So in PS1 you had an armor bar and once that was depleted you were then taking health damage. Armor that was destroyed didn't regenerate, you had to use a kit to repair the armor damage value.

This function has fundamentally changed now in PS2.

You now will have a shield bar whose value depends on your armor and skill set. For the sake of discussion, let us assume that light armor has 100 points of shield damage. Shield damage works the same way that Armor damage did in PS1. Depending on what weapon you were shot with, what type of ammo they were using, and the distance at which you were shot, defined how much armor damage you just took from being shot once. Same-Same with the Shield in PS2. Here is the difference. Shield damage naturally regenerates over time. During the closed beta and from reconning the GDC footage it appears that base Shield regen is about 4 per second. So you could regen from 0 to 100 in Light Armor in 20 seconds. This is where it is like tribes and other shield regen games. Once you stop taking damage, there is a 5 second buffer before you start shield regeneration. With all this said, expect to see passive skills in the trees that effect this game mechanic as well as side grades from the cash store.

Don't make me have'ta Troll ya Bro!