The main defenses of your ship are the shields and the hull itself. The former can be recharged in a variety of ways (outlined below) while damage to the latter is permanent and cannot be repaired during flight.
The above image depicts the shield system absorbing damage from incoming fire. While your shields can sustain a fair amount of damage under normal circumstances, if they fail your ship is extremely vulnerable to enemy fire and collisions. Also note that taking hits even while the shields are up can have other negative effects, such as losing primary weapon levels.
Shields can be recharged during flight by various methods, some more difficult than others. The simplest is to get the associated powerup, although these are somewhat rare (economists have postulated that this is due to an increased demand for these powerups; this theory is somewhat substantiated by a recent increase in "pilot error", resulting in numerous fatalities and untold damage).
An alternate and sometimes desirable method of charging the shield generators is to apply power normally reserved for the primary weapons system. If your ship's primary weapons are not discharged for a short period of time (about one or two seconds), the excess energy will automatically be rerouted to the shields, which will subsequently begin to recharge slowly. This process can be immediately terminated by using the primary weapons (note that using secondary weapons or missiles does not interrupt the charging). Extreme caution is recommended when using this method: not using primary weapons can allow your ship to become overwhelmed with enemies and incoming fire, often resulting in damage being taken much more quickly than the shields can recharge. Pick your recharge areas carefully!
If your shields fall, the physical hull of your ship is susceptible to damage. You will know that your ship's hull is taking damage via audio, visual (HUD) and tactile (if you have a force-feedback input device) cues. Pay particular attention to these, as hull damage is irreparable and if your hull integrity falls to zero your ship will explode!
The importance of avoiding hull damage cannot be stressed enough. If your shields fall to a very low level (or fail entirely) or if you begin to sustain hull damage, your primary responsibility should be to avoid damage while you recharge your shields (by any of the methods in the previous section). Ideally this situation should never occur, but it's best to be prepared (and we have little faith in your piloting ability).
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Copyright © 2004 by Andrew Lauritzen and Chris Iacobucci.