Interesting. I haven't read Steel 7 myself, only the original Crossbone. I figure that era would be the only real source where we see VSBRs and I-fields interact. I'm curious as to whether the Cornix's headmounted weapon you mentioned was outright stated to be a VSBR or was simply powerful enough to overcome beam shields (such as the aforementioned battleship beams in F91)? Probably no clear answer on that matter, though, as vague as it sounds when you mentioned "whatever" there.Cmdr Harabec wrote:I can't recall any scene showing an I-Field stopping a VSBR in any media off the top of my head, but it's pretty well implied it would. We see that beam shields aren't limited to being broken by VSBRs in F91 - battleship fire tears through the beam shields with repeated hits. I-Fields have been known to stop such fire (and even more powerful weapons, as is the case with the X-3 mostly stropping the Divinidad's enormous built in head cannon) with little issues. The containment I-Field of beam shields and beam sabres etc are much weaker than the full power I-Field barrier systems, and thus more easily broken. Such is the trade off for requiring less power to utilize.Ceiling_Squid wrote:The question I have then...does this mean that a VSBR can penetrate a more conventional I-field barrier, like what we see on the Big Zam and other mobile armors? If the I-field is the key to a beam shield's function here, I figure it would operate that way.
There is one instance I can recall of an I-Field barrier ever being "broken," and that's in Crossbone Steel Seven. The Patchwork X-1 puts up its I-Field directly in front of the Cornix's headmounted VSBR/beam cannon/whatever (shield piercing weapon, though, as seen in the first chapter when it pierces a Flint's beam shield) and the beam is sort of deflected, but it's so close it still hits part of the arm and melts it away. It's not really breaking it, but more it seems that the hand was so close to the barrier the beam could only be deflected so much. This is a little at odds with how we've seen the X-3's I-fields emit before, but perhaps it could have been forming and expanding or something. Who knows? At any rate, that's the only example I can think of.
As someone who's interested in possibly running a Gundam game with Mekton Z tabletop that'll go into the late UC era, I suppose I'll have to just fudge it, not having any actual reference. I imagine that a VSBR set to max-penetration might be able to slip through an I-field with enough particle speed, but unfortunately the canon and semi-canon sources seem to be pretty silent on this. Maybe in-game I'll leave it to a percentile roll or something.