[Taqwus]

Crystalline armor seems to contribute to shield regen even before the shield falls. As far as I can tell, it's something like

shield += MAX((shield_max - shield),
(5 * total_crystaline_armor (in levels)),
damage)

That is, I've never seen a hit *increase* the shields to above where the shield was before the hit (but maybe I wasn't testing with sufficiently weak weapons), but the armor still recharges the shield even if the shield held and the armor wasn't touched.

So a Battlestation with, say, 30 Crystalline Armor III components (600 KT if memory serves, but a BS has a LOT of space) and, oh, 4 Phased Shield Gen. V (560 shield pts IIRC, and not pierced by phased weaponry) would be effectively immune to most < 450 pt weapons until the total shield strength < 450. Temporal weapons would work, as would ramming (at least with cobalt warheads; don't know how ramming damage is calculated), but not a whole lot else. Figure Large (2x) is the best that fits on a cruiser, so one needs a base damage > 225 to even reach the armor, which is, er, rather steep. Shield depleters probably won't work, because the regen happens *after* damage is assessed but before the next weapon fires...

I don't recall "lucky" ships bypassing shields, but against such a BS, you'd better hope so. =) Or use an allegiance shifter or bording party.

The only saving graces would be that a) the armor/shields take up a fair bit of KT, so it's not going to have a dozen Massive Shard Cannon X's bLasting everything in sight, b) such a monster is hopefully going to be expensive and slow to build (but crystalline armor is cheaper than emissive, IIRC), c) it can't move, so if you can hit whatever it's guarding from the other side, you might make the BS rather moot.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night