Deflector / Shields

[Johnny]

A couple of things;

Firstly if the deflector is mainly directed forward, obviously for warp travel etc, what pushes particles out of the way from the rest of the ship? I'm assuming things are coming at the ship from all directions, so what kind of defenses do they have for the rest of the hull?

Secondaly, can the shields be a replacement for the deflector dish? If the main deflector is damaged then can the shields be used instead for warp travel? Being able to deflect solid objects and such. Obviously it would require more power and they would probably heat up real damn quick, but would it work?

Ta!

 

[brayman1701]

Well from what we saw on-screen it seems the navigational deflector surrounds the ship and that stops particles from hitting the ship. The next gen episode "The Chase" they adjust the navigational deflector and it surrounds the ship. So I guess the main deflector pushes aside larger objects the navigational deflector pushes away small particles.

I cant see why the shields wouldn't work but obviously the more hits they took the more damage they'd sustain until eventually they failed. Obviously it would require a lot of power but In an emergency I cant see any problems with it.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

From what it would seem, at least as initially intended, the navigational deflector was designed to project ahead of the ship a great distance out to sweep objects out of the way of the ship, or slow them down so as to reduce the impact (to either the deflector-screens/grid, shields or hull), from what it would seem the navigational deflector seems to have the lowest energy density of all the shield/deflector systems on the ship. Interestingly, in order to be protected the navigational deflector has to be able to project ahead of the ship at at least speed the ship is moving (which means the energy has to be moved ahead faster than the speed of light, as the deflector shield has to project ahead of the warp field and if it was moving at just luminal speeds the energy would then be overtaken by the warp-field and eventually the ship) which might explain the deflector-dishes need to be able to channel enormous amounts of power through it.

The deflectors (not navigational deflector) seem to project out in all directions in what would appear to be a largely spherical shape (although this seems largely variable) and are emitted either from projectors mounted on the deflector-grids, or from emitters in or under the skin. The deflectors appear to be designed primarily to slow down the velocity of objects heading towards the ship (such as a missile, or a photon torpedo) so as to reduce severity of impact towards the force-fields and/or hull. It would seem that the deflectors have a much higher energy density than the navigational-deflectors and seem to have the ability to slow down the velocity of an incoming object in a much shorter distance than the navigational deflectors do (considering how far ahead of the ship the Nav-Deflectors project outwards and the fact that they appear to have the lowest energy density of all of the shielding systems). Unlike the navigational deflectors, the energy from the deflector-grids spread outwards at the speed of light.

The force-fields appear to play the role of the stereotypical "energy-wall"; they seem to have the highest energy density of all the shielding systems on the ship, and pretty much seem to be able to stop objects colliding with the shields in the shortest distance (virtually instantaneous). They might have the highest ability to absorb energy (such as an energy-weapon), of all the shielding systems on the ship, with the deflectors and navigational deflectors ranking second and third respectively. Force fields seem to be conformal with the hull of the ship and appear to be emitted from projectors either in, or under the ship's skin.


CuttingEdge100