Shield inconsistencies.

[sgc]

Mind you, it certainly seems like the shields are pretty bad compared with what the ancients could do later.

A while back someone did a calculation that it would take between 10 and 100 ZPM's worth of energy to dial the Destiny. I assume it would take about the same amount to dial back, and apparently the power reserves of a seed ship and that of Destiny would be enough. So assuming just 10 ZPM's of energy to dial, and also assuming that the seed ship and Destiny have the same power capacity, then Destiny has 5 ZPM-worth of energy stored in it at full charge.
Atlantis, with one ZPM apparently can withstand a fleet of hive ships constantly bombarding its shields for a week! (And no sparks either ), so they must have got a whole lot better at shielding since the time of Destiny's launch
Mind you, given the frequency that they seem to need to recharge, I have to assume that FTL drive is an incredible power-hog! No wonder they moved to hyperdrives

--Rakhal

They aren't bad. They can go right through a star. They are just primitive.

I wish that people would stop pulling an arbitrary number of ZPM's out of their noses for Destiny's trip. There's no way of confirming it.

The Ancients used FTL drives for Destiny and the seed ships because of the possibility of using the Stargate to get there, along with the power requirements. Hyperdrives have no limit on speed, directly related to power. FTL has a finite speed, increasing as time in FTL increases. However, you have to constantly drop out to recalculate course so you don't crash into planets, stars, ships, or floating replicators at superluminal speed. Destiny used FTL so that it could go faster and so that the Stargate could be used to get to Destiny's location.

[Blistna]

The worst thing for me is who build a shield that after 4 or 5 hits causes consoles to explode. Seriously? I'm fed up of watching sci-fi shows where the shield seems to trigger **** loads of pyrotechnics inside.

If shields work with energy being delivered through conduits and suddenly there was a massive increase of energy hitting your shields, the shield would have to rapidly increase and if those energy conduits couldn't handle the rapid growth of energy needed to fight back the force hitting your shield, things would blow up. Maybe not as dramatic as the TV makes it appear, but things would get physically damaged.

Also we don't know how the shields work in terms of holding back the sun. We know it could protect the crew with little energy, it could be there are two shields -- one for the sun, and one for defense. But again, since we don't know how it works we can't begin to guess how it works.

[sgc]

If shields work with energy being delivered through conduits and suddenly there was a massive increase of energy hitting your shields, the shield would have to rapidly increase and if those energy conduits couldn't handle the rapid growth of energy needed to fight back the force hitting your shield, things would blow up. Maybe not as dramatic as the TV makes it appear, but things would get physically damaged.

Also we don't know how the shields work in terms of holding back the sun. We know it could protect the crew with little energy, it could be there are two shields -- one for the sun, and one for defense. But again, since we don't know how it works we can't begin to guess how it works.

If Destiny were brand new, then the shield could probably handle the attacking ships without all the sparks. The conduits have been damaged, and they have not had time to reroute all of the conduits.

[Gatefan1976]

If shields work with energy being delivered through conduits and suddenly there was a massive increase of energy hitting your shields, the shield would have to rapidly increase and if those energy conduits couldn't handle the rapid growth of energy needed to fight back the force hitting your shield, things would blow up. Maybe not as dramatic as the TV makes it appear, but things would get physically damaged.

Also we don't know how the shields work in terms of holding back the sun. We know it could protect the crew with little energy, it could be there are two shields -- one for the sun, and one for defense. But again, since we don't know how it works we can't begin to guess how it works.

This is, imo, 100% correct. If you have any doubts, go to your local "re-creationist" society, throw on some armour and get smacked by a mace. You may not bleed, but I bet you will get some great bruising
Even with modern ballistic armour, if you get shot, you probably won't die, but the arteries and veins underneath will suffer damage (much like power conduits in a ship causing an overload).

[xxxevilgrinxxx]

If Destiny were brand new, then the shield could probably handle the attacking ships without all the sparks. The conduits have been damaged, and they have not had time to reroute all of the conduits.

This. Right now, the Destiny on a good day is running at around 40% according to Eli.

[SGSargon]

Well, an Abrams tank can survive a 100 kg bomb exploding in front of the turret, with little as a few ceramic layers being chipped off and the crew survives. Does that mean you would need a 200 kg bomb to kill the tank crew? or 300 kg? Nope. You would need a shaped charge to cut through the armour. HEAT projectiles such as RPG-s use a shaped charge of copper or some other metal to punch through the armour by making a small hole. Instead of a normal explosion in which the force expands in all directions, in a shaped charge the explosion concentrates a cone in a narrow jet of metal (which is not actually molten, is more of a metal plate being deformed really really fast). All anti-tank weapons (HEAT, KEP) have something in common: they concentrate their force in a very small point, instead of a large area.
In this case the star's energy disperses even over the entire shield, where as a weapon pulse hits the shield in a very small portion.
Long story short: You can stay on a sheet of glass without breaking it, but if you concentrate the force in a single point you will break it. It's all in how the force is dispersed or absorbed.

[k1037]

It's likely more an issue of Destiny not being familiar with this type of weapon and needing time to adapt. I mean, the range of weaponry that could be used is truly remarkable. Aliens could use weapons from dozens of different categories: projectile, explosive, electromagnetic, plasma, laser/heat/photon, thermonuclear, antimatter, phasing, teleporting, exotic particle, cold/drains, and others that we've never even conceived of. And there would be hundreds of different variations in each of those categories. The ship couldn't possibly have been built to handle *every* type of attack possible, and it can't just block *everything* (or else we'd never see any light, never be able to use the radio, never be able to dial the gate, etc.).

I'm betting Destiny (and her crew) will make adjustments to the shields fairly quickly. They already handled the second fight much better than the first.

Anyway, new SciFi bad guys are ALWAYS overpowering at first. The Dominion, Goa'uld, Replicators, Ori, Borg, on and on. The Blues may have been new enemies for us, but Destiny was quite familiar with them. They got in their shots (based on the damage to the ship) early on, but Destiny had learned to hold her own by the time we got on board.

[knowles2]

It's likely more an issue of Destiny not being familiar with this type of weapon and needing time to adapt. I mean, the range of weaponry that could be used is truly remarkable. Aliens could use weapons from dozens of different categories: projectile, explosive, electromagnetic, plasma, laser/heat/photon, thermonuclear, antimatter, phasing, teleporting, exotic particle, cold/drains, and others that we've never even conceived of. And there would be hundreds of different variations in each of those categories. The ship couldn't possibly have been built to handle *every* type of attack possible, and it can't just block *everything* (or else we'd never see any light, never be able to use the radio, never be able to dial the gate, etc.).

I'm betting Destiny (and her crew) will make adjustments to the shields fairly quickly. They already handled the second fight much better than the first.

Anyway, new SciFi bad guys are ALWAYS overpowering at first. The Dominion, Goa'uld, Replicators, Ori, Borg, on and on. The Blues may have been new enemies for us, but Destiny was quite familiar with them. They got in their shots (based on the damage to the ship) early on, but Destiny had learned to hold her own by the time we got on board.

Auto Adaptive shielding would be a smart thing to have on this sort of vessel.

[Brian]

This whole concept has bugged me from the first time I saw those annoying sparks fly out of random parts of a ship in SG-1 when hit by anything. I like what this thread has been saying. Personally I chock it up to us not knowing what kind of "energy" or "blasts" they are using to hit the shields with.

But that temporary covering of my questions on the topic don't last long when you factor in common sense. Example: Goa'uld fighting each other. Well they all know what they're getting attacked with...the same ship they're in. Yet with these ships that can travel in subspace and across the galaxy don't have a shield that can withstand their own weapons? Come on that's just stupid.

In the end the only reason that makes any sense is plot convenience. Plain and simple. The writers want this to happen and make it happen even though it makes no sense.

[Ukko]

Or the shields dont stop all the energy. Or perhaps the impact of weapon on shield (No matter what kind of weapon or shield) creats another kind of energy behind the shield and that damages the ship.
Maybe everytime the shields are hit, the shield generators let out bursts of energy or some kind of shockwaves throughout the ship.

Likes some already said. You get hit while wearing armour, your still gonna get hurt.

[Abiron]

As far as shields in sci-fi go, it's all about what the fictional explanation of what the shields actually do says, not about any actual physics. I suppose that once we develop something like real physical force fields capable of acting as defense systems, there will be more consensus on what they're really doing.

For example: In Star Trek, the deflector shields from TOS were never fully explained in-show. When the Franz Joseph blueprints and Technical Manual were produced years later, they offered technical details on the system, mainly based on how the shields had appeared to act in the episodes. The manual states that the deflector grid produces an energy field from a grid embedded in the actual hull that functions as an ancillary hull layer to absorb damage. The deflectors don't actually deflect anything based on this explanation; they merely form something like an ablative armor layer that can be replenished so long as the energy to do so is available.

In The Next Generation, shields were much more complex, and formed a "bubble" around the ship that looked great in VFX shots. This same effect - having the shields form a bubble surrounding the ship rather than a hull-hugging ablative layer - has been used in countless other shows and movies, including most Stargate incarnations. It's worth noting that Destiny's shields are not of the projected bubble variety, but appear to be of the hull-hugging variety.

No matter what the VFX for the shields are, we have never really had a full explanation of how any race's shields work in the Stargate universe. Do they form some kind of additional ablative armor layer? Do they form a coherent energy barrier that allows some forms of energy through, but not others? Are they impermeable to matter at certain velocities or mass? Do they drain incoming energy fire into some kind of capacitor system, allowing only small non-destructive quantities to pass through? I'm pretty sure that we've never heard the exact details, and that's mainly so that the writers can make them up as they go along.

In Destiny's case, all we can know for certain is that the stock shields are proof against a star, but not against certain forms of directed energy attack. Like the Chobham armor on a modern Main Battle Tank, the ship's shields are proof against almost all forms of damage that it might encounter in its mission. But as SGSargon so wonderfully pointed out above, there are anti-tank weapons that are designed specifically to defeat that armor...just as the drones have weapons that can defeat Destiny's shields. When attacking a modern tank, a heavily-loaded bomber carrying massive explosive bombs may well fail where a single man with an RPG will succeed. In the case of Destiny, a star can't hurt her shields, but a tiny drone with very specifically designed weapons can. Just like a modern RPG is designed to defeat the type of armor used in most tanks rather than a specific model, so the drones weapons are likely designed to do damage to ship shields based on general rules, rather than Destiny's shields specifically. Unfortunately, in Destiny's case those general rules are apparently the ones the show is going with.

[garhkal]

Anyone remember a scifi show where we didn't see sparks fly when the shields got hit?

[Rylor]

Anyone remember a scifi show where we didn't see sparks fly when the shields got hit?

Star Trek: The Next Generation rarely had sparks. Mostly, it was only shaking.