Babylon 5 Shield Generators

Shield Generators

Truly advanced defenses, shield generators are drastically different to true shielding. Shielded ships have a constant bubble or second skin around them, ships equipped with shield generators are instead simply ready to project partial canopies to reflect, absorb or otherwise halt incoming attacks. They require massive amounts of power to work properly and cost a small fortune per generator (which only cover a single arc of the ship) but they rarely let the buyer down when needed.

Note that all shield generators are activated as part of a Skill Check. However, once activated, their rating is applied against every attack that targets the vessel, for the remainder of the combat.

A shield’s rating is automatically applied against every incoming barrage in their arc – there is no need for a Skill check.

Also, due to the precise nature of what a shield generator must accomplish, they are utterly non-functional inside the atmosphere of any planet, moon or other structure. The swirl and ebb of the air particles disrupts the perfect logarithms of the generators’ firing mechanisms.

Name	Origin	Scale	Cost	Shield Rating
Gravitic Shield	Abbai Matriarchate	Starfighter	400,000	1D+1
Harmonic Shield	Hyach Gerontocracy	Starfighter	800,000	2D

Gravitic Shield

Originally designed by the defensive-minded Abbai, then also taken on by the Brakiri, gravitic shield generators are very effective deterrents to any hostile weapons fire. By forming an angled funnel of very high gravity, most attacks simply slow down to the point of stationary and burn out well before they ever get close enough to harm the ship. Missiles detonate, particles simply fade away and matter collapses in upon itself upon striking the field of massive force. High-output energy beams or sustained firing weapons can push past the buffer with little trouble, as the generators are simply unable to keep up the sort of output required to keep up with such a barrage.

Harmonic Shield

There is not a true interception technique designed by the Younger Races that can stop or even slow down high-energy beams like lasers… save one. The Hyach, masters of laser technology, created a powerful wavelength-based shield that essentially balances the wavelengths of attacking energies. For every wavelength in the spectrum, there is an opposite wavelength that brings the two into balance – the nullification point. Through their advances in harmonic laser technology, the Hyach designed several safety measures that would cancel out laser wavelengths if experiments got out of hand or became unstable.

It was these safety measures that were then experimented on, creating a powerful shielding force that can actually cancel out a large portion of energy. It does nothing for weaponry that uses solid matter or charged particles, but with the addition of defensive turrets their threat is lessened as well. Note that the Harmonic Shield only applies its rating against Beam attacks.

Source

• Babylon 5: Ship Builder's Manual (pages 68-69)
• thedemonapostle