Star Trek Shield Theories
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posted on July 10th, 2015, 6:28 pm
I have a few theories on how Star Trek shields work based on information given in the various episodes.
My theory is that the shield generator is expending energy to dissipate the weapons energy from the shields. But this creates a load on the generator that makes the process less effective, and that the effectiveness drops exponentially with the increase in load, somewhat similar to the inverse square law, but the power can be less than 2 and must stay above 1. A power of 1 represents 100% efficiency.
Also, the shields have an energy threshold which determines how much weapons energy can get through the shields. If the weapon exceeds this threshold, then it will cause damage to the ship. The more the weapon exceeds this threshold, the less protection that the shields actually offer. And the more energy that the shield has absorbed and has not been dissipated, the lower this energy threshold is, making it easier for weapons to penetrate the shields outright.
In terms of shield protection, the shield technically protects itself and is it's own "adhesive" (similar to surface tension in a liquid). So when it's hit by a weapon, the weapons energy causes the shield to lose cohesion with itself and it eventually collapses because the weapons energy is not being dissipated from the shields quickly enough.
When it comes to shield status, the percentage reported is not necessarily a measure of how long you have before the shields just stop protecting you, but rather a measure of three factors: (1) How much physical protection the shields are offering. (2) How much weapons energy is interacting with the shields compared to the shields "capacity." And (3) how much load is on the generator.
With factor 1, why bother reporting "shields at 100%" if the shields are only providing 80% protection? STA2 actually does report 100% shields when they only provide 80% protection.
With factor 2, since the energy dissipation rate decreases with an increase in generator load, the percentage that this number decreases by from the shields "capacity" will increase during course of the battle.
With factor 3, it's kind of hard to generate a shield when the generator is overloaded. Rerouting power to the shield generator will simply "mask" some of the load in the hopes that you last longer during the battle, but will result in the shield generator needing physical repairs if not replacement. Also, because of the weapons energy interacting with the shield, rerouting power to add more shield energy will not be that effective at restoring shield strength. Granted, you might get a couple more minutes out of it, but there's only so much that your shield generator can do before your attempt to increase shield strength causes the shields to collapse!
In Fleet Operations, all weapons will be under the energy threshold required to penetrate the shields, no matter how strong the shields are. And this threshold does not change at all when the shields are damaged. It's also the case that the shield strength will always increase at a constant rate, which means that generator load has no effect on the generator's ability to dissipate weapons energy from the shields. Yet that doesn't explain why the shields don't regenerate at all when a vessel is say, cloaked when there is plenty of time to reduce the load on the generator and there is no shield in place to need to dissipate weapons energy off of.
- Shields absorb energy.
- This energy needs to be dissipated.
- Shields offer less physical protection as they are damaged.
- Shield status drops exponentially with damage.
My theory is that the shield generator is expending energy to dissipate the weapons energy from the shields. But this creates a load on the generator that makes the process less effective, and that the effectiveness drops exponentially with the increase in load, somewhat similar to the inverse square law, but the power can be less than 2 and must stay above 1. A power of 1 represents 100% efficiency.
Also, the shields have an energy threshold which determines how much weapons energy can get through the shields. If the weapon exceeds this threshold, then it will cause damage to the ship. The more the weapon exceeds this threshold, the less protection that the shields actually offer. And the more energy that the shield has absorbed and has not been dissipated, the lower this energy threshold is, making it easier for weapons to penetrate the shields outright.
In terms of shield protection, the shield technically protects itself and is it's own "adhesive" (similar to surface tension in a liquid). So when it's hit by a weapon, the weapons energy causes the shield to lose cohesion with itself and it eventually collapses because the weapons energy is not being dissipated from the shields quickly enough.
When it comes to shield status, the percentage reported is not necessarily a measure of how long you have before the shields just stop protecting you, but rather a measure of three factors: (1) How much physical protection the shields are offering. (2) How much weapons energy is interacting with the shields compared to the shields "capacity." And (3) how much load is on the generator.
With factor 1, why bother reporting "shields at 100%" if the shields are only providing 80% protection? STA2 actually does report 100% shields when they only provide 80% protection.
With factor 2, since the energy dissipation rate decreases with an increase in generator load, the percentage that this number decreases by from the shields "capacity" will increase during course of the battle.
With factor 3, it's kind of hard to generate a shield when the generator is overloaded. Rerouting power to the shield generator will simply "mask" some of the load in the hopes that you last longer during the battle, but will result in the shield generator needing physical repairs if not replacement. Also, because of the weapons energy interacting with the shield, rerouting power to add more shield energy will not be that effective at restoring shield strength. Granted, you might get a couple more minutes out of it, but there's only so much that your shield generator can do before your attempt to increase shield strength causes the shields to collapse!
In Fleet Operations, all weapons will be under the energy threshold required to penetrate the shields, no matter how strong the shields are. And this threshold does not change at all when the shields are damaged. It's also the case that the shield strength will always increase at a constant rate, which means that generator load has no effect on the generator's ability to dissipate weapons energy from the shields. Yet that doesn't explain why the shields don't regenerate at all when a vessel is say, cloaked when there is plenty of time to reduce the load on the generator and there is no shield in place to need to dissipate weapons energy off of.
posted on July 11th, 2015, 3:20 am
This is very interesting, and I'd hoped to see this translate in the game somehow. In all my nitpicking, it bugged me that ships had two 'health' bars and shields usually had to drop before other damage happened.
Another factor I see is energy overload. You've got the concussive effects down pat, but there's also overcharging which happens with energy weapons. I believe, not in all cases but most, that when energy weapons exceed the shield's protective threshold, the shield starts to act like a lightning rod and whatever excess energy over the threshold is absorbed by ship itself, usually in the power systems, but can bleed into anything.
For game standards, this would make for good ship matching. Unless ships become more intelligent in their attack patterns, no longer could you send a Saber to annoy a D'deridex. They might take one or two hits before systems started breaking down whereas a Sovereign could trade several blows without issue.
Another factor I see is energy overload. You've got the concussive effects down pat, but there's also overcharging which happens with energy weapons. I believe, not in all cases but most, that when energy weapons exceed the shield's protective threshold, the shield starts to act like a lightning rod and whatever excess energy over the threshold is absorbed by ship itself, usually in the power systems, but can bleed into anything.
For game standards, this would make for good ship matching. Unless ships become more intelligent in their attack patterns, no longer could you send a Saber to annoy a D'deridex. They might take one or two hits before systems started breaking down whereas a Sovereign could trade several blows without issue.
posted on July 11th, 2015, 10:16 pm
And that would mean that energy not absorbed by the shields might be transferred to the shield generator as load, which could mean that shields go down sooner.
posted on July 13th, 2015, 5:45 pm
nice and very interesting reading...i think this might be of interest to the guys developing ST: Excalibur...you should post it on their forums as well...
posted on July 13th, 2015, 11:24 pm
Never heard of them.
posted on July 14th, 2015, 4:05 pm
you should check their website then...stexcalibur.com
it's a simulation in development (like bridge commander) and i think that your theory might be something for them to consider...i know that some mechanics are in place there but some are still on drawing board so you never know...
it's a simulation in development (like bridge commander) and i think that your theory might be something for them to consider...i know that some mechanics are in place there but some are still on drawing board so you never know...
posted on July 14th, 2015, 4:25 pm
im amazed you havnt heard of star trek Excalibur,
there is a thread on this site, so you should of got a notification on it at some point in your "view all unread forum topics" button.
under "star trek" and (currently on time of writing this) on page 5. //www.fleetops.net/forums/startrek/star-trek-excalibur-11792
(for some reason each time i post this it stops being a link...
)
there is a thread on this site, so you should of got a notification on it at some point in your "view all unread forum topics" button.
under "star trek" and (currently on time of writing this) on page 5. //www.fleetops.net/forums/startrek/star-trek-excalibur-11792
(for some reason each time i post this it stops being a link...
)posted on July 14th, 2015, 11:36 pm
hellodean wrote:im amazed you havnt heard of star trek Excalibur,
there is a thread on this site, so you should of got a notification on it at some point in your "view all unread forum topics" button.
I almost never check that button. And when I do, I'm looking for posts exclusively relevant to Fleet Operations.
dani9 wrote:nice and very interesting reading...i think this might be of interest to the guys developing ST: Excalibur...you should post it on their forums as well...
It turns out that I don't know enough Star Trek trivia to use their forums.
I noticed a few inconsistencies between my theory and Star Trek.
(1) The reduction of the energy dissipation rate does not account for the exponential shield decay.
(2) The theory would imply that damage done to the shields decreases as the shields take damage.
Anyone want to help me revise the theory to be more consistent with Star Trek? I'm thinking that rather than dissipation rate dropping with load, the shield's capacity could drop with load because the generator cannot sustain both a high load and a high shield capacity. Perhaps there is a load threshold beyond which shield capacity starts dropping.
posted on July 17th, 2015, 4:37 pm
TChapman500 wrote:dani9 wrote:nice and very interesting reading...i think this might be of interest to the guys developing ST: Excalibur...you should post it on their forums as well...
It turns out that I don't know enough Star Trek trivia to use their forums.
how so?...don't be afraid to post some theories as you never know what it might spark...i know some of the debates there are pretty much into star trek technical detail and i don't understand some of that staff myself...and i consider myself as quite good at understanding things and how they work (even fictional)...
TChapman500 wrote:I noticed a few inconsistencies between my theory and Star Trek.
(1) The reduction of the energy dissipation rate does not account for the exponential shield decay.
(2) The theory would imply that damage done to the shields decreases as the shields take damage.
Anyone want to help me revise the theory to be more consistent with Star Trek? I'm thinking that rather than dissipation rate dropping with load, the shield's capacity could drop with load because the generator cannot sustain both a high load and a high shield capacity. Perhaps there is a load threshold beyond which shield capacity starts dropping.
well, i think that your first point 'shields absorb energy' isn't quite right...you should consider that shields also deflect incoming fire...if the shields were just absorbing energy than there would be no protection against torpedoes as they are actual warheads with explosives...also it could be seen that smaller ships were deflected off of shields in few episodes and i assume that the shields would also be a protection against asteroids and other stellar debris...
posted on July 17th, 2015, 5:56 pm
dani9 wrote:TChapman500 wrote:It turns out that I don't know enough Star Trek trivia to use their forums.
how so?...don't be afraid to post some theories as you never know what it might spark...
A lot of good that does me if I can't answer the trivia questions that their anti-spam-bot system keeps asking me.
posted on July 18th, 2015, 8:34 pm
dani9 wrote:well, i think that your first point 'shields absorb energy' isn't quite right...you should consider that shields also deflect incoming fire...if the shields were just absorbing energy than there would be no protection against torpedoes as they are actual warheads with explosives...also it could be seen that smaller ships were deflected off of shields in few episodes and i assume that the shields would also be a protection against asteroids and other stellar debris...
Then perhaps the exponential decay is the result of energy absorbed by the shields reducing the shields ability to deflect energy, causing it to absorb more energy as the battle goes on.
So now then, the shield mechanics would be something like this:
(1) Shields absorb some weapons energy, but deflect most of it harmlessly into space.
(2) As the shield absorbs energy, it's ability to deflect energy is reduced.
(3) There is a damage threshold that, if exceeded, will cause weapons energy to be directed into the ships systems.
(4) As the energy interacting with the shields increases, the damage threshold decreases, making it easier for weapons to exceed this threshold.
(5) Weapons energy feeding into ship systems may overcharge those systems.
(6) The more powerful the weapon is, and the weaker the shield is, the more energy is absorbed by the shields and the less energy is deflected by the shields.
(7) Diverting power to dissipate absorbed weapons energy will create a load on the generator, as will diverting power to generate a "thicker" shield that can take more energy.
(8) Overloading the shield generator will result in the generator being unable to generate a shield as strong as it should be, or would cause the generator to fail completely.
I guess this makes the shield generator another health bar, but at least it works differently from the hull and subsystem hitpoints.
posted on July 20th, 2015, 11:41 pm
TChapman500,
This is an interesting topic. Here are excerpts from the "Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual" (U.S.S. Enterprise NCC 1701-D, 1991, by Rick Sternbach and Michael Okuda). It does not answer all your questions, but it's informative.
[beginQuote]
11.8 Deflector Shields
The tactical deflector system is the primary defensive system of the Galaxy class starship. It is a series of powerful deflector shields that protect both the spacecraft and its crew from both natural and artificial hazards.
Like most forcefield devices, the deflector system creates a localized zone of highly focused spatial distortion within which an energetic graviton field is maintained. The deflector field itself is emitted and shaped by a series of conformal transmission grids on the spacecraft exterior, resulting in a field that closely follows the form of the vehicle itself. This field is highly resistive to impact due to mechanical incursions ranging from relativistic subatomic particles to more massive objects at lesser relative velocities. When such an intrusion occurs, field energy is concentrated at the point of impact, creating an intense, localized spatial distortion.
To an observer aboard the starship, it appears that the intruding object has "bounced off" the shield. A zero-dimensional observer on the intruding object would, however, perceive that his/her trajectory is unaffected, but that the location of the starship has suddenly changed. This is somewhat analogous to the spatial distortion created by a natural gravity well, and is typically accompanied by a momentary discharge of Cerenkov radiation, often perceived as a brief blue flash. The deflector is also effective against a wide range of electromagnetic, nuclear, and other radiated and field energies.
Field Generators
The deflector system utilizes one or more graviton polarity source generators whose output is phase-synchronized through a series of subspace field distortion amplifiers.
....
During Alert status, up to seven generators can be operated in parallel phase-lock, providing a continuous output of 2688 MW, with a maximum primary energy dissipation rate in excess of 7.3 x 10^5 kW.
Heat dissipation on each generator is provided by a pair of liquid helium coolant loops with a continuous-duty rating of 750,000 MJ.
...
Shield Operating Frequencies
Providing shielding against the entire spectrum of electromagnetic radiation would prove far too energy-costly for normal Cruise Mode use.
...
During Alert situations, shields are raised to defensive configuration by increasing generator power to at least 85% of rated output. Shield modulation frequencies and bandwidths are randomly varied to prevent a Threat force from adjusting the frequency of a directed energy weapon (such as a phaser) to penetrate shields by matching frequency and phase. Conversely, when the frequency characteristics of a directed energy weapon are known, it is possible to dramatically increase deflector efficiency by adjusting the shielding frequencies to match those of the incoming weapon.
[endQuote]
This is an interesting topic. Here are excerpts from the "Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual" (U.S.S. Enterprise NCC 1701-D, 1991, by Rick Sternbach and Michael Okuda). It does not answer all your questions, but it's informative.
[beginQuote]
11.8 Deflector Shields
The tactical deflector system is the primary defensive system of the Galaxy class starship. It is a series of powerful deflector shields that protect both the spacecraft and its crew from both natural and artificial hazards.
Like most forcefield devices, the deflector system creates a localized zone of highly focused spatial distortion within which an energetic graviton field is maintained. The deflector field itself is emitted and shaped by a series of conformal transmission grids on the spacecraft exterior, resulting in a field that closely follows the form of the vehicle itself. This field is highly resistive to impact due to mechanical incursions ranging from relativistic subatomic particles to more massive objects at lesser relative velocities. When such an intrusion occurs, field energy is concentrated at the point of impact, creating an intense, localized spatial distortion.
To an observer aboard the starship, it appears that the intruding object has "bounced off" the shield. A zero-dimensional observer on the intruding object would, however, perceive that his/her trajectory is unaffected, but that the location of the starship has suddenly changed. This is somewhat analogous to the spatial distortion created by a natural gravity well, and is typically accompanied by a momentary discharge of Cerenkov radiation, often perceived as a brief blue flash. The deflector is also effective against a wide range of electromagnetic, nuclear, and other radiated and field energies.
Field Generators
The deflector system utilizes one or more graviton polarity source generators whose output is phase-synchronized through a series of subspace field distortion amplifiers.
....
During Alert status, up to seven generators can be operated in parallel phase-lock, providing a continuous output of 2688 MW, with a maximum primary energy dissipation rate in excess of 7.3 x 10^5 kW.
Heat dissipation on each generator is provided by a pair of liquid helium coolant loops with a continuous-duty rating of 750,000 MJ.
...
Shield Operating Frequencies
Providing shielding against the entire spectrum of electromagnetic radiation would prove far too energy-costly for normal Cruise Mode use.
...
During Alert situations, shields are raised to defensive configuration by increasing generator power to at least 85% of rated output. Shield modulation frequencies and bandwidths are randomly varied to prevent a Threat force from adjusting the frequency of a directed energy weapon (such as a phaser) to penetrate shields by matching frequency and phase. Conversely, when the frequency characteristics of a directed energy weapon are known, it is possible to dramatically increase deflector efficiency by adjusting the shielding frequencies to match those of the incoming weapon.
[endQuote]
posted on July 21st, 2015, 2:39 pm
I don't have access to those resources.
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