The usual VS Trekkie attack on Star Wars shield power starts with the asteroid-colliding-with-the-Star Destroyer-command-tower scene in "The Empire Strikes Back"
VS Trekkies won't accept any rationalization of the scene, even though they'll strain to grasp at every available straw they can to explain away negative Trek shield-related incidents. Most contend that the destroyer's shields were useless because a mere asteroid could overwhelm them.
Unfortunately for them, there's plenty of evidence to disprove such claims. Mike Wong has presented an extensive investigation of the collision scene, debunking any weak-hull arguments Trekkies have proposed in addition to weak shields. Check out his page here.
During the Battle of Hoth, Vader's Death Squadron arrived at the planet to capture and rout the Rebel Alliance. Their secondary mission, under the express orders of Lord Darth Vader, was the capture of Luke Skywalker. Once Vader's fleet arrived, the Rebels cleared a corridor for escaping Rebel ships by using a KDY v-150 Planet Defender Ion Cannon against Vader's Star Destroyers.
VS Trekkies balk at the very idea that MORE than one Star Destroyer was hit by ion cannon fire during the battle, and that more than ONE transport was given cover fire! There's an ulterior motive to this irrational reasoning. This is groundwork to bolster a claim that the Star Destroyers in the asteroid field were pristine and undamaged. Evidence to the contrary however, is abundant.
The Databank on the Official Star Wars website under "Rebel Medium Transports":
No mention of the Ion Cannon being taken out after its one onscreen firing. "During the evacuation" means it covered the Rebels escape until the Imperial troops entered the base. After the announcement over Echo Base's speakers that "The first transport is away!" indicated the ion cannon successfully guarded the escape of the first transport, its quite easy to see that several others made it as well; the end of the movie shows several of these transports amid the Nebulon B frigates. Also, General Rieekan's comment to Princess Leia that they couldn't protect two transports at a time after the first transport was away bears this out.
Under the Databank's Echo Base entry:
Once again, there is no implication that the ion cannon was destroyed early in the battle. Under the entry Toryn Farr:
What's this? Star Destroyers is plural. That means more than one! And she offered cover fire for multiple transports.
Not only was she dealing with the ion cannon, she stayed until late in the battle...until ordered the evacuation code signal. There is presently no EU source anywhere that even suggests the ion cannon stopped working. The evidence shows that multiple ISDs were fired upon by the ion cannon. All the sources say that the ion cannon provided cover for multiple Medium Transports and against multiple ISDs. None of the sources suggest that the ion cannon stopped doing its job.
Tales of the Bounty Hunters
In the passage above, Dengar appears in the Hoth system, hunting for Solo and drops in on the Imperial attack. At the moment, we don't know exactly when in the battle this is, but we will. Note that an ion cannon barrage has fired, and disabled Dengar's ship.(It also fried a group of TIE fighters that flew through the blast.)
"Solo!" Dengar shouted as the Millenium Falcon drew into sight.
Obviously, the ion cannon was firing even toward the end of the battle.
Ok, so now we've established that at the very least, more than one Star Destroyer had to deal with the ion cannon on Hoth. Does this mean the Star Destroyers were close to being crippled when they entered the asteroid field? No. They may not have been at 100%, but most systems were still working, including shields. Captain Needa ordered shields up when Han Solo moved the Falcon to attack position. So what happened to that Star Destroyer that lost a conning tower to an asteroid collision?
As the evidence shows, its shields were down. During the scene in question, Lord Vader was holding a holo-conference with most of the commanders in his Death Squadron. As the scene begins, the asteroid in question takes out a conning tower on a Avenger type Star Destroyer, and as we switch to the holo-conference aboard the Executor, we see one officer throwing his hands up in defense, then his holo winking out, suggesting that he was aboard the ISD that was hit.
First off, VS Trekkies claimed that subspace rather than hyperwave was used for transmissions. That was defeated rather easily:
Heir To The Empire
Then we have this image from page 129 of the Star Wars Encyclopedia:
The image above (and accompanying text) shows Holonet Transmissions occuring DURING the briefing with his fleet commanders in the asteroid field - hence the shields were down.
Trekkies contend that the novelization of The Empire Strikes Back accurately describes a scene from the
film where a Star Destroyer was hit on its conning tower by an asteroid.
Nope, sorry. In this scene, (and many others) the novelization does not accurately match the film. The film is the highest canon, and the novelization is subordinate to it.
In the film, Lord Vader is standing at the holoprojector, toward the rear of the Executor's bridge. He is neither near nor looking out a viewport. In the novelisation, the Death Squadron is described as containing one “mammoth Imperial Star Destroyer” (the Executor), “five wedge-shaped Imperial Star Destroyers,” and “a number of smaller fighter ships” and “the infamous TIE fighters.” This establishes that (at least in the novelization) the full Squadron includes one Executor-class Star Drednought, five Imperial Star Destroyers, and an indeterminate number of lesser warships, support ships, and fighter craft.
Later, when the Executor moves away from Hoth, the novelization states that Vader's ship is flanked by “two other Star Destroyers” and “a protective squadron of smaller warships.” Again, this is important in that it establishes that there are many warships in the Death Squadron, the majority of which are not classified as Star Destroyers of any model. When the Death Squadron is in the asteroid field itself, the following scene is described:
The Empire Strikes Back
As Vader watched, one of his smaller ships disintegrated under the impact of an enormous asteroid. Seemingly unmoved, he turned to a series of twenty holographic images. These twenty holograms re-created in three dimensions the features of twenty Imperial warship commanders. The image of the commander whose ship had just been obliterated was fading rapidly, almost as quickly as the glowing particles of his exploded ship were being flung into oblivion.
Admiral Piett and an aide quietly moved to stand behind their black-garbed master as he turned to an image in the center of the twenty holograms which was continually interrupted by static and faded in and out as Captain Needa of the Star Destroyer Avenger made his report. His first words had already been drowned by static.
The ship destroyed by collision with an asteroid is described as “one of his smaller ships,” whereas no Star Destroyer is described in diminutive terms throughout the novelisation—the author is consistent in dividing the Death Squadron into “Star Destroyers” and “smaller warships.” In the context of examining the novelisation itself, the particular language used suggests that the author did not intend for the vessel to be construed to be a Star Destroyer of any model. This is backed up by the storyboards of the scene, which the author had access to during the writing of the novelization:
In the movie, Captain Needa used a TIE-craft type shuttle to travel to the Executor:
This then, may have been the TIE craft the Imperial commander in the novelization (and storyboard) was on when it was struck by the asteroid. In Galaxy Guide 3: TESB, such a vessel exists.
This gives us two vital pieces of information. First, they used these shuttles extensively for communications purposes (such as with Needa). More importantly, it indicates why standard comm traffic would not have been employed in the asteroid field: Comm transmissions would have interfered with both sensor scans and probe droids!
And thats only from the Star Destroyers, to say nothing of the OTHER vessels. Remember that at the time they were vigorously searching for the Falcon, so detection would be a priority. Standard comm signals would probably interfere with scans, and therefore Vader most likely ordered subspace and/or Hyperwave communications (Which may not interfere as readily as standard comms), but also required that shields be down, much as was the case in Dark Empire with the Alleigance as well (its shields were down during holonet transmissions, which allowed the ISD Emancipator to drop out of hyperspace at point blank range and destroy it)
Secondly, the scene names Captain Needa, of the Avenger, as one of the warship commanders, allowing one to conclude that five of the holographic proxies are commanding officers of Star Destroyers, and fifteen are commanding officers of other, lesser warships within the Death Squadron.
Thirdly, the scene describes Lord Vader as watching the collision, and then turning to receive a report from the captains, whereas in the film, Lord Vader is already facing the captains’ holographic proxies.
Fourthly, the twenty holographic proxies are described as “twenty battleship commanders” in the novelization's second paragraph, and, even after the holographic image of the captain whose ship is destroyed vanishes, there are still twenty holographic proxies present and reporting in the third paragraph. This allows one to conclude that the vessel destroyed by collision was not, in fact, a battleship, and therefore, not, in fact, a Star Destroyer. (Although, TESB novelization uses self-inconsistent terminology. The only battleship present was Executor. Destroyers are
not battleships.)
If one were to attempt to construct a timeline of events, it would seem that Lord Vader was watching from the forward observation viewports of the bridge in the novelization, and saw one of the smaller vessels in the fleet collide with an asteroid, and then moved aft toward the holoprojector, where the vessel’s captain had been reporting, with twenty "battleship commanders".
At some point, seventeen of the "battleship commanders" ceased transmission, and one of the remaining battleships (a Star Destroyer) was struck on the conning tower by another asteroid. As an immediate result of this collision (for whatever reason), the transmission from that ship was also terminated.
So in conclusion, the "smaller ship" destroyed by an asteroid in the novelization was never meant to represent a Star Destroyer being destroyed. The movie was changed between pre and post production to have a Star Destroyer's command tower destroyed. There is absolutely ZERO evidence to conclude that the entire ship was destroyed.
Would Executor be crippled in the asteroid field just as easily as the Star Destroyer that lost a command tower? The tower on a Star Dreadnought is the same size as those found on an ISDII Star Destroyer, so it is a possibility. However, as Vader informed Piett, asteroids didn't concern him. The Executor's tower shield was down; the Emperor's holo transmission successfully reached Executor from Coruscant, informing Vader that the Emperor demanded an audience with him. Executor may have had more anti-asteroid guns going than the Star Destroyers; the one that lost the command tower let an asteroid slip by during a possible recharge phase of the turbolasers. Recall that Needa was relying on this very tactic when the Executor's bridge shields went down in ROTJ.
How strong are the Executor's shields? Inside The Worlds Of The STAR WARS Trilogy says that the shields are equivalent to the total power of a medium-sized star. In ROTJ, the Rebel fleet concentrated all their firepower on the Star Drednought, which made the massive ship's shields fail long enough to give Rebel starfighters a chance to inflict heavy damage to one of the command tower's sensor domes; collateral damage which brought down the bridge deflector shield. This attack also hampered the Executor's defensive gun coordination, which Admiral Piett was counting on in the absence of the bridge shield. At this point, an out of control A-wing smashed into the unprotected bridge viewscreens.
This scenario also occured to Captain Needa in TESB, which is why he raised the bridge deflector shields when the Millennium Falcon made its attack run. The novelization clarifies this:
The Empire Strikes Back
Needa couldn't resort to defensive guns as Piett did in this case, because Vader wanted the Falcon intact!
Another example of the Executor's shield strength comes from the Classic STAR WARS comics, where the
Executor survives a accidental collision with three cruisers coming out of hyperspace.
The three ships were instantly destroyed as they smashed into Executor's particle shields. The particle shields suffered only temporary loss of power, but protected the Executor from damage.
Or the ship's shields were badly battered from spending many hours (possibly days) under the murderous bombardment of the Hoth asteroid field, so they were't confident in their ability to stop the speeding freighter. Remember that the ship had just emerged from the asteroid field where it was attempting to locate Solo, and that all of the ISD's in that field were taking a steady and continuous asteroid bombardment. Also, a simple human reaction to a speeding object coming right toward you isn't a barometer on shield weakness or strength. People in movie theatres routinely flinch or gasp from actions projected on a movie screen, which aren't real.
In TNG:"Genesis", where the crew "de-volves" The E-D was outside an asteroid field. They were at the edge of it, firing IN to it to test some new weapons capabilities. When one torp goes AWOL, Picard wants to pursue and destroy it. Data says:
This asteroid field in "Genesis", wasn't as dense, and the asteroids themselves were virtually standing still compared to the asteroid field in TESB. There is no canon or official word on how long Vader's Death Squadron searched the asteroid field before Solo left the space slug. The best estimate would be 24 hours, based on Vader's impatience. Unless of course, one wishes to believe Vader gave up on all 5 Star Destroyers in his command fleet after an hour and brought out his bounty hunters from storage. "Tales Of The Bounty Hunters" establishes that the bounty hunters were already in the Hoth system when the rebels were escaping, but they would need time to meet with the Imperial fleet and dock all their ships on Executor
In TNG:"Conundrum", a Lysian destroyer fires a fusion powered laser at the Enterprise, which was stated by Data as being 2.1MJ. This weapon caused no damage, but was significant enough to shake the E-D and apparently exceed the intertial dampeners' ability to compensate. Interestingly, the impact of a 3-ton early 1970's Chrysler New Yorker travelling at 120mph constitutes 4.25MJ of kinetic energy. (KE=1/2*mv^2)
A 2.1MJ attack should'nt have any real effect whatsoever on a 200,000 ton vessel like the Enterprise, as far as imparting any kinetic energy to it. Therefore, if a tiny weapon like that can actually make the E-D shake noticeably, the only logical conclusion is that its stabilizers or inertial dampeners were affected by the impact, which in turn means that some of the energy must have gotten through the shields and actually affected internal ship systems, even though it was an impact that was much smaller than the impact from being rammed by a large four-door sedan.
It is frightening that the Enterprise-D is so weak. If a bus or, god forbid, a tanker truck full of gasoline were to ram the E-D, the warp core would likely blow. Blues Brothers' Bluesmobile would have enough kinetic energy to penetrate the E-D's shields!
In TNG:"The Survivors" a 400 GW blast penetrated the shields of the Enterprise and forced Picard to flee the area. It takes a LOT more than 400 GW to vaporize a 10 to 20 meter asteroid in a fraction of a second, meaning that a point defense turbolaser has at least 1000 times the power required to penetrate the Enterprise's shields.
ANH: Han Solo flies into the remnants of Alderaan with shields already raised. The novelization says that if Solo did NOT have his shields up, the Falcon would have been destroyed instantly.
"What the—?" a thoroughly startled Solo muttered. Next to him, Chewbacca offered no comment of his own as he flipped off several controls and activated others. Only the fact that the cautious Solo always emerged from supralight travel with his deflectors up—just in case any of many unfriendly folks might be waiting for him—had saved the freighter from instant destruction.
The movies show shields protecting ships from impacts, on many other occasions:
"That was no laser blast, something hit us!"—Han Solo, TESB
Shields keep air in the Death Star hangar.
Gungan shields keep water out. Also, the Trade Federation tanks fired solid projectiles at the Gungan shields. Note the
recoil, arch, and sound of impact.
"Prepare to open shield."—TESB. Why, if they don't stop physical objects?
"All craft, pull up!"—ROTJ. The rebel fleet couldn't enter Death Star 2 until the shield protecting it was down. In the novelization, ships were destroyed when they hit that shield.
Vader's shuttle and Tydirium in ROTJ both need the security shield lowered (locally) in order to pass.
"Have you noticed the shields are still up?!?"—ROTS. Anakin had to destroy the shield generator on the Invisible Hand's landing bay before he and Obi-Wan smashed into the protective shield.
In A NEW HOPE, Han Solo commands Chewbacca to "angle the deflector shields" on the Millennium Falcon. Speculation on exactly what this means has run from a "umbrella" shield than can be angled to face an oncoming attack, or
vector field effect. At each point the field would have an inherent direction and its alignment with the direction of incoming fire would have some effect on the level of protection.
The effect could also be a scalar field, but its intensity can be concentrated in specific arcs, possibly analogous to the multipolar concentrations of electron density in atomic orbitals. To push the analogy further, such angularly concentrated field distributions may be associated with different angular momentum (spin) states of the field.
When travelling at sublight speeds, but a large fraction of the speed of light, the crew experience less time than the
outside galaxy. For ships traveling at speeds greater than lightspeed, the duration of the journey (for the crew) is approximately x/c, where x = the length between start and end points measured in the frame of the galaxy at rest, and outside observers see a starship make an almost instantaneous jump. Standard operation of hyperdrive requires onboard time-retardation such as a stasis field. In the "Behind The Magic" CD, the Millennium Falcon has a "stasis-type shield generator".
If Bosbit Matarcher covered 200 years with a single hyperjump which felt like a two hour trip, it means that he suffered extreme time dilation at some point in the journey. We don't know what kind of time dilation he would experience at superluminal speeds, but if we assume that this was caused by his acceleration forward from sublight to hyperspace, it would mean that the ship has to pass VERY close to c before suddenly flipping over to superluminal speeds.
Averaged over his whole trip, Bosbit has suffered time dilation in the subluminal regime. The time dilation ratio is
832770, implying a mean speed about a millionth less than c (very roughly, and on average over the whole trip).
Planetary shields are commonplace in Star Wars. But in Star Trek, there is little to no evidence for their existence. They certainly weren't in evidence in DS9:"The Changing Face of Evil", when the Breen attacked Earth. One example of at least structures being shielded against phaser attack, was TOS:"The Apple", where the god "Vaal" shielded itself from the Enterprise's phaser fire. Another example is TOS:"Whom Gods Destroy", when the Enterprise is held at bay by the Elba III facility's shield.
In Star Wars, most civilized planets have planetary shields, like Coruscant and Alderaan. Smaller shield systems can protect an area at least as big as Echo Base in TESB. The shield protecting the Death Star protected it from the destruction of an exploding Alderaan with no ill effects. The Death Star's safe minimum distance from such a violent explosion is six planetry diameters. In REVENGE OF THE SITH at the beginning of the Battle of Coruscant, two flashes of blue shield emission can be seen as the outer shield of Coruscant dips (locally and temporarily) to admit two Jedi fighters at the point where dive they down past the first Venator (which is coasting above the shield). Evidence for the Coruscant planetary shield has also been witnessed in ATTACK OF THE CLONES.
Here are more EU references on planetary shields:
Planetary shields (at least in Ukio) are well within the atmosphere.
SW planetary shields are composed of multiple overlapping shields. Also, these shields seem to be in the form of an umbrella or plate of some sort instead of hemispherical. Thrawn's cloaked ships could maneuver under these shield segments easily. Hoth's Echo Base had but a single generator, implying the same geometry; a high atmospheric "parasol" much like the shieldships used to travel to Nkllon in "Heir to the Empire". If this is the case, then the Imperials could just land "outside" of the shield area and walk in under the "umbrella".
It is unclear here whether Ackbar was referring to part of a shield or one of the multiple overlapping shields. If the former, then it seems planetary shields can "leak" energy at points if overwhelmed. Parts of the shield can be overwhelmed, and if the entire shield itself soaks up too much energy it will catastrophically collapse.
If the Death Star's shields had small "seams" then fighters could slip through, but the shields would still stop almost all of the incoming debris from Alderaan, except for the small amounts that just happened to hit the seams, and which would presumably not be significant enough to worry about.
In "Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country" most of the Klingon moon was destroyed by overmining dilithium. The depletion of Quonos' ozone layer was an environmental catastrophe for the Klingons. They had no way to deal with the loss of their ozone layer, and the problem with a missing ozone layer is a lot more UV rays bombarding the planet. This means that they can't shield a planet against UV rays, or the loss of the ozone layer wouldn't have been a problem.
In TNG:"Inner Light", a probe built by a society that lacked manned space flight fired a beam of nucleons at the Enterprise, which penetrated its shields. Nucleons are not exactly exotic particles—they are neutrons and protons.
A planetary shield is not impossible to take down from orbit. The planetary shield protecting Coruscant was estimated to fall in less than 12 hours from a bombardment by a fleet of Star Destroyers.
STAR WARS SHIELDS
Star Destroyers vs Hoth Ion Cannon
"The Alliance's giant ion cannon provided the added protection of cover fire during the evacuation."
"The Rebels speedily evacuated the personnel and equipment they could aboard Rebel transports with starfighter escorts, offering covering fire for the fleeing ships from a massive ground-based ion cannon."
"It was this officer who ordered the massive ion cannon to fire at approaching Star Destroyers, offering cover fire for escaping Rebel transports."
"Toryn Farr was among the last to leave the Rebel command center in Echo Base on Hoth."
pg. 97: A glowing ball of red energy burst up from the planet, and Dengar accelerated the Punishing One and tried to turn away. The ion cloud washed over his ship with a noise like crackling gravel. Dengar could feel its electirc charge raising the hair on his head, and suddenly every indicator light and monitor went dead. The cabin went cold and black. Even whirring fans cycling the oxygen from the life-support system droned to a stop.
pg. 97-98 Dengar was watching the sleek gray lines of the Star destroyer, trying to guess which docking bay he would be dragged into, when a Corellian light freighter screamed over the horizion, firing at the Star Destroyer's gun emplacements, dodging laser blasts , three TIE fighters close on its tail.
Shields and Holo-Communications
pg.110: Han shook his head, looking around. "No, they've got something new. Some kind of booster that lets them punch subspace transmissions through
deflector shields and battle debris."
Star Destroyer Destruction in TESB?
The novelization clearly says that one of Vader's "smaller ships" was "disintegrated" due to a collision with a huge asteroid. This scene is also portrayed in TESB. Although the scene cuts away before we see the entire destruction of the Star Destroyer, the novelization, being part of the canon, speaks where the film does not. Since the Star Destroyers in Vader's Death Squadron were the only "smaller ships" in relation to Executor, this means that the asteroid collision completely "disintegrated" this mile-long ship. This clearly shows just how vulnerable these ships are to physical attack. He was staring through the large rectangular window above the deck at the raging field of asteroids that was pelting his ship as it glided through space. Hundreds of rocks streaked past the windows. Some collided with one another and exploded in brilliant displays of vivid light.
TIE craft cockpit window.
Why would an Imperial Commander be on a TIE craft? And if he were, why isn't he seated and wearing an environmental suit, since TIE fighters have no life support?
pg. 49: Another TIE, not designed for combat, but nevertheless utilized extensively during the Hoth campaign was the TIE shuttle. With the collected crew of six Star Destroyers, standard comm traffic between the starships of the Imperial Death Squadron would have interfered with the sensor scans and probe droid communications so vital for its missions. As such, many non-vital communications were physically shuttled back and forth when the fleet was not in hyperspace. Instead of the stanadard, high-profile Imperial Lambda-class shuttle, the TIE shuttle was dedicated to these tasks.
Executor's Shields
A small freighter could not do much damage if it collided against a Star Destroyer's hull; but if it smashed through the bridge windows, the control deck would be littered with corpses.
Kinetic Impact Durability
The Imperials hit the deck when it looked like the Millennium Falcon was going to smash through the bridge viewports of the Avenger(futile though such action may be) indicates an instinctive reaction, but still shows their gut-level lack of confidence in the ability of their shield to hold up against a high-velocity impact from a massive object.(Either that or they were still jittery about that asteroid that took out the ISD bridge tower in the asteroid field.) DATA: "Inadvisable. The Enterprise is too big and the asteroid field too dense to navigate safely"
Prove that any SW ship has shields capable of stopping the impact of a physical object, when the only two such shields known to exist were planet-based. Gigantic chunks of glowing stone appeared out of the nothingness, barely shunted aside by the ship's deflectors. The strain caused the Millennium Falcon to begin shuddering violently.
TIE fighter remains in ANH.
shields in TESB.
sheilded surfaces of Star Destroyers in ROTJ
from a fighter it has just destroyed in ROTJ
.Shield Physics
RELATIVISTIC SHIELDS
WOZIN, DELEMEDE—To look at him, you'd swear he wasn't a day over 35 standard years old, but Bosbit Matarcher's birth records confirm the unthinkable—he's 225 years old. His secret? Faulty relativistic shielding. "I got what I thought was a deal on this ship," says Matarcher, pointing to his antique Delemedian starhopper. "I engaged the jump drive for a trip in outsystem. It took about two hours. When I got out, it was 200 years later." Matarcher is taking it all in stride. "Well, truth to tell, when I left, home was pretty shoddy and run down, but now Delemede is a thriving place. I can't wait to get back, but this time I'll fly transit."
PLANETARY SHIELDS
Star Wars Novelization:
A voice announced over a hidden speaker that they had approached within antigrav range of Alderaan--approximately six planetary diameters.Star Wars Radio Dramatization:
TARKIN: Make sure we are well out of range of the explosion.The Last Command:
pg.8: "..could be seen dropping through the brief gaps Ground
Control was opening for them in Ukio's energy shield, a hazy blue shell surrounding the planet about 50 kilometers above the surface.The Last Command:
pg.10: "Sequence four had two of the Ukians' thirty overlapping
shield generators as its targets....launching such an attack would mean that Thrawn had given
up on his stated goal of taking Ukio with its planetary defenses intact."Wedge's Gamble:
pg. 34: With his mention of the defense shields, two spheres constructed of hexagons appeared to encase the world. One moved in the direction of its orbit, the other moved in the opposite direction.The Last Command:
pg.73: "If the Empire has learned a method for focusing
nonvisible energy against a shield, it could conceivably weaken a section long enough to fire a turbolaser blast through the opening."Tales From The Empire: Retreat From Coruscant
pg.121: Bel Iblis studied her silently. Just as Taryn began to fear that she'd been too brash, he grimly answered. "Coruscant is surrounded. Our defenses have been forced to retreat, and we estimate the planetary shield will fail by morning."
Although the number of ships in the above tale wasn't mentioned, this quote clarifies the details of such an assault:
Before the Storm
pg.137-138: According to Ayddar, the order of battle for Black Sword includes forty-four capital ships which we have not seen nor heard of since the fall of the Emperor. None smaller than a Victory-class Star Destroyer. Three are Super-class vessels.Drayson whistled. "What do you think of his analysis?"
"I find it indisputable."
"You know that that's more than enough firepower to overwhelm any planetary system in the New Republic," said Drayson. "Coruscant included."
Consider that the shield generator at Hoth was a small unit that could only protect a 50km area, and was not a full planetary-scale shield.
Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology: PLANETARY SHIELDS
pg.106: Planetary shields vary widely in in size and power output. A small unit such as the Kuat Drive Yards DSS-02, used by the Rebel Alliance at Hoth, protects an area approximately fifty kilometers in diameter.
Star Destroyers have enough firepower to reduce a civilized world to slag/smoking debris, expend as much energy in just one hyperjump as most civilized nations do in a lifetime, and can take another Star Destroyer's shields down after a few vollleys in one area.
Star Destroyers, with canon visual evidence and many other sources, have been proven to have firepower on a highly destructive scale. So how did one small planetary shield projector keep five Star Destroyers, and one Executor-class Star Dreadnought at bay? The shield at Hoth is said (by General Veers) to be able to withstand ANY bombardment. Another canon reference clarifies the issue:
The Last CommandThis not only confirms that sufficient orbital bombardment CAN eventually overwhelm shields (as with Coruscant in Wedge's Gamble, Tales Of The Empire, and Star By Star), but it makes a good parallel to Hoth. If they needed to land a ground force to take out the shields before bombarding a world they invaded, and it STILL takes severe damage as the quote indicates, how much worse must attempting to bring it down by raw bombardment be?
pg.4: With planetary shields able to hold off all but the most massive turbolaser and proton torpedo bombardment, conventional wisdom held that the only way to subdue a modern world was to put a fast-moving ground force down at the edges and send them overland to destroy the shield generators. Between the fire laid down by the ground force and the subsequent orbital assault, the target world was always badly damaged by the time it was finally taken.
The Empire Strikes Back Radio Dramatization:
"He's as clumsy as he is stupid," Vader cut in, breathing heavily. "A clean bombardment is impossible through their energy field."
Vader wanted a clean bombardment. Canon. The Star Destroyers have enough firepower to collectively blast the ice on Hoth into steam. Canon. Shields eventually wear out after a concentrated bombardment. Canon. Vader wanted Luke Skywalker alive. Canon.
Vader's fleet could have overloaded the shield, but would have likely wiped out all the rebels and Skywalker as well. If we take the canon quotes in context with each other, a "clean" bombardment is impossible. So in this context, that's exactly what Veers means by his general statement of "any bombardment." He is simply generalizing; that Vader's primary goal simply can't be achieved with the shield up.
Obviously, Vader would have gone over the attack plan with Veers and Ozzel BEFORE they reached Hoth, not after. The novelization is clarification of what was planned "offscreen". Vader doesn't need to see any scans, because Veers has just told him that the bombardment they had planned is now impossible due to the Rebels' energy shield being up, and Ozzel's screw-up of the battle plan.
|
Oh, this is pathetic! Fine, he specified WHAT KIND of bombardment couldn'tbe achieved because teh shield would block it. Nothing in either quote states or indicates the shield would fail—infact, this is directly contradicted by the quote from the film—powerful enough to deflect any bombardment, be it clean, general, high-powered or whatever. |
 |
Not necessarily, looking at ALL the information at hand. You know, they very thing the VS Trekkies keep whining—that the SW side should do? The only bombardment option OPEN to the imperials that Vader would allow, was impossible. If not, then why the "clean" bombardment comment? No, the best way to rartionalize ALL the evidence, is to say the shield made the "clean" bombardment, and therefore ANY bombardment which they had planned to achieve their goal, impossible. |
Trek shields have quite a number of holes in them. Let's take a look through the three kinds of holes we know of:
1) The shields are constantly changing so that there are short-lived windows in them for sensors to pass through—this is how O'Brien transported aboard the Phoenix in TNG:"The Wounded", by matching the "refresh cycle" of the shields. This tactic wasn't used by the Klingons who penetrated the E-D's shields in Generations, since their blasts went through at arbitrary times, not at some carefully chosen moments.
2) There may be even more short-lived windows for outgoing phaser blasts, specifically created by the computer as needed. These can't be the way the Klingons penetrated, since a permanent frequency window for an outgoing phaser would be disastrous—the enemy need only analyze the beam fired at them, and voila, they have negated the shields of their opponent. Windows like this can apparently be created at will in specific locations of the shield bubble - one such window apparently exists for the impulse engine exhausts during combat, and this window was utilized by Ro Laren in TNG:"Preemptive Strike" to drive a starship through.
3) The shields are "rotated" against the Borg (and Capt. Keogh also attempted this against the Dominion, without success). What is actually rotated here? Not 1) or 2), but some unknown quantity that is very likely equal to the "modulation frequency" used in ST:Generations by the Klingons to blast through the E-D shields.This unknown quantity is not observable by enemy forces unless they have agents inside the ship - but if they do, it is irrelevant whether the defending ship decides to rotate or not. The agent inside (in the case of Generations Geordi LaForge) can give the attacker the new setting for the shields just as easily as he could give the old setting. The rotation apparently can't be done very quickly, even though probably it is done pseudo-randomly. This was also done in VOY:"Equinox", where the "bad" EMH was calling out Voyager's shield frequency to the crew of the Equinox
Here is a direct quote on the energy capacity of the Enterprise-D's shields:
Season 4, Ep# 93: "The Nth Degree"
DATA: Captain, an energy field is forming around the device. Intensity is three point two terawatts, and increasing.DATA: Captain. The probe's energy output is overloading our shields. Failure anticipated in forty-seven seconds.
This is canonical proof that anything over 4TW will overload the shields on the Enterprise This also jives with the canonical proof from the TNG episode, "The Survivors", that "400GW of particle energy" can take the shields down. A Star Destroyer's light turbolasers would do this easily.
The shields on most TREK ships employ a "shield bubble" around the vessel. Depending on the threat presented to the ship at the time, the shield bubble conformes in answer to the size of that threat.
The above picture is from TNG:"Datalore", when the Crystalline Entity scraped the Enterprise-D's forward shield. Again, this isn't the default setting to the area that the shield bubble displaces, but is a defensive posture in answer to a physical attack on the ship by an object that rivals the size of a Borg cube. A unique circumstance to say the least.
In TNG:"Clues", a diffuse cloud interacted with the Enterprise's shields. Unlike the Crystalline Entity attack, this shield interaction isn't a kinetic impact, and therefore highlights the shield bubble's "default" size and setting.
 |  |
In TNG:"The Hunted", Roga Danar bounces his one-man capsule off the E-D's shields.
Again we see, even with a kinetic attack, the shields were conformed in answer to the size of the threat; an object that rivaled the size of a communications satellite. The shield bubble is about the size of the one seen in "Clues", not "Datalore". In TNG:"Symbiosis", the Enterprise's shields were bombarded by huge bursts of X-rays from a star.
Again, no huge shield bubble rivaling what we saw in "Datalore".
 |
TREK ships can also expand its shield coverage to encompass another ship in distress, which was shown in TOS:"Mudd's Women" and TNG:"The Defector" |
Kirk's Enterprise protected Harry Mudd's stolen Federation shuttlecraft after it was crippled by flying into an asteroid field to evade Kirk. The Enterprise's shields were extended to protect Mudd's shuttlecraft, however, it severely strained the Enterprise's engines to the point that new lithium crystal circuit replacements were needed.
Incidentally, STAR WARS ships can do this as well:
Darksaber (hardcover)
pg.67: "Drop back. We will parallel the Whirlwind. Harrsk's ship is dead in space, so increase our shields to protect him in case any of Teradoc's ships come after us."
In TNG:"The Defector", the Enterprise-D extended its shield to 5km to offer limited protection to a Romulan scout ship.
A Romulan Warbird flew up to the E-D's bow for a face-off, which shows that the E-D's wasn't extending a gigantic bulle shield all around both ships. Instead, a small "column" of shield protection was extended around the scout ship.
Later episodes of DEEP SPACE NINE showed a shift to "hull-hugging" shields instead of the shield bubble.
 |  |
 |  |
The above vidcaps from DS9:"Sacfifice of Angels" and DS9:"Tears Of The Prophets" wouldn't have been possible if all those Galaxy-Class starships has massive shield bubbles extending around them. They are either employing hull-hugging shields, or these Starfleet ships prefer to go into battle with no shields. It's quite apparent from these examples that shield geometry isn't set at one size or shape. It's also apparent that the shield ovoid seen in "Clues", "Symbiosis", and "The Hunted" appear to be the default setting.
|
The E-D can utilize metaphasic shields like they did in "Descent part 2", to get closer to a star than a Star Destroyer can The novel Heir To The Empire shows that a Star Destroyer will have its hull vaporized off if it ventures too close to a star! |
Incorrect. The sun Athega was an exotic celestial body. See STAR DESTROYERS vs STARS for further details.
The Enterprise wasn't in there long before the metaphasic shield program began to destabilize. Heading for the sun, the E-D's hull temperature was increasing rapidly until they set up the metaphasic shields. This indicates that even at long range and low intensity, say, 10 MW per square meter, the EM radiation was capable of easily penetrating normal shields.
In the Marvel Star Wars comic #58 "Sundown", The Rebel Fleet was able to hide inside a sun's chromosphere. Although some had reservations about Princess Leia's plan, others pointed out it wasn't a unique idea. "It's not like we've never done it before"
(Click icon to view image) Princess Leia's plan to hide the Rebel fleet in a sun's chromosphere
As for individual ships, Leia takes a shuttle from the control generator out of the sun's chromosphere!
 |
Since the Star Wars galaxy apparently never adopted transporter technology, the shields on Star Destroyers and other ships may not block transporters like the shields in Star Trek do. SW shields may have all sorts of "holes" or "windows" in them for Starfleet to exploit! |
That's extremely silly reasoning. When Voyager was lost in the Delta Quadrant, the enemy ships they encountered had shields that blocked transporters, even though Voyager was said to be the first Alpha Quadrant ship to ever reach the Delta Quadrant. Even Delta Quadrant civilizations that have no transporter tech had shields that can block transporters. (VOY:"Resistence"). With all the power a Star Destroyer puts out, it may not NEED shields to block Starfleet transporters! Here is the Commander Wilkens official List of Things That Screw With Transporters:
TNG:"Coming of Age"
PICARD: Enterprise to shuttlecraft. Mister Kurland.
JAKE: Captain Picard. I'm going to Beltane Nine to sign onto a freighter. Tell my father I'm sorry.
PICARD: Tell him in person. Bring the ship back. Now.
JAKE: No. I can't face him. I'm leaving.(The shuttle's engines stall)
JAKE: I've lost power!
RIKER: All he's got left are his maneuvering jets.
GEORDI: At that trajectory, he'll hit the atmosphere and melt at two hundred kilometers.
PICARD: Probable impact?
DATA: Atmospheric entry... seventy-eight seconds.
PICARD: Options?
TASHA: He's out of transporter range.
WORF: Tractor beam?
RIKER: Won't work. He's too far away for a positive lock.
Analysis: Jake is out of transport range. This range limitation seems very confusing. They were able to transport Wesley to and from the planet's surface, but they can't transport Jake off a shuttle which is between the Enterprise and the planet! This seems like a hopeless conundrum until you consider the fact that Jake is in a spacecraft rather than a planet. Moving vehicles seem to present more problems for transporters than planetary surfaces (which, although technically in motion, are very predictable)
This is even stranger when you consider the fact that Spock was able to beam Captain Christopher off his fighter jet while it was within Earth's atmosphere in TOS:"Tomorrow is Yesterday".
Simple English: Its harder to beam someone off a ship that is moving, such as a slow moving shuttlecraft than it is to beam someone off a planet. Trying to beam someone off a highly maneuverable ship like an X-wing or the Millennium Falcon) would be virtually impossible.
TNG:"Symbiosis"
WESLEY: Captain, deflectors are being hit by a huge burst of X- rays (bridge panels begin to short out) ... Sir, my console seems to be overloading.
WORF: The X-ray burst is disrupting systems, Captain. I'm adjusting deflectors to compensate.
DATA: Captain, our sensors are being severely affected by the sun flares.
TASHA: The solar flares are interfering with the tractor beam, Captain. I am unable to lock on.
RIKER: I'll beam over with a team.
TASHA: Captain -- I strongly recommend against anyone from this ship beaming over. The solar interference is too great.Have them go to their own Transporter Room. It will be tricky, but perhaps I can link the two transporters in series and get them over with the increased power.
TASHA: Reading six life forms... but I can't get a solid lock.
RIKER: We've no choice. Energize.(four people materialize)
RIKER: You said six; where are the other two?
Analysis: An X-ray burst from the solar flare interferes with transporters; an interaction which proves to be deadly. Even with a send/receive connection between the two ships' transporters, only four of six passengers survive the trip. Furthermore, this occurs when the Enterprise is in orbit around the fourth planet in the system, where the intensity of solar radiation, flare or no flare, simply cannot be that high.
Simple English: Mid-level X-ray radiation is enough to interfere with transporters.
TNG:"Ensigns of Command"
WORF: Human life form readings from the planet.
RIKER: So, the Sheliak weren't hallucinating.
PICARD: Numbers?
WORF: Impossible to get an accurate reading, Captain. The high radiation levels are disrupting our sensors.
DATA: Hyperonic radiation also interferes with ship's transporters; they are now inoperable.
WORF: So are the ship's phasers.
RIKER: How can humans survive down there?
BEVERLY: They must have found a way to adapt. Milan's work in radiation sensitivity suggests it's possible. Perhaps with extensive virotherapy...Until they found the answer, their mortality rate must have been staggering.
Analysis: Transporters are disrupted by the naturally occurring "hyperonic radiation".
Simple English: The planet supported human life. Basic biology therefore dicates that this radiation is incredibly weak.
TNG:"The High Ground"
GEORDI: Explosive charge on the main warp chamber...
PICARD: Transporter room three, lock on the explosive device and energize.
ENGINEER: It's scrambling the sensors, Captain... I can't pinpoint it.
Analysis: The bomb couldn't be transported because the sensors couldn't pick it up, even though it could be seen perfectly. Geordi had to slap his communicator onto it and then have the transporter chief lock onto the comm badge signal.
Simple English: They can't even lock on to a bomb on their own SHIP's reactor. How do you think they will fare trying to beam it in near a power source such as a Star Destroyer's engineering room orders of magnitude more energetic?
TNG:"Legacy"
RIKER: O'Brien! Lock onto Ishara and get her out of here!
O'BRIEN: There's a transformer substation directly above the chamber she just entered. It's masking her signal.
Analysis: The electromagnetic fields generated by an ordinary transformer can block transporter locks. My front channel power amplifier has a big 1.5 kVA transformer in it; from the sounds of it, that means I could avoid transport by simply standing next to it...
Simple English: Low-power EM fields can screw with transportation.
TNG:"Legacy"GEORDI: They've been moved so far underground that it took awhile to pinpoint their signatures. The men are here (pointing to spot on map). Next to one of the Alliance headquarters. And that's about two kilometers of solid granite above them.
RIKER: So much for the transporter.
Analysis: Transporters can't go through two kilometres of solid granite. Interestingly enough, they have transported through as much as two kilometres of dirt and rock on other occasions, so this indicates that the limitation may be one of density. Of course, if the marginally higher density of granite makes transport impossible when compared to "normal" rock, then it stands to reason that heavy metal would present an even greater difficulty.
Simple English: They can't pass through 2 Km of granite. How are they going to fare against 40-80 Km of durasteel.
TNG:"Final Mission"
RIKER: Any life signs?
DATA: It is impossible to determine. The magnetic flux would mask any bio-energy emanations.
RIKER: Mister Worf, will that interference affect the Transporter Beam?
WORF: Yes, Commander. An Away Team would have to take a shuttlecraft.
Analysis: Transporters can't transport through the natural magnetic field of a habitable moon.
Simple English: Normal magnetic fields around a planetoid screw up the transporters again.
TNG:"Hero Worship"
PICARD: Transporter room one, can you lock onto him? And transport directly to sickbay?
HUTCHINSON: I'll try, Captain ... but there's a lot of shielding to pull him through.
HUTCHINSON: The lock is holding. I just can't resolve the matter stream. Not with all that victurium alloy in the way...Commander Riker. You'll have to get him out into the corridor.
Analysis/Simple English: Transporters can't transport through "victurium" alloy. It's an alloy, a simple metal mixture and they can't transport through it...
TNG:"Schisms"
GEORDI: We've set up a containment field in Cargo Bay Four. But the rupture just keeps expanding. I'd say we've got another five or six hours before it breaches the hull.
PICARD: Can we still beam the affected sections into space?
DATA: No sir. The spatial rupture is creating severe nucleonic interference. It is impossible to obtain a positive lock on the bulkheads.
Analysis: Transporters can't be used in the presence of "nucleonic interference". Since we can generate nucleonic radiation today (and it's a natural byproduct of nuclear fusion and fission reactions), this means that transporters are ineffective in the presence of a lightly shielded nuclear fission or fusion reactor.
We saw how even a well-shielded nuclear reactor aboard the 20th century USS Enterprise could interfere with sensors, communications, phasers and transporters in Star Trek 4 The Voyage Home. This is merely another example of that well-established trend.
Simple English: A modern or near future fission or fusion reactor would be enough to block ST transporters.
TNG:"True Q"
AMANDA: Why are you taking everything down in shuttlecraft?
GEORDI: We can't use the transporters because of all the ionization in the Tagran atmosphere.
Analysis: An unusually large concentration of ions in the atmosphere of an inhabitable planet can make transporters useless.
Simple English: There is only so much radiation a livable planet can have...and it blocks transport.
TNG:"Suspicions"
PICARD: Mister Worf, can we beam him out of there?
WORF: The solar radiation is interfering... he must be at least five hundred thousand kilometers from the star before we can get a transporter lock.
Analysis/Simple English: Transporters can't beam Jo'bril out of his shuttle because of the solar radiation. This means that mundane electromagnetic radiation can block transporters.
TNG:"Attached"
DATA: There is nothing wrong with the transporter. I have run a complete diagnostic and checked all the targeting components.
RIKER: Then what happened to the Captain and Doctor Crusher?
WORF: Commander, the transporter sensor log shows an unusual concentration of antigraviton particles in the emitter coil. These particles do not occur naturally—something must have interfered with the transporter.
RIKER: Interfered?
DATA: A concentration of antigraviton particles would suggest a tractor beam. It might have deflected the transporter beam to a different set of coordinates.
Analysis/Simple English: Transporters can be deflected, misdirected, and otherwise manipulated by tractor beams!
"Publius" for the information in Marvel Star Wars #58
"The Ubiqtorate" for the TESB asteroid scene analysis
"The Living Holocron" for the Tales of the Bounty Hunters quotes
And the "Cosmic Consulting Agency" for gerneral proofreading and encouragement