Wanted: concepts for "realistic" SciFi

[SirNitram]

Antimatter can solve most of the problems. Perhaps the military uses some form of superdense antimatter?

Let's see.. Common space travel, but exclusive to citizens. Wormholes might work, as opening such would be very power-intensive, and traversing one would require a very well-built ship. They also don't require Clarketech(A word used to describe technology so advanced, it might as well be magic).

If you want shields, I'd go with shaped electromagnetic fields.. Read over Mike's Brain Bugs page to see why. Armour, however, shouldn't fall by the wayside: You need lots of protection against the harshness of space. Personally, I'm a fan over reactive armour plated over old-fashioned thick steel.

Weapons-wise, I say go with plasma-based weapons for the most part, with nuclear missiles being the heavy-hitters. Railguns tend to be unwise, as you must impart all the energy yourself.. A serious energy drain. Civilians may be reduced to using message lasers for weapons, to overheat their opponents.

As for what I write? Often things dealing in Clarketech, or a medieval world suddenly presented with high end(ST-SW range, depending how evil I feel) technology. The concept of a wizard playing with a plasma rifle is too tempting for me.. I am weak! When I go for low-tech sci fi, I'm usually doing a one-shot story, like one I'm trying hard to get on paper, about the second AI created, and how it slowly turned into mankind's worst nightmare.

[Mr Bean]

No comprende, senor... Never heard of "closed threads" except as in forum context. - could you please explain?

String Theroy is what he's refering to, I could describe it but being I have a grounding in the advanced aplication and not much in basic describtion to lay-people I'd first have to explain fourth and fith demention mathmatics, A subjects its been noted filles many pages and many people have commited susided while trying to understand it

[SirNitram]

No comprende, senor... Never heard of "closed threads" except as in forum context. - could you please explain?

String Theroy is what he's refering to, I could describe it but being I have a grounding in the advanced aplication and not much in basic describtion to lay-people I'd first have to explain fourth and fith demention mathmatics, A subjects its been noted filles many pages and many people have commited susided while trying to understand it

Many physicists have died to bring us this technobabble.

[Mr Bean]

Indeed, The last time I started describing Fith D math I think two of the posters nearly gouged there eyes out with rusty spoons before it was locked away so that no mortal could ever hear the words agian and thus the town was saved

[oberon]

I hate to say it, but if you learn chaos and differential geometry, you'll be quite capable of devising your own uh, devices.

[oberon]

I might as well plug some of my own ideas and listen to myself type, as I have the day off (amazing!)

Aww, geeze, got taken away for a minute by a door-to-door salesman. I live at the end of a cul-de-sac, so my personal feeling is he shouldn't be down here, but anyway--so I'm standing there trying to keep 2 Leonburgers and a golden retreiver, which comes to about 350 lbs of dog, from getting out the door, and he doesn't take that as a sign that I'm busy. So he's yakkin' and carrying on, and the dogs are dragging me backwards because I'm in my stocking feet and on a hardwood floor. Anna, the GR, starts whining and I look down and notice that he collar has actually gotten twisted around and is choking her, so I basically kicked the guy off the porch. Oblivious. Yeha..

First, there's no "5th-D math". Adding new dimensions to math is a natural act of vector analysis and linear algebra. Linear algebra is a way of computing and treating finite-dimensional systems as a simple object. For instance, tensors are a class of linear transformations (maps) that we use to describe the universe, and they happily follow group-theoretical rules. You have to have a zero matrix, and an identity (Kronecker delta, if you want to call it that, but "identity matrix" will do). There are 2x2 tensors called duads, but I don't think they're of any interest here--at least, not to me anyway. It takes 3 numbers to describe a point in space, which gives you a vector space. If you put it in a matrix (tensors have matrix representation), there's your column space. You could have it in a row space if you wanted but let's just stick with one. To describe a 3D space, you need 3 columns--a way to "get from one 3D point to another". That makes 9 entries in a tensor matrix. You define a dot and cross product and then you have an algebra that you can work with. Eigen analysis is where the rubber meets the road, so to speak, where theory joins with reality. A tensor has a principal axis and a spectrum. In mechanics and engineering, the eigenvectors are the principal stretches (deformations) and the eigenvalues are the magnitudes of those stretches. It's just stress-strain. So if you were to draw a circle on a sheet of metal then stamp the sheet, so as to deform the circle into an ellipse, you'd find that the principal axes are the eigenvectors, and theri lengths are the eigenvalues. For this 2D case, your tensors are 2x2.

For fluid mechanics and computer science, the matrices are much larger. CFD arrays have thousands of entries, and they need to be algebraically manipulated and combined with other matrices. Linear algebra is the framework, and the limit of my patience is 3x3. That's all you should ever need to do by hand. You have a variety of computational methods for finite (discrete, industrial) math, such as Gauss-Jordan elimination, Gauss-Seidel iteration, successive over-relaxation (SOR), truncated singular value decomposition (TSVD), FFT, wavelets, and so on. Fourier analysis is applicable to infinite dimensions, but since it's a series decomposition, you'll have a truncation error eventually.

There are gross generalizations in the above, but I didn't feel that explaining the Ptolemaic view and going up through Descartes and yakking about group theory and such was what you were after.

If you take spacetime as a topological manifold, then it has some properties we can use. It's simply connected, which means that it has no holes. That is, you can draw a curve from any point on the manifold without leaving the manifold. This implies that any crack in the event horizon of a black hole is a rip in the dimensional fabric, the manifold. Complex analysis introduces residue theory, which is a way of determining the area of a surface that has poles (not holes) in it. Black holes are not holes, they are just poles, or severe stretches in the manifold, down to a singularity. I don't remember enough complex analysis to say more, but the Saff/Snider book is a good introductory text to complex analysis for science and engineering. You should see a lot of similarities between roots of complex numbers and Mohr's circle--it's just stress-strain again. You use Green's theorem to find the Cauchy residual around a pole. If there were a hole in the manifold, then you may be able to use it. I wouldn't advise that. If this hole were in the event horizon of a black hole, then it seems to me that it would rip open with no end, tearing the universe in half. Well, what's beyond that? Where would we go?

So now there's catastrophe theory. Basically, if your manifold curves (with potential wells, or minima/maxima), then you could maybe fall off and back on to the same surface, on the other side of a potential well, thus saving all the energy of going into the well and working to get back out. I think you could view travel this way. The surfaces of wells have level curves, and if you can identify the curves (diffeq), then you've found the Hamiltonian. Populations (or energy levels) will tend to be attracted to level curves--which you learn about in first-year calculus, when you learn how to find gradients. For instance, predator-prey populations fluctuate, and they are coupled to each other, so if you parametric-plot them against each other, you'll find that, provided neither goes extinct, their populations will go through a period of transient chaos, a spiral, which settles down into a limit cycle. Find the Hamiltonian, and you have an at-a-glance way to look at all the possible states, with the limit cycle showing the present state. A limit cycle is just a closed loop, and if it's stable, it will attract orbits to its trajectory, and if it's unstable, it will repel.

This--the complex analysis, the continuum mechanics, the chaos--with strange attractors and fractals which come along with that, are, I feel, quite useful in thinking of ways to "wave your hands" around FTL. Look at how trajectories spiral in toward an attracting fixed point, and you can have some decent technobabble without overwhelming the story. Like SirNitram says, you don't have to explain how it works in comprehensive detail, but just enough to be interesting and original would be good.

[Mr Bean]

I have to dis-agree with you on this oberon, There IS Fith D math, The first three X,Y,Z being postional Fourth, Time being where it is now so to speak
Heres a link dealing with hyper-cubes and the like and some brief descripitons
http://www.math.toronto.edu/mathnet/que ... cgeom.html

A few more pics here
http://www.geom.umn.edu/docs/outreach/4-cube/

Fith D is refered sometimes as where it is or WILL Be, Or to put it another way, Hesinburg Uncertanity principle says you can't know the exact position of anything because when you measure it agian, Fith D referes to where it will be after you try and measure it and of course move or, Or another way where. I have not heard Fith-D Described out of the Quantum Mech level, Wong happens to be a Ballstics Engineer is there anything I forget missed? Or do you ever deal with Fith D in the Marco world

[His Divine Shadow]

The Independence War universe is based entirely on current or possible theories and technologies.

Like LDS?

[sgiathach]

Bloody hell... I replied to this in length yesterday, but then my browser crashed and took the entire essay with it. Now let's see.

Antimatter can solve most of the problems. Perhaps the military uses some form of superdense antimatter?

Let's say, matter annihilation solves the energy problem. So it might be achieved by using antimatter, or depict something like the famed "quantum singularity". If you could simply destroy any given matter, my intuitive thought would be using mercury as fuel: easy to store, liquid at moderate temperatures, and very dense.

>>Let's see.. Common space travel, but exclusive to citizens. Wormholes might work, as opening such would be very power-intensive

Right, I guess I'll concentrate on something like Jump gates / short wormholes, at least for the civilian aspect.

>>If you want shields, I'd go with shaped electromagnetic fields.. Read over Mike's Brain Bugs page to see why.

That negative energy shield sounds pretty mighty, but I myself have absolutely no grasp of negative energy, and I don't want "invulnerable" tech either. Electromagnetic shields sound good, and maybe there's a reasonable way of "projecting" a mass in a missile's flight path when it's needed, I call this idea "delegator".

>> Armour, however, shouldn't fall by the wayside: You need lots of protection against the harshness of space.

Here I have something nice. No idea if or how it could be realized, but it would be very practical: a very dense armour-liquid, which is pumped onto the hull from internal tanks, and distributes there evenly. Energy weapons would evaporate some liquid, and it would help deflect or dampen projectile impacts. The armour would have the same thickness all over the ship.
Added bonuses would be making the liquid transparent and not letting it refract light.
I developed this idea for gaming purposes, so that a ship's armour can be summed up into a single figure.

>>Weapons-wise, I say go with plasma-based weapons for the most part

How about packing some antimatter into a plasma coccoon and hurling it towards the opponent. Charge depends on size of the gun and, thus, size of the ship. Here's your instant antimatter dumbfire torpedo.
Small arms, as I said previously, will be regular powder-and-shot firearms.

>>As for what I write? Often things dealing in Clarketech, or a medieval world suddenly presented with high end(ST-SW range, depending how evil I feel) technology.

That sounds very neat. I developed something like that myself - or rather: I was inspired by TSR Spelljammer universe. Wooden ships and iron men, sailing through the void. Medieval/Fantasy tech level and magic. Has nothing to do with this project though.

[His Divine Shadow]

Weapons-wise, I say go with plasma-based weapons for the most part, with nuclear missiles being the heavy-hitters. Railguns tend to be unwise, as you must impart all the energy yourself.. A serious energy drain. Civilians may be reduced to using message lasers for weapons, to overheat their opponents.

Are plasma weapons really realistical?

Anyway, for weapons, lasers, masers, whatever those are the best systems for energy weapons, no mass means hardly any recoil.

KE weapons? I do not reccomend them, unless you're thinking long ranged homing nuclear missiles.
Projectiles with mass are wastefull since the energy invested in rest-mass does not have destructive potential and the weapons will suffer from the problem of finite ammunition, as opposed to a laser where the weapon naturally travels and lightspeed.

[The Nomad]

Energy generation : fusion, AM, wormhole linked to a star core, or use "low" figures ( tera-petawatt range ).

FTL drive : see Orion's arm exotic matter based wormhole nexus, or graviton wormholes ( gravitons have been theorized to be able to cross distances faster than light would by going through our dimensional branes, as someone stated ), the main array including a high-power particle acelerator ( to "extract" gravitons and shape a macroscopic wormhole ).
Or use warp frive with dilithium warp core and verterium-cortenide nacelles

Weapons : plasma as a gas wouldn't be a realistic weapon. Because no one has the slightest clue on how to generate a proper magnetic containment field, and the mere reactors of the targets could generate a field strong enough to deflect them. But plasma is not just gas ( hell the free electrons in a metal bar could be described as a plasma ), it could be... lots of things .
Lasers, masers and particle beams ( basically a laser in which the photons are atoms ), as well as plasma railguns ( fires cryogenic deuterium at high speed, the friction against the target can trigger nuclear fusion ) for the bigger fishes, could serve as main weaponry. Nukes ( compact and fast, with AM to trigger nuclear fusion ) would be nice too ( AM weapons, aka photon torps, would require a high tech level to make sure 99.99% of the AM is used in a short timescale, but for the most advanced ships, you could replace the particle beams by AM beams ).

Defences : magnetic fields require huge power outputs and can deflect objects only if they come in a certain directions ( I assume that a military device generates fields complex enoug to assure 100 % cover ),and would be useful only against weapons like particle fields or AM emitters.
Point defences ( lasers, "shrapnel" for projectiles ) would be better, as well as tons of ECM and stealth tech.
Hulls with nanotech repair ( although intense radiations might cause malfunctions ) made of "smart" new materials, ablative armour spread by repair bots ( EVA ), all that would be good to see ( or read ).

My 2 $ ...

[sgiathach]

Energy generation : fusion, AM, wormhole linked to a star core, or use "low" figures ( tera-petawatt range ).

TW range should be sufficient for most applications. Interstellar travel still must need enormous amounts. I'll try and figure:
We have a ship, length 100m, which should be average, with a mass(laden) of, let's say, 18.000t.
It is supposed to cover 10LY, or 94,6e12km, in 120 hours and not use up more than 2000t of fuel. I'll round the figures a bit and take an average velocity instead of acceleration:

dist.=100e12km
t=100h
-> v=1e12km/h -- average velocity! accel must be immense.

Energy equivalent of 2000t matter (100% annihilation):
9e16 J/kg * 2e6kg = 180e21J

Energy-to-weight ratio (100% efficiency)
180e21J : 18e6kg = 10e15J/kg

Sounds good so far? Instead of calculating the power, let's look at the distance covered:
d = 10e13km
This means that we have only 100 lousy Joules for each kilogram of spacecraft mass per kilometre distance covered.

Disclaimer: could be that I mixed up some exponents, though I tried to get it all straight. Anyway, EVEN if I made a 1e3 error, and even if 10 times as much fuel was burned, we'd only have the energy of a decent meal to hurl 1kg to an avg. velocity of 1e12km/h.

Looks pretty desolate, I think.

But now for the rest:

>>Weapons : plasma as a gas wouldn't be a realistic weapon.

Hmmm... I thought of plasma just as a container for the AM. If there's another "possibility", it would be just as well.
What are masers, please? m as in mass, or magnetic, or what?
AM beams sound too tricky for my liking, I think this is better used in projectile weapons.

>>Defences : magnetic fields require huge power outputs and can deflect objects only if they come in a certain directions

How about shields that activate only "on demand", i.e. when the sensors detect incoming fire (tricky with lasers)? Provided the energy can be converted quickly enough, it should save a lot of power.

>>Point defences ( lasers, "shrapnel" for projectiles ) would be better, as well as tons of ECM and stealth tech.

This I like. I'll definitely incorporate these ideas.

I'll have a look at Orion's Arm, too

[The Nomad]

Maser as in microwave IIRC, ie not visible light, EM radiation with extremely long wavelength and low frequency.

A "laser" whose photons have an extremely high frequency would be qualified as X-ray laser or gamma cannon I suppose ( gamma ray : the most energetic photons I know ).

[The Nomad]

And don't forget missiles with a good IA ( say self-propelled warheads with basic guidance are "missiles" and bombs with high-grade suicidal kamikaze IA, searching a target around a solar system during days or weeks are classed as "torpedoes" )

[Knife]

You could use implied histories of development by having mag shielding for life support and enviromental purposes, like anti cosmic radiation shielding. Then seriously pump up the power for combat situations. The mag shield would be useful for energy weapons, then back it up with armor to dissipate the remaining energy and designed to deflect KE weapons. Not one super upper system, but a series of systems to defend the ship from a variety of threats.
If you can create a EM field for a shield you should be able to use it as a capsule for a plasma weapons. Also in a combat situation do not underestimate the use of jamming. ECM and ECCM systems would be very important to defend against missiles, and targeting systems of energy weapons.
And weapons in general, try to figure out the predecesor and what the defence against it was, so why is the new one so special and advance.
I hope these are good, I am using them, and help you.

[HRogge]

David Webers "Harrington" Storries describe a consistent future-tech example too. He developed a timeline of ~ 2000 years and explains what has been developed at what time. Most weapons are just a new version/combination of old technology and he has a pretty realistic way to describe space combat.

The first two books are online available:
On Basilisk Station
The Honor of the Queen

[SirNitram]

I don't see what's unrealistic about plasma... Hell, we can control it to the point of using it as a welding device, so if we're flying to the stars, we should bloody well be able to make an oversized welding torch which spews a continuous beam of plasma.

[oberon]

Oh my God, I just miskeyed and deleted my entire reply. Jesus. OK, here we go again:

Fuck! I can't remember that. Dammit. Well, start from the beginning.

OK, so I disagree with your notion that "5D math" has a fixed meaning. You can have as many variables as you want, as long as your computational system--and by that, I mean the linear algebra, not the computer itself--can deal with it. If you say "5D math is such and such," then that's dogma. We are after systems that can deal with any number of dimensions. You have a misunderstanding, hence (I guess) your question "don't you deal with quantum in macro?" It's just math, and dimensions don't have to have any particular name. Again, that would be dogmatic. Quantum theory is just a theory, and one designed for when continuous methods break down. The distinctions are those between continuous and discrete, or differential equations and difference equations.

Now, I object to this:

Fith D is refered sometimes as where it is or WILL Be, Or to put it another way, Hesinburg Uncertanity principle says you can't know the exact position of anything because when you measure it agian, Fith D referes to where it will be after you try and measure it and of course move or, Or another way where.

When you learn electron microscopy, and do Monte Carlo simulations of random paths of electrons after striking an atom in a piece of metal, well, this requires some quantum theory. But the distinction you made is false: if you know the math, then you don't have to polarize yourself between quantum and continuum mechanics. If you are not familiar with a certain concept, you use your education to bring yourself up to speed, and get to work. With particles described in 3D, at no time are you required to assume that the particles enter the 5th dimension. When a particle moves into a place that you cannot predict, are you to conclude that it is moving into different dimensions? What if it enters the 7th, or the 3851st, dimension? What if it entered the 2.67th dimension?How would you know? College science courses have different names and subjects, but they are all consistent in that the math is the same. This is why senior/graduate engineers and physicists get sent by their departments to take more senior-level mathematics, so they have more analytical ability and the tools for dealing with their respective subjects in the same, systematic fashion.

Time doesn't have to be the fourth dimension. It could be a parameter in parametric equations of as many variables as you like. The 4th dimension could be a 4th chemical in a reaction, which is parametrized by time. The 5th dimension could be a 5th species introduced into a system of 4 others. Industrial chemists may have to track 20 or 30 different chemicals in one reaction; missiles have to numerically integrate functions of something like 100 or more variables. They would all be parametrized by time, we would not call that a dimension. So there is nothing that says any particular dimension has to be spatial, or has to deal with one set thing. What you are referring to is simply a space of 5-component vectors or arrays, and to find solutions to model things happening in this space, you use linear algebra. Whether it refers to some sort of concept of simultaneity or uncertainty, you worry about that when you can postulate existence and uniqueness of solutions in that space.

The other thing I wrote about was technobabble. Even the most rudimentary materials science course will teach you better-sounding words you can combine and use for technobabble than the tripe that B&B vomit up. It's sad, in a way, to watch ST, because with only a little reading or listening, they would know more and be able to generate better terms (as well as plots and human behaviors).

For example, there are ceramics that are superplastic, meaning they have a higher limit of elasticity than regular technical ceramics, meaning they can withstand some measure of impact. They are used in things like diesel engine valve seats and such, IIRC. Think of a lightweight superconducting shell of a hyper-advanced version of this superplastic material, that can shed energy attacks and withstand projectile impacts and structural flexing. I think something like this, which has zero energy cost (except in its one-time cost of manufacture) would bespeak a higher level of tech than constantly relying on some active, energy-sucking magic shield. Added realism would be gained by showing that they won't always stay shiny and smooth, and after a while would need to be replaced or repaired. Drama, too. The captain would not be allowed to be so cavalier as ST captains are about taking hits, and you might actually find yourself caring about the crew and hating any enemy that would fire on them. I mean, I never feel real emotion when I watch ST. I never think "Those assholes! How could they attack the ship? God I hope the people up front are OK" because you know everything will turn out the same as it always does. When you watched, say, The Green Mile, you hated Percy Whitmore, didn't you? You felt bad for John, didn't you? Even though it was just a movie, it was immersive, and people reacted to it, because it was fucking good. Now, I am not asking TV writers (especially these ones) to try for that level of involvement, and I wouldn't ask the viewers to make the same investment emotionally that they would with a movie like The Green Mile, but having a show put you on the edge of your seat for a half-hour, is that too much to ask? Why do people watch ER, or NYPD Blue? They watch because they can connect with the characters emotionally. I don't watch because those shows stress me out, it's just too much drama for me, but that is why I would watch sci-fi. It's a different genre, and having drama in that would be a good thing. Drama in ST? Went out with Captain Kirk and Scotty. At least those actors could pretend that a proposed technobabble solution may not be ideal or even work at all, and that's more interesting than "shields up. Let's sit here and let them fire at us". Goddamn, even the biggest battleship doesn't stick around when a flatbottom boat that could have a Stinger in it comes up--they haul ass and prepare to fight their way out of the area.

This rant has gone a ways, I think it's time to go now

[His Divine Shadow]

I don't see what's unrealistic about plasma... Hell, we can control it to the point of using it as a welding device, so if we're flying to the stars, we should bloody well be able to make an oversized welding torch which spews a continuous beam of plasma.

It's just too complex and uneccesarily so compared to a laser.
Trust me, I got this straight from Saxton

[Shaka[Zulu]]

as the discussion has grown to include other ship systems. It seems you are set on _actually_ travelling through interstellar space -- I hate to say it, but going that route is not only the _longest_ way, but likely the least efficient as well (not to mention the most dangerous). I wonder why Nomad was the first to acknowledge my suggeestion of trying to mimic gravity/inertia effects (given that they are related) and using dimensional branes...

anyway, on to weapons!

a long time ago, on the alt.stvsw group, I posited that there may in fact be a real basis for the blaster & TLaser tech in SW. Now, in the Wars universe, such weapons are fueled by Tibanna gas, which is mined from the lower reaches of gas giants such as Bespin (it was cloud city's sole export). interestingly, there is a substance that exists in large gas giants which has most of the properties of Tibanna... metallic hydrogen. this form of common H2 (in its' liquid state) is thought to be the principal source of Jupiter's immense mag field, with a good % of the core being made up of the solid state. either way, when it decomposes to normal H2, it is able to release energy in the vicinity of 138MJ/kg (this has major possibilities for everything from propulsion to beam weapons to missile & torpedo warheads, as it is far safer than AM to store (although it doesnt produce as much E by a factor of roughly 650 million), and alot cleaner than fission based nukes for power and warheads. 2 other possible candidates are metastable He (which releases 480MJ/kg when it decomposes to the ground state -- it is also easy to make, as one merely needs to run a current thru normal He, or operate an He-Ne laser. it isnt very stable however, with a lifetime of only about 2.5 hours in vacuum), or charged radical H, which when combined to form normal H2, releases about 830MJ/kg (but nobody knows how to store significant quantities of it yet)

as for defenses, I have to agree with others that high-power mag-fields are the way to go, with a notable addition, sand -- not normal sand mind you, but a very fine, electrostatically charged powder. when launched in a canister and released into the magfield, it could easily block lasers, either through absorbtion, refraction or both, and possibly prevent sensor locks as well, depending upon the material used. large quantities would have to be used/carried, but it would be more effective against lasers than armor alone.

sorry if this post isnt structured as well as it should be... I am rushing to get to work now.

[His Divine Shadow]

Ofcourse a hihghly reflective hull, like a mirror would be to prefer in space too, would reflect lots of laser light and nukes and antimatter devices exploding in space give off intense lightbursts only so there reflective armor would be very usefull too.

[His Divine Shadow]

Also, if you use lasers, you need not put them on turrets and be forced to swing the whole thing, but you can use an internal weapon, say sealed in a vacuum in an armored section, when it fires the beam is refracted to a tube of near 100% relfective cryo-cooled mirrors out to the hull, where a armored plate is retracted and a small and very nimble cryo-cooled mirror array is extended, this one could turn and aim very quickly and allow you to protect your weapons inside the hull instead of in turrets.

Also, waste heat is very problematic in space, the only way you can get rid of it is through radiance, and in fights, this could become a problem, so I guess you could have a system of cooling fluids and when they get too hot, eject them, put lightbulbs or something on them and have the heated cooling fluids run the light, and pick them up later after a fight or something like it.

[sgiathach]

>>Think of a lightweight superconducting shell of a hyper-advanced version of this superplastic material, that can shed energy attacks and withstand projectile impacts and structural flexing.

You mean, as the Battlestar Galactica dissipating armour that Mike used as an example in the "debating fallacies". Very interesting concept, I must say -- I've grown so accustomed to energy shields from all sorts of SF that I thought it would have be something like this.
(That's why I like forums like this, you always get help with new ideas)

My original concept was to introduce a "shield hierarchy" (in terms of tech level and effectiveness), somewhat like this:
Fixed-frequency shield // Multi-frequency shield // Phase shield // Delegator (or Point Defense). I stole the Phase shield from Wing Commander, these were the type only vulnerable to Phase Transit Cannon and shipkiller torpedoes.

The idea of "power armour", if I can use this term, has the advantages you stated, but also one drawback: it doesn't recharge, it has to be repaired when damaged. Even automatic in-flight repair systems are good only as long as there's spare material in the hold.
As for the energy guzzling, remember that the ship has to be able to produce enormous amounts of energy anyway for FTL travel, and it doesn't need the power for FTL flight in combat, but prolly only a fraction of it for maintaining EM shields.

>>I mean, I never feel real emotion when I watch ST [...] because you know everything will turn out the same as it always does.

*snicker* just my words. "We have a problem? Push the problem-solving button!" BTW, once there was a discussion on TV with the unspoken topic "Why Star Trek is so boring". The two guys, two professors actually, named all the points: "those are not heroes, they are Heroes-Plus"; and at the end of one episode the situation is precisely the same as in the beginning... well you know it yourself.
I digress. What I wanted to say: a good compromise between effective tech and potential for Drama would also involve a mixture of various techs, shields, armour and point defense. Shields might be optional as "extra kick" for a short time, or only eat up part of the incoming beam, whatever. I'll keep thinking about it.

But first I want to get the power&propulsion stuff set up, and at the moment, I'm rather frustrated about the calculation I posted a few hours before. I'll post that in an extra message to keep the topics apart.
It basically proves that a starship, whatever the size, cannot accelerate to interstellar speeds out of its own force even with matter annihilation as power source.

[sgiathach]

...here we go again:
The calculation I posted before basically proves that a starship, whatever the size, cannot accelerate to interstellar speeds out of its own force even with matter annihilation as power source, because the high energy yield is dwarfed by the extreme distances.
Secondly, it should also prove that space travel must be extremely expensive, as a single trip would need more energy than entire nations over years.

Reminder: c barrier or relativity problems don't count. Anything goes, as long as the energy feed is maintained, and of course the speed cannot be "infinite".

Thus, I see three options, and several might be necessary to get further:
1) make up an energy source that delivers magnitudes more power than matter annihilation
2) make up ways to decrease the energy cost to accelerate the vessel
3) rule out self-propelled FTL travel and concentrate on wormholes and jumpgates

as for (1), chopping up "closed threads" has been proposed, but I don't have a clue what it is, what it does, and how it would be done. So currently, I might call the method as well "hyperspace tap" and it would mean no more and no less to me.

as for (2), we return to charted waters (concerning SF), including the beloved "mass reduction", transferring the vessel to an alternate layer of spacetime, hyperspace or whatever.

and (3), for both artificial wormhole and jumpgates, I'd demand a fixed entry point, and a pre-declared exit point.
If the exit point is limited only by a maximum range of the flight, i.e. you're hurled on your way and drop out at some other point, there'd be no problem: send ships on their way to construct entry jumppoints wherever they drop out.
But if you need a fixed exit point, and if it's only a nav beacon, someone has to get there by some other means in order to set it up. And here the cat bites its tail, because these "other means" cannot be significantly slower (who'd want to wait 20 years for a new route to be opened?). Or is that just my impatience?

@ Shaka Zulu: herewith I pick up the idea of exploiting dimensional branes. The problem I see here is, as stated above, to get precisely the entry and exit points that you need. What use is a wormhole when it dump you somewhere in the void, several lightyears away from places of interest?

One more thing: I might not have time to respond to every post in this thread, but I read them all and appreciate all input.

[His Divine Shadow]

Hmmm, well for interstellar travel, using high fractions of C or near C speeds you can say have a large large ship and a network of solar collectors near the sun, wich send their energy as laser beams to a central focusing point wich then send this beam to the ship in question, the result should that the ship could accelerate to near C velocities without using it's own power.