Star Wars Shields

[Adam Reynolds]

That said, Abacus, if you want a detailed rebuttal or confirmation of the railguns argument, you really need to quote as directly as possible this guy's argument. He might be saying that it works on the Ray Shield argument, or he might be referring to say, Brian Young's well substantiated proposition that Star Wars warships suffer the 'slow blade penetrates the shield' weakness that Droidekas do.

There is just one problem. Railguns rounds aren't a slow blade.

As for the rest, we have already had this discussionand I doubt we will convince each other of anything by having it again.

[NecronLord]

Oh? I had honestly thought you had been convinced by the shield permeability theory given that your last post in the thread was:

That scene was rather awesome. [...] Given that I now see he hadn't perhaps this example doesn't fit my concept as well.

The shield permeability theory fits the preponderance of evidence rather well and even has predictive power in that scenes from Rebels and Force Awakens, both released after Brian posted it, show Star Wars space combat exactly as he predicted. I'm happy to start a new thread on the topic if you feel further discussion is appropriate.

You're right in that railguns are typically imagined to fire at multiple kilometers per second, but it is too much to say a railgun can't be 'slow.' Relative to a shield the meeting velocity could be very low, in space all motion is relative.

For instance, if the railgun attacker is chasing the Star Wars ship, and firing, the velocity difference between the Star Wars ship and the rail projectile could be extremely low; a star destroyer travelling away from the railgun ship at 8 km/s, where the railgun ship travels at 3 km/s and the railgun imparts 5.1 km/s results in a velocity difference between the star destroyer and the slug of 0.1 km/s - which is pretty damn slow and might not 'trigger' the shield.

That's why to really comment we need to know the details.

[Darth Tedious]

Could a near-c railgun slug exploit shield refresh rate, now it's a thing?
Perhaps not every shot would bypass the shields, but spamming enough would result in enough getting through to hurt
That could be played into game mechanics- cost of spamming ammo and having to roll dice to determine ratio of penetrating shots, you'd have the chance of expensively wasting lots of ammo or cheaply wasting a ship to weight up

[Khaat]

All of this comes down to your player: is he looking for a character advantage or a game-breaker?

Mechanics-wise: If your game "also involves multiple other fandoms", any such exploit would have been closed by anyone with an interest (read: everyone), unless the idea is "first contact", in which case he knows nothing about their tech, too. How is it this character knows anything about this other fandom and the other fandom is ignorant of what he's using? If they've overlapped before, why wouldn't SW tech have been adapted to dealing with mass-drivers? What says it hasn't been already (particle shielding a planetary shield may not need to incorporate because they can blast normal meteors and don't care about dust)? A kit-bash requires a deft hand to balance story with character.

My read: This isn't so much a "game mechanics management" question as a "player management" question.

My technical opinion: the "shield refresh rate" thing (and jumping from inside the hangar of the larger cargo hauler) in TFA was bad writer fiat. If a hyperdrive works anywhere, anytime, why "blast out of Mos Eisley spaceport" when you could have made you calculations (since arranging the charter) and just jumped into hyperspace right away, from the ground? Why have spaceships fly at all if you can jump anywhere, anytime? Why not just drop a 'droid-brain drone/cargo-hauler-loaded-with-bad-news through hyperspace on the Starkiller Base power regulators? "Well, the fans want to see a space battle!"

[Eternal_Freedom]

Because we never see hyperspace jumps from inside an atmosphere. Both examples from TFA are dreamt up by Han as novel solutions to specific problems. For jumping into Starkiller Base for instance it's something he's worked up as a smuggler - the key was that he dropped out of lightspeed just inside the shields but outerside the atmosphere and had just enough room to slow down and land. We don't see them jump away from the atmosphere after all.

In the old EU at least, the limit on hyperdrives wasn't atmosphere by gravity. Presumably the freighter didn't have enough gravity to stop it. And for Starkiller Base the Falcon's drive is powerful enough that he can get deeper into the gravity well before having to drop out (or he turned off the safeties, also possible). That ties in to the old explanation of the "twelve parsecs" line, the drive was powerful enough that he could get closer to the black holes near Kessel so he could take a shorter route.

[Khaat]

Because we never see hyperspace jumps from inside an atmosphere. Both examples from TFA are dreamt up by Han as novel solutions to specific problems. For jumping into Starkiller Base for instance it's something he's worked up as a smuggler - the key was that he dropped out of lightspeed just inside the shields but outerside the atmosphere and had just enough room to slow down and land. We don't see them jump away from the atmosphere after all.

Actually, they dropped out of hyperspace just over tree-level at Starkiller Base, not outside the atmosphere. And we do see them drop into hyperspace from inside the (pressurized) docking bay of the ship, with the bad guys (and one of the critters Solo was smuggling) just outside. Granted, this last one isn't "on a planet", but I would have to presume Solo isn't suicidal enough to try an untested gambit in a ship he hasn't seen in years, that other people have modified since. More on that point below.

In the old EU at least, the limit on hyperdrives wasn't atmosphere by gravity. Presumably the freighter didn't have enough gravity to stop it. And for Starkiller Base the Falcon's drive is powerful enough that he can get deeper into the gravity well before having to drop out (or he turned off the safeties, also possible). That ties in to the old explanation of the "twelve parsecs" line, the drive was powerful enough that he could get closer to the black holes near Kessel so he could take a shorter route.

I know that, you know that, but Abrams ran with solutions that short-cut running time (and avoided having to recycle "impersonate supply run to get under the shield" riffs), after Disney through threw all/most of the EU out.

[Elheru Aran]

I want to say they came out of hyperspace just above some mountains, and the treetop thing was after dodging the mountains. It all happened very quickly, of course.

In theory you probably can go into hyperspace from a spaceship cargo bay, since the spaceship's mass isn't large enough to generate gravity of its own. Something along the lines of a full 900-kilometres Death Star II might, but just that huge cargo hauler, no. As long as you don't have anything blocking your path as you exit the cargo bay, I see no reason why it's not possible. Difficult certainly, insanely unsafe, but possible. Perhaps something along the lines of an "old smuggler's trick" or whatever.

[Eternal_Freedom]

What altitude they come out at I'm not clear on, I'm going on what I remember from the cinema as I don't have the DVD yet.

[Batman]

No, the moment the hyperspace swirlies go away you see snow-covered mountains not far below. They're definitely in-atmosphere.

And would somebody please fix the thread title?

[Adam Reynolds]

Oh? I had honestly thought you had been convinced by the shield permeability theory given that your last post in the thread was:

That scene was rather awesome. [...] Given that I now see he hadn't perhaps this example doesn't fit my concept as well.

The shield permeability theory fits the preponderance of evidence rather well and even has predictive power in that scenes from Rebels and Force Awakens, both released after Brian posted it, show Star Wars space combat exactly as he predicted. I'm happy to start a new thread on the topic if you feel further discussion is appropriate.

I still disagree somewhat in the details.

Though one trait could answer most of my objections. If Star Wars vessels have two layers of shields, one for outer shields and one for weaker inner shields that both protect critical targets(like the exhaust port) and reinforce armor, it would resolve questions like that of why the characters were worried about casualties in the fighter attack against Malevolence as well as why the Resistance X-wings were unable to destroy the oscillator on Star killer Base. Though they had penetrated the outer shields, they still faced a second layer of shields that are intended to block things like fighter attacks.

It would also nicely explain the infamous Executor destruction. A-wings penetrated the outer shield and destroyed the bridge deflector shield, as mentioned in the dialog. Executor's main shields were still active, but they were vulnerable to fighter attack, which indicated why they expected to defend themselves with greater defensive fire.

Though was Anakin's trick in Clone Wars against Grevious' flagship(the scene quoted) the same as Han's in The Force Awakens? They both seemed to use the strategy of jumping out of lightspeed and bypassing shields. Anakin's would be far more impressive considering that he did so into a battle and against a capital ship, which has a smaller shield gap than a planet. Though he did also have The Force, so there is that.

There would be something rather poetic to the idea that the two ways to fly through shields are to go too fast or too slow.

Could a near-c railgun slug exploit shield refresh rate, now it's a thing?

SW FTL is approaches millions of times c. That is hardly the same thing as relativistic speed.

My technical opinion: the "shield refresh rate" thing (and jumping from inside the hangar of the larger cargo hauler) in TFA was bad writer fiat. If a hyperdrive works anywhere, anytime, why "blast out of Mos Eisley spaceport" when you could have made you calculations (since arranging the charter) and just jumped into hyperspace right away, from the ground? Why have spaceships fly at all if you can jump anywhere, anytime? Why not just drop a 'droid-brain drone/cargo-hauler-loaded-with-bad-news through hyperspace on the Starkiller Base power regulators? "Well, the fans want to see a space battle!"

It makes sense in the context that it doesn't work all that often. It's not like an entire fleet could make the jump in such a tight window, and one ship isn't going to destroy a planet sized superweapon against waves of fighters or do much against the defenses surrounding something like the shield generator on Endor or Hoth, let alone Corruscant.

It is exactly akin to the clever tactics that have always been used against fortifications, in contrast to siege weapons like the Death Star.

[NecronLord]

I still disagree somewhat in the details.

Though one trait could answer most of my objections. If Star Wars vessels have two layers of shields, one for outer shields and one for weaker inner shields that both protect critical targets(like the exhaust port) and reinforce armor, it would resolve questions like that of why the characters were worried about casualties in the fighter attack against Malevolence as well as why the Resistance X-wings were unable to destroy the oscillator on Star killer Base. Though they had penetrated the outer shields, they still faced a second layer of shields that are intended to block things like fighter attacks.

It's essentially canon that there are secondary shields on critical targets; at least for the ray shield on the Achilles Port on the Death Star. The Oscillator simply seems to be armoured to me.

It would also nicely explain the infamous Executor destruction. A-wings penetrated the outer shield and destroyed the bridge deflector shield, as mentioned in the dialog. Executor's main shields were still active, but they were vulnerable to fighter attack, which indicated why they expected to defend themselves with greater defensive fire.

Though was Anakin's trick in Clone Wars against Grevious' flagship(the scene quoted) the same as Han's in The Force Awakens? They both seemed to use the strategy of jumping out of lightspeed and bypassing shields. Anakin's would be far more impressive considering that he did so into a battle and against a capital ship, which has a smaller shield gap than a planet. Though he did also have The Force, so there is that.

There would be something rather poetic to the idea that the two ways to fly through shields are to go too fast or too slow.

Perhaps. Brian of course says that the shield refresh rate in The Force Awakens is consistant with that. It's important to remember it's not a physical limitation, but rather characteristic of how the ships' shields are programmed.

Of course the point is that in most cases when a small craft attacks a large one it does some small damage. We see that again and again and again, even when the large ship should be shielded.

It also makes fighters and bombers make a degree of actual sense, never a bad thing.




As for the old idea of particle vs ray shields, in Clone Wars admiral Trench (I loved that spider) has something that would fit the description of a particle shield which he called a 'thermal shield' and which had different effects and characteristics.

[Simon_Jester]

That said, Abacus, if you want a detailed rebuttal or confirmation of the railguns argument, you really need to quote as directly as possible this guy's argument. He might be saying that it works on the Ray Shield argument, or he might be referring to say, Brian Young's well substantiated proposition that Star Wars warships suffer the 'slow blade penetrates the shield' weakness that Droidekas do.

There is just one problem. Railguns rounds aren't a slow blade.

Hm. You could have a launching system (slow-moving or otherwise) that fires ballistic shells with explosive warheads (i.e. a proton torpedo warhead). The problem is that given Star Wars accelerations, any projectile slow enough to penetrate the shields will normally be easy to shoot down in flight, or just plain outrun.

My technical opinion: the "shield refresh rate" thing (and jumping from inside the hangar of the larger cargo hauler) in TFA was bad writer fiat. If a hyperdrive works anywhere, anytime, why "blast out of Mos Eisley spaceport" when you could have made you calculations (since arranging the charter) and just jumped into hyperspace right away, from the ground? Why have spaceships fly at all if you can jump anywhere, anytime? Why not just drop a 'droid-brain drone/cargo-hauler-loaded-with-bad-news through hyperspace on the Starkiller Base power regulators? "Well, the fans want to see a space battle!"

As to "why not just remotely blow up the target," they could only get the Falcon in by jumping through the planetary shield. X-Wings couldn't follow them in until the shields were down.

This may be because unusual feats of precision piloting were required, which just any ship would not have been capable of, especially on autopilot. Screw the attack up and you don't necessarily get another chance, because the First Order may well be able to modify the shields to eliminate the vulnerability. Also, they have a (frankly secondary) objective of rescuing Rey, which they cannot do by just hyper-jumping a nuclear bomb into the middle of the base facilities.

[Khaat]

This may be because unusual feats of precision piloting were required, which just any ship would not have been capable of, especially on autopilot.

Or it could be short-cutting the "sneaking in" riff. All the other recycled story beats from the OT were okay....

Also, they have a (frankly secondary) objective of rescuing Rey, which they cannot do by just hyper-jumping a nuclear bomb into the middle of the base facilities.

Granted Rey is important to Finn and Solo, but what's to say "hyperjumping a bomb" into the planetary shield generator (or the power regulator before the Starkiller weapon recharges) would mean insta-death for a prisoner? It isn't a 2-meter exhaust port they have to hit with snub-fighters. They have Finn's report of what's where in the base.

[SilverDragonRed]

Sad the Resistance didn't build a Death Star to blow up the Starkiller Base with.

[Simon_Jester]

This may be because unusual feats of precision piloting were required, which just any ship would not have been capable of, especially on autopilot.

Or it could be short-cutting the "sneaking in" riff. All the other recycled story beats from the OT were okay....

Look, either accept that in-story explanations for reasonable actions apply, or don't, your choice.

But if you're going to argue "why didn't they send a robot with a bomb instead of a light freighter with two guys and a Wookiee," then "because a robot with a bomb couldn't have done the job" is a valid answer.

Also, they have a (frankly secondary) objective of rescuing Rey, which they cannot do by just hyper-jumping a nuclear bomb into the middle of the base facilities.

Granted Rey is important to Finn and Solo, but what's to say "hyperjumping a bomb" into the planetary shield generator (or the power regulator before the Starkiller weapon recharges) would mean insta-death for a prisoner? It isn't a 2-meter exhaust port they have to hit with snub-fighters. They have Finn's report of what's where in the base.

The problem is that they don't necessarily have pinpoint ability to target any single point in the base with their hyperspace jump.

If they accidentally emerge from hyperspace a kilometer to the west of where they wanted, they can still get to the base by trekking through the snow. By contrast, if their bomb is meant to land on the shield generator and instead emerges a kilometer to the west, the shield generator is undamaged. Unless, of course, you use a bomb big enough to destroy hardened targets from a kilometer away.

And a bomb that big would probably kill Rey. A more ruthless set of planners might have decided not to care about that, but that doesn't mean it isn't a reason not to send such a bomb.

Moreover, it still remains in question whether "just any" starship could have made the jump in the first place. It's a moot point whether a robot freighter with a bomb could have destroyed the target if said freighter couldn't even have gotten into position in the first place.

Now, if you want to ask a really good question, ask why Leia didn't send a platoon of Resistance commandos along with Han in the Falcon as backup.

[Khaat]

Granted, I opened this line with an expression of my personal dislike for the technical explanation for the plot to proceed, it was not my intent to derail the thread.

Bartender! Concessions for everybody!

[Darth Tedious]

@Adam Reynolds: True, if hyperspace-grade velocities are necessary, nothing subluminal would stand much of a chance
I was mostly thinking of some way to work the idea into game mechanics in a way that made things interesting

It's interesting to consider just what exactly IS needed to bypass shields by exploiting refresh rates, I guess you'd have a bunch of factors we don't have any info on
The refresh rate itself is one thing, but what about duty cycle? If the rr is high enough, you could get away with low duty cycle
But then you could have odd effects, depending on the thickness (or lack thereof) of the shield
If the rr is very high, the shield is thin (do shields even have thickness?? Idk) and the duty cycle is low, could you end up 'pinching' the sides of an incoming fighter, rather than acting like a wall?
Would the fighter be caught, sliced, or *insert nasty fate*?
Are there any examples of the BAD THINGS things that happen when a ship hits a shield it can't pass through?

[Elheru Aran]

Are there any examples of the BAD THINGS things that happen when a ship hits a shield it can't pass through?

New canon? Nothing (that I know of) yet.

Old canon? A good few. In the old Marvel comics, Admiral Giel (Griff?) and his flotilla crashed into the Executor's shield; three, maybe four, Star Destroyers completely obliterated. Admittedly they were either in hyperspace or just emerging from it, so we're talking some crazy velocity to start with, but it's noteworthy that it only destroyed the Super Star Destroyer's shield, the ship itself had no damage apart from needing to repair the shield generators IIRC. That's one example, I'm sure there are others.

[Batman]

It should be noted that ships emerging from hyperspace rarely seem to be all that fast actually(the MF in TFA certainly wasn't). If TCW and Rebels are any indication ships coming out of 'lightspeed' actually don't move anywhere near it.

[Adam Reynolds]

It's essentially canon that there are secondary shields on critical targets; at least for the ray shield on the Achilles Port on the Death Star. The Oscillator simply seems to be armoured to me.

Applying that same logic to vulnerable bridge windows would also make sense. Though I wonder if the oscillator is armored in the same sense as AT-AT walkers, in which it is a semi-active system that partially deflects rather than purely absorbing the energy.

Perhaps. Brian of course says that the shield refresh rate in The Force Awakens is consistant with that. It's important to remember it's not a physical limitation, but rather characteristic of how the ships' shields are programmed.

Of course the point is that in most cases when a small craft attacks a large one it does some small damage. We see that again and again and again, even when the large ship should be shielded.

It also makes fighters and bombers make a degree of actual sense, never a bad thing.

Another factor that is likely the case to some degree as well is that fighters can hit a points where shields are weaker even if they can't fully penetrate them. Getting in close could be this as much as it is about flying under the shields. It would also be much safer for the attacking fighters.

As for the old idea of particle vs ray shields, in Clone Wars admiral Trench (I loved that spider) has something that would fit the description of a particle shield which he called a 'thermal shield' and which had different effects and characteristics.

That did actually fit the old description of particle shields, in which he had to lower them to shoot his own torpedoes. It is possible that those shields were more effective against attack but also prevented you from using your own missile weapons.

Hm. You could have a launching system (slow-moving or otherwise) that fires ballistic shells with explosive warheads (i.e. a proton torpedo warhead). The problem is that given Star Wars accelerations, any projectile slow enough to penetrate the shields will normally be easy to shoot down in flight, or just plain outrun.

That was also a key point Brian Young made with his argument. That fighter attacks are quite likely to die against enemy defensive fire, as seen against both Malvolence and Executor. So even if you can fly under shields, it doesn't mean instant victory for anyone who tries.

Are there any examples of the BAD THINGS things that happen when a ship hits a shield it can't pass through?

There were a several cases at Endor of various fighters crashing into a mix of Rebel and Imperial capital ships.

[Elheru Aran]

Are there any examples of the BAD THINGS things that happen when a ship hits a shield it can't pass through?

There were a several cases at Endor of various fighters crashing into a mix of Rebel and Imperial capital ships.

Was that fighters hitting the *ship* or the *shield* though?

[Adam Reynolds]

It is somewhat ambiguous. They exploded with no visual damage to the ship, which would indicate that it was hitting the shields, but they hit close enough to the surface that it might have just been heavily armored hull plating.

The cases in the early part of the battle, against Rebel cap ships, rather strongly appear to be shields, as the hits visibly break up without noticeable impact on the hulls. In a scene in which Wedge out turns a TIE interceptor, it appears to hit a window without doing any damage, indicating a shield hit. Against Star Destroyers, it is harder to tell, as they generally hit the thicker hull armor at a distance.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Given the lack of visible damage, most likely the shield. Plus, the entire Rebel fleet turned away drastically to avoid hitting the DSII shield, so I tihnk it's reasonable to infer that hitting active shields is a bad thing.

[Darth Tedious]

Yeah, clearly the Rebel pilots knew something nasty would happen if they hit that shield
I'd not considered the collisions we see between fighters and capships, but yeah, the total lack of damage would imply shields for sure
Going on the Interceptor example, it doesn't visually appear any different to what hitting a solid object would (ie ship explodes, same as the TIEs we see running into asteroids in ESB)
Doesn't really tell us anything, I guess
Any of the funky 'catching the fighter IN the shield' stuff I was thinking of wouldn't be likely to look any different at those speeds (and without super high-speed photography)

But this pondering and rambling of mine is making me think that there's a huge amount of specifics we don't know about how SW shields work
The whole ray shields thing makes me think the writers aren't too sure either

[Captain Seafort]

Given the lack of visible damage, most likely the shield. Plus, the entire Rebel fleet turned away drastically to avoid hitting the DSII shield, so I tihnk it's reasonable to infer that hitting active shields is a bad thing.

We can do more than infer. From the novel:

Three flanking X-wings nicked the invisible deflector shield, spinning out of control, exploding in flames along the shield surface.