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Skintight shields
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Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
Is it possible with to get skintight shields in space? It's done pretty decently on ground with our personal shields (and for example the effect given off by medical generator or nanite health monitor).
For those of us that play in space with shield ring indicators turned off, would it be possible to have skintight shield effects?
For those of us that play in space with shield ring indicators turned off, would it be possible to have skintight shield effects?
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You mean like "Polarize Hull" and the NX Enterprise?
Polarize hull is ingame and you can to de-equip your ships shields. Good luck!
Right now im pretty sure its a set size bubble for a ship of a class, aka assault cruiser has X size bubble and defiant has Y size. I to would like this as an option, simple addition to all ship shields right click the shield and chose skin tight/bubble effect.
However it would mean a diffferent shield graphic/shape for each ship...that would take up a fair bit of dev time.
2nd one, expand the 2nd one in size by 10% id say, set to to be transparent and give the shield effect code. Then place it over the 1st necell. Its simple and could work with some tinkering as it wouldnt be all that easy but thats the gist of it.
Now continue to do that for ALL of the ships parts in game for all factions. Still think it's "easy"?
Typically there's two sets of shields. There's an outer "bubble" layer, and an inner "skin-tight" layer. The latter protects against impacts, and can be controlled at will. You may recall in Voy: "Equinox" that they dropped shields on specific sections of the ship (bridge, cargo bay, etc). More than likely, this was the "skin-tight" shield, not the "bubble".
I think this effect was likely supposed to show a secondary structural integrity field. Not the primary shields for use in combat.
Most Star trek encounters show shields as a bubble around the ship, even so much as to it being an important plot device in several episode (extending shields around others, or when Scotty used his shields to keep open the Dyson Sphere, even shields contracting and certain extremities of the ship being vulnerable).
And while the solution of enlarging and using transparent textures to existing ship models will obviously lessen the amount of work needed, it is still going to be a major undertaking for coding, as your talking about a new visual effect that would need to be tested on many ships, AND would be a higher polycount for in game (every shape in game has to be rendered, so one sphere is much simpler than an entire extra ship).
All of this would be to replicate an effect that can be argued to have not even represented the primary shields of a ship. So while this is something that might be "possible". I would place it has extraordinarily unlikely, ever. As the resources to implement this will have a more broadly applicable purpose.
The Nemesis Enterprise definately only had the 'skintight' shields, as evident from about 30secs in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjRFYOcT1WU&feature=related
Before the start of Nemesis the Ent E had an extensive refit which probably included these new wrap-around shields.
If there was any way to get this into the game i'm all for it
I Dont think that's their shields that looks like its a combination of the navigational deflector and the structural integrity field
During the fight the Enterprise gets pounded on quite hard from above, where we see its skintight shields take a beating. After this Data reports that the shields are at 40%, and Picard has the ship roll over. So it seems they are the shields.
I could be wrong of course, but from watching the movie and that reference about the shields getting the snot kicked out of them, I am inclined to think it was the shields of the E.
Especially after hearing in First Contact, if memory serves, the E was said to be the most advanced starship of the fleet at that time so at least imo it fits.
I would soo love to have skintight shields on my ship.
It seems not too long ago the thought of separating starships into manageable "pets" was never going to happen and now look at what we have, the Galaxy R and MVAM.
I thought the skintight shields did make the E look a lot more technologically advanced compared to other ships of the series along with the sleek design and that is another reason why I think they would fit perfectly into STO.
The bubble shields look like imo that we went backwards rather than forward.
I know the saying about looks and all that, but just the same, it does imo look more futuristic.
At any rate all that aside, I think it would enhance the overall feel of the game, and while it may not seem like a "game changer" pretty much anything that can be done to make the game a more enjoyable experience gets a gold star in my book.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeYrkdyW2Cw&feature=related
About 30 seconds in...you see a schematic of the shields....I does appear to be a wrap around shield.
I was mistaken in my orginal post.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nrc0Thr7FVc&feature=fvsr
Also here is a cool CGi version of the battle between the A and the bird of prey plus the excelsior.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYg1lyUmXR4
Apparently the shield bubble is something new. Most vessels used skin tight shields until the 24th century when federation ships started to use bubble shields than went back, as seen in nemesis. So it is canon. The only reason I can think of going back to skin tight shields is maybe to save power since stronger armour plating has been made e.g. ablative armour which obviously minimizes damage dealt.
I mean it wouldnt be as cool if one of the romulan ships wing piece bounced off a shield bubble.
Nah seriously though, the concept of skin tight shields is pretty inferior to the bubble idea.
Mainly because the energy fields arent a completely solid barrier, thus the bubble shield offers more protection from kinetic impacts while impact on a skin tight shield will result in kinetic energy being directed right into the hull.
True it was cool and it would be cool also it they add this in the game. I don't think skin tight shields are inferior. Maybe true that the kinetic damage dealt to the ship with bubble shields maybe less but like i said in my previous post with improvements to armour tech should help as well plus we have seen with bubble shields solid objects have passed the shield and with the nemesis skin tight shields we have seen that even shield objects won't go passed the shields. Each have there advantages and disadvantages. Also we see the the skin tight shields are not really that close to the ship so maybe still kinetic damage is still reduced.
The reason is that there is less distance between the generator and the shield layer making the shield stronger as the shields weakens by distances from the generator, hence it is possible to protect an other ship within your shields, but you would weaken them (multiple references to that in series)
As for inagme the extra time it would take to create this is better spend elsewhere, but it can be a side project in the future
My source: The Technical Manuals. What do they state? You know all those recessed lines on the ships? Those are the shield grid generators. You could feasibly turn individual segments off. I've seen nothing about 2 shields.
the MLSS (multi layer shielding system) is more something from fan fiction I know many pen and paper RPG run with it to explain all the things the shields do, it is just a basic uncomplicated way of saying they do multiple things.
The sovy uses regenerative shielding, which is pretty simple a double set of shield generators, 1 on line 1 off line, once generator 1 of a certain section drops below X% number 2 kicks in allowing number 1 to re charge slowly. And the separate shield grinds close to the hull made them stronger and also with a grind in the bubble collapse it opens a far larger portion of your ship open to enemy fire compared to a single skin tight grid
That is what I can remember, note or caution it is nearly 2 am here.
It can't be hard to make this. A lot of people have asked for this since bridge commander days and even then i thought it was funny because BC timeline was set after nemesis I think and in the game they didn't even have skin tight shields and sto is set 30+ years after nemesis, where are the skin tight shields. Crytpic needs to do thier research.
Thats because Bridge Commander pre-dates Star Trek nemesis.
To be fair though, most people are going to preferr canonicly established standards over stuff that appeared in a one off movie, which was not even a very good one at that.
At least two... STVI had Skintight Shield for both the Excelsior and Enterprise... and they were even more tight than the Nemesis ones :P
Yes, but thats like 100 years earlier, and in STVI we even see how those skin shields are horribly ineffective, not shielding the hull from damage, but making sure that projectiles cannot just penetrate straight through the saucer.
TNG and onward the norm is bubble shields.
Wha..wha...what?
Last time I checked the torpedoes in Star Trek VI did not simply penetrate anything until Scotty said "shields collapsing!"
The shields of the Enterprise were just not strong enough to hold off the entire damage thrown against them.
http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/2346/enttorp1.png
http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/4411/enttorp2.png
as you can see there is a black spot where the first torpedo hit.
It did not penetrate the saucer.
When you compare that to the hit on the Excelsior saucer:
http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/9692/extorp1.png
http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/114/extorp2.png
http://img2.imageshack.us/img2/8050/extorp3.png
http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/2659/extorp4.png
http://img810.imageshack.us/img810/8251/extorp5.png
http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/4745/extorp6.png
http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/1849/vlcsnap2011101713h39m10.png
no damage to the Excelsior.
So it's not really the type of shields, it's just that the Constitution class had crappy shielding.
Besides: since the Post-Nemesis USS Pasteur once again has bubble-shields it becomes clear it's just a matter of available budget.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KKtmE4MH4Fc/TaXRtffZHrI/AAAAAAAAApI/corcwdHrRF4/s1600/USS-Pasteur-NCC-58928.jpg
*EDIT: "Movies", not "Bovies"* have higher Budget so they sometimes have skintight shields.
Modern CGI also allowed something like that on "Enterprise" (it works exactly like shields it just has another name)
With bubble shields you won't get that kind of hull damage until they actually fail completely.
Enterprise didn't have any kind of shield type effects.
The entire idea with polarized hull plating is that electromagnetism makes the material more resistant to damage.
The reason why we did not see anything of that nature in TNG was because there was no budget to show any kind of hull damage.
Take "Yesterday's Enterprise" as an example:
The Klingons kept punding the Enterprise-D's saucer long after the shields had collapsed yet there was no visible damage on it whatsoever.
So the correlation is actually that when there is budget to show skintight shields, there is also budget to show hull damage not that skintight shields make the ship more vulnerable.
Besides when the Excelsior can hold off the damage even though she has the supposedly "ineffecte shielding" does that say something about the shield concept or just about the performance gap between the old Connie Refit and the Excelsior class?
http://ent.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/4x16/divergence_447.jpg
http://ent.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/4x16/divergence_448.jpg
http://ent.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/4x16/divergence_449.jpg
yes there was a shield effect.:)
Again, a question of budget. It should be noted that the Galaxy class did have shield bubbles in the first TNG movie Generations, and the Sovereign seems to have that as well in First Contact. But in Nemesis, they moved back to "skin-tight".
Should we see this as a sign that shield tech is constantly evolving and changin back & forth, or just that it determines on the SFX team mood and abiltiies what they can implement?