Personal Disruptor Shield
A form of energy bubble that surrounds the unit holding/carrying the shield device. Protects the user against most forms of attack, eg: Armour Piercing, High Explosive, Incendiary, Plasma, Laser, Disruptor Beam, Devastator Beam, Acid Spit, Entropy Enzyme and impact damage from falls. Personal Shields only have a limited charge, and once this charge is exhausted, the device is destroyed. It will recharge over a short time, but this may be too long if the tactical mission is hot. These shield devices may be placed anywhere in the inventory of an Agent, it does not need to be in the unit's hand to function. To capture for study,one must stun the owner with gas, use a mind bender or use the Toxigun in order to avoid destroying the disruptor shield.
The Agent also may carry more than one. The shields will lose energy and be destroyed 1 by 1. Incoming damage will always target the shield with lower energy. Using multiple shields is therefore either very resource intensive in terms of destroyed shields... or ultimately pointless, except as insurance. (If you are able to preserve 1 shield through tactical means, the 2nd shield is completely redundant)
They are not kidding about only being able to reproduce this with great effort... manufacturing time for this is very high. The best source of shields is to get them directly from the aliens. Bear in mind that alien clusters tend to explode spectacularly, destroying the shields, so be especially careful around chokepoints and UFO entrances. An alternative source is to raid the COS with toxiguns and mindbenders. Or perform friendly raids using stun gas or Mindbenders.
Cocky agents may remove Megapol armor entirely and use shields to gain excellent increases in speed. A minimum of 2 shields is recommended for this, although the strategy becomes pointless after researching the featherweight X-COM Disruptor Armor.
When a shield is destroyed, the remaining leftover damage vanishes as if it weren't there.
Official Entry: "The Personal Disruptor Shield generates an energy field which warps the space around the user. This causes beams or projectiles to be deflected and dissipated. Any hit causes the shield's energy to drain and if it reaches a critically low level it will malfunction. It is a highly sophisticated device that we can reproduce only with great effort."
See Also
