The Soleans and their two cousin races possess some of the most effective and unique armor in the known universe. This highly effective armor also played into the early Solean mentality to dismiss shields as a viable defensive mechanism. It didn’t help that they were also quite talented at defeating energy shields. Another factor that played into that dismissal of energy shielding and perhaps the most important was their reliance on stealth technology. All Solean ships of that era possessed cloaking technology, and the Soleans were very good with cloaking technology. Most races could fire torpedoes while cloaked, but the Soleans were also able to fire their energy weapons without disrupting their cloak. This led to a tendency for them to engage opponents while cloaked during that era.

This tendency also meant they couldn’t really use shields. Cloaks and shields were fundamentally incompatible. This meant that if an opponent could see through their cloak, and they were hit, it would be their armor that absorbed the hit. As such good armor was very important to the Solean people.

Now then you may be wondering what makes Solean armor so special? The answer is in how it operates.

The armor itself is a multilayered construct of floating plates and shock absorbing gel integrated with advanced circuitry. This circuitry allows an energy field to be run through the plating, a field that drastically strengthens the integrity of the armor, and also absorbs some of the energy directed at the hull. In addition, a number of special devices called energy absorbers are embedded in the plates. They absorb some of the energy from incoming weapons fire and shunt that energy directly into the Armor Integrity Field often shortened to the AIF. Those factors alone make their armor very impressive, but in addition to that a dispersion field is also projected around the hull. This field acts on incoming weapons fire and attempts to disperse it. Concentrated energy bolts traveling through the field often end up hitting the hull in a much wider area than they would have otherwise, because of this field.

Forcing incoming fire to hit a wider area has the benefit of not only weakening the penetrating force of incoming energy bolts but also allowing more energy to be absorbed by the energy absorbers and the AIF field. This makes the armor very effective at stopping energy weapons fire, especially pulsed energy weapons.

Projectile weapons can bypass the dispersion field. However that is where the shock gel layer comes into play. When a kinetic impact hits the plating, the energy of that impact is dispersed through the gel over the surface of the hull. Thereby allowing more absorbers to act on the impact than if the gel wasn’t present. The gel also absorbs a significant chunk of the impact on its own.

The same deal happens with the explosive burst of a missile or torpedo. The energy of the shockwaves would be absorbed and dispersed by the combination of the gel and absorbers. While the AIF ensures the hull maintains integrity and even absorbs a chunk of the blast itself.

As such Solean armor is highly resilient and able to withstand phenomenal amounts of weapons fire before failing.