tend to overload and pierce shields, while small hits will tend to feel the full effect of the deflector's absorption %.

Mixing up weapons is also a known way to weaken shields.
Alternating size and damage types can reduce the effectiveness of shielding. Only during repeated hits from the same weapon will a shield reach its theoretical potential.