Working of Shields

[Executor]

As Ep2ICS tells us that anything below the shield rating will not affect the shields. Here is how I see it working.

The Defending Ships (Ship A) has a shield peak of 200TW; the attacking ship (Ship B) has a broadside of 250TW and can fire this every second.

Ship B fires on Ship A, with Ship B’s broadside being 50TW more then the Shield peak the generators on the ship A start heating up, but the shields hold.
On the next broadside the peak of the shield of ship A will only be 150TW, while the heat sinks cool off the generators. The heat sinks for the generators on Ship A can cool enough heat to give 10 % of the peak power back every second. The following is how a ship would lose its shields.

0 Seconds- Shields at 200TW
1 Second- 250 TW hits shields-generators heat up by the additional 50TW-peak now at 150 TW
2 Seconds-Heat sinks cool generators-10% of peak restored (20TW) (I call this the shield recharge)
Shield peak at 170TW- 250TW hits shields-generators heat up by 80TW-Peak now at 90TW
3 Seconds-Heat sinks cool generators-10% of peak restored (20TW)
Shield peak at 110TW- 250TW hits shields-generators heat up by 140TW-Shields Collapse hull takes some damage

Basically any amount of power above the peak shield rating will heat the generators up to a level where by the following Broadside the peak Shield rate will be lower due to the heat in the generators. If the Heat sinks can reduce the heat quick enough the next Broadside but not effect the shields, for the example above the heart sinks would need to be able to handle 25% of the shield peak a second, to keep the shields raised at 100% peak. The Broadside needs to be greater then the combined peak and Recharge to wear the shields down.

Tell me what you think.

Lee

[omegaLancer]

Why wouldn't the shield generator heat up anytime it takes a hit. Apparentily since the shield is still performing work whether the energy exceeds the peak rating or not..

that would explain why shields fail after prolong period of combat.

[arctic_series]

more like this

shield generator has 200 TW peak shield rating.

while the shield generator can withstand in excess of 1000 TW equivalent of energy before giving out over a period of say 20 seconds, where each second the shields are getting hit with 250 TW of energy

so after 20 seconds, 20 volleys of 250 TW equivalent of energy has wacked the shields and the shield generator has reached it's threshhold of 1000 TW and it overloads and shields are basically down..

[Spartan]

The shield generator would heat up, but the issue is really how quickly the heat sinks can absorb and re-radiate it.

In the OT ICS shield generators are described as converting the incoming energy to neutrinos. Logically that would be it would be the heat sinks doing it. Which is a good thing actually, because once converted to the heats converted to neutrinos they can be radiated in any direction (not neccesarily a surface radiator). That and they'll no longer interact (heat) any other ship systems. I'd require some bizzare particle physic though.

[Executor]

Why wouldn't the shield generator heat up anytime it takes a hit. Apparentily since the shield is still performing work whether the energy exceeds the peak rating or not..

that would explain why shields fail after prolong period of combat.

I believe the generators would heat up, under any firing on the sheilds, pretty much how an elctrical cable will heat up when a current passes through. The peak rating is how much power the shield can absorb before the generators heat up enough to start effecting the shield rating. Again like a cable has a rating, you can run a current through that cable at its rating as long as you want, put more current through it and the cable will heat up more and hinder its performance.

[AL]

wouldnt we have a shield operator with this process. I always though it weak that the shileds go up by pressing a button and all the shield operator does is sit there and say are shields are at 100%, 90%, so on and so on until they have no more shields, surely they do something else beside that, maybe angle the shileds to deflect blast or something.

[Larz]

wouldnt we have a shield operator with this process. I always though it weak that the shileds go up by pressing a button and all the shield operator does is sit there and say are shields are at 100%, 90%, so on and so on until they have no more shields, surely they do something else beside that, maybe angle the shileds to deflect blast or something.

Indeed... I'd figure that a shield operator would have to work closely with the commanding officer and the tactical officer. That or wouldn't the shield operator have to be the tactical officer or a tactical officer so they could allocate power to shield sectors that will be needed for a move. Or perhaps to act as a shield repair crew coordinator...

[His Divine Shadow]

Why wouldn't the shield generator heat up anytime it takes a hit. Apparentily since the shield is still performing work whether the energy exceeds the peak rating or not..

that would explain why shields fail after prolong period of combat.

Think of the shield rating as a refresh ratio, they dissipate energy at that rate without problems, it really depends on wheter the energy that went over it's limit forced the shield generator to work hard enough to lower it's efficency through increased thermal waste in the system.