: I just checked by playing a bit. It does the same thing in the Infinity
: version as Steve suggested. I never knew that. I thought the player was
: still limited to a maximum of 3x shields. In fact, you can make it as high
: as you wish. Steve is right, that makes the rest of the scenario trivial.
The HUD graphics code is limited to displaying the purple (or in this case gray) bar that means 3x shields. However, if you keep on charging, you are still getting more and more health. If you go way above 3x health and take some damage, you can watch the bar run all the way back to 2x health and then start over from 3x.
The maximum quantity of health the engine supports is 32,768 health points (IIRC a single bar is 150 points). So, yeah, you can make yourself pretty much invincible if you're willing to invest several minutes banging on the fusion mace second trigger.
I wouldn't think it was possible to even come close to beating the game without this weapon. That's quite an accomplishment, Steve, if you really didn't know about this :)