watching both star trek and stargate today

[jimbeamjunior]

why do ships etc continue having shields that cover the hull of their ship/station

even if the beam doesnt get through the shield, the resulting impact would still cause structural damage alone

whereas a bubble shield like atlantis' is far better imo, then even the physical impact of the blast doesnt affect the thing its trying to protect

[Ed]

the disadvantage of a bubble is it increases your size stuff that would be a near miss on a hull hugging shield will hit a bubble shield thats the rational in star wars but with their weapons that makes alot of sence not so much in stargate as no really dodges much

[lordofseas]

why do ships etc continue having shields that cover the hull of their ship/station

even if the beam doesnt get through the shield, the resulting impact would still cause structural damage alone

whereas a bubble shield like atlantis' is far better imo, then even the physical impact of the blast doesnt affect the thing its trying to protect

I'll just say that the answer to that is inertial dampeners. Like the Ancient personal shield.

[jds1982]

Every shield I've seen in Star Trek is kinda egg shaped, which might lend it some kind of inherent strength, eggs are pretty strong.

[jimbeamjunior]

Every shield I've seen in Star Trek is kinda egg shaped, which might lend it some kind of inherent strength, eggs are pretty strong.

see i remember it on star trek being that once, but yesterday on DS9 the place was bein whooped by the klingons and the blasts were practically impacting the station

[Merlin1701]

DS9 has a "bubble"...every ship I have seen in Star Trek has a "bubble".

[jimbeamjunior]

DS9 has a "bubble"...every ship I have seen in Star Trek has a "bubble".

like i said yesterday it didnt

the klingon beams were hitting right on top of the station

maybe the shield diagrams are bubbles but defo the otherday the station was being rocked by the blasts even though the shields were up, indicating that the physical impact was still affecting the station

with a bubble that wouldnt happen

[Merlin1701]

watch the first episode again, They use the shield to move the station ...its a bubble.

I know which episode you are talking about, its called "The Way of The Warrior part 2" during your example the station is under attack by a large klingon fleet. The way understand the idea of energy shields is that they deflect an energy blast. however in Atlantis and Star Trek, any constant attack causes the shield to fail in that area.
http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/me...er_shields.jpg
image from memory alpha

[Duskofdead]

why do ships etc continue having shields that cover the hull of their ship/station

even if the beam doesnt get through the shield, the resulting impact would still cause structural damage alone

whereas a bubble shield like atlantis' is far better imo, then even the physical impact of the blast doesnt affect the thing its trying to protect

Nearly all shields seen in Star Trek were either bubbles or elongated (egg/oval) shapes. I see no particular reason these shapes would necessarily damage the ship structurally anymore than a spherical shield shaping.

One benefit of making the shield shape oval instead of spherical is target aspect. A lot of ships in Star Trek are "long and flat" relatively speaking, so a bubble shaped as a sphere covering the whole mass would be protecting a lot of empty space.

It's also been stated many times in Star Trek that extending the range of shields requires more energy and weakens the shield. I believe this was stated in Stargate Atlantis, as well.

In Star Trek as both the in-universe tech and visual effects budgets improved over time, you saw the shields get slimmer and slimmer around the hull of a ship, to the point where in Star Trek Nemesis the shields appeared to be completely conformal to the hull of the ship itself, rather than any one solid geometric shape. I always conceived the "reason" for this being that more sophisticated ships better equipped for combat would have multiple shield emitters (and better sophisticated ones) able to generate a specific shape of field in one specific direction. So basically each generator is just making a field shaped just to protect that "segment" of the ship, and when combined, all generators create adjacent fields which completely envelop the ship in a shield which resembles the shape of the hull.

The advantages to this would be smaller target profile, greater energy efficiency, and stronger shields (the same amount of energy being used to maintain a smaller, more compact shield closer to the hull, rather than a huge balloon bubble around the ship.)

[jimbeamjunior]

Nearly all shields seen in Star Trek were either bubbles or elongated (egg/oval) shapes. I see no particular reason these shapes would necessarily damage the ship structurally anymore than a spherical shield shaping.

One benefit of making the shield shape oval instead of spherical is target aspect. A lot of ships in Star Trek are "long and flat" relatively speaking, so a bubble shaped as a sphere covering the whole mass would be protecting a lot of empty space.

It's also been stated many times in Star Trek that extending the range of shields requires more energy and weakens the shield. I believe this was stated in Stargate Atlantis, as well.

In Star Trek as both the in-universe tech and visual effects budgets improved over time, you saw the shields get slimmer and slimmer around the hull of a ship, to the point where in Star Trek Nemesis the shields appeared to be completely conformal to the hull of the ship itself, rather than any one solid geometric shape. I always conceived the "reason" for this being that more sophisticated ships better equipped for combat would have multiple shield emitters (and better sophisticated ones) able to generate a specific shape of field in one specific direction. So basically each generator is just making a field shaped just to protect that "segment" of the ship, and when combined, all generators create adjacent fields which completely envelop the ship in a shield which resembles the shape of the hull.

The advantages to this would be smaller target profile, greater energy efficiency, and stronger shields (the same amount of energy being used to maintain a smaller, more compact shield closer to the hull, rather than a huge balloon bubble around the ship.)

hard to disagree with that

im just thinking that with having shield cling to the hull so to speak, then your ship will still take structural damage from the physical impact of the blast hitting the shield

its like wearing a bullet proof vest, even though the bullet doesnt get through, you still have a bruise and could even have internal damage if the shot is close to you and of a high calibre

[lordofseas]

hard to disagree with that

im just thinking that with having shield cling to the hull so to speak, then your ship will still take structural damage from the physical impact of the blast hitting the shield

its like wearing a bullet proof vest, even though the bullet doesnt get through, you still have a bruise and could even have internal damage if the shot is close to you and of a high calibre

Velocity of impact.

[jds1982]

hard to disagree with that

im just thinking that with having shield cling to the hull so to speak, then your ship will still take structural damage from the physical impact of the blast hitting the shield

its like wearing a bullet proof vest, even though the bullet doesnt get through, you still have a bruise and could even have internal damage if the shot is close to you and of a high calibre

Are you assuming that the shield will deform with the impact, or just that the energy of the shot will get transferred to the shield and therefore the ship?

[P-90_177]

like i said yesterday it didnt

the klingon beams were hitting right on top of the station

maybe the shield diagrams are bubbles but defo the otherday the station was being rocked by the blasts even though the shields were up, indicating that the physical impact was still affecting the station

with a bubble that wouldnt happen

DS9 does have a few issues with shields. Basically it seems often that they were not used in order to increase dramatic effect. Way of the warrior is the most prime example but during many of the large fleet battles in the dominion war it appears like ships have no shields at all.

[Duskofdead]

hard to disagree with that

im just thinking that with having shield cling to the hull so to speak, then your ship will still take structural damage from the physical impact of the blast hitting the shield

its like wearing a bullet proof vest, even though the bullet doesnt get through, you still have a bruise and could even have internal damage if the shot is close to you and of a high calibre

Well I'm kinda going off on a tangent here but I agree with you there's lots of problems with how shields are implemented in sci fi.

For all intents and purposes, shields are treated exactly like armor. Peck away at them enough, and they collapse.

There are two main "explanations" on what shields are; one is that they are an energy barrier in which case nothing thrown at it should "weaken" it unless it was a type of matter or energy which "absorbed" the sort of energy used to create the barrier. The other is that it actually creates a space distortion which alters the trajectory of incoming fire (this is the original technical explanation of Trek shields.) Now with #2, basically, as long as you can maintain the shield, it should alter the trajectory of anything shot at it and how "strong" the weapon being shot at it shoudln't matter, because that weapon will never hit. It gets "bounced" off in a different direction. In Stargate, Ancient shields seem to lean more towards this explanation as well.

So the problem there is that if you have a field that changes the direction of weapons directed at it, then "omg shields are down to 40%!" makes no sense. Weapon fire shouldn't do jack until you basically run out of energy to power your shield generator. Hitting it with more weapons shouldn't weaken it faster or anything of the sort. The problem there of course is that if writers stuck to that, basically shields would make you invulnerable and that would remove dramatic tension.

In regards to structural damage, there's a whole separate tangent. With the magnitude of weapon firepower being discussed in EITHER Trek or Stargate, (well, in Stargate I'm assuming like Goa'uld level firepower or similar, not human railguns or whatever) almost ANY shot should almost completely vaporize their targets if they get past the shield. But of course weapons fire we see in ALL sci fi when impacting ship hulls looks more like someone was tossing hand grenades or firecrackers. Most viewers don't notice that kind of detail but when you've heard something ridiculous like "Goa'uld weapons fire 5000 Mega/Giga/Whatever Watts" and you see them hit and it looks like someone threw a cherry bomb, it's really silly. If all advanced spacefaring aliens are building ships made of alloys THAT resistant to energy, why do they need shields at all?

[Ouroboros]

If your ship's outer hull had a particularly complex shape, think Romulan Warbird not Star Destroyer, it could actually cost you less total shield surface area to just make a tight fitting bubble around it than project a shield over every outer hull surface.

That being the case though unless you're throwing physics out the window your shield is going to transfer momentum to your ship when it takes a hit. This might not be such a big issue with things like lasers or nukes but if you eat a multi ton kinetic projectile at a fair percentage of lightspeed expect to see your shield generator flying out of your ship at extreme velocity.

The reason is that when it comes to a kinetic impact the shield is only as strong as what's securing it to the ship. You could have a shield of infinite strength, but of it's anchored to the cargo bay floor with chewing gum and best wishes, it'll just become another kinetic projectile itself when something carrying sufficient momentum collides with the outer "bubble" or hull hugging surface or whatever.

As such vs an adversary with kinetic weaponry shields aren't really much more useful than hull armour, as their main limitation is still going to be your materials strength. Only in this case the strength of whatever you're bracing/mounting the shield with, instead of the strength of some kind of outer plating.

For anyone still not sure what I'm talking about imagine a man holding a shield, like a knight's shield, that covers him nearly head to toe and is made out of a metal that can not be destroyed. So he stands there and you shoot a few rifle bullets at him and they bounce off his invincible shield, next you swing at him with a large bat and he staggers a bit, then you hit him with a wrecking ball and he dies as his arm breaks into a billion pieces, followed shortly by the rest of him.