Planetary "airspace" security in Sci-Fi

[Simon_Jester]

Honestly, I'd regard all Legends material about how technology works as canon unless contradicted by new material. It's silly to do otherwise.

Clearly the history of the era between Episodes VI and VII has to be dropped or radically revised (specially everything involving children of Skywalker, Organa, and Solo). And perhaps revisions would have to be made to some of the Clone Wars-era events. But if star destroyers could do this-and-that in Legends, there's no reason to assume they would have fundamentally different capabilities in Disneycanon or whatever we're calling it.

Anyway...

I can think of reasons why capital ships might have non-conformal shields. The biggest one is the sheer magnitude of fire they're expected to repel. It may well be that projecting such a strong force field in direct contact with the hull would stress or irradiate the hull's outer surface, whereas the comparatively weaker shields of a fighter do not have such effect. It might also be useful to be able to let the shields 'ripple' or 'recoil' a bit inwards toward the hull without actually being slammed down into the physical hull surface.

For that matter, non-conformal shields mean you can do things like protect your own fighters inside your shield, which is a useful tactical ability and a good reason for TIEs to be capable of flying around that close to the hull.

[LastShadow]

Honestly, I'd regard all Legends material about how technology works as canon unless contradicted by new material. It's silly to do otherwise.

Clearly the history of the era between Episodes VI and VII has to be dropped or radically revised (specially everything involving children of Skywalker, Organa, and Solo). And perhaps revisions would have to be made to some of the Clone Wars-era events. But if star destroyers could do this-and-that in Legends, there's no reason to assume they would have fundamentally different capabilities in Disneycanon or whatever we're calling it.

Anyway...

I can think of reasons why capital ships might have non-conformal shields. The biggest one is the sheer magnitude of fire they're expected to repel. It may well be that projecting such a strong force field in direct contact with the hull would stress or irradiate the hull's outer surface, whereas the comparatively weaker shields of a fighter do not have such effect. It might also be useful to be able to let the shields 'ripple' or 'recoil' a bit inwards toward the hull without actually being slammed down into the physical hull surface.

For that matter, non-conformal shields mean you can do things like protect your own fighters inside your shield, which is a useful tactical ability and a good reason for TIEs to be capable of flying around that close to the hull.

Honestly i can get behind the whole how it works as long as the new stuff doesnt contradict it, helps a little with certain arguments.

But in most instances on screen, you see shields are more of a rigid surface than a pliable one, though they do slightly ripple on the surface when hit(see TPM when the Gungans fight the droids) though that is just one example, but if the example scales well, then it would seem that they do not bow inwards but do ripple on the surface.

In RotS, you see in the battle over coruscant the fighters flying might close to the surface of the cruisers, which could mean the shields have failed, the shields are hugging the hull, or their is some really odd ass unexplained ever interaction that allows fighters to pass through shields, which would make sense because in RotJ, they need to take down the shield around the DS II so they can get their little ships in on the attack.

Then you get things like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyeVl9RfaJQ (skip to 1:52) where a ship legit scrapes hull in a situation where you would think there might be shields up due to a battle, though anakins ship isnt firing.

In TCW you get a whole lot of scenarios in which it seems like shields are not even really a thing, since it seems they never have them up.

So there are examples that, say i am right, AND examples that say you are right, so i say we are both right, and call it a odd canon variable that we cant totally say which is right or wrong, because it seems either A. we both are right, B. Both are wrong, or the wonderful C. where shields operate in no sane or knowable way in the SW universe.

[Simon_Jester]

Honestly i can get behind the whole how it works as long as the new stuff doesnt contradict it, helps a little with certain arguments.

But in most instances on screen, you see shields are more of a rigid surface than a pliable one, though they do slightly ripple on the surface when hit(see TPM when the Gungans fight the droids) though that is just one example, but if the example scales well, then it would seem that they do not bow inwards but do ripple on the surface.

Oh yes. They 'ripple' when shot with a tank gun. What might they do when shot with, oh, a megaton or gigaton-range turbolaser bolt?

More generally, though, granting the point that there is so much visual evidence kicking around in the movies that contradiction is the rule and not the exception.

[Elheru Aran]

Relevant observation from season 5, episode 2 of Clone Wars--

The Jedi send a team to assist rebels on Onderon. Shortly afterwards, we see a B1 battle droid briefing a team of droids that "An unscheduled ship entered the atmosphere at Sector S-11 and failed to register."

So, at the very minimum, the Separatists are monitoring atmospheric entries and requiring a 'registration' from ships not on the daily arrival/departure schedule. There's no reason that said schedule couldn't be largely automated, especially in the case of commercial traffic.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Something just occurred to me regarding the fighter-shoots-turrets bit from TFA, the fighter was small enough and close enough to the hull that it hit the turrets from the side. Perhaps shields do generally conform to the hull but are far enough out to avoid having anomalous lumps around the bigass gun turrets. That would strike me as being much simpler from an engineering standpoint.

[Lord Revan]

well we know there's about finger whith or so difference between the shield boundry and the actual hull of the N-1 so if we assume that scales with length something as big as the Finalizer could have quite large gap between the hull and shield boundry.

[Simon_Jester]

Right.

Also, it might well be that it's hard or impossible to reshape the shield- the generators may be fixed and immobile. In which case, if you rotate a turret and the shield doesn't turn with it, the turret smacks into the inside of the shield. This could either open up a weakness in the shield, or physically damage the turret.

Either way there's a reason to leave a 'blister' of open volume inside the shield for the turret to rotate within.

However, this would not allow a fighter to bypass the shield in order to damage the turret, unless the fighter was itself inside the shield... and my thesis is that it was.

[LastShadow]

Whilst reading Isard's revenge in the x-wing series, its stated that capitol ships have a shield sphere, so its quite possible the capitol ships and fighter type ships have different shield types. It would make sense for fighters to have tighter shields for close dog fighting. Also in said novel, fire control computers are linked to the shields to open holes for firing out of.

I would have to read all the books again to compare any inconsistencies, but it stands to reason from the bits I remember from various novel's that ingress and egress of fighters requires the shield in that section be dropped. Like in Wraith squadron where they need to drop the shields to launch the x-wings out of the bow bay.

Along with a few things I noted earlier it would seem starship shields are not permeable, and require sections being dropped for the firing of torpedoes and assorted other weapons, along with the launching of fighters.

So theres that, I guess.