The shield bubble only shows itself when it’s hit — and a hull hit is impossible to miss.
- Invisible bubble: The permanent shield arc around the ship is gone. When a shot lands, the bubble becomes visible exactly there: a patch of force field with a hexagon grid, bright and filled at the point of impact, fading outward, plus a ripple across the surface and a bright core where the projectile bursts. Afterwards the whole bubble shimmers in its honeycomb grid for just under half a second.
- Fading shield: The less shield you have left, the tighter the bubble hugs the hull (down to 72 %), and its color shifts from magenta through amber to red.
- Shattering glass: When the shield breaks, the bubble shatters into 22 shards that spin away into space, with a flash of light and a shock ring. The screen shakes hard.
- Hull hits: much stronger shaking, a red border that flashes in from the edges of the screen, and a brief hitstop — the world almost stands still for an instant. The ship still flashes red. Hits that punch through the shield (kinetic) get a smaller version of this.
- In online co-op, the red border only flashes for the player whose ship was hit.