Common Upgrades - Shield Booster

[dannypsl]

Hi,

I was able to get a game of FTL in this past week with a few other folks and noticed that the Common Upgrade - Shield Booster seems really over powered.  I had been playing solo rules for a while so I didn't notice it changed during fleet creation, but the others did and wow.  I don't know if it was just a lot of lucky dice rolls or what, but I couldn't land a hit that would stick for anything - they kept with the 5+ saves.

Any chance on making the rule a 6+ or limited to only one model?  Otherwise is just seems really over powered 

Thanks

[onepagerules]

The shield booster is one of those rules that really changes how you feel about it depending on your rolls. Statistically speaking, the shield booster is useless 66% of the time, so it can hardly be called OP, however it simply FEELS bad to see your opponent shrug off all your damage. If it was changed to a 6+, it would be useless 83% of the time, and at that point why even bother taking it?

[dannypsl]

I hear you on that, and agree statistically, but when the dice are rolling good for the blocking it’s hard to see 3 hits all get blocked.

Any thoughts on having a limit to its effectiveness in a round or engagement? I’m thinking something like another space ship fleet game where once the shields work so much they need time to recharge until after the round?

Maybe it was just how everything was rolling, but even the guys with the upgrade (on every ship) thought it could use a tweak. To the point where next game we play the house rule is not to use it, which would be fine but we wanted to provide some feedback.

Aside from that everyone really liked the game and we’ve got another one scheduled for next game night. 😀

[federebus]

With my group we changed the rules to:

Armored Plating: This upgrade takes 6 damage to be disabled.

Shield Booster: When taking a point of damage to this upgrade roll one die, on a 4+ it is ignored.

This way they (on average) double the damage needed to destroy the single upgrade, without making the other upgrades of the ship tankier just by existing