I don't pretend to be a technical expert in this game - far from it - but at least on the term of technicalities I am very firm indeed. I lost one of the most pivotal battles of my history because I once forgot to say my reinforcements were arriving by hyperspace. I protested at the time that what fool would try and fly to the rescue on sublights when that would take weeks, but was told that at TRF, technicalities matter. In other words, if leaving the shields up cause fighters to crash, then that is exactly what will happen here, even if it is completely ridiculous.

You could say it was a slip-up, discipline the shield operator for being sloppy, or maybe a fluctuation in the ship's systems gave confused signals, but having fighters crash into shields has happened to me before, and it's something you just end up accounting for. If it is ruled that the precedent has changed, then I will change with it, but from all that I have heard the current stance is that shields up + fighter launch = explosions, and I will stand firm on this until I hear otherwise.

Well I still have heard no definite ruling on the fighters/shield launch.

So, we need one of those.

I think TRF precedent speaks for itself. Fighters cannot be launched while shields are up - I believe Cracker knows this, too.

As Dolash said technicalities matter a lot:

ORS lost a few battles because we didn't say raise shields.

The original Bird Of Prey was considered unshielded because despite the fact that the R&D mentioned having shield generators it didn't have a shield rating.

The occasion Dolash mentioned.

I have never read an RP in which fighters were launched at the last second while in contact with the enemy. Most RPs involve launching away from the enemy so presumably dropping the shields away from the enemy.

Very first book of the Thrawn Trilogy, the Chimaera rolled to protect itself while it's shields were down and it was launching fighters, this was like in the first chapter.

This may be moot point by now, but I found my copy of the 'Guide to Weapons and Techology' and it says that particle shields must be lowered for ships to launch fighters or to fire physical weapons and that 'computers are used to drop and raise the shields with microsecond precision in order to leave the ship vulnerable for only a minimal time'.

It says nothing about lowering energy shields to allow fighters to leave.

Very first book of the Thrawn Trilogy, the Chimaera rolled to protect itself while it's shields were down and it was launching fighters, this was like in the first chapter.

I almost mentioned that... but I remember Thrawn rolled his ship so the enemy wouldn't see him launching fighters. I couldn't remember if it was mentioned that it had to do with shields as well...

Also in the Courtship of Princess Leia book they have to drop the particle shields to allow the concussion missiles through (and they projected out like 50m).

That all being said, and Dolash and Marth are probably going to kill me for this, but whatever. Yeah in the past technicalities were important. However during the last war when everyone was bitching about everything and capitalizing on every little mistake I'm pretty sure the staff made a ruling "yeah just assume that shields are up". We were all trying to win, but the constant bitching and capitalizing on tiny mistakes and technicalities was getting out of hand.

TRF is a place for us to write, not argue (although both will happen in a fleet battle, it is a guarantee). Let the Union edit their post, a little forgiveness doesn't kill anyone. Or at the very least say they dropped their particle shields below their ships to launch their fighters and try to find a way to take advantage of that. Using writing skills, tactics and effort to win a battle, not capitalizing on stupid little mistakes that your opponent made (for something like this). If they RPed doing something that was a mistake, or accidentaly ignored an action or something, yeah take advantage of it, but for something like forgetting to drop shields before launching fighters? That doesn't help anyone.

This is one of those spots where official sources are very sketchy, and in fact outright contradictory. TRF has always had two shielding systems, energy and particle. One for energy weapons and one for physical weapons. All of our R&D's have these ratings, many an argument has been posed and settled because of them and more than once this debate has come up.

I think (not a ruling, just a staff opinion) that we should just go with what we've done in the past. If you guys want to hash it out, dig up referances and formulate a new way of working shields (both ship and planetary) by all means, go for it. I'll even help. But for this RP, I'd say just go with what we've done in the past countless times.

I would be inclined to agree with Titus on that score.

This is largely an aside, but...

TRF has always had two shielding systems, energy and particle. One for energy weapons and one for physical weapons. All of our R&D's have these ratings, many an argument has been posed and settled because of them and more than once this debate has come up.

Actually, Titus, yours are pretty much the only R&Ds I remember ever having seperate particle and ray shield ratings... most people just chuck a "shield rating" number in and that means combat shields.

Which, judging by canon, is the way things are done - ships that suffer missile attacks and lose their shielding are then vulnerable to laser fire.

All of the canon evidence I've seen points to one set of shields intercepting energy and physical weapons, and that is mostly how TRF has played it in the past.

The only example of ray shields being explictly mentioned as an "always on missile deterremt" was a technicality in which someone forgot to raise shields and was attacked with missiles...

But by and large, whether I fire missiles or lasers at you, your "shields" decrease. Same is true of the EU.