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.

[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? 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*

[Phoenix-D]

SEIV -is- technobable. Just not Star Trek technobable.

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.

[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.