Shield belt

The shield belt is a defensive utility item that generates a bubble of energy to absorb projectiles. It blocks projectile attacks both from the outside and from within, meaning colonists will not fire ranged weapons with an equipped shield belt, and instead are limited to melee weapons only.

Acquisition

As a complicated piece of technology, Shield Belts can only be made at the machining table and requires Shields to be researched in order to be constructed. Crafting the belt requires 50 Steel, 20 Plasteel, 2 Components, 14,000 ticks (3.89 mins) of work, and a Crafting skill of 6.

Alternatively, they can be received as a quest reward, purchased from traders, or found on Raiders.

Summary

Shield belts are worn at the waist, and use their own charge to stop damage from incoming ranged attacks and explosions. The amount of charge is dependent on the belt's quality, with the default being 110 points. This charge is depleted at a rate of 3.3 charge per 1 point of damage from attacks. If an attack would be sufficient to completely deplete the shield's charge, then the rest of its damage is negated, and the shield temporarily broken. The shield does not prevent pawns from being set on fire^{[Fact Check]}, explosions from detonating, or being staggered from weapons with sufficient stopping power.

Shield belts constantly recharge at a rate dependent on their quality, so long as they are not broken. However, once a shields charge is completely expended, the shield will break and the belt will be temporarily disabled. Similarly, upon being hit by an EMP from any source they instantly lose all power and the shield will break. In either case, it takes 3,200 ticks (53.33 secs) after breaking before it begins to recharge again. They will recharge starting from 20 points, meaning they can be easily broken once again.

Wearing a shield belt prevents the user from firing, but not equipping, ranged weapons. They can still use them as blunt melee weapons. The ranged weapons integrated into the grenadier armor and phoenix armor are also disabled. Note that shield belt wearers will not fire even if a shield belt is inactivated by damage or EMP.

Quality table

The following table lists how much protection a shield belt provides at each quality level.

Quality	Awful	Poor	Normal	Good	Excellent	Masterwork	Legendary
Maximum charge	66	88	110	132	154	187	231
Damage capacity	20	26.7	33.3	40	46.7	56.7	70
Recharge rate (energy per second)	11.7	12.4	13	13.7	14.3	15.6	16.9
Market Value	195	290	390	485	585	975	1950

Visuals

The shield takes the form of a white bubble around them, which will shrink and diminish as the charge reduces and will vanish if the shield is downed. It shows up when the colonist is drafted, or under ranged attack.

Shielded colonists (left) and unshielded ones (right).
Full shield (left) compared to nearly depleted shield (right).

Analysis

The shield belt provides a substantial amount of defense for melee pawns. It blocks great portions of gunfire, which allows them to close in on ranged enemies. Pawns with a gun in melee combat won't fire it, so approaching ranged enemies makes them much less dangerous to your entire squad. As shield belts constantly recharge until broken, shielded pawns are effectively invulnerable when facing enemies that have a DPS below 1/3.3x the recharge rate of their belt.

Shield belts make it viable to bait enemy fire without placing your colonists at serious risk. Simply equip a colonist with a shield and run them in front of your line. Enemy AI tends to target the closest victim possible, so they'll target your shield bait. This is especially effective against mechanoids, to absorb those lethal charge lance shots and stray minigun hits.

The shield belt can be used in combination with Locust armor to provide an equivalent to the Jump pack while still being able to equip the shield belt, while the shield belt is used to compensate for the very low sharp protection of the locust armor.

Trivia

Despite requiring an industrial research project and obviously being a high tech piece of equipment, the shield belt is actually defined as having an medieval tech level. This is likely just an oversight.
Shield belts bare some similarity to shields in the Dune franchise, mainly in that they do not allow any high-speed object to enter or exit the shield, rendering guns useless to shield belt users.

Version history

0.9.722 - Added as the Personal shield.
Alpha 17 - Renamed from Personal shield to Shield belt. Now has a crafting recipe and also gained a slight retexture.
Beta 19 - its crafting cost and market value is greatly reduced.
1.3.3066 - Wearing a shield belt now prevents firing the integrated launcher in the grenadier armor and phoenix armor . Previously they could be fired but could only target only adjacent squares (including diagonals).
1.4.3523 - Fix: Explosive projectiles disappear when impacting a shield. They now detonate when impacting.
1.4.3531 - Children can now wear shield belts.

Shields used to block attacks from Spike traps as if they were ranged attacks, however this is no longer the case.

Original Personal Shield sprite

Utility

Utility: Firefoam pop pack • Orbital bombardment targeter • Orbital power beam targeter • Psychic shock lance • Psychic insanity lance • Shield belt • Smokepop pack • Tornado generator • Low-shield pack • Jump pack • Orbital mech cluster targeter • Bandwidth pack • Control pack • Tox pack • Biomutation lance • Biomutation pulser • Deadlife pack • Disruptor flare pack • Shard animal pulser • Shard insanity lance • Shard shock lance • Turret pack