Unlike standard Babylon 5 Wars ships, all Star Trek vessels utilize impulse drives for their sub-light thrusting needs. Impulse drives function similar in form to Shadow bio-drives. Any ship with Impulse Drives can apply as much of their free thrust-up to the total-through their impulse drives to perform any maneuver they so choose. Note however that, unlike ships utilizing bio-drives, ships with Impulse Drives may purchase additional thrust and over-thrust their thrusters, though this requires a critical check just as is used for standard thrusters that over-thrust.

In addition to this more liberal thrusting system, all ships with Impulse Drives are considered to have gravitic drive systems, a side effect of the gravitic bubble that allows the Impulse Drives to function.

If a ship loses all of its impulse thrusters due to damage or overthrusting, the ship may still maneuver. However, all thrust costs are DOUBLED and the ship suffers -10 initiative for the remainder of the scenario. Example: an Excelsior loses its after section and no longer has any impulse thrusters. Normally the accel/decel cost of the Excelsior would be 3 thrust; to do so now requires 6 thrust. If the Excelsior was going at speed 6 and wished to turn, it would have to pay double its normal turn cost, which is 6 thrust-so performing a turn now would cost 12 (!) thrust!

Impulse thrusters are not applicable targets for called shots should the called shots optional rule be in play.

Designers Note: The Impulse Drive System is a major point of conflict even within my own mind. The reason that I adopted the impulse drive system was two fold. First off, the thrusters were too easy to hit and destroy, and breaking through the shields of a section (especially the forward section) even once could leave the ship practically dead in space. In my recollection of the show, no ship was ever left unable to maneuver due to combat damage, unless it was MAJOR combat damage. All in all the impulse system does reflect how the ships moved in the show, and allowing the ships to continue to move (though at double thrust costs) isn't as good as it first looks--if the more maneuverable Star Trek ships will be able to continue to fight and maneuver, just worse, with the loss of their impulse thrusters, but the larger ships (such as the Nebula, Galaxy, and Ambassador) will end up making EA ships look like ballerinas.

The shielding used by ships in the Star Trek universe differs greatly from the systems used by the Abbai, Brakiri, or even the Vorlons. Instead of simply "deflecting" the shots so that they don't hit, or bending them slightly to weaken the strength of the offending weapons volley, deflector shields act to absorb this damage before it can strike the hull.

Every ship has any number of 'shield projections', each of which represents a specific arc of shield coverage for the vessel. Light combat vessels have a single projection, medium ships have two projections (forward and aft), and larger vessels have four projections, one for each facing of the vessel. Each shield projection covers a mutually exclusive hemispheric region surrounding the defended vessel.

Each projection has a given rating listed within the projection icon. This value is the amount of damage that the projection can hold before damage is scored directly to systems and structure on the target ship. A value of '40', for example, in a shield projection shows that a total of 40 points of damage can be absorbed before the ship can take any damage! The defending player cannot choose to score specific weapons to shields and other weapons fire to the ship itself; if an unfilled shield projection exists in arc, that shield projection must be filled before ANY damage can be scored on the ship it is defending.

At the beginning of every turn during the Ship Power segment of the Combat Sequence, in-arc deflector shields are used to reinforce shield projections. The value within each deflector shield icon represents the amount of 'free' points of damage that can be subtracted from a shield projection within the shield's arc. Extra points of regeneration, up to twice the current value of the deflector, can be purchased for 1 point of power per point of regeneration. This regeneration is purchased and applied immediately. Note that if a deflector shield is making use of arc extension capabilities to reinforce failed shield projections the maximum shield regeneration is based on the modified shield value, not the original.

Damage absorption capability ("shield strength") can be transferred during the Adjust Ship Systems Segment of the Combat Sequence. Up to 50% of the remaining damage absorption ability of any shield projection can be transferred to other consecutive shield projections. The total absorption of a shield projection cannot be improved beyond its value, however. The most common use of this option is to rebalance shield levels to keep all shields on even footing (and emulates the "shields are at X%, captain" reports of the crew).

In the event that a shielded ship is involved in a ramming attempt (either as the rammer or the rammee), add the current value of any in-arc shield projection to the ship's ramming factor before performing damage calculations. This makes shielded vessels much more devastating when ramming unshielded vessels.

If there weapons fire comes from a target that is one a shield spline, the defending player must choose a single shield projection to which to score the damage. Multiple projections may NOT be used to defend against weapon fire from a single unit or fighter flight!

If at any time a ship's shield generator fails or is destroyed, all shield projections immediately fall and the ship may no longer benefit from them. Likewise, if no deflector shields remain within arc of a shield projection it will fail and shields will collapse in that direction (but all other shield projections will continue to function normally). Shield projections that no longer have deflector shield in-arc to maintain them collapse during the Adjust Ship Systems segment.

If a deflector shield is subject to energy draining weapons (such as the Narn burst beam) and shields are still active, scores 10 times the energy draining amount against the shields as if it were damage. If this damage "overkills" the in-arc shield projection, the weapon bleeds through the shields and may roll to hit as normal, in effect getting a second free shot against the target!

Arc Extensions

Extra power may be applied to deflector shields to enlarge their arc an additional 90 degrees so that remaining deflector shields can "pick-up the slack" of destroyed shield systems to ensure that specific shield projections remain in play. Every 90 degree extension of a shield's arc increases the shield's power requirements by two times the current power level and decreases the inherent shield regeneration value by 1. If a deflector shields innate regeneration value listed in the shield icon falls below 0, the shield is deactivated. Because of these limitations, shields with low regeneration values are not very effective at the task, and the power requirements for extending shield arcs beyond a single consecutive projection become very costly to maintain. Medium ships must pay for a full 180 degrees worth of extension to make use of this ability, as their shield projections cover 180 degree hemispheres fore and aft.

The decision to perform arc extensions for deflector shields is made during the Ship Power segment. At that time ship systems can be deactivated and shield systems extended. Note that shields that have already collapsed at the end of the last turn do not retain their remaining absorption ability; they must start from scratch regenerating as if they had fallen completely. At this point a player may elect, however, to transfer shield strength from consecutive shield projections to temporarily shore up the weaker shield projection.

Deflector Shields vs. First Ones

Whereas First Ones negate the effects of non-First One shielding technology when it comes to standard gravitic shielding, First Ones DO NOT bypass deflector shielding. However, the immense power of the weapons used by First Ones can more easily disrupt and sap deflector shielding. Against First One ship fire (not fighter fire), double damage is scored against shields. Thus, if a Shadow slicer beam struck a shielded vessel that had 50 points of shield in arc for 80 points of damage, only 25 damage would be required to fill the shield projection protecting the ship, and the remaining 55 points of damage would continue to be scored normally.

Designers Note: The only logical way to illustrate shielding in the B5 game is to use this hybrid system akin to Shadow diffusers and the ThoughtForce shielding. The Star Trek shields did not operate anything like the shields in the B5 universe. Instead of reducing the chance to hit and the damage if they do hit, Star Trek shielding just absorbed the damage--as much as it could, anyway. I have heard some people whine with other people's Star Trek stuff that this system makes it so a ship won't take any damage until it has lost its shield entirely. Not so. Just because a shield projection is filled and damage is taken in one turn doesn't mean that the ships shields will go down entirely. By being able to "shuffle" shield strength, and from the natural output of the shield generators, shield will be able to keep their shield up and minimize the amount of damage they take, but from a hard strike against one arc you can still heavily damage a Star Trek ship.

Star Trek ships do not use jump engines, instead they use warp drives to allow them to break the faster-than-light barrier. Though in the series Star Trek ships seem to be able to jump in and out of warp speed at will, all Star Trek conversions have a Warp Delay. Similar to a jump delay, the warp delay is how many turns must pass before a ship may once again go to warp speed. At the beginning of a turn, any warp drive equipped ships that wish to attempt to escape into warp may declare as such. The turn that the ship goes to warp speed it may not fire any of its weapons, either offensively or defensively. All such systems are temporarily offline due to the power drain to achieve warp speed. They continue to arm normally, however. Otherwise, the warp engine should be handled as per Shadows phasing in-to and out of combat.

Similarly to jump engines, the warp engine does not suffer critical hits. However, whenever a ship attempts to go to warp, a check is made on all nacelles. There is a percentage equal to the number of boxes destroyed that the nacelle will fail, causing the warp delay to be reset and the warp attempt to fail. Example: A warp nacelle has taken 18 boxes of damage, thus there is an 18% chance that the nacelle will fail.

For every warp nacelle destroyed, add '2' to the warp delay. This does not reset the delay, but merely increases the time until the delay will be met. [9-26-01] Please note that any ship that does not normally have only a single warp nacelle will be unable to go to warp if the ship is reduced to one remaining nacelle. Most Star Trek vessels have paired nacelles, so if one nacelle was shutdown or destroyed the vessel would be unable to go to warp.

If a ship has more than two warp nacelles available, it may elect to shutdown additional nacelles at a rate of one nacelle per turn. For each nacelle shutdown increase the warp delay by 1. Nacelles that are shutdown are not counted when determining whether there is a warp drive failure. This is usually done if one of the ship's nacelles is so badly damaged that keeping it online would almost certainly inhibit the vessel's ability to jump to warp speed, or perhaps even endanger the ship via a warp core breach.

Some ships-notably Romulan and modern Klingon vessels-are equipped with cloaking devices. This piece of technology selectively bends light around the ship, evading most detection techniques and rendering the ship virtually invisible.

At the end of a turn any ship with an intact cloaking device may elect to cloak their vessels. Cloaking occurs immediately after it is declared. Unless otherwise stated in the ship description or on the ship control sheet, any ship which cloaks must adhere to the following conditions:

• No weapon may be fired while cloaked; however, all weapons continue to charge at their normal rate.
• Any ship operating a cloaking device must lower shields. Note that, while shields are lowered while the ship is cloaked, the cloaked ship may continue to reinforce their shields using in-arc deflector shields.

Once a ship is cloaked, the ship's counter is removed from the board and movement is tracked secretly until the ship elects at the end of a turn to decloak, with weapon and shields being online the following turn. Cloaking leaves a ship very vulnerable during the turns that it is cloaked, especially against the effects of flash or proximity weapons, as the ship no longer has shields to protect itself.

Cloaked ships can be detected by ships in the same way as mines are detected in Babylon 5 Wars. Use the mine detection rules, however EW should be placed towards cloak detection rather than mine detection. Minesweepers do not benefit from their inborn minesweeping bonus when attempting to discover the location of cloaked ships. For the purposes of detecting cloaked ships, refer below for signature values:

If a cloaked ship is detected using this method, it is a boon for the locating player as they get a free turn of unprotected fire against the enemy unit! For purposes of resolving fire against cloaked ships, refer to the mine rules in Showdowns-1.

Cloaked ships are also automatically detected if they take collateral damage from flash weapons or Vree antimatter shredders. Note, however, that this detection occurs after weapons fire is declared, so ships will be unable to directly fire at the discovered vessel. However knowing where the cloaked vessel is will be of great assistance in future turns for matters of finding the cloaked vessel and figuring out its position.

Designers Note: Though these cloaking rules exist and can be taken advantage of in a battle to lick a ship's wounds, it is generally a bad idea to do so. A determined opponent is likely to attempt to locate cloaked ships once they know they are there, and depending on the ship that is cloaking it may be an easy affair to do so. When cloaked a ship is so vulnerable that snap fire--even at double range penalties--can be devastating, and will easily render a vessel to nothing more than slag. For this reason alone it is in a ship's best interests not to recloak unless it is in retreat.

A newer Federation enhancement to existing photon torpedo technology, the advanced photon torpedo launcher was first testbedded on the New Orleans-class Battlecruiser. Able to store up to three torpedoes for simultaneous, rapid-succession fire, the advanced photon torpedo launcher allows for a stronger alpha strike on Federation vessels so equipped with the weapon.

Simultaneous fire, however, didn't come without its drawbacks. For every photon torpedo after the first fired from an advanced photon torpedo launcher, each warhead suffers a cumulative -1 to-hit penalty. Example: if 2 torps are fire, then each suffers -1 to hit; if all 3 torps are fired, each suffers a -2 to-hit penalty. With the launcher's enhanced fire control systems this penalty did not seem as problematic as it might to others, as the advanced photon's versatility earned it a proud spot in the fleet.