Question about shields?

[mendal]

You will be able to transfer power between your weapons, shields, engines or auxiliary power systems. Additionally, you can balance shield power to your fore, aft, port and starboard shield emitters. There is no mana bar. You need to manage these systems depending on your circumstances.
Can someone clarify for me please if we will be able to run out of shields since there is no mana bar? It may sound like a stupid question but please humor me.
I mean in the shows we all remember how ships would have a certain percentage taken away from shields until they completely drop.

[loyaltrekie]

Can someone clarify for me please if we will be able to run out of shields since there is no mana bar? It may sound like a stupid question but please humor me.
I mean in the shows we all remember how ships would have a certain percentage taken away from shields until they completely drop.

I always assumed mana bar meant "ability points" rather then "health points", the system I see them using is different sections/quadrants of the ship will have different "health" and you will have an overall amount of "shield capability" so lets say you lose your aft shields, you would need to transfrer the shield capablity from another part of the ship to cover your weak spot, but then making your shield structure overall weaker? Maybe, IDK, theres a lot of ways they could take it.

[Sinclair]

I would guess that the ships systems are more complicated than just one mana bar. I'm hoping there will be a need to and controls for balancing power requirements between various ship systems, and that this balance can be changed in battle. Its a good question though on whether you can simply run out of all power or have the shields fall entirely if you were diverting full power to them.

[Trsmash]

The shields are seperated into 4 main quadrants (Port, Aft, Ventral, and Dorsal shields). When you are in combat these different shield areas will take different amounts of damage depending upon where the enemy is striking you at.

You are suppose to manage the power from these quadrants. The more hits a particular shield takes the more power it is going to lose. If a shield generater looses all power then that section of your ship will not be protected. That is why you are in charge of power management on your ship during battle. You are suppose to determine whether you want to keep your shield power equally distributed throughout your shield grid, or if you want to reinforce one section of shielding with extra power and so forth during battle. Or you can decide that you want to take power from shields to reinforce your weapons. By doing this you weaken your defense slightly and will have to be even more particular about where you conentrate your shield power than before, but you will also be dealing more damage to the enemy.

All of these things come into consideration in a battle. You dont have to worry about a single health bar or "mana" bar or anything, you just need to make sure that you are managing your shields so that they are at least strong enough to keep vital systems from being destroyed (such as your warp core) and so that you ship does not take direct hits from enemy fire and get destroyed.

At least that is my understanding of it from what I have read in the last "Ask Cryptic" article.