Survival and Emergency Preparedness

Soliciting discussion on the ability of the Shield Cracker to have an OL function. The Seltorian PC, even when using my proposed combined shot and lessened impulse delay is still not a powerhouse crunch weapon, particularly with it's lousy range breaks. A combined shot (assuming a 4xPC cruiser) 'could' potentially do 48 points of damage but it would have to be just about at point blank range and hit with all four. And it costs a lot of power. So it isn't something that is going to happen often anyway.

So tossing around a proposed modification to the Shield Cracker. Right now it costs 2 points to yield 4 damage to shields-only (no damage to the ship ever). Perhaps allow an OL feature of 3 points to yield 6 damage or even 4 points to yield 8 damage. Again, expensive and not at all feasible for frequent use as other system on the Selt can be power hungry. But it would be a feature that exists if/when it can be used. Still doesn't damage the ship, but may help with an Alpha strike for other weapons, some of which may not hit due to range breaks.

X-tech Shield Crackers have a direct fire damage mode. Perhaps that would be a reasonable tweak in GW-era Shield Crackers? Or allow the SC to have a capacitor that is capable of holding up to X amount of power, say 5 points like the Particle Cannon capacitors? Allow it to also fire twice per turn with an 8-impulse delay using two points during each firing?