Personal shields

[Ryag Han]

you heard this argument before: star trek has Personal shields!! but, where are they? i didn't found any reference on any trek site that is canon. memory alpha has no info about it. st online and games have them, but their non-canon last time i checked.

star wars DOSE has ersonal energy shield, in the movies, The Clone Wars and other C-Canon material:
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Personal_shield
the Gungan personal energy shield is a less encompassing Personal shield, but Personal shield nonetheless, and there are many other types in KOTOR and KOTOR 2, which are C-Canon.

what i want to know is why trekkies keep bringing this up, when clearly its not canon! ignorance? fail at doing some research on the issue?

[Ryag Han]

ok, i found the Hunters as having a something like a Durge-like version of them...that's it.

[Darth Tedious]

The personal shields in KOTOR are totally canonical, but ceased to be in use by the time of the main saga. The explanation given is that blasters had become too powerful for personal shields to be practical.
Canonically in ST, the Borg do have them (and there was that one time Worf stopped some holographic bullets with his combadge), but I was pretty sure that was it.

As to your actual question, *shrug*. A lot of hardcore Trek debaters (the so-called Trektards) tend not to give a crap about canon, and instead go for 'what may be possible'.
And a lot of people consider ST:O to be canon, though I'm yet to see anything from Paramount confirming so.

[Crazedwraith]

There's also a reference to them in 'Homefront' or 'Paradise Lost' that Admiral Leyton had been stockpiling, 'phaser rifles, personal energy shields and photon grenades' for his military coup.

[Stofsk]

At this point some warsie asshole will come in and go 'lol but we never see them used ergo they do not exist'

So a Starfleet Admiral was off his rocker and nobody went wtf at him about non-existent technology... suspension of disbelief maintained!

The more rational viewpoint is that 'personal forcefields' are probably difficult to deploy, are more portable than personal (but where were they at the siege of AR-555YOURMOTHER am i rite), and would have defensive uses rather than something you use on the attack, which could explain why we never see them.

The personal shields in KOTOR are totally canonical, but ceased to be in use by the time of the main saga. The explanation given is that blasters had become too powerful for personal shields to be practical.

Ugh. I liked KotOR but don't remind me how retarded the whole 'blaster bolts only do 1d6 or 1d8 points of damage' thing was. Soooo stupid.

[Stofsk]

'Lessons' A season six episode. The woman was an Australian actress too. Wendy Hughes. I literally have not seen this episode for at least a decade HOW DO I KNOW THIS

[Darth Tedious]

At this point some warsie asshole will come in and go 'lol but we never see them used ergo they do not exist'

As a Warsie arsehole, I must disagree. There's no need to deny their existance for the purpose of versus debate- they're obviously such a long way from standard issue as to have little to no bearing on the overall complexion of things.
It's like Stormtroopers with lightsabers: Sure, they exist, but they're not a regular thing.

Ugh. I liked KotOR but don't remind me how retarded the whole 'blaster bolts only do 1d6 or 1d8 points of damage' thing was. Soooo stupid.

Sorry, just forget I mentioned it.

Portable forcefields are brilliant. That episode of TNG... damn me, I don't remember the name now... Picard is playing his flute in the bowels of the ship, and a blueshit commander is playing her roll up piano. omg romance. But then the blueshirt has to beam down to a planet expericing extreme firestorms with a team and set up some forcefields to protect the innocent.

We're left to think she's dead and watch Picard react but then she beams up and the reactions end the romance.

Anyway it's the forcefields there that's interesting. I'm fuzzy on the details but that might be an example of portable units.

'Lessons' A season six episode. The woman was an Australian actress too. Wendy Hughes. I literally have not seen this episode for at least a decade HOW DO I KNOW THIS

Ah, of course. Some things just stand out in our bizarre meaty brains.

Damn straight! I was starting to think, "What the fuck happened to you guys?!?"
But yeah, that episode could be worth checking out. I very vaguely remember it. Obviously not as vividly as you two...

So I just read the wiki thing on force fields. The interesting thing it reminded me: holograms use force fields, and holograms are very carefully shaped - the holographic doctor could even do surgery.

I wonder how a holographic personal shield would hold up to enemy phaser fire. Run into the holodeck and turn on the forcefield without the visual part, boom, instant personal shield.

If you have one of those fancy mobile emitters, take it with you!

That's a really monumentally good idea. It raises further questions, like the ability to use holo-guns outside of the holodeck (after all, we know holo-bullets work against the Borg trololol).
But seriously, the possible applications of mobile holodeck technology are absolutely staggering.

[Stofsk]

Hey Adam, you may have watched this recently. Remember the sword of kahless episode in DS9's 4th season? I remember at one point there was a force field that blocked off a cave tunnel. It seemed to be man-portable too. I think what's his face, the duras kid, set it up to trap Worf and Dax and Kor.

[Batman]

Another possibility is riot-shield style personal shields. Think Gungans in TPM-definitely man(well Gungan)portable, but a bit unwieldy for everyday use. Or they get hot/emit radation xyz under fire and you need an abc-lined bulky protective suit to be able to safely use them.
Or the blasted things are just plain too expensive to mass-deploy.

[Darth Tedious]

So, imagine if it's two poles, like the transporter pattern enhancers they use. Then, it puts up a force field to protect you. So instead of digging a trench, you just drive these two or three steaks into the ground and turn it on. Instant wall!

You hide behind it for cover. If it's the length of the poles, and you can carry a pole, it makes sense that it'd be like one meter tall - you crouch behind your portable force-wall and shoot over the top.

Or the walls might be bigger, and can be used as either an instant fort or quick obstacle. The Federation isn't the kind of people to use land mines or barbed wire to deny ground.

Yeah, yeah, (I love this idea) but you wouldn't fuck around with the meter tall, 'duck-behind-it' wall- you'd make it two or three meters tall, and match phaser frequencies so you can shoot right through the bastard!

[Agent Sorchus]

There is also the kluge of a force-field that Torres makes in one of her season five or six episodes. (The episode with her being suicidal about the elimination of the Marquis.) It was a small box with a phaser mounted as an emitter on top and would most definitely be man portable.

So ST personal shields are most definitely (outside of TAS) area denial and defensive technology, which fits the federations character whereas the more aggressive none federation species favor armor instead of developing personal shielding. And SW personal shields only offer what they consider dubious protection.

Would there not be two things that would limit the use of any personal shield, one: energy drain while left on such that unlike armor there is not protection when you aren't ready for it, and two: that police would like to be able to identify when someone is carrying additional layers of defense like armor while a shield would be less easy to identify?

[Ryag Han]

The personal shields in KOTOR are totally canonical, but ceased to be in use by the time of the main saga. The explanation given is that blasters had become too powerful for personal shields to be practical.
Canonically in ST, the Borg do have them (and there was that one time Worf stopped some holographic bullets with his combadge), but I was pretty sure that was it.

As to your actual question, *shrug*. A lot of hardcore Trek debaters (the so-called Trektards) tend not to give a crap about canon, and instead go for 'what may be possible'.
And a lot of people consider ST:O to be canon, though I'm yet to see anything from Paramount confirming so.

as i remember, they had personal shields in the movies eras to. not only those gungan like shields. and as i remember, they don't use personal shields because of increased blaster firepower, but because using them has its tole on organic beings. The Droideka had some of the most powerful personal shields, but they'd be dangerous for an organic creature. the explanation here is quite logical: you have to get rid of that energy that hits your shields, so, in SW, the energy is converted into different kind of energies: neutrinos, heat, etc. probably the technology used in personal shields isn't advance enough for neutrinos, and heat would fry the guy inside. so, they use other radiations that over time harms organic beings.
when i talked about personal shields on other forums, trekkies always point out at federation personal shields.

but those mentioned the others are quite rare and few in between, and most are special occasions or from a series with suspicious canon. we never saw or heard of mass used personal shields.

the borg are several hundred years ahead, and are partially cybernetic. their ,more like the Droideka than humans (id like to see them adapt to a blast from a starfighter) so they probably have more...space, on them to have the generator. they also use nanotechnology, so the shield most likely uses more individual nanobots to produce it.

but i still can't find any reference for federation personal shields on the wiki. and that thing has references to everything.

[Connor MacLeod]

People overrate the necessity or utility of personal shields because 'FORCEFIELD IS THE ROXXORZ' or something like that. Forcefields can have quite a few drawbacks. In Star Wars:

1.) Shields are a more complicated device than armor, and thus more prone to failure than a suit of armor is, and are generally omre maintenance intensive.

2.) Shields consume power. Armor does not. Indeed the fact shields consume power means they also must emit some sort of detectable emissions to sensors, and we've seen many times in canon and official sources where shields can be detected via sensors. This means they suck for any kind of stealth operation.

3.) Many "man portable" personal shields are probably too small to carry any sort of effective heat sink or radiator (I've at least never heard of personal scale neutrino radiators, and the Destroyer droid shields seem to suggest not.) This means they can only absorb limited amounts of fire before being 'used up', and may in fact have heating/cooling concerns in certain issues (absorbing too much energy too quickly, for example.)

4.) Still going to be totally useless against certain kinds of attacks - those that deal with momentum, especially.

Gungan shields are probably the 'best' kind because they seem to focus less on absorption and more against deflecting away shots - they absorb as little of the energy as possible, which means they can be used safely for long periods. It's also probably one reason why they seem so commonplace.

Lastly I'd note that the distinction in SW between armor and shields can be a bit blurred - stormtrooper armor has heat sinks and some sort of superconducting "laser mesh" in its composition which seems designed to disperse and absorb (possibly to help deflect away) blaster fire, so it could be described as having "shield like" qualities as well. Vehicle armour has also sometimes been described in a similar vein. It also make sa bit more sense than assuming that SW armor works by putting inert mass in front of huge quantities of energy and hope to stop it.

[Enigma]

I think we're complicating as to how big a ST style personal energy shields are. Worf manage to cobble together a basic energy shield with his communicator. True it lasted enough to take a bullet but it was effective.

Now, a personal energy shield to be effective in combat, I'd see it as a belt. Attach around your waist and turn it on. Presto! Instant protection.

Even the Doctor's mobile emitter from End Game was large compared to the 29th century version but it was still pretty small.

Why hasn't it been shown onscreen? I'd blame it on the idiots that ran the franchise. lol If Starfleet had enough of them to equip an army then they surely would have enough to supply each ship for two away teams. Imagine the increase in survival rates! The redshirts and nameless ensigns might actually live to see another away mission.

[Azron_Stoma]

I always pictured them as a harness like what the Hazard Team wear in the Elite Force games.

[Ahriman238]

There's another possiblity, that personal shields and personal forcefields are two seperate things. In "Chain of Command" Picard, Worf and Crusher go on a special ops mission in Cardassian space, and they have a handheld device that projects an area denial field. They use a phaser to tunnel through some rock, and then the forcefield to seal it behind them so they are not pursued.

There are two more personal 'field devices I recall, in the episdoe where the Enterprise and a Romulan Warbird are frozen in time, they use armband devices to protect themselves from being likewise frozen, and Worf's cobbled together shield in 'Fistful of Datas.' But none of these are shown to stop a phaser, disruptor or other energy weapon, and it is faintly ridiculous to assume they would.

[dworkin]

Personal belt shields are used by away teams in The Animated Series. On the whole it's more a 'hostile environment field', allowing Kirk and co to operate in vacuum, nasty places without the animator having to draw new figures. I can't recall any outstanding defensive abilities.

How TAS is regarded is variable although I expect manic trekkies to embrace it with both pudgy hands.