[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.