Shield frequencies

[Phoenix-D]

Just keeping this out of the SE5 thread.

"Damn that Star Trek for perpetuating so much junk science... There would be no such thing as shield frequencies in reality. There is no reason for an energy field to have to shut completely off and back on again so many times per second as Star Trek implies. Certainly, you could design your shields to do this, but it would be monumentally stupid... Read this site for more information: *link* "

Its never specified -what- frequency they are talking about, and there is another rather important frequency type you aren't mentioning.

Namely, electromagnetic radiation's frequency. Each photon has a characteristic wavelength and frequency. Each object reflects or absorbs certain photons in a certain way, giving it its color. White reflects most of the photons hitting it, black absorbs most of them (most because if it reflected all you'd never see it!)

ALL of Star Trek's beam weapons are visible. If those weapons are using light as a weapon, then the frequency of the shield becomes critical. A white shield will reflect the most energy, by nature, but ST shields might not have enough power to reflect light from all ends of the spectrum. So they cover specific areas they expect the enemy to use, leaving 'gaps' in others. The shield's color is a combination then of all the energy it reflects and absorbs.

The frequency setting won't do anything against non-photon weapons or physical impacts, though.

[Kamog]

Please check that link. I can't get it to work.

[geoschmo]

What sort of person complains that Star Trek is "junk science" because an imaginary shield that we don't know the process behind allows imaginary beam weapons that we don't know the process behind to penatrate them? Why is their idea of how imaginary beam weapons and imaginary energy shields any more technically correct then mine, or the writers of the show?

This is the sort of person that would get into arguments about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.


EDIT: Ah, of course. Fyron. Why am I not suprised. Fyron would argue about how many buttons are on the shirt of the 14th angel from the left dancing on the head of a pin. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Fyron]

Ahem... if you go back to the thread, the classic "match your weapon frequency to shield frequency to get complete shield piercing" garbage in Star Trek was suggested for SE5... This is why I posted the link, to keep it away. Do you want to see SE5 filled with Star Trek technobabble? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif I wasn't trying to start an argument over it, and don't have any interest in one, just trying to spread the joy...

*link that really does work* (http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech/Myths/Myth_Science.html#Phase-coherence)

[Phoenix-D]

SEIV -is- technobable. Just not Star Trek technobable. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

Anything much over a single-system setting is going to run into that issue.

[brianeyci]

Actually frequencies do make sense. The normal justification is that the Fed must open holes in their shields for their weapons to fire through. If you read the whole article, you'll see that is the only justificaton for frequency.

And there is a distinct community of people who debate sci-fi for fun, that is why they nitpick things like that =D.

SE:IV is not technobabble. Technobabble is trying to use pesudoscience to explain the mechanism behind technology. SE:IV leaves the mechanisms undefined... we don't know how ripper beams work and we don't care, only their effects, that they do 250 damage with heavy mount on a weapons platform =D.

<edit>Actually that is not exactly right. The normal justification is that the Fed doesn't possess advanced enough forcefield technology to open up holes in their shields to allow weapons to fire, like syncing a propeller with a machine gun to allow forward firing guns in WWI. Therefore, they have to use frequencies so that their phasers and photons can shoot through their shields. Needless to say, SE:V should not have this stupid frequency thing, because SE:V ships are advanced enough to have this weapons-forcefield syncronization technology</edit>

Brian

[Fyron]

brianeyci said:
SE:IV is not technobabble. Technobabble is trying to use pesudoscience to explain the mechanism behind technology. SE:IV leaves the mechanisms undefined... we don't know how ripper beams work and we don't care, only their effects, that they do 250 damage with heavy mount on a weapons platform =D.

Exactly. So adding in technobabble like shield frequency matching is going in the wrong direction. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Nodachi]

But it would be nice to be able to mod this effect! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Nitpicking the science in science-fiction is part of the fun but just because I don't know how something works doesn't lessen my enjoyment of it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[geoschmo]

My point Fyron, which suprisingly you seem to have totally missed, is that you can't say shield frequencies are junk science, or technobabble, or unrealistic. Since energy shields are totally imaginary and a fabrication of the authors of the particular science fiction, you cannot say exactly how they will or wont work in reality, and so you can't say that any particular authors version of them is unrealistic. In Star Trek shields have frequencies that can be matched to penatrate them. This is totally reasonable and realistic from the perspective of the Trek universe, because that's how shields work in the Trek universe.

You are free to say this is stupid or poor writing if you want, but don't try to tell us it's junk science. Doing so removes any usefull meaning from the term junk science.

You could call it Junk Science Fiction if you want. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[brianeyci]

Geoschmo, the problem with that is that you view shield frequencies an an intrinsic part of a shield. They are not. A frequency is a weakness and shows that your technology is not advanced enough to open up a hole for your weapon to fire through, and therefore you need to have a frequency your shield works on so your weapons can fire through your shield. The only analogy I can think of is a machine gun shooting through a propeller in WWI. SE:IV ships, and SE:V ships don't necessarily have to have shield/weapons frequencies if they have enough forcefield mastery to open a hole in the shield exactly when the weapon fires.

The argument is not that shield frequencies are unrealistic, or junk science, or technobabble. The argument should be that you have SHIELD SKIPPING weapons that accomplish the same thing, and adding a frequency to your shield is not necessary since shield development should be advanced enough to open small holes in them rather than have the shield on a frequency to shoot your weapons through.

Shield frequencies would add a totally unnecessary component to SE:V, because there's shield skipping weapons. If you want, you can imagine shield skipping weapons as weapons which match the frequency in a ST Mod for example... but other universes with advanced shield manipulation need not have frequencies in their shields.

No shield frequencies in SE:V, please. SE is not about the how of things work, but the effect. Shield frequencies is something anagalous to knowing how the engines, or the weapons, or the hull "works" -- totally useless and unnecessary. The "what" can be represented by shield skipping weapons, the how is useless, which is what a shield frequency is.

Plus the fact that certain universes have enough forcefield mastery so that they don't need to rotate their shields on a frequency. SW Mods don't need shield frequency, since SW shields are not a cloud of exotic particles and are a field effect... but this is getting too much into the details so I digress.

No shield frequencies. Please.

Brian

[Captain Kwok]

I don't think this matters much anyway. You should be able to make your own damage types in SE:V, so assuming that you can make damage types that damage only particular components you can create this effect in game to some degree.

[Suicide Junkie]

It will depends on how the system is set up...

The most likely one would be levels of "phased shield"-ness:

Ie, if your damage type is skipping-level-5 then it ignores shields of protection-level-5 or lower.

---

On the other hand, you could have a more generic system, where you have shield types A-Z.
Then you specify that damage type #1 skips shield types E, G, and H.

[douglas]

Somehow the idea of frequencies never occurred to me in thinking about phased shields and weapons. I always thought of it as "phase" being roughly synonymous with "layer" or "stage". By this explanation, a phased polaron beam actually shoots two shots at a time, the first being an extremely localized and short term shield depleter that only serves to open a temporary whole for the second, much more powerful, shot to go through. Phased shields would block this by having a second layer behind the first.

[Thermodyne]

Seems to me, that for shields to ever be realized, we would have to discover some new form of energy. And to say that this energy would not have a frequency spectrum would be premature. If it produced a field that could be seen, like when they take a hit in ST, then there would be a measurable frequency within the visible light spectrum. And it would then seem feasible that some energy weapons could be made more effective by altering them to best defeat the energy frequency of the shields. And when speaking of shields as in ST, we would be talking about a layered matrix of small overlapping areas of energy. There is no reason why they could not be modulated so as to offer a different band of frequency protection. As too energy shields, the closest thing that comes to mind, would be some type of ionized energy layer that would channel the energy into a dissipation device or perhaps direct it into some type of storage device so that it could be recycled. This would certainly have a measurable frequency. Also, it comes to mind that a pure energy weapon would be only one of several types of weapons that would need to be defeated. IMHO, shields, like warp drive are vapor physics, and will not be realized without the discovery of some branch of physics totally unknown to us at this time. But it does make for some damn good entertainment! How may time have I enjoyed hearing some variation of “Scottie, I need warp drive now!”?

[Will]

Ok, I think I understand something now. Every time a star trek ship gets fired on by something, even though shields are still up, the ship shakes, things blow up, and people get thrown around. With the shields being turned on/off based on a specific frequency, some of the energy from the weapon would get through, thus justifying the death of even more red shirts.

[AgentZero]

Exactly. Wierd thing is that's not how it's explained in ST. Can't remember where I saw it, but it's mentioned somewhere that the the damage the ship takes even when it's shields are up is some sort of energy feedback effect. Which always seemed silly to me. I mean, in several hundred years of using shields, did no one think to isolate the shield generators from the rest of the ship's systems, thus avoiding having consoles exploding all over the place every time the ship gets hit?

[Slick]

No shield can protect a red shirt.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Look:

Shields must take awful lots of energy. That energy goes; where? I say it probably leaks off into space, causing the amount of power usage to increase... exponentially. But only if your shields are constantly activated. Therefore, it is "pulsed" on and off several (a lot of) times per second to prevent that big an energy leak. I mean, shields MUST leak energy... first law of thermodynamics anyone?

[brianeyci]

Shields don't have to be a wall of energy. In fact, it doesn't make sense for shields to be a wall of energy if you think hard enough about it... when I first was reading into shields I thought this naively as well, but read the link below and be enlightened.

In fact, if you could manipulate energy and form it into a shield, why not use the same manipulation effect to deflect incoming energy rather than put up a wall of energy?

See here (http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech/Shields/Nature.html).

Brian

[Aris_Sung]

Interesting. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif I created this much discussion from stating my wish for shield frequencies.