About the sur mesh for ships/shield bubbles:

I was testing a lot for Schmackbolzen’s obj to sur converter.

I also tested the usage of shield bubbles and weapon sur-meshes on the ship.
I found out: A shield bubble works like the mesh for a weapon.
These additional meshes are always solid for players flying the ship. This means, if a player uses this ship, you will always have collision with your shieldbubble, even if you don’t have any shield on your ship. Same with weapons.

Just NPCs (including stations) can toggle these additional HP-sur-meshes.

About the shield-objects:

shield_link works like this:
shield_link =
shield_object (defined in select_equip),
Hardpoint where the hp_child (defined in select_equip) is attached to (means teleported to the same position and rotation),
Hardpoints for shields using this object.

[Shield] (shield link object) uses “empty” 3db files that just contain the hp-point defined at hp_child.
The sur file of these 3db files is now used, because a 3db/cmp file always connects to a sur file of the same name in the same directory.

For example:
shield_link = l_freighter_shield01, HpMount, HpShield01
The object “l_freighter_shield01” has one HP, called SpConnect. This one is the hp_child.
The whole object will be moved and rotated until SpConnect has the same position and rotation as HpMount
Shields using HpShield01 will use this shield bubble.

For me it always seemed like the object defined in shield_link is not used by the game (thats why your cruiser gets always hit on the hull). Means: Use any standard shield-object there and everything will be finde.

Correct me if I’m wrong.