Shield System - QtFRED Help

# Shield System

Opens via Editors › Shield System.

A convenience tool for enabling or disabling shields on ships in bulk, by ship class or by IFF team. Each side of the dialog is an independent batch operation; pressing an Apply button writes the shield flag on every existing ship of the chosen class or team and also records the choice as the default for ships of that class or team placed afterwards. Close the dialog with the window's close button when you are done — there is no separate save step.

## By ship class (left panel)

Pick a ship class from the dropdown. The Currently: label shows the current state for that class — Has shields, No shields, or Mixed when ships of the class disagree. Choose Has shield system or No shield system and click Apply to current class to commit. When the state is Mixed, neither radio is preselected and the Apply button stays disabled until you pick a value, so you cannot flatten per-ship customisation by accident.

## By IFF team (right panel)

Works the same way but operates on every ship of the selected team. Use Apply to current team to commit.

Each Apply only touches the axis whose button you pressed. The other side's selection is not affected, so you can switch back and forth and apply class- and team-level changes independently in the same session.
When both a ship class setting and a team setting apply to the same ship, the ship class setting takes precedence.
The Shield System dialog, the Ship Editor (Initial Status and Ship Flags tabs), and Global Ship Flags all write to the same per-ship shield flag. There is no fixed precedence between them; whichever is applied last takes effect. A typical workflow is to use this dialog to establish a baseline across the mission, then make individual adjustments per ship in the Ship Editor. Reopening this dialog re-reads the state from the ships themselves, so if individual ships have been edited since the last bulk apply, the class or team will show as Mixed; applying without changing the radio choice is not possible in that state, which protects per-ship edits from being silently overwritten.