Shields Failing

[TwoJakes]

In Journey to Babel, Chekov mentions a shield "firming up" after being weakened.

The absence of percentages on Kirk's Enterprise might be from his policy of basically not giving him (overloading him) with too much information in the heat of battle.

That wouldn't make him a bad commander, it would help him avoid the "fog of war."

 

[Unicron]

There's a similar line in TNG's "The Emissary" after the T'Ong attacks the Enterprise.

 

[poloronbeam]

That Picard can calmly count down his percentage points while Kirk never does may well tell us Picard's shields are much, much better...

Timo Saloniemi

That's HARDLY indicative of shield strength and capability. Picard pretty much sat there in a calm daze in "Tin Man" while that Romulan Warbird knocked the End-D's shields down by 70% in about five seconds in a simple flyby. Based on what was shown in TNG episodes from "The Arsenal of Freedom", "Rascals", "Darmok", "Tin Man",etc., I would say that the TOS Enterprise shields fared MUCH better against its contemporaries than the TNG Enterprise shield did.

You have one ship (Original Enterprise) whose shields can withstand the damage equivalent of 360 Photon Torpedoes ( "The Changeling"), and then you have another ship (Ent-D) that is worried that they may sustain significant damage by being in the blast radius of THREE of their Photon Torpedo ("The Nth Degree"); You have one ship (Original Enterprise) that can take a sustained pounding from Three Romulan Warbirds for several minutes ("The Deadly Years"), and then you have another ship that loses 70% of its shields in under 10 seconds from a SINGLE Romulan Warbird; You have one ship (Original Enterprise) whose shields can withstand the firepower of Klingon Warships ( "Errand of Mercy" and "Elaan of Troyius" ), and then you have another ship (Ent-D) that is completely overwhelmed by two literal junkyard B'Rel BOP's ("Rascal"); and so on and so on.

Again, if the End-D shields were better than the TOS Enterprise shields, the Federation definitely fell behind with keeping them as resilient against their modern day contemporaries (at least until the Defiant and the Ent-E). Apparently, the 24th Century Starfleet finally woke up and realized that the "skin tight" shield configuration (Defiant, Ent-E) offered much stronger shield protection than that weak bubble configuration of the TNG era.

 

[SWHouston]

I don't think the writers even read previous episodes. They're so involved in making us pity our poor Hero's, that they must make Fed equipment as junky as possible. I've been watching Trek since Episode 1 day 1, and it took me about 10 years for my eyes to not be glassy from the wonderful plots, and started seeing one episode after another, where this occurs. Though nothing has been stated (cannon), but I can't help relating the Fed Equipment to USA, and the product reliability which we as Americans cherish. Those guys are totally unconcerned with image, and I doubt they're even from "around" here.

 

[Avro Arrow]

You have one ship (Original Enterprise) whose shields can withstand the damage equivalent of 360 Photon Torpedoes ( "The Changeling"), and then you have another ship (Ent-D) that is worried that they may sustain significant damage by being in the blast radius of THREE of their Photon Torpedo ("The Nth Degree"); You have one ship (Original Enterprise) that can take a sustained pounding from Three Romulan Warbirds for several minutes ("The Deadly Years"), and then you have another ship that loses 70% of its shields in under 10 seconds from a SINGLE Romulan Warbird; You have one ship (Original Enterprise) whose shields can withstand the firepower of Klingon Warships ( "Errand of Mercy" and "Elaan of Troyius" ), and then you have another ship (Ent-D) that is completely overwhelmed by two literal junkyard B'Rel BOP's ("Rascal"); and so on and so on.

So what you're saying is... weapon strength improved SIGNIFICANTLY between TOS and TNG!

 

[Mytran]

Starfleet chose to put their R&D into carpet and lounge furniture technologies, instead of shields

 

[DonIago]

I can see PIcard strutting around the D's bridge while it was under construction: "I'm thinking...beige."

 

[SWHouston]

I can see PIcard strutting around the D's bridge while it was under construction: "I'm thinking...beige."

The "bunting" will be next.

(Uoops, excuse my SG1)

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Starfleet chose to put their R&D into carpet and lounge furniture technologies, instead of shields

Ahh, but it's self-cleaning carpet.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Starfleet chose to put their R&D into carpet and lounge furniture technologies, instead of shields

"Shields are down to 30%... but the coffee machine in Ten Forward is still holding."

 

[SWHouston]

but the coffee machine in Ten Forward is still holding."

That, life support, lights and gravity plaiting seem to be just fine. The Engineers who designed those, should be moved over to the rest of the ship. ALL of it.

 

[poloronbeam]

So what you're saying is... weapon strength improved SIGNIFICANTLY between TOS and TNG!

Uh, no. I was pretty clear about what I said. However, let's go with YOUR "theory". If what you say is true, then the Federation REALLY fell behind in the offensive/defensive curve because THEIR weapons had less of an effect on most of their opponents during the TNG era, as opposed to the overwhelming effectiveness that their opponents weapons had over THEM. Almost everyone was slapping the Ent-D around, from junkyard BOPs ("Rascals"), to a 20 year old BOP ("Generations"), to a minor race like the Tamarians ("Darmok"), to the Romulans ("Tin Man"), etc. It's painfully clear that in "Rascals" and "Darmok" that those ships were inflicting WAY more damage on the Ent-D, than the Ent-D was inflicting on THEM. The sad thing is, in both of those examples, it was clear that within the first 5 seconds of the battle, that the Ent-D was in SERIOUS trouble.

Even in "Generations", the Ent-D weapons couldn't penetrate that old BOP's shields, as evidenced by the Klingon tac officer's statement that "Our shield are holding". Holding against WHAT? That statement has NEVER been uttered in ANY Star Trek unless something was impacting against someone's shields, so it's clear that the Ent-D was still firing on that BOP even though we didn't see it, but their weapons were so ineffective that it could even whittle down that much smaller OLD ship's shields down. Sadly, we see the same kind of weapons ineffectiveness from the Ent-D sister ship in "The Jem'Hadar". Even with their shield power transferred to their weapons, they were completely useless at destroying a single Jem'Hadar ship.

So if these lackluster results are considered as "weapon strength improved SIGNIFICANTLY between TOS and TNG", then it's no wonder that the Federation needed Section 31 to assist in the security/defense of the Federation, since their TNG era ships clearly was not up to the task.

 

[Spot261]

I've often looked at those encounters in much the same way, my theory always being that the federation simply weren't devoting their resources to weapons development in a way that matched their potential. They were portrayed as being significantly more advanced and scientifically inclined than their peers for the most part and whilst they had the capability to apply that knowledge to warfare, they seemingly had not done so during the TOS-TNG period. Perhaps the very fact of being largely at peace left them with for the most part easily manageable threats (the Cardassians) or the occasional uber tech aliens against whom they had no chance of competing directly.

Contact with the Borg, the return of the Romulans and the increasing instability in relations with the Klingons seemingly challenged their false sense of security, giving them their fabled "kick in their complacency".

Which was handy when the dominion came along and they were already well along the way to making up the shortfall

 

[Leathco]

My thoughts on the percentage thing is that when shields take a hit, it causes strain on the shield generator. As the generator is strained, it supplies less power to the shields. A 10 percent shield seems to allow more energy through than at 100 percent, as hull breaches form while shields are still up. It's easier and faster for someone to say "Shields at whatever percent", then to say "Shield generator capacity at whatever percent" in the heat of battle.

 

[SWHouston]

Ummmm, after the ten billionth time the Shields have been reduced or failed, seems like someone might think that they need a bigger/backup Generator.....but noooooo.

 

[nx1701g]

Why is it that during ship battles you'll hear "shields down to 60%" or "shields are down".

Surely shields will always remain up so long as you are supplying power to them. The shields should only drop in power or fail when you run out of power to supply to them.

I'm amazed at the number of times shielding has failed, yet the ship is still capable of firing weapons.
It would make more sense in a fight to keep your shields at maximum until you run out of power and then switch to pummelling the enemy with torpedos as the final resort.

Also to be frank, after a battle has taken place, the ship still seems to have a filled deuterium tank and are still able to just carry on as normal, warping off on their journey. If they still have plenty of deuterium and a functioning warp core, why did they ever run out of shield power during the fight?

The changes in the percentage indicate the damage that has been caused to a particular shield grid. While it does make sense that as long as power can be supplied the shields should stay up, the percentage indicates their effectiveness at continuing to block threats to the ship. Some locations on the ship are better shielded than others as well.

Memory Alpha has a very detailed entry on Deflector Shields.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The changes in the percentage indicate the damage that has been caused to a particular shield grid. While it does make sense that as long as power can be supplied the shields should stay up, the percentage indicates their effectiveness at continuing to block threats to the ship.

But see, if that was the case, the ship would actually take a lot more PHYSICAL damage than normal when the shields were up but weak. This is rarely IF EVER the case and the vast majority of the time, shielding is an all-or-nothing proposition: they either block your weapons entirely, or they succumb to your weapons and weaken.

Pretty much NEVER have we seen a situation where an enemy weapon actually blasts right through the shields and damages the ship anyway. Star Trek doesn't treat shields so much as a layer of armor with a finite strength so much as a set of exhaustible hit points, the depletion of which spells the ship's immediate (or rapid) doom. EXTREMELY rarely have we seen a weapon that can actually brute-force its way through the shields even when they're at 100%; the most powerful weapons Starfleet encounters might blow the shields away with one shot but won't do a whole lot of damage to the SHIP until after the shields are depleted.