Ender wrote:I am well aware of tha bit and routinely use that. What you have above is a precrafted response to rabid whiners.
Ah. I was trying to nail down some more likely numbers, and then work out some of its implications as far as shielding goes (or how much it could apply to shielding).
I always put that down to being a typo on the part of the printers. Is there a statement saying that what you propose is the case?
Well, basically, I assume it isn't a typo. (Though if we assume they're off by an order of magnitude, then that'd be 20% power to shields, but we wouldn't know which one is correct.) Asking Saxton would be the sure way to find out.
Assuming the numbers are intentional, then we'd have to have an explanation. No, there's no direct proof of the theory I'm using, but I'll give the reasoning (at least, my understanding of it; others have came up with this before me, and their reasoning may be different in some areas):
Given various references to shield generators or projectors overheating/burning out, and how SW shields tend to collapse rather suddenly and randomly when under large power straisn, it appears that handling heat is a major issue with shields. There's also mention of heat disposal systems relating to the shields in ICS2.
Since a ship's reactor can't give a shield system more power than the reactor itself can generate, then there's two explanations that I can think of: first, that there's a capacitor/battery that is charged up that can briefly power the shields in the event of a big enough attack; and second, that the number refers to the rate at which the waste heat can be dumped.
Also, with the fact that ships can allocate more or less power to shields, including from weapons. For example, in Isard's Revenge, an ISD ceased fire to put as much power to shields as possible... which is going to be more than the standard allotment of power.
For an Acclamator, that's some 5E22 watts, assuming 2 second delay between shots. Since the peak capacity is 7E22, I doubt the normal shield capacity is 2E22, or only 10% of reactor capacity. (The numbers could still likely work out under a different set of assumptions, I admit... a larger firing delay, for instance.)
Those are based off some work I had already done refuting people who tried to use little bobby's MCR theory for the DS. Going by it's shielding, it's reactor would be ~1.6E32.
So you used a lower number for the DS' reactor than it should be. Since your goal is low-end numbers for canon, that shouldn't be a problem for that goal.
As for the numbers you gave using a more accurate reactor figure, all I can say is that they seem a bit high. (Especially since that'd put 1,000 TT/s shielding on ISDs using more likely assumptions.) But, of course, "they seem high" isn't a valid argument.
Later...
), but it looks like that is because the good Doctor rounded down. 
