Being inspired by the 'Egarian Geode Mesh' armour upgrade, I figured that this could be up-scaled a bit to ship sizes.

By layering tonnes and tonnes of into his ship's armour a Captain gets increased protection from las-macrobatteries and even lances as the alien stones dissipate the light all along the ship's hull.

Light Dissipation: Increase the ship's armour by 2 against all laser-based macrobatteries. In addition, reduce damage done to the ship by lances by 1.

Dead Weight: Decrease this vessel’s Manoeuvrability by –2.

Space Requirements: 1 for Transports, Raiders and Frigates, 2 for Light Cruisers and Cruisers.

Power Requirements: 0

Basically, this is just like Armour plating, with the Armour Rule replaced with the Light Dissipation Rule. What do you think?

An interesting and basically well thought out idea actually…However..you forgot one important point for a RT that they always consider…the cost in terms of Ship Points. As this would be a exceedingly rare and difficult upgrade to aquire…the test to even locate a place suitable to DO the work would be at leat mediocre difficulty…or higher…and then to aquire the materials TO do the upgrade…even moreso ( more aquiring ENOUGH of them to do it as a ship isnt the size of a dingy afterall..and aquiring THAT many tonnes of the material..then refining them to suit the purpose…would take time and ALOT of thrones/favors/SP for final calculation…the highest SP ive seen them add in was only SP+3 to purchase the upgrade..but for something like this..id prolly go with SP+5 ( due both to the rarity of the upgrade AND for its ability to lessen effects of the imperiums more prodigious weapons )

Though i would actually go with reducing the damage dealt by 1d5 or even a d10 ( to reflect the different angles and distances of being hit and the varied efficacy of that particular area ) but it would still give the lance and laser batteries the ability to do some damage reguardless..even at 1d10 less…they still have their bonus ( plus whatever that ship has to add to it )

Just my two thrones though…take it for what you will

Ah, you are of course right. I thought of it along the lines of an endeavour - harvest the material yourself, bring it somewhere to be processed, have someone integrate it into your armour. So more of a series of tests and acquisition rolls than a straight ship point buy. After all, this stuff doesn't come off the shelf.

But I wouldn't improve the protection any more, especially against lances. Lances don't do a lot of damage despite huge power draw. The only thing making them viable is their ability to ignore armour. If you take that away, they become useless.