09-21-2016, 09:05 PM
(09-21-2016, 03:11 PM)OdinYggd Wrote:(09-20-2016, 06:05 AM)Surge Wrote: On a scale of feasible to horseshit it is definitely a 4 or something
Long as I can convince the average person though I am satisfied.
One of my retro-themed starships had a similar shield though.
It used a slowly rotating magnetic field that on emerging from FTL would quickly gather nearby meteorites and space junk. This would orbit gently around it in a continually thickening debris field, providing an ablative shielding of sorts.
But said ship was also a freighter, and when it went to warp it left behind a swirl of space junk gradually spreading out again since the magnetic field was gone. The shields had to be operating for some time at sublight velocities to have any kind of effectiveness - since it took time for the shield to gather debris. This shield would also capture nearby freight containers interestingly enough, making it rather convenient when loading cargo without a proper space dock because you could fling the container towards it and let the shield capture it, then attach a thruster pack to the container to 'deorbit' it so it would fall into the cargo bay.
I had considered a few times including a mechanism to capture debris from the shield, grind them up and store them inside the ship, then use that material as chaff to prime the shields if it happened to warp into a crisis.
Your plasma system sounds interesting, but I see a very problematic flaw- it would require a specially shaped magnetic field to capture the plasma in an envelope that attracts it to keep it within a certain distance, but then repels it again so it doesn't stick to the hull. My solution to it would be to phase the shields- it operates at one polarity to attract the plasma, then once the plasma has momentum towards the hull, it reverses polarity to repel it and push it away again. Like so the thickness of the plasma belt would be controlled by the frequency- lower frequency means thicker field, but to achieve compression for shielding an incoming shot you would have to change the frequency up and down at regular intervals to decompress and recompress the plasma so it doesn't cool off or get squeezed out.
The idea for pulse shields has been around for a long time. It's even the style of shielding used in the halo series by covenant and adapted by human forces once reverse engineered. Shielding being constantly on is expensive, energy inefficient, and produces massive amounts of heat over time after all, magnetic or otherwise.
The issue becomes what balance between these things are you looking for.
Pulse shielding is good for disassociation of energy and explosive weapons (rapidly peels them apart using it's tiny pulses or disrupts aim heavily diverting the shots or causing them to explode at a distance) And only has issues with solid projectiles, specifically flame retardant non ferrous ones, but ferrous materials still oft get through, though slightly damaged and not as damaging. This weakness is the cost of the system being more efficient and (generally speaking) cheaper than other systems across all areas.
However, if you want to go REALLY cheap and REALLY effective compared to the cost, you'd use something closer to a broad spectrum AMS Using plasma counter battery fire to repel attacks on the ship via slaved trajectory computers set to their own projectile speed etcetra. All for minimal wear on your ship, max coverage, minimum cost. Lasers aren't going to repel projected energy, but plasma will counter projectile, explosive, laser, other plasma, projected energy, and non-ferrous flame retardent materials. What else would you need when the better alternative is already here today in real life? Just apply a bit of that science mumbo jumbo and point defense systems outrank shields for everything that is going to see combat. Minimum drain on your ship, your wallet, your rescources, and your safety. Who needs some ineffective energy envelope when you have a set of those babies?