Sovereign Class Ablative Armor: Difference between revisions

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Originally developed in 2367 during the Defiant Class Development Project, ablative armor is still considered to be a significant breakthrough in starship defense by effectively creating a beam-retardant layer that greatly increases a ship's life expectancy in battle.  Originally deployed only on ships of the Defiant class, ablative armor showed remarkable dispersion properties against various beam-type energy weapons, including the various types of phaser, disruptor, polaron, and focused-plasma beams employed by nearly all threat races.  The armor works by first dispersing incoming beam energy across the hull of the ship where, after reaching an undisclosed threshold, causes part of the armor to boil away, taking with it a large fraction of that energy.  The effect also creates a modest vapor cloud, which effectively disperses the incoming beam further, causing it to do less direct damage to the hull.  It should be noted, however, that the armor is not a hull replacement, but a supplement and must be replaced over time due to the boiling away process.