Two types of ray shields?

There isn't a contradiction. There's a great deal of energy coursing through the RotS ray shield...it wouldn't stop physical objects but would probably kill any organic who walked through it.

 

You're right...

The first time I saw RotS, and they mentioned the "Ray Shield", my mind immediately flashed back to my old Star Wars Sourcebook, and whether this fit into current known information.

 

Ray shields would mess up organics pretty well, I would think. Although why they would install ray shields as a capship security system is beyond me.

Chalk it up to another Lucas oversight-- a minor one, at that, but still annoying. Or maybe it was part of his vision all along, that ray shields could be used both to cover exhaust ports and trap trespassers. "You see, back in 1976, I conceived of this idea for a shield covering the hole in the Death Star, and that's why they couldn't use lasers... I also knew that these ray sheilds could also stop people, and had stopped Anakin once a long time ago. That way when my vision was complete it would be ironic that Anakin's son got around some ray shields when he didn't. It's another way of tying the trilogies together."

A more important question is why exactly Kenobi felt he and Skywalker should have been "smarter than this" and somehow able to anticipate the "oldest trick in the book." Was he watching the same movie I was?

 

That's what I thought as well, though kind of like an Ion Cannon it could still kill you.


-The Scummy-

 

All makes sense, doesn't it?

And as to why they're there - presumably it's to prevent hull-breaches, since we know that there must be some sort of shield ("magnetic seal"?) keeping the vaccum out of the hangar, but allowing ships through... in the previous scene, however, we see that there's also a "ray shield" preventing things getting in and out of the hangar - the script explicitly says it's lowered to let the vulture droids out, and has to be lowered again to let in Anakin and Obi-Wan - though Anakin is able to blast the generator to let himself and Obi-Wan in, causing explosive decompression...

Presumably this non-penetrable local shield over the refitted hangar-bay is actually a precursor to the particle shields of the EU?

And another nice tie-in with an old EU source - ships like the refitted Kaloth-class battlecruiser in Specter of the Past don't have particle shields.

And this, incidentally, might be another pointer to the age of the Death Star design.

- The Imperial Ewok

 

This is why you need to read good books like The Black Fleet Trilogy. It's one of several novels that mention particle (torps, physical objects) and ray (laser energy) shields, Questie. So does Stackpole and Allen.

 

thank you, quest. this is exactly the question i asked in the ROTS thread a few weeks back, to which i got no response. i'd forgotten about it since then.

so... wait. what're you saying is there was no such thing as genuine particle shields back then, just some sort of ray shield that stops the flow of physical objects? i was under that impression that ray shields stopped energy fields like lasers, period. Maybe we could say that they were there as a security measure since it's quite plausible that they're dangerous to organic lifeforms too (like someone said, ion cannons can probably kill, too), but going as far as to say that it can plug hull breaches and stop space craft from entering & exitting hangars kinda goes against everything we'd learned about ray shields in the OT, right?





incidentally... are shields 2-way? snubfighters in the star wars universe tend to have one-way ray AND particle shields, where they can fire lasers & torpedoes without having to open their shields, yet those same shields deflect laser & torpedo fire from outside sources. then again, in Before The Storm, there was this reference to a ground-based particle weapon (in the 5th Fleet Exercise) that had to open up it's shields to release it's particle rounds. why the discrepancy?

 

Various quotes and facts about shields:
"Chewie, angle the deflector shields!"
"Switch deflector screens to double front"
The ion cannon firing only during times they opened the shields for the transports
Luke dropping and raising shields to let concussion missiles through in COPL
The HV gun dropping shields to fire in BFC
Shield boundries and interference zones from BFC
Burns caused by personal deflector shields in COPL
Droidekas firing with shields up (barrels protruding through shields?)
Ray shields in ANH requiring torpedoes to penetrate
Ray shields in RotS, undefined characteristics?
Magcon shields in docking bays of capital ships.
Distinct energy and particle shields in ANH, BFC, SotP.

 

No, there is a minimum shielding requirement, as Before the Storm says. Even a civilian skiff like Mud Sloth had basic nav shields for antimeteorite defense. They would pop after one starfighter pass; Skywalker was cockpit experienced enough to make that observation. Even the Falcon had antimeteorite (Americans seem to say an-tie, we say antee normally) concussion shielding; COPL.

 

the droideka shielding can apparently be set to fit whatever ground the droideka is on - but when they are floating in air, the shield forms a full sphere and can't let them land on the ground (ROTS novel)

also, what about the personal shielding units that are found in Dark Forces, KOTOR etc.

and will ray shields prevent Ray Park from passing through?

 

What I'm wondering, is why didn't the Death Star have these ray shields? Or maybe Ben turned them off when he was shutting down the tractor beams. As he said, he is smarter than this

 

if the DS had ray shields, stormtroopers would be getting fried all the time. that's why they use blast doors instead. stops organics, energy weapons, and droids and probably can form airtight compartments against decompressions or gas leaks.... at a substantially cheaper cost than ray shields!

besides, i don't think the empire considered that the DS would have rebels running around on it.

 

They could have gone through, if they wanted to fry their skin off. Only armored sentients and droids can walk through a ray shield, I.E. the battle droids in TPM.

 

Useful?

Clearly, there have always been energy shields that stop some physical passage - antimetiorite shields, and the fields that keep the atmosphere in hangar bays. But the Invisible Hand's specific "ray shield" guarding the hangar seems to be something new - unless of course the TF flagship had something similar in TPM, which doesn't seem to be in the script, and I don't think is made explicit anywhere...

What we know about this is that it's powered off the same generator as the shield that keeps in the atmosphere, but not apparently the same thing (since the hangar doesn't decompress when the Vultures come out)...

So it's probably not a "particle shield", but some sort of precursor.

And The Courtship of Princess Leia established that personal shields need a reasonably large power-source and can also be dangerous to the person inside them...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

ah, but they did. what do you think covered the thermal exhausint port?

oh, yeah. nice reference there.

well, if it'll stop the likes of hayden christensen & ewan McGregor......

yeah, that's right. i remember something about a very basic (not intended for combat) ray shield, i think, that protected all craft from the harmful radiation in space. gamma rays and whatnot. I guess TIEs & other "unshielded" craft are still equipped with these basic shields?

 

So besides all those weapons that Kyle can inexplicably carry, he also lugs around a reasonably large power-source for his personal shield?

The energy shields in KOTOR seem to just strap onto one's arms.

 

Oh god, I'm going to have to start a scientific "what are shields thread." Warning!

First off, what defines a shield? It's a "field" of energy.
What is this energy in a shield? I assume this is a form of light and/or electricity

So if a shield is a field of criscrossing light beams. Light is made up of two seperate waves (they are perpendicular to eahother), but is also a particle these particles are usually called photons.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Particle Shields"

As we can see from everyday things:
Physical objects can go through "light" (i.e. waving you hand infront of a flashlight). But when this is done it "stops" the light. This is caused by the weakness of the "beam."

Physical objects can also be burned/destroyed by "light." (i.e. lasers and infrared radiation). If you stick your hand into a ray shield you will be burned very harshly. From many sources I have found this to be true. You are burned because of the concentration of "particles in the light."

-- SO the ability of something "physical" to pass through a shield would be caused by the frequency of the wavelengths in the shield (More frequency, more photons in the "wall of energy"). So it takes a lot (A HELL OF A LOT) more "energy" or "power" to power a shield that would need to stop a proton torpedo traveling at a extremely high velocity (because the shield would need to have high enough concentration of photons to "stop" or "redirect" "most" that kinetic and explosive energy.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Ray Shields"

"Light" can be "absorbed" by light of the same wavelength. When two beams of light with the same wavelength "hit" eachother, energy is given off and the two beams "stop" or cease to exist, in a way.

"Light" can "pass through" light without being affected (i.e. have a flashlight pointing at one thing, then a laser pointed at something else 90 degrees from it so they intersect eachother, it's not interfered with.) So in theroy a "blaster" could go through a "shield" if it's a different wavelength.

--SO for a shield to let a "blaster" through, but still prevent a "blaster" from coming in, the shield would need to contain ALL the OTHER wavelengths of blasters EXCEPT the one the vehicle/droid uses itself.

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In conclusion:

-There is no "different type" of shielding. Particle and Ray shielding are in general the same. Particle shields are just Ray shields that stop particles too. So "lowering particle shields" to let fighters in, just means "lowering the energy" (i.e. frequency of wavelengths) in the shield. One could also lower the amount of wavelengths in it.

-Ray shields that stop particles (Particle shields) just take A LOT more energy (It can be adjusted between stopping 24 proton torpedoes [i.e. cap ship], or just stopping two humans from walking through [i.e. RoTS; obiwan/anakin]).
--The effectiveness of "particle shields" is just the amount of photons per cubic centimeter per second. It takes a lot less photons per cm per second to stop two humans with large surface area from walking through, then it takes to stop a fighter with a lot of kinetic energy. (Organics will also be burned or maimed when trying to pass through a shield, the amount of damage caused to an organic is also caused by the "photons per cm per second").

-Ray shields can be "one-way," "two-way," and "no-way" (with blasters/lasers) depending on the wavelengths of the weapons involved. The shields need to "project" the wavelengths of the weapons that you DON'T want to let through, but omit the wavelengths you want to get through.

 

The New Sith War caused a degradation of technology, so maybe the personal shield tech of the KOTOR period was lost.
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech/Shields/index.html

That site seems to argue that Star Wars shields don't have frequencies.

 

EDIT:

It doesn't say there are no frequencies, it just says that there is no way to say if SW ships have a vulnerable frequency or frequencies.

 

Not those ray shields, dummy

 

There are loads of different types of shield the HoTD points to static shields that stopped the mob from invading the Bothan embassy. This type of shielding meant that people didn't get hurt as there were able to force down the static barrier.

Therefore if ray shields weren't harmful to organics why was there a need to develop this sort of tech? So i think its reasonable to conclude that ray shielding is harmful.