Planetside - Star Trek - Technologies

Ships of the 22nd Century made use of polarized hull plating before the widespread adoption of the more familiar deflector shielding technology. Rather than projecting an energy field in a spherical region away from the ship's hull, polarized hull plating binds an electromagnetic field to the ship's hull that acts to harden the ship's natural armoring abilities.

Ships equipped with polarized hull plating for defense will have polarized hull plating generators, commonly called polarized hull plating units or systems, located in each of the ship's sections. These units serve as juncture points for the ship's polarized hull plating network. Usually a ship will have more than one system available in a section, with one being active and the other serving as a backup unit in case the primary unit is knocked offline. Polarized hull plating units take a small amount of power to maintain operations, representing the power flow necessary to maintain the cohesion of the polarization matrix.

An active polarized hull plating generator will add its current rating to the armor values of all systems in it's ship section (forward, port, starboard, aft, or primary), including the polarized hull plating generator. For enormous units and capital ships this is fairly self-explanatory. However, in the situation of medium ships where structure is part of both forward, aft, and primary blocks, a ship will only benefit from any polarized hull plating through the arc which the enemy unit is firing.

The rating of a polarized hull plating system can be increased through the application of power in the same way that sensors can improve their EW output. To increase a polarized hull plating system by one point would require a payment of power equal to the new hull plating shield factor. Example: a 1 point polarized hull system would require a total of 2 power to increase to a strength of 2, a total of 5 power to increase to a shield factor of 3 (2+3), and a total of 9 power to increase to a shield factor of 4 (2+3+4).

Polarized hull plating systems are not subject to criticals, but their effectiveness can be decreased as a result of damage. As each damage track in a polarized hull plating system is destroyed, the system's rating will decrease by 1.

As with EM shields, if a burst beam or other energy draining weapon strikes a ship protected by an active polarized hull plating system, the weapon will not roll to hit but will instead inflict its energy draining effects upon the active polarized hull plating system. Unlike EM shields, further energy draining weapon hits on the ship score damage normally -- they are not all absorbed by the polarized hull plating as they are with EM shields!

The Federation and other major powers eventually stopped using polarized hull plating because of its limitations compared to deflector technologies. Some transitional units attempted to use both deflector shields and polarized hull plating, but, while a potent combination, such ships suffered crippling power problems. With too much space reserved for defensive systems, too, these ships could operate very few weapons.

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