Psycho Romeo

While I'm totally willing to admit I'm wrong, it doesn't account for a critical mechanic I've been told and have experienced - a single large IFG is more effective than numerous small ones because one field covering everything is more reliable than ten small fields covering a small handful of things. If the fields did in fact allow blocks to share damage, that'd make perfect sense.

Got the info from a vet off discord. It also aligns with my personal experience. Bump a rock without an IFG and watch the block crumple. Do the same with an IFG and watch half your health vanish instead. Works best (if suicide is your measure of "best") if the IFG is large and covers your entire ship. Compare that to an IFG that only covers one or two small blocks.

Ignore Hellatze, he doesn't know what he's talking about. So the Integrity Field Generator makes your ship larger, i.e. easier to hit and easier to run into things? How is that supposed to improve your ship? xD I thought I read somewhere that the IFG "reduces damage per block by 10". I hope that's 10% and not just a flat "10", because that makes little difference in the post-Iron game, if that's what it does. To put it simply, it is as you said the first time. Blocks within an integrity field generator will share the damage they take with each other, to a degree. This is great because now your fragile blocks can utilize some of the durability of your tougher blocks. This is terrible because instead of just breaking off when destroyed, that block can now cause massive damage to your ship. I highly advise putting a bumper in front of your ship and not covering it with your IFG.

I can discern two things from your rant: 1) You just crashed and lost everything, because you put everything in one ship. 2) You had an integrity field generator covering your whole ship. Bad idea. Don't blame you though, easy mistake to make. You may or may not know you can turn collision damage off/down. Can't tell.