Star Destroyers Shielding

I was wondering :

To destroy a SD efficiently (that is stripping it from its shields), you gotta shoot the shiled projection domes. But why aren't those protected, whereas the rest of the ship is ? Or is the shield weaker there ?

Huh ?

 

In the X-Wing/TIE Fighter games, you have to destroy the shield before you could destroy the shield generator. The reason to do so is to prevent the shield from re-generating. I think the movie just shows the dome-destroying scene, the attacking scenes are off-screen.

 

Okay, that's it.

Another couple of questions :

- How is the shield shaped ? Does it 'fit' the ship shape, or is it a simple sphere ?

- What happens if a ship hit a shield ? Does it bounces, or does it go through ?

 

You can see in TPM that a shield hugs the shape of the ship quite closely. It has always been my theory is that shields are part of what alows a non aerondymanic ship, like the Falcon, to fly in the atmosphere without breaking up.

Aso, if ships colide, it would be just like firing a big torpedo at the ship, if the shields were weak enough the ship would punch through.

 

How is the shield shaped ? Does it 'fit' the ship shape, or is it a simple sphere ?

I remember reading somewhere that they overlap.

What happens if a ship hit a shield ? Does it bounces, or does it go through ?

My guess: That really depends on the size of the ship and the shield-strength. A Star Destroyer obviously can handle larger objects than the Millennium Falcon, yet they shot the asteroids to bits in ESB. Probably just protect the shield. A shield dissipates energy but if it's hit too many times, it's energy levels to keep it up will deplete. If that's because of cannonfire or asteroids, it will collapse.

 

Val is right in that shields project very close over the hulls of ships. However, larger capitol ships have bigger shields, so starfighters and transports have been known to fly under them and knock out critical areas, such as the Millennium Falcon in The Courtship of Princess Leia, when Han blasted the bridge of the Iron Fist with concussion missiles.

 

I actually haven't added anything to this thread yet, but I hope this helps:

"The Ins and Outs of Shield Generators and Projectors, v. 6.2: by darthseti and tears of palpatine.

I. Shield Operation:

i. Energy from the main reactor core enters the shield generators, where it is increased by a large factor and converted into a form of energy (?purified energy? able to be used by the projectors.

ii. Purified energy is routed from the generators to the shield projectors; there, the energy is converted into a ?deflector shield,? which is then projected around the ship, typically in a hull-hugging fashion.

II. Shield Failure:

i. Projector capacitors allow a safe power-down in the event of a failure of the shield generators until another energy source is procured. Although very uncommon, at times small amounts of shield energy residue remain in the capacitors, sometimes allowing 7.5 per cent or less shield energy to exist for a short time. There are some documented cases of shield residue higher than 7.5 per cent, sometimes as high as fifteen per cent, but this is extremely uncommon.

ii. In the event of a failure of the shield generators, technicians will attempt to reroute ?crude energy? directly from the main reactor core to the shield projectors in order to reëstablish shield functions. Because the crude energy has not been refined into purified energy, the projectors are only able to function at approximately 25 per cent of maximum capacity; performance levels in excess of 25 per cent are documented, and are typically found on older ships with more experienced crews.

iii. Deflector shields remain up when generators are overloaded, but cannot be replenished and are therefore easily brought down by salvoes from enemy vessels.

iv. Deflector shields drop completely when projectors are overloaded, and this constitutes a serious threat as projectors are not as easily replaced as generators.

III. Shield Types

i. Particle deflector shields, which are closely hull-hugging in most warships, function as a sort of invisible and mass-less wall surrounding the ship. Solid materials, such as asteroids and starfighters, are vapourised on contact with the particle deflector shields. These are operating at all times in order to protect the ship from micrometeorites, and are only lowered in order to make repairs, receive or send HoloNet transmissions, and (in localised regions) to receive or launch smaller vessels. The absorption of kinetic energy and vapourisation of solid matter depletes the shields, thus necessitating constant replenishment.

ii. Ray deflector shields, which tend to hull hugging (but not as closely as particle deflector shields) in order to prevent damage from ?bleed-through,? function as a sort of invisible and mass-less wall which absorbs incoming rays and re-transmits them over a greater area, thereby reducing the destructive effects immensely. The re-transmission of the rays does permit a certain amount of ray energy to ?bleed through,? and the process gradually depletes the shields, thus necessitating constant replenishment. Ray deflector shields are only raised in combat situations due to the considerable energy requirements.

iii. Cloaking shields, which are spherical in shape, function by creating immense warps in space-time in order to cause matter and energy to flow around the shield rather than actually striking it. This causes the ship to be completely invisible, but also has the side effect of blinding the ship generating the shield. In addition, exhaust must be vented through the shield, which might conceivably be detected by enemy vessels. Sufficiently sensitive gravitic sensors can detect cloaking shields.

IV. Dangerous Warheads

i. Warheads include concussion missiles, 1.5-kiloton proton torpedoes, advanced concussion missiles and advanced proton torpedoes, heavy rockets, space bombs, multi-megaton capital ship warheads, mag pulse warheads, and T-33 warheads, which are extremely dangerous and can overload Star Destroyers? shields in approximately thre

 

That was more than I asked, but it's a great reading, thanks !

Now last question (I think) : are the shield working only from the outside ? That seem logical, otherwise the turbolaser'd be useless, but what if there was something else. Any info on that ?

 

Those aren't shield-generators! That's just another inaccurate bit of nonsense brought to you from West End Games...

They're sensor-domes... and whatever, the bridge deflectors must have been already destroyed for the Rebels to be able to destroy them...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

How can you call them sensor domes when just about every EU source imaginable calls them shield generators?

The Technical Commentaries, for all the effort Saxton put in, are wrong. I cannot stress this enough.

 

Actually ,I'm pretty sure that some EU source mentions hpw the shields generators interfere with normal ship funtions.That's why they're on top.

 

Yes, that's in EG to weapons and technology.

It has something to do with external are much stronger than internal shields. The interference weakens the shields reliability.

 

All it is is an uncritical repetition of the errors of West End Games...

Similar things happen in rl...

For instance, the frequent repetition, in both popular fiction and militaria, of the idea that Wellington's redcoats could fire as many as five musket-rounds a minute, whereas it seems likely that in anything other than exceptional circumstances, it no more than three rounds per minute was possible...

Or the idea that Roman cavalry was ineffective and rarely used in combat, since they lacked stirrups... whereas reconstructions of the four-pommeled 'Gallic' saddle have shown that it was just as effective as stirrups in keeping a rider in the saddle, and a cursory study of the sources shows that the Romans did not neglect to use their cavalry...

I'd be inclined to see "the domes on a SD's bridge tower are shield-deflectors" as a popular myth, something similar to "Roman cavalry were limited to a scouting role because they lacked stirrups" or "the design of the Brown Bess musket enables it to be fired five times a minute in combat"...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

You could be inclined to believe that, but you are not backed up by any sort of credible evidence.

If you want to support your side of the argument, I suggest you find real and credible evidence, not conjecture based on only the films.

 

Maybe there ray-sheilded?

 

The films are canon... are you suggesting that it's possible to bring down a shield by firing through it and destroying something inside it?!

Also, the officer who reported to Piett said that they'd lost their bridge deflectors...

Now this implies that most of the ship was still protected - it was just the bridge tower that had lost its deflectors... now there are several dome arrays on an SSD, but they are clustered around the bridge, on the upperworks of the dorsal hull... which makes no sense if they are supposed to be shields...

And surely if the destroyed dome was a shield-generator, the other shield-generator would still be functioning, and the bridge would be covered by the overlap in the shields (which, logically, would run along the centreline, where the bridge is located)

Moreover, no other SW starship except those using ISD-style bridge towers has anything that might plausibly be an external shield-generator of the sort that the domes are supposed to be... but communications/sensor arrays are very visible... the most prominent such external features on many ships are sensor dishes - which the SDs conspicuously lack, but which in RL are often contained in domes of just that sort that you are insisting on identifying as 'shield generators'...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

There is a very simple answer to that question: The A-wings were under the shields.

When Ackbar ordered the fleet to concentrate all fire on the Executor, most of the capital ships in the vicinity responded. Their salvos opened up a big enough hole in the shields that some fighters could slip through to destroy specific targets on the hull. The shield generators were the primary target, so that the capital ships could start pounding on the hull itself.

 

Three points from a science student's perspective

1. How do you know the shield generators arn't area based/controlled by the bridge crew.

The destruction of the shield generator dome prevents a shield from recharging save at half rate and instantly implies that at least half the shields were gone.

What if around areas of the Star Destroyer they were knocked out in large "patches" and/or

Piett was ordering certain areas of the shields to be weakened while others strengthened

2. The milleneum falcon is not a warship and it doesn't have shields as strong as necessary to cover a mile long starship.

Shields cost alot of space as the Shield generators on Hoth illustrate.

Finally

3.

If you were an evil galactic empire would you want giant shield systems or giant sensors?

 

"The films are canon... are you suggesting that it's possible to bring down a shield by firing through it and destroying something inside it?! "

No.I'm suggesting that they brought down a portion of the shield and then blasted the left generator bringing down only the bridge shields.

Tell me where it says that the globes are sensor domes int he movies.

 

It's a much safer angle of attack.Would tou rather take out the shield generator from above (harder to hit when you come screaming in from above like that) and aft(less weapons aft of a SD) or would you rather hit em straight on and hope you last long enough to make a whole in the forward bridge shields?No.You take out the generator first dropping all bridge shields.

And if I recall correctly;you have to destroy both generators in the game in order to drop ALL shields.

Difficult task indeed but not when you have a few Mon Cal cruisers helping you out and the might of the entire alliance fleet.

"Concentrate all firepower on that Super Star Destroyer!"

 

Let me repeat this quote...

"we've lost our bridge deflector shield."...

Bib: it is the bridge deflectors that go down... Why would the shield generators projecting the bridge deflectors not be themselves projected by the bridge deflectors? And why would the bridge deflectors go down when only one generator was destroyed? If the domes were generators, then the bridge would lie in the area of overlap between the two shields... and it would still surely be covered by the portside generator...

Charlemagne: 'bridge deflectors' means the deflectors protecting the bridge, not some random set of deflectors controlled from the bridge... especially since Piett immediately orders forward firepower intensified to protect the bridge from attack...

Trias: are you trying to tell me that those shield generators project this huge globe in space above the Ex, and that she'd already lost main shields... or that they are just responsible for the 'bridge' shields (but are, somehow, not protected by the shields that they project)...

No... whatever shields protect the domes on top of the bridge, they must have already been brought down for one of those domes to be destroyed...

And even beyond this, something must have gone seriously wrong with the Ex at Endor... loss of the flag bridge alone could not cause that sort of loss of helm control...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Sorry, but you are wrong. They are shield generators, and nothing you can do or say will change that fact.

I don't know why people continue to believe Saxton's work, even when they have been proven wrong time and time again.

 

No I'm sayoing that they attacked from behind and brought down a hole large enough for two A wings to slip in and destroy one generator.The loss of that generator resulted in the loss of the bridge deflectors.That's all.

 

Let's keep this Civil.

Okay Thrawn how about this?

The rebels knocked out the shields on the Imperial Star Destroyer above the bridge, destroyed one bridge dome, and then destroyed the cockpit?

 

Why would the 'bridge domes' not be protected by the 'bridge deflectors'? That's the main issue...

The secondary issue is that, if the domes were shield generators, then there'd be two overlapping shields protecting the bridge, and the loss of one dome would not expose the bridge...

- The Imperial Ewok